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310 sats \ 1 reply \ @Undisciplined 12 Mar \ on: My questions for libertarians libertarian

How can libertarians articulate that the benefit of eliminating all government is worth the risk?

This depends heavily on the individual who needs to be convinced:

Conservatives generally get that the state is wasteful and undermines civil society, so try to convince them that the same is true of the military and police.
Progressives generally get that corporate interests hijack the government and use it for their own ends, so try to convince them that the same will happen with all the utopian programs they want to begin.

Can a proper constitution that is carried out dutifully by a central government increase human flourishing?

Short-term, sure. Long-term, maybe. We've seen the US government morph from the smallest government in history to the largest, so I'm skeptical of constitutional constraints. However, I have no idea how to evaluate the relevant counterfactuals.

Is libertarianism - or maybe the non-aggression principle - a legitimate movement/principle if libertarians cannot agree on whether throwing a baby into the ocean ought to be a crime?

I'm going to allege straw man on that one, but it's also a valid point. There's a lot of disagreement about exactly what constitute NAP violations. However, these are generally highly contrived edge cases and it's not like other legal frameworks don't have their own unpalatable outcomes.

How can libertarians change the image that is conjured in people's mind when they hear the word libertarian?

Convert more regular people. Bitcoin has this problem too.

What can libertarians do now to make a highly limited government more feasible to the broader population?

Tell people "Told ya so." as the wheels come off.

What needs to be done before an anarcho-capitalist society is feasible?

As much as I would love to see this, it probably needs to be phased in. We need voluntary civic organizations to reestablish themselves as the state rolls back its entitlement programs, before ripping the band-aid off entirely.

Is the feasibility of anarcho-capitalism path dependent?

I think we could see many societies fail to get off the ground, if they don't start from the right foundation.

The scenario I've thought about a lot is dedicating an island to an ancap experiment. What immediately comes to mind is that it will just be overrun with all the degeneracy currently outlawed by the state. The issue isn't that a libertarian society must look like that, but rather that the entire global demand for such behavior will be supplied in one spot, while all the legal behavior stays where it is.

I think the path of anarcho-capitalism has to be one where a fairly large area adopts it and ideally many nations will have moved in a libertarian direction as well.

250 sats \ 0 replies \ @Voldemort OP 12 Mar

I'm going to allege straw man on that one, but it's also a valid point

I almost took it out - but I decided to include it because it was on the list you provided. Admittedly not sure what the broader context is from Bob Murphy's perspective. Though I think more generally the loud libertarians on the internet debating things like this does a disservice to the movement.

Convert more regular people.

I think in general this is true, but not at the heart of the matter. I have not been very close to this topic the last few years so I could be wrong, but I think part of difficulty of converting more people is the image. I remember back in my facebook days a pretty popular libertarian on social media was just railing against the evil government because she got a DWI (as if private companies wouldn't be better at enforcing this). All that does is perpetuate the myth that libertarians are just people who want to conduct in illegal activities with impunity.

While I recognize there are idiots and terrible people in all "groups", other ones have the benefit of being mainstream. That is to say the fringe are seen as fringe and not representative of the broader group. Libertarianism does not have that liberty.

Tell people "Told ya so." as the wheels come off.

I really hope this is all that is needed.

We need voluntary civic organizations to reestablish themselves as the state rolls back its entitlement programs

My thoughts exactly - and I think it applies to the above about limited government as well. Or maybe with respect to limited government it is how we get to a limited government without the wheels needing to fall off. More broadly, libertarians often say "rich people care about the poor and will step up without the government." I just don't think people buy it. People see billionaires and millionaires living lavish lifestyles without doing much for the poor so I think they receive this claim with a heavy amount of skepticism.

I recognize that rich people do a lot for the poor already, however. Especially at the local level. Unfortunately the media has no incentive to cover this.

I think we could see many societies fail to get off the ground, if they don't start from the right foundation

I wonder what the right foundation is.

Your comment about islands made me think of something i often ponder about science funding.

We spend billions on ever more powerful particle colliders and muon colliders (or whatever nima is proposing now) and I wonder what the marginal value to society is. I don't doubt we benefit from technological advancements that went into building the LHC for example, but I also wonder what we missed out on had that money been spent elsewhere.

Imagine the learning we could generate if we did some sort of randomized control trial separating people into different societal structures. An island with no government, an island with a communist government, and island with a huge welfare state, and etc., and then observe how the society evolves.