United States Why Do Libertarians Always Lose?

liberty90

Evil Neoliberal Cat
Imagine that you are a politician and a lobby of hairdressers approaches you. They want you to promote a new regulation, 2 years of mandatory training for any new hairdressers, done by people certified by their group.

Now, if you refuse, you possibly make enemies. If you agree, you make friends.

General public is concerned with grand issues like abortion,not with risks of 5$ higher haircut bills ten years from now. Opposition wouldn't make you any strong friends, unlike support of the regulation.

Multiply by a few dozens of various interests groups per year, all slowly lobbing for very concentrated benefits to their friends, while costs are like 1$ per taxpayer or customer.

How your legal and regulatory code looks after 100 years?

Statism and over-regulation are basic nature of humans and human politics. The same happens not only to democratic legislature, but also to dictators.

In my own country, Poland, the first laws about income tax had like 12 pages (ironically made by the last reformist communist administration). Now hundreds of various special cases, and there will be more and more, such is the nature of humanity.
 

LordsFire

Internet Wizard
Ultimately, all of libertarianism relies on the axiom that private property matters, just as much as Christian morality depends on god existing.

Don't hurt people and Don't take their stuff is just a simple way of stating the NAP. It of course loses some fidelity by being a quick summary. Really, it has to do with respecting people's private property.


No, we don't have a moral duty to society at large through libertarianism. Libertarianism only concerns itself with the rights of the individual. Society at large has no claim against the individual.

Now I think I should point out that this is my morality, which is different than my politics. Morality, I go near full AnCap. But I realize that practically and politically, that the political system of AnCapdom is nothing more than a pipe dream that cannot last. I also recognize that liberty requires work and society to last, including social cohesion, the rule of law, etc. Hence I end up just a very pro-America libertarian in practice.

You missed my point.

The damage done to society at large is evidence of how redefinition of sexual ethics is harmful, not the reason it is harmful.

The redefinition of sexual ethics is harmful because humans don't get to define what is right and wrong. And secular Libertarianism tries to do that. It ultimately devolves to 'Whatever I personally think is right and wrong.'

I once knew a guy who thought that he wasn't 'aggressing' against anyone, when he completely wrecked the economy of an MMO he had been playing for a little while. He didn't care how much time and emotional investment others had in that game that they had ruined. To him playing the game was just a lark, so it wouldn't have upset him if someone else had done it, so he didn't think he had in any way transgressed against anyone else.

And this is why secular Libertarianism cannot work. Because Libertarianism is a part of a worldview, not a complete worldview in and of itself. If there is no greater moral system that it is grounded in, one which can define 'aggression,' 'offense,' 'hurt,' and the like, it literally means whatever each individual secular Libertarian wants it to.

You, personally, have Motivated Reasoning pushing your rejection of Christian sexual ethics. I won't try to claim it's the only line of reasoning you have, but you do not have an unbiased perspective on the issue, and this is part of what informs your belief that promiscuity isn't actually wrong. Because you don't want it to be wrong, because it's something you want to engage in without guilty conscience.

The same is true of people who justify petty theft (that corporation is so much richer than me!) destroying other people's property (that business is insured!), and on, and on, and on.

The Non-Aggression Principle cannot stand alone. It's a component for a greater morality, not a substitute for it.
 

liberty90

Evil Neoliberal Cat
All religious and secular ideologies can be defined as anything somebody wants.

Christianity can be defined as somebody wish, from free-market-friendly sects of protestantism to communist Liberation Theology or, in the other direction, to authoritarian medieval popes.

Whether your interpretation rules depends on your and your friends power.

As is always the case.

As to why Libertarianism is not well suited to accumulation of power - I tried to explain above.
 
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Abhorsen

Local Degenerate
Moderator
Staff Member
Comrade
Osaul
The redefinition of sexual ethics is harmful because humans don't get to define what is right and wrong. And secular Libertarianism tries to do that. It ultimately devolves to 'Whatever I personally think is right and wrong.'
Then who does? Really, that is an important question. I cannot believe in God honestly, as I have seen no evidence for one, much less the Christian one. So if I don't accept your god, where do my sexual ethics come from? Either they can be derived philosophically from some other ethics, or it is human defined.

And my sexual ethics come from the same principle of Non-aggression, which is basically: if you are going to have sex, make sure it's consensual.

You, personally, have Motivated Reasoning pushing your rejection of Christian sexual ethics. I won't try to claim it's the only line of reasoning you have, but you do not have an unbiased perspective on the issue, and this is part of what informs your belief that promiscuity isn't actually wrong. Because you don't want it to be wrong, because it's something you want to engage in without guilty conscience.
Just because my reason might be 'motivated', doesn't mean it's wrong. I mean, such an argument would also disqualify rich people from believing in capitalism, or men from disbelieving in feminism, etc.

I would also note that my being kinky probably lead to me being a libertarian and moving away from leftism, rather than the other way around. Kink itself is inherently about consent and personal responsibility and some DIYness.

As for claiming that libertarianism boils down to 'do what you think is right or wrong' in practice, I would say that happens only to the extent that other systems do that as well. But libertarianism does serve as a check on morality, and libertarians who actually practice what they preach do obey its one commandment. There is of course some disagreement about what it means on edge cases, but that is true with all moralities as well. But ultimately, there is a limit, and some easy cases where you can just say a person isn't acting as a libertarian. For a few examples: most murderers, rapists, arsonists, theives, vandals etc, clearly are violating the NAP. The same goes for any communist or anyone who doesn't believe in capitalism.

Meanwhile, that guy you referenced? Yeah, one could easily make an argument that he wasn't agressing against anyone in the MMO, unless he was scamming players or violating Ts&Cs.
 
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LordsFire

Internet Wizard
All religious and secular ideologies can be defined as anything somebody wants.
Then who does? Really, that is an important question. I cannot believe in God honestly, as I have seen no evidence for one, much less the Christian one. So if I don't accept your god, where do my sexual ethics come from? Either they can be derived philosophically from some other ethics, or it is human defined.

When you reject God, inevitably some men will become as gods. In ye olden days, they were more explicit about it; the Chinese and Japanese Emperors were considered divine, and similar claims were made by/of Babylonian and Roman rulers.

More recently, it's the 'dear leader,' see Lenin, Stalin, Mao, the Kims, Hitler, etc. Someone will define morality.

Saying 'it can be defined whatever it wants' doesn't hold water with Christianity like it does with secular libertarianism. Christianity is actually a comprehensive worldview, it has definitions for what is good and evil, it contextualizes them, it demonstrates why they are right and wrong within scripture, and reality testifies as proof to such moral principles.

The reason I referenced the societal havoc wreaked by rejection of Christian sexual ethics, is because it's a piece of supporting proof about how valid those ethics are, and how destructive attempts to change them are. The amount of human suffering is mind-boggling.

And to be blunt, if you can see no evidence for God's existence, you're not looking. The need for a First Cause alone is a strong indicator of the existence of the supernatural. Once you add in the issues of abiogenesis and irreducible complexity, you have three elements of hard material science clearly pointing towards the existence of the supernatural. When you start moving into studies of human psychology and sociology, you start seeing very solid arguments that reality as depicted by the Bible in particular has a functionally perfect correlation to reality as humans experience it.

The idea that reality can be rationally explained without the existence of God underpinning it is nothing but atheist dogma, a dogma which has been more and more thoroughly disproven as time has gone on. If academic discourse about the subject was honest, the discovery of DNA alone would have put the credibility of a sans-supernatural universe into extreme dispute, and by the 90's anyone who tried to argue naturalistic materialism at the collegiate level would be thrown out for bad-faith argumentation. But academic discourse about the subject isn't honest, and instead academia has taken upon itself the authority and prestige of the priestly class, with even less accountability than the clergy had in the worst of the middle ages.

I could go on for pages and hours (and have in the past), but I won't overly belabor this thread with that. The bottom line is that when you start out denying the existence of God, you're putting yourself down Nietsche's path whether you like it or not. Every time humans start trying to redefine ethics for themselves, it ends in tragedy, personally, culturally, and for humanity as a whole.
 

liberty90

Evil Neoliberal Cat
Saying 'it can be defined whatever it wants' doesn't hold water with Christianity like it does with secular libertarianism.

Oh, but it historically was. Interpretation of Christianity was, for example during the 30-years war of the 1618-1648, a political tool like all others. Your interpretation rules if you or your friends enjoy enough Power, as is the case with any ideology.
 

Morphic Tide

Well-known member
And to be blunt, if you can see no evidence for God's existence, you're not looking. The need for a First Cause alone is a strong indicator of the existence of the supernatural.
Except that physics actually mostly rejects First Cause, because you always land in infinite regress. Even if the First Cause is a logical need, there's no need for the First Cause to be supernatural, save by the most dry definition of lying outside nature because it exists before it. Zero need for it to be an intelligent creator, could just as well be spontaneous genesis with zero actors. "Just because" reality is entirely logically valid.

Once you add in the issues of abiogenesis and irreducible complexity, you have three elements of hard material science clearly pointing towards the existence of the supernatural.
Abiogenisis is the question of precisely how the first biological mechanism arose. The time periods we're talking about are billions of years, and the fact that existent sub-mechanisms of biology separable from any living creature creates organic matter from raw elements proves it's a physical possibility by disproving any fundamental "vitae". Even if it takes the random dice rolling for three billion years across a whole planet. The scope science speaks of is vast in ways that are incomprehensible in any broad sense to humanity, the nature of the theories these days are painstakingly going over tiny fractions of details for years to work out more of the overall picture.

Irreducible complexity is a misunderstanding of evolution, because particular traits don't need to be advantagious, they need to be non-detrimental, to a sufficient degree as to reach reproduction. It has always been an attempt at disproof of evolution by trying to provide a contradictory piece of evidence, and it has always been either fallacious rhetorical tricks or a gross misunderstanding of known biology. Flagella work with many elements missing, have a staggeringly similar separate system, and have a great number of variations, the eye has several living precursor systems like the ocular cavity of the nautilus, avien wings have sizable fossil evidence of their requirements serving other purposes before gliding occurred, and in general the "examples" keep running into the fact that science is staggeringly huge so these creationists don't know that their criticism is already disproven. Most of the time, neither do the scientists! Because they didn't have any need to bother cross-referencing those bits.

Edit: Another thing about irreducible complexity is that evolution does not always make more complex systems, and thus the final result we see can just as well be the same as a weathered arch of stone. Now-absent precursors for a different function or less efficient ancestral version of the same function can have a lot more complexity that's ultimately reducible, and thus evolution simplifies those down to an irreducible state by removing everything unnecessary.

When you start moving into studies of human psychology and sociology, you start seeing very solid arguments that reality as depicted by the Bible in particular has a functionally perfect correlation to reality as humans experience it.
Not really? Unless the Bible has some passage on incommunicable qualia somewhere, or there's a study suggesting very basic behaviors of self-interest and learning are somehow acquired, then what the Bible has to say about psychology is... beyond wrong.
 
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liberty90

Evil Neoliberal Cat
Discussion about the existence of God is something, I think, not well suited for this thread. Supreme Being can exist or not, Deist or Christian or Islamic or whatever, but until such supreme creature (if there is such) intervene visibly, interpretation of their wish depends entirely on human power, on human elites and kings that enjoy power.

 
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CarlManvers2019

Writers Blocked Douchebag
Discussion about the existence of God is something, I think, not well suited for this thread. Supreme Being can exist or not, Deist or Christian or Islamic or whatever, but until such supreme creature (is there is such) intervene visibly, interpretation of their wish depends entirely on human power, on human elites and kings that enjoy power.



Honestly, as much as people try going on about religion being better than non-religion, while there's much talk about intelligent-design, whatever

You gotta realize that much of religion in the end is made up by different cultures/peoples around the world trying to explain the world, long before science significantly advanced

And the morals and "rules" that come with them may not necessarily adapt or be that nice or even smart

I'm pretty sure Muhammed kept slaves and didn't ban them for one
 

LordsFire

Internet Wizard
Oh, but it historically was. Interpretation of Christianity was, for example during the 30-years war of the 1618-1648, a political tool like all others. Your interpretation rules if you or your friends enjoy enough Power, as is the case with any ideology.

If you're going to make that kind of argument, we should abandon debate altogether, and start stockpiling guns and minions.

Just because people claim a thing is true, does not mean it's true. Just because people claim the Bible says something, does not mean that it actually says that something.

When you stand on the ideological void of secularism, there is no metric by which to separate truth from falsehood, except for hard material reality. And as I've gone over, an honest look at hard material reality, inevitably forces one to conclude the existence of the supernatural which transcends it, and then you're trying to understand the nature of God, not whether or not He exists.


Except that physics actually mostly rejects First Cause, because you always land in infinite regress.

This isn't the thread to dive into this subject full-bore. You've basically made my argument about First Cause here though.
 

Morphic Tide

Well-known member
This isn't the thread to dive into this subject full-bore. You've basically made my argument about First Cause here though.
Except that you claim First Cause as one of three aspects of material reality that "prove" the supernatural, one of three things that do exist, of which all three don't actually have any such proof because the first and third are rejected by science, with the third landing in court and failing all standards of proof, and the second is a gross misunderstanding in that it's an unsolved problem, not a problem that's unsolvable. This is you either admitting you utterly failed to communicate your intent or backtracking by instead stating that there isn't a First Cause by saying my statement is agreement with yours.

And you ignore the following piece that even if there were a First Cause, it need not be intelligent in any capacity. Even if there is an original event before which there was nothing, this event need not have or be an actor we can call God. All three of your examples are "God in the Gaps" arguments, saying that because science hasn't given an explanation for X right now, X existing right now is proof of God.

Science doesn't claim to be complete or absolute. The "God in the Gaps" line of argumentation, the claim that because science has not answered something disproves it, fundamentally misunderstands science, and also attempts to say that science can not answer that thing. Science is a pursuit, a process, a method. It isn't a complete worldview, because it is fundamentally the creation of one.
 
If you're going to make that kind of argument, we should abandon debate altogether, and start stockpiling guns and minions.

isn't that essentially human history in a nutshell though? Even during America's infant years ideological conflicts and power struggles occurred on day 1 Shay's Rebellion, the whiskey rebellion. The American-indian conflicts, we just don't think much of it because history is written by the winners and dead men tell no tales. If the dead could speak, most of us would be too afraid to wake up in the morning. Ironically even with the corruption going on in this country things have been more peacful then they've been in the last fifty years, save some very loud instigators.

Just because people claim a thing is true, does not mean it's true. Just because people claim the Bible says something, does not mean that it actually says that something.


When you stand on the ideological void of secularism, there is no metric by which to separate truth from falsehood, except for hard material reality. And as I've gone over, an honest look at hard material reality, inevitably forces one to conclude the existence of the supernatural which transcends it, and then you're trying to understand the nature of God, not whether or not He exists.



and who holdes governments accountable when they twist the bible to serve thier ends? governors and kings are not like elders in the chruch where you are allowed to peacefully discuss grievances and disagreements. Heck Christianity isn't really meant to be used as a law book for a phisical kingdom, Jesus clearly states "My kingdom is not of this world if it were then would my servants fight in my defense."

And frankly we've seen how it plays out when Christians try to make a physical kingdom. It inevitable turns into a"Not RealTM" Christian kingdom
 

LordsFire

Internet Wizard
isn't that essentially human history in a nutshell though? Even during America's infant years ideological conflicts and power struggles occurred on day 1 Shay's Rebellion, the whiskey rebellion. The American-indian conflicts, we just don't think much of it because history is written by the winners and dead men tell no tales. If the dead could speak, most of us would be too afraid to wake up in the morning. Ironically even with the corruption going on in this country things have been more peacful then they've been in the last fifty years, save some very loud instigators.

and who holdes governments accountable when they twist the bible to serve thier ends? governors and kings are not like elders in the chruch where you are allowed to peacefully discuss grievances and disagreements. Heck Christianity isn't really meant to be used as a law book for a phisical kingdom, Jesus clearly states "My kingdom is not of this world if it were then would my servants fight in my defense."

And frankly we've seen how it plays out when Christians try to make a physical kingdom. It inevitable turns into a"Not RealTM" Christian kingdom

I'm not arguing for a theocracy. I'm arguing that Christian morality is both more coherent and more true than any secularist ideology. America was founded on Christian principles, and part of that was that the government would not hold religious authority, and in fact was specifically not supposed to try to control religious matters.

Over the course of the 20th century, secular humanists realized that they could take advantage of this by defining themselves as not being a religion, even though they very much were, and have used this to justify driving Christians out of government institutions and insisting that secular dogma be taught and practiced ever since.

Except that you claim First Cause as one of three aspects of material reality that "prove" the supernatural, one of three things that do exist, of which all three don't actually have any such proof because the first and third are rejected by science, with the third landing in court and failing all standards of proof, and the second is a gross misunderstanding in that it's an unsolved problem, not a problem that's unsolvable. This is you either admitting you utterly failed to communicate your intent or backtracking by instead stating that there isn't a First Cause by saying my statement is agreement with yours.

And you ignore the following piece that even if there were a First Cause, it need not be intelligent in any capacity. Even if there is an original event before which there was nothing, this event need not have or be an actor we can call God. All three of your examples are "God in the Gaps" arguments, saying that because science hasn't given an explanation for X right now, X existing right now is proof of God.

Science doesn't claim to be complete or absolute. The "God in the Gaps" line of argumentation, the claim that because science has not answered something disproves it, fundamentally misunderstands science, and also attempts to say that science can not answer that thing. Science is a pursuit, a process, a method. It isn't a complete worldview, because it is fundamentally the creation of one.

Dude. Stop trying to debate on this subject on this thread. I'll be happy to argue it with you elsewhere, but this is not the place.
 
i'm not arguing for a theocracy. I'm arguing that Christian morality is both more coherent and more true than any secularist ideology. America was founded on Christian principles, and part of that was that the government would not hold religious authority, and in fact was specifically not supposed to try to control religious matters.

Over the course of the 20th century, secular humanists realized that they could take advantage of this by defining themselves as not being a religion, even though they very much were, and have used this to justify driving Christians out of government institutions and insisting that secular dogma be taught and practiced ever since.

secularism and humanism are two different beast though secularism is simply the concept that governent shouldin't get involved with the affairs of the church, and ideally vice versa minus simply upholding the law of the land so long as it does not conflict with God's law. Humanism is essentially the belief that man is the end all be all. Honestly it should be treated as a religion/zelous ideology in it's own right.

on a slightly different note, it's ironic, Christians are supposed to uphold the law of the land of whichever country they are a resident in so long as the law does not contradict God's law be it a monarch, oligarchy ect. Which means us Christians in America are not supposed to be Right leaning or left leaning so much as we are supposed to be constitutionalist
 

LordsFire

Internet Wizard
secularism and humanism are two different beast though secularism is simply the concept that governent shouldin't get involved with the affairs of the church, and ideally vice versa minus simply upholding the law of the land so long as it does not conflict with God's law. Humanism is essentially the belief that man is the end all be all. Honestly it should be treated as a religion/zelous ideology in it's own right.

on a slightly different note, it's ironic, Christians are supposed to uphold the law of the land of whichever country they are a resident in so long as the law does not contradict God's law be it a monarch, oligarchy ect. Which means us Christians in America are not supposed to be Right leaning or left leaning so much as we are supposed to be constitutionalist

Constitutionalism is right-leaning. And not just a little bit, either; the left at this point is violently anti-constitution.

As BLM and Antifa have been showing.
 
When? I can't think of any time post-Civil War that the left has been in favor of the Constitution.

sorry should have been more specific. There may be a time when the pendulum swings causing the right to be more concerned about Social conservatism as opposed to constitutionalism. I've seen monarchist and catholic zealots popping up on alt media complaining about how the constitution and liberty have failed.
 

CarlManvers2019

Writers Blocked Douchebag
sorry should have been more specific. There may be a time when the pendulum swings causing the right to be more concerned about Social conservatism as opposed to constitutionalism. I've seen monarchist and catholic zealots popping up on alt media complaining about how the constitution and liberty have failed.

Yeah, I’ve met douchebags on reddit and youtube comments who were pretty eager to have lots of entertainment banned and saying how immoral it all was and how essentially people had to be forced to go and make families and such

Talked to some who seemed to be actual fucking homophobes

I can tell those Conservatives weren’t gonna get along with any New Blood in the present and future
 

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