CandleInTheDark,
Maybe I should leave climate change at the door because it's such a hot-button issue.
Anyway about pollution... it's effects are rarely quick and are often cumulative. Let's say you have a leather company. You use chemicals to treat the leather, which you dump locally to save costs because you've been assured there are no negative short term effects on the environment. 50 years later, people are getting sick because it's seeped into the ground water. When you consider the 50 years of more expensive dumping in an area where it theoretically cannot hurt anyone compared to possible liability for the health effects on some people, it turns out that it's more cost effective to dump locally and have a few sick people settle in court 50 years down the line. By my understanding, according to libertarian theory, the correct libertarian decision would be to dump locally, right? There could be some fallout with some buyers, as people speak with their wallets, but if you're able to pass on the savings (or remain competitive in some way due to the cheaper costs of local dumping) a lot of customers may decided to stay on board because they're not directly effected. Or affected, I get those confused.
-----Added 4/8/2008 at 02 : 16 : 32-----
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Originally Posted by MSD
Well, I dropped my LP membership after realizing that the party has no direction and is an incoherent mix of single-issue voters dedicated to every cause out there, religious nuts who want to dismantle government authority so that religion can take its place, and right-wingers who don't like the religious connotations of the Republican Party. Only one of their top candidates had an immigration policy that was anything other than xenophobic or outright racist, and Bob Barr ... that was a joke, right? But I'll answer anyway. I do not agree with everything I'm saying, but I'm giving the libertarian response to each question.
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I appreciate your responding.
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Originally Posted by MSD
The basic libertarian principle is to regulate only to prevent harm to others and to force those who do harm to take responsibility. Air/water/food quality and sustainable use of natural resources are necessary to prevent harming ourselves and others, so ideologically pure libertarians would believe that legislation to prevent individuals and businesses from polluting to a dangerous degree is ethically allowable. LP members are more likely to favor a free market of carbon credit trading regardless of the fact that it wouldn't work.
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So you're saying that LP members and pure libertarian theory are at odds on this issue? That's very interesting.
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Originally Posted by MSD
The basis of libertarian philosophy is that the right to extend one's fist ends at the tip of your neighbor's nose. If something does not directly harm others, it should not be regulated. Therefore, guns shouldn't be regulated, using them to harm others should.
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So the idea of prevention measures would not likely be popular with libertarians. Moving away from guns, though, it still seems that rights are held to be sacred in libertarian theory. They are beyond reproach so long as they don't directly injure others?
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Originally Posted by MSD
A person who owns property (by allodial deed) is free to act on his property in any way that does not directly harm others. Food, water, and shelter are basic human needs and may not be taken away by a government. Deeds in the US and most other countries grant permission to use the land to a certain depth below ground level and a certain height above ground level, but can be seized through a number of legal means. To put conditions on property ownership means that the individual is not the fundamental unit of society, whereas libertarianism holds the individual as that fundamental unit.
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No, I'm talking about the idea of personal property being a necessary mode for libertarianism. It seems that mode is never really established. Collective ownership can work and has been demonstrated to work in human history. Considering that, wouldn't libertarianism be based on an incorrect assumption: that private ownership is moral/natural/etc.
I've had several lengthy debates with a good friend of mine who is a Mises worshipper and he insists that private ownership is moral, natural, and correct and that anything else is wrong or somehow doesn't even exist. This belief is not uncommon.
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Originally Posted by MSD
Libertarianism holds that an individual is entitled to what he earns in a free market, not what a government decides he is entitled to or says he is allowed to earn. This is the basis of opposition to affirmative action, income tax, etc.
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This assumes that the market is fair. I don't ever recall seeing evidence that the market is consistently fair. Maybe it's a difference in what I think "fair" is compared to a libertarian?