I'm letting the first part go because this next part warrants more attention.

Here is the difference. They want to do it on an ethically bankrupt basis and it seems quite subjective in nature. The "Yes we want drugs legalized, but only some of them..." kind of attitude. Or the "Yes. Pro-choice, but only in certain instances..." stand. To me, that takes a level of completely delusional hypocrisy that I cannot even fathom. The "Yes. Free markets, but only if no one gets trampled..." UGH!

However, it isn't. If everyone were like you and I then we wouldn't have anything to discuss here. lol.

I have such a model. I hinted at its basis in the last post. Libertarians stop short of any propositions concerning the strong intermediary oversight needed to guarantee the freedoms they so long for.

The capitalist idea of 'democracy' is anything but. Right now, we must follow laws that make very little sense to us and do very little towards progress. Bringing the democratic level down to the people by putting the people collectively in control of their places based upon their own choices is possible, but only when governed by a strong intermediary intent upon keeping ideological enemies apart and unable to affect choices made by different people.

In a community of 1,200 people, vote counting on any issue would take less than an hour and would be subject to complete public oversight. Currently, we try to count 100,000,000 votes on a single issue in a single day to resolve who will be the one person with a veto  that will effect everyone. I feel oppressed now. I have no recourse. Nowhere to move in the country that is not effected by that veto.

Take out worrying about the paycheck. Well-defined socialism works to get rid of currency by placing worth on the individual and their needs. I don't know what occupation you do, neither do I know what occupation you wish that you could do instead. However, I would want you or anyone to do what you chose rather than be forced to just do 'something' in order to get a paycheck.

Let's face it. Everyone needs housing. Everyone needs food. Everyone needs internet(in my opinion even the fundies). Everyone needs the opportunity to make their own lives liveable and express themselves openly.

Easy. Do what you must to do what you want. Work 30 hours per week for the collective. Use the other 138 for sleep and whatever else.

In a community of 1,200 people, it is easy to keep track of what time someone wants to eat their meals and even easier for the members of the community in charge of food to make sure that the individual not only gets what they need, but what they want as well. 

I'm preaching now aren't I. 

I don't want people to be trapped by economic means which is why anything involving the perpetuation of 'markets' is abhorrent to  me. 

Let me ask 5 questions of you personally ParanoidAgnostic. Not too personal, but relevant.

1.) What would you like to do as an occupation? Anything. It can be weird even.

2.) What time of day do you sleep best normally?

3.) Do you eat on a relatively regular schedule?

4.) How much space do you require to be comfortable at home? with kids if any? with spouse/companion?

5.) If the community that you had chosen to live in with like-minded individuals changed too much for you to be comfortable, would you be open to moving to another that better fit with your own philosophy/ideology? 

These things are dependent upon subjective terms. However, they are intersubjectively possible. Under the 'market' system we are currently in, you don't have these same freedoms.

I assert that under a libertarian system, the economic chains of bourgeois slavery to the oligarchy would force you to forget those answers to the questions presented. You and I would continue to run around chasing our quarters for nothing more than a fleeting feeling of success when all of the 'bills' are paid or postponed. Losing sleep. eating poorly, working long hours, trapped in a space too small to move around or too big to afford, no hope of being free from laws made by people who will never think the way you do.

Or. Answering a few questions. Being pointed in the direction of where to go to find the answers for yourself while providing a meaningful service to society by just doing what we had to in order to do what we want to do.

I can't get over how 'preachy' that sounds. Sorry. 

In defense of the goofballs, their idea is a 'pay as you use' the services.

Unfortunately, many communities could not afford to keep their level of service without the federal government. Shhh. Don't spoil that delusion for them too soon. lol. 

If it comes from the government to ADM it's called a subsidy.

When it comes from Archer Daniels Midland to a farmer, it is market manipulation, but completely legal by Libertarian standards.

Since paying farmers not to grow soy beans in Indiana on certain years only indirectly affects the price, they can't be drug back into court over it. 

 I'm not sure where you're getting this from. I think you may be confusing libertarianism with some other postions because "Yes we want drugs legalized, but only some of them..." is exaclty what libertarianism is against.

The libertarian ideal would be that all drugs are legal.

Maybe some libertarians would say this because have personal hang-ups about harder drugs or maybe they are trying to be main-stream enough to at least make a little change in the libertarian direction but it's not based on the libertarian ideal.

 The idea of 'keeping ideological enemies apart' disturbs me. You want to segregate society based on opinions? We need to be exposed to ideas we dissagree with for our own personal growth. What about children born in one idelogical community? They never get to see that there's other ways to look at life. What happens if they somehow decide that they don't agree with the ideology of their commune? Who can they turn to?

Segregated, the hatred and misunderstanding between ideological groups can only grow. The end result of this would be volence.

How does your perfect system deal with labour shortages in specific jobs?

With capitalism if there aren't enough people doing a certain job then the imbalance between supply and demand increases the pay offered for that particular job. This makes the job more attractive to people who may have otherwise prefered another job. If there are too many people doing another job then the supply/demand forces decrease the financial reward for that job. This will make other jobs appear more attractive even if that particular job is their ideal job.

How does your society deal with a situation where you need 100 garbage men but it's naturally noone's dream job or you have 300 people choose to be teachers and only need 200?

What about deciding who get's what resources? You've provided housing for your citizens in a seaside community. 10 of the houses are across the road from the beach, with spectaular views out across the ocean. Naturally most citizens would like one of these houses. How do you decide who get's them?

The USPS is irrelevent at this point, at best.

Face it, often times, in fact most of the time, the private sector can get things done as well, if not better than the clods currently in charge.

I've stayed out of this argument, because I felt it was waged on false premises. Essentially, the anti-libertine crowd is arguing against the chaos that WOULD insue from a dramatic paradigm shift. That's bull.

Of course switching to a libertine system overnight would cause proplems. Nobody in the of the libertine bent I know is advocating such a ridiculously irressponsible thing.

Change takes time.

We start by ending the drug war and the war in Iraq. Two things I'm fairly sure the vast majority of libertines would support.

Social and economic changes can come after that, and in stages. It makes little sense to change th e way things work overnight. You do it slowly, and evaluate what you are doing ast you implement it.

Of course the next step would be to legalize gay marriage amd lift all restrictions on stem cell research.

Then we'll eliminate immigration restrictions and work for true free trade.

Then we'll eliminate property and income tax, so that you can finally actually OWN your home and property.

Additional reforms can wait till the next term or five. Personal responsibility is NOT something we are used to as Americans.

Even if I agree, it still seems to me that you are talking about change eventually rendering an old way irrelevant and not necessarily that the new way was right all along.

The pricate sector can get things done, but it is not ALL about getting things done. It depends on what you want done. And I still think other issues trump getting things done. Down with Machiavelli.

I would like to ask one thing, though. You do employ one thing that appears to be a trick that I see from a lot of self-styled libertarians and that is a shell-game of conflating freedom and personal responsibility. I am told that the libertarian ideal is founded on freedom so it would not be good to argue with it. But when we start talking about corruption and lawless being a predictable side-effect of Freedom with a capital F, the libertarian frequently(without explanation) morphs freedom into personal responsibility. The fact is that personal responsibility is necessarily a restriction on freedom even if it is no more than one placing limits on oneself. Further if it is NOT only self-control, it must be control from without (and I think it would be completely stupid to think that even if we follow all good steps there would still not be a significantly damaging cadre of criminals raring to exploit Freedom). There must be some entity with the power of creating law and enforcing it, i.e. a government.

This is where libertarianism collides with concepts of government and for me loses all sense. If you are not an anti-government libertarian, this does not apply to you. But if you are (or someone) please explain to me government without a government.

I'm genuinely interested in how your version of communism deals with shortages and surplusses in people doing certain jobs and the distribution of limited resources.

I know that I put the question rather mockingly and I'm sorry for that. As I said, if someone can put forth an idea for communism that works and maintains a high degree of personal freedom then I'd have no problem supporting it. I just have trouble seeing how these two problems (really one problem from two points of view) would be solved without government coersion or declaring some people "more equal than others."

Irrelevant? Ok. One wonders how long the bidding war would take for sending tax papers, rebates, and bills from the IRS until the process of eliminating said agency comes to fruition.

Let alone WHERE it would go since things can wind up in the wrong zip code now. Oh yeah. Hmmm. Zip codes. Where'd those come from? 

At what cost to the people? Things to see:

Bill for daily driving on privately owned roads in order to get to work.

Police: "Here is the bill for my wages for pulling you over, sir."

Bill for handcuff rental, jail cell rent, and food for jail time even if found innocent. [side note: They do this where I live. One guys bill was $713 for one week and he was found innocent. According to the sherriff, he still has to pay. It's in civil court this month some time.]

"Sorry that your house burnt down. Please remit the payment for the fire brigade and equipment rental to extinguish it."

"Sorry that your house burnt down. Please see my insurance representative for damages incurred to my lawn by the fire truck."

I don't share your optimism with regard to the 'private sector'. Perhaps it is just the private sector that I see.

Sure. Absolutely. I agree. Overnight would be next to impossible. And always of course, it takes time to get all three colors of a group in the game of MONOPOLY as well.

I'm looking at the end result of libertardism.

Since we like glittering generalities in this thread(I said 'WE' meaning me too). How about this gem?

Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

People translate 'free trade' into 'crush the competition'.

I'm for ending the war in Iraq.

When you start talking about legalizing drugs, you lose me. That's begging chaos. Let alone an almost irrefutable truth that while under the influence of drugs, 'personal responsibility' is the farthest thing from one's mind.

Who evaluates? Who adjusts the implementation?

No need to resort to libertarianism for that.

"True free trade" is a very scary and not very profitable or secure. U.S. Customs stops more than just drugs and dangerous fruits from entering the country.

How would you propose the privatization of that government agency?

HIP HIP HOORAY! Hope you enjoy staying at that home on your property because it's going to cost you BIGTIME to go anywhere.

I'm all for eliminating the IRS, but they're going to create new taxes or increase the taxes already paid for everything else that people NEED as well as the luxury stuff. One seemingly simple truth about business is:

You can never revenue less and you aren't supposed to spend more to do the same operation.

So what would you propose? Spending less or sales taxing more?

Agreed. It comes down to the question of: "Will Americans EVER be capable of it?" As it sits now, I trust people regarded as 'low-life' more than I do the people commonly associated with 'libertine values' because the former are less likely to look at me as a 'profit margin'.

Just to toss my 2 cents in... I like anarchist vs libertarian debates. Being a social democrat... they have many valid points.

If Libertarians think government is so bad... why do they want to just fight it down to just a little...

If there is a point of similarity than the analogy is not false. To show that it is false beyond that would be to show how the similarity doesnt make sense in the inference of the analogy. Just to move beyond this... you dont do this in the next steps.

I do believe I did state that I get these points from anarchists. Who literally are of the position of making every single person their own country. No ruler of any kind over yourself. Therefore you rule yourself. Meaning NO minimal restrictions. The issue with this is that you do not than have jurisdiction over that person unless that person agrees to that jurisdiction. The most you can do is sanction the person. Now the issue as seen with the American Articles of confederation. The rulers did not have the funding nor capability of  governing the people in any meaningful way. Such a similar government today could never fund National defence nor federal level law enforcement in the same method.

The point is that the government IS coercive on these points. The small government would also still be coercive toward tax evasion and such. The point in creating certain laws was because of negative effects. Such as robbery. Most people(not all) see how robbery is a bad thing. Than the government looks at things like abortion. Again most people might see abortion as a bad thing. The collective morality thusly wants to infringe on the freedoms of thieves and abortion recipients. The problem here is... you can ban robbery entirely. Someone can find themselves in a bad position where morally it is an ok thing to do in turn to steal. The point would be... in court you just explain that situation as mitigating problems. You than aren't going to be punished. I honestly cant think of an example... but again it's the usual problem with moral absolutism. "Thou shalt not lie or else" Than that nazi soldier speaks with the christian family and askes if they are hiding jews in their attic. Well if you had moral absolutism... lying is wrong always... you have to give up those jews to the nazis. 

 Same sort of thing.

Same-sex marriage is legal in Canada. It's actually considered a hate crime if a priest wants to not marry homosexual. I'm pretty sure it hasn't been appealed or anything.

Pretty sure Canada also again has no blue laws. I do believe the law in Canada basically allows the market to decide whatever it likes. I'm not a beer kind of guy. I do know that LCBO is open during sundays. Though not as much. 

They aren't taxing you because they own 1% of your car or something. They are just excise taxes. They are basically taxing you for doing things which likely arent moral... but they cant outright ban them. They want to raise the cost of that act so as to generate money from that possible abuse. Such as CD-Rs. You pay an extra tax on those most likely. BECAUSE they are so likely to being used in copyright infringement. Driving a car is a privilege and not a right. Instead of driving and having to pay these excise taxes... buy a bike or jog everywhere.

Well forgive me for not knowing exactly what you're position entails... but libertarianism and small government has happened many times historically. The USA is a great example. Look how much that blew up. Every communist country was also the same thing. The first inbetween government wasn't perfect... they limited government. It exploded and jumped into communism. Dictatorships have a few other examples. Though dictatorships aren't necessarily big government all the time. 

This is another thing anarchists point out. My favourite example is the one of the... You are on a plane which is crashing... you can see the mountain that is about to be crashed upon. Again libertarians are suggesting is to just toss off the most people and try to stabilize with very little. The unfortunate thing is that you tossed the pilot off the plane and this plane is going to transform in a giant starship to fly over that mountain. Anarchism is basically letting the plane crash and not die and go down with the plane....

The reality however is that I see now evidence of this mountain and we may have a few yellow lights and perhaps a couple red lights. The plane is not going down and we have the appropriate tools to repair the plane before anything bad happens. Nothing is perfect. The issue is that the current system is not causing big problems... *at least not in the American world* there's far more good occurring because of government than harm. Irradicating government or limiting it so much that it becomes far less effective. Will not fix any issues... perhaps fix a few issues in the american situation... but will cause a nice big list of problems.

Even in the Star Trek world... there is a need of jails-brigs. You virtually eliminate personal need of property because of replicators. Yet there are still constantly people who find thrill or something in breaking the law. Rejecting superstition is a pretty realistic thing... but there will always be those few really nuts people... be they loch ness monsterists, kleptomaniacs, or serial killers. There will always be people who do these things. In fact I dont believe there would be any change in these groups because of the change of government. Those compelled to be serial killers or kleptos will still be compelled to be.You thusly still need an effective need for law enforcement. Starfleet security infact are a pretty big force... anywhere in the world within 4 seconds... now that's some serious manpower.

Actually on the contrary factually and statistically. The more likely the country is atheistic or rather far less superstitious are infact the countries in the world who have large governments... who tax and pay much into the education systems. The top 25 countries or so on the scale of atheism also are the countries which have universal health care... I recently checked this. If the country has universal health care... it's also highly probabilistic that the country is pretty damn socialistic and thusly a big government.

Which is great. If you truly believe as such and it makes you happy to fight for such a future. GREAT. The unfortunate fact is that anarchism-libertarianism is something that's basically only going to appeal to more intelligent anti-establishment kinds of people. This is why punk music and such are so very anarchistic or anti-government. The reality is that the majority of people in a country are morons who perfer to get their political advice from Oprah, whoever looks like they will be a good leader(as in... he's wearing a nice tie... I'll vote for him), decide to pick their representive by their name(I like Tom Lantos... it's a strong name... Adeline Geo-Karis sounds like a foreigner(stinkin greeks lol)... he'd be a terrible choice... ), or the good old usual... well I vote liberal/democrat always. They dont have a clue about the people they are voting for... they are just going to vote liberal because they always vote liberal.

 Rest of the post is just a big quote. I think I'm going to miss points or something perhaps.

Yep.

You didn't really address the point that the federal government doesn't really have the power any longer. You are just killing the constitution and recreating the problems of the articles of confederation. Obviously Ron Paul isn't a complete idiot and has been around the block on the issues. That's why he proposes changing the constitution.

Furthermore... my examples were on religion for the point. As Ron Paul says and you often can argue... the separation of church and state does not create protection FROM religion. It's only protection from the government toward religion of any kind. So atheism not really being a religion allows them to make it illegal. While making the state religion for california atheism while not necessarily making any other religion illegal or anything... Nothing really is violated as per the constitution. Furthermore since it's not freedom from religion... teaching creationism in schools would be perfectly fine.

So far I do believe it has been the state level who stopped them... perhaps you would see it go through.

 Kind of reminds me of the April Fools thing where a news article announced that the State of Alabama has officially changed the value of PI to be 3.0 in line with the Bible. It's awesome because of how believable it is. That's why it spread as a true story on the net.

The federal government in the usa said california couldnt do it. It was a main topic for the republican debate in california... the question being directly from Schwarzenegger. McCain gave the thumbs up. Thusly McCain for his approval. I'm pretty sure that was the big question that swayed Arnold.

Not a refutation at all. My position isn't that giving the option to the states that they will all become freedom whores and cause problems... for example in positions of religion. I know that most of the blue states infact would indeed become pretty strong. Which exceptions obviously... Michigan likely would take good advantage of far less laws and regulations. There would also be red states which become good also. It's not that no individual state would become more responsible. It is moreso that there are some who would take good advantage and go back to 1830 in terms of laws and knowledge. That's the problem here.

 MANY laws and regulations that occur in some places are very minor things. For example... lets say you would like a nice glass of carrot juice. Well there are loads of regulations on the market up until you pouring that carrot juice. There is pesticides and all kinds of things... they are to try to eliminate possible problems. Than the carrots are taken from the ground... it needs to be washed up properly and prepared some ways... you than mash it up... you than have to pasteurize the juice. You do this to kill off any potential viruses and harmful organisms.

Well the joke is... "Organic" foods eliminates loads of these regulations... for the most part to not a big problem... very little chance of evil african bugs laying bad crap into the carrots... but the biggest problem is that they dont pasteurize the carrot juice. This than doesn't kill off the bacteria which is very very common in soil. The bacteria germinates and than you have Botulism in lethal amounts living in this carrot juice. What's the chance of this happening? 1-2%??? Ya pretty much... botulism frequently gets into your body but doesn't germinate; or does but doesn't germinate to a real large level because of the small probability. How do you fix this small probablity from happening?  Make it a law so you have to pasteurize the juice. Suddenly that 1-2% becomes oh so negligible that calling it a percentage is meaningless.

 That's the reason for these sorts of regulations. If you eliminate this regulation... the state says MEH why have it? and they dont do it... you are going to hurt many people.

Perhaps Maine will have been burnt recently because of this and it's in their minds... they take the usual regulation and make it even moreso strong. Great.... whatever... 

Yes. I am talking about a paradigm shift, especially in the light of evolving ethics and am making a distinction between this idea and the idea that we were always doing things wrong and now we need to do them right.

This points to a difference between me and the right/wrongers and that is that ethics evolve.

Example: I was discussing this with someone who talked about "privatizing law." According to any normal idea of government (a body with the authority of enforcement) "privatizing law" is a contradiction in terms.

Maybe the more interesting question here is the freedom/responsibility link.

I think that's actually quite fair. You can easily add in the anarchists to this also. The biggest thing you always hear about...

TAXATION IS THEFT!!!!1!!one!!!!

Which is a false claim anyway. Yet they always almost immediately will bring up that taxation is wrong and things that the government do is wrong sometimes.

 Libertarians are just a little less deluded than anarchists in that they realize that the government is doing a number of things that couldn't be replaced nor ended. Which is basically a "want to have cake and eat it too sort of thing" They dont want to be paying big taxes... for example the excise taxes that are being complained about. Yet they still want the same services that are provided by the government.

A far better statement is

TAX EVASION IS TREASON

Dying in a far away land for oil is sad but in no way patriotic, paying your taxes on time shows have at least some interest in the well being of your country

A democratic government can represent the people but cannot possible represent you as an individual. Its not a perfect form of government but its by far the best we have come up with so far

Partly true. I do agree that what we agree upon as a society dictates what is acceptable and what is so - that how we live is subjective based upon the society that we live in.

With that in mind, I'd hope you'd at least be willing to say that what I advocate is not "wrog" or antithetical to our nature. It may go against current mores, but it certainly is not outside the realm of how we could conduct ourselves and conduct ourselves on at least a similarly civil ground as we do now.

I will say, however, that the concept of ownership and possession does exist within other species, especially primates.

We as a society define HOW we treat such concepts, and we do that through disussion and social interation, what we're doing now.

The concepts remain, and are not unique by any stretch of the imagination.

Right, see the Soviet Union and how that worked out. Yes, there are plenty of ways we can cohabitate, we've tried quite a few.

When did I say that?

Rights come from mutual contracts and responsibilities. Rights are a two way street, they cannot exist without the capacity to reciprocate them.

Humans have rights, only because humans grant other humans rights, and we do so with certain expectations and caveates. Nothing decrees we are entilted to these rights, except contracts (be they business or constiutional or verbal or what not) we work out amoung ourselves. or have been worked out for us. No formal government is required for this, simply the ability to empathize and make agreements.

 And it should be noted that even those contracts don't really entitle you to anything without reciprocation and a collective mentality willing to uphold such agreements. And again, this does not require a government. In a civil society as large as ours though, I will say it requires a system of arbitration and laws - which I've already said I'm all for.

I think properties humans posess allow us to grant one another rights in the form of contract and mutual understanding. I don't think that humans possess rights by the mere fact that they are human - which is what intrinsic implies. A PERSON has rights, a human does not - at least not necessarily, and a PERSON only has rights based upon contracts and mutual understandings with those around him or her.

To say a human has such intrinsic rights implies that they come from somewhere, for example divinity.

I define the ability to have rights as part and parcle of the ability to understand what said rights entail and the ability to carry out the necessary responsibilities of reciprocation of such rights. 

Rights require responsibility.