Comment by rootusrootus
12 hours ago
> I'm generally pretty libertarian, but I'm all for throwing the book at these guys.
To me that seems perfectly in line with being libertarian. One of the legitimate roles of the government is protecting people from violence by other people. Libertarians are not anarchists.
Not to my understanding. Libertarian protections are from my understanding all about the quantifiable damages that were done by any given action. They don't usually go beyond that.
That's why most libertarians would be in favor of blowing asbestos insulation with the thought that "well, eventually the mesothelioma victims will sue which will stop the practice". You couldn't preemptively sue, however, as you don't have any damage you could demonstrate until after the cancer starts.
There might be flavors of libertarians that aren't that way but it's my understanding that environmental protections is one of the weaker aspects of the libertarian mindset. Especially since it simply doesn't account for "all the damage is done and the people that did the damage are now gone".
> environmental protections is one of the weaker aspects
That is probably why we are not on the same page here. I'm thinking in terms of the actual harm. Someone rolling coal near me is causing violence to me. The damage to the environment is more difficult to quantify, and that is not the angle I would approach it from.
(Most) libertarians still support addressing externalities.
One common libertarian solution for something unproven would be "it's your job to purchase insurance for this new way of doing things, and convince an actuary that it's safe; the insurance premiums will stop you from taking risks with unproven technologies without appropriate precautions/testing/etc".
> (Most) libertarians still support addressing externalities.
Not really. They support it in terms of individual responsibility and not as a government role.
> The standard libertarian solution for something unproven would be "it's your job to purchase insurance for this new way of doing things"
No libertarian I'm aware of would force someone to purchase insurance. But it also does not address the externalities problem. We have in this thread an example of an externality that doesn't have a solution. Rolling coal does small amounts of damage. An insurance agent would be happy to insure someone with a modded car that rolls coal because there isn't going to be a claim related to it.
The same is true for any CO2 emitting activity. The damage is an externality that builds up with very small individual acts. I know of no way this would be addressed with libertarian philosophy (grant for me that man-made climate change is real and a problem if you want to argue against this).
3 replies →
You're describing Corporatist Libertarians.
Traditional Libertarians: No organization (government or otherwise) should be large enough or powerful enough to infringe on anyone's liberties.
Corporatist Libertarians: No government should be powerful enough to infringe on the liberties of corporations.
Corporatism has taken over about 50% of the Democrat, Republican and Libertarian parties. They're what people usually mean when they say "moderate" in the US, and why no branches of the federal government have an approval rating above 33%. It's also why things are going downhill so fast: It doesn't matter which party is in power, even if they've got a filibuster proof majority and all three branches in their pocket. Their corporate faction will still be powerful enough to block progressive and populist legislation.
> Traditional Libertarians: No organization (government or otherwise) should be large enough or powerful enough to infringe on anyone's liberties.
But how?
You are perhaps confusing libertarians with anarcho-capitalists. Ancaps are a subset of libertarians. I think among other right-wing libertarian varieties there is a broader spectrum of beliefs, and left-wing libertarians generally would not support anything that pollutes the commons (although they would disagree about the best means of preventing such pollution).
Left libertarians, while they exist, are definitely a minority opinion.
But I'd say that they also don't have a good solution to this problem as it requires more centralized enforcement to really make a difference. A tribal council shunning the polluter or even ejecting them from the community isn't likely to result in them stopping their behavior. Not unless a huge portion of the world adopts that government (which is unlikely).
1 reply →
Libertarians consider anyone doing things they don't like to be anarchists, and anything they do, to be "freedom."
You ever notice that areas with very high libertarian numbers tend to have lots of problems with illegal dumping, and lots of people who think registering and insuring their vehicle is optional?
I've lived in the most libertarian state in the country for the majority of my life. I've never noticed any illegal dumping, and I've never heard any libertarians call anyone an anarchist (maybe once?). If anything, it's the non-libertarians that call libertarians anarchists.
On what are you basing your opinions?
I would say that libertarians come in many flavors. And many of them are not big-L libertarians.
> You ever notice [...]
No. It may be true, but I would like to see evidence rather than conjecture. I have seen plenty of trashy areas that I would not associate with a high concentration of political libertarians.
I would agree that there is an entire flavor of libertarian who, for example, felt like they must not wear masks during the pandemic because they were being told by the government to wear them.
My position on that version of libertarianism is in line with Penn Jillete's. I.e. https://www.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/comments/je34ya/penn_ji...
You're right that's what it should be, as me and my kid's right not to get trampled to death beneath a 2m hood clearly trumps your "right" to drive a 4-ton machine at unsafe speeds wherever you please. But sadly that's not how most "libertarians" think.