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Libertarians

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if I had to choose between paying less taxes or spending more money on health care/education/social service, I would always pick the latter simply because I find that more important than my own self interests. Not to mention that nation's which have social safety nets tend to have a better society overall.

A reasonable enough position - wanting to spend more money on health care/education/social service, and wanting to defray costs while spreading benefits is an equally laudable goal.  Hence we have lived for centuries with the benefits of Church run hospitals and schools and more recently with Mutual Life Insurance funds along with Widows and Orphan funds and Cooperative Societies.  Those "Club" run services are the precursors to your "National" services.  The Nation is nothing more than another Club.  And an exclusive one at that.  One that denies entry on the basis of National origin to those that would voluntarily wish to pay their "dues" in order to receive the "benefits".

Does your sense of Universality extend beyond your National borders?

The advantage of a Transnational Corporation is that the underlying contract is available to all on a voluntary basis.  No compulsion is required.

Like yourself I recoil from extremes - extremes of any sort - including extreme nationalism and extreme socialism.

Your continued good health Young Fella.

Cheers.
 
A reasonable enough position - wanting to spend more money on health care/education/social service, and wanting to defray costs while spreading benefits is an equally laudable goal.  Hence we have lived for centuries with the benefits of Church run hospitals and schools and more recently with Mutual Life Insurance funds along with Widows and Orphan funds and Cooperative Societies.  Those "Club" run services are the precursors to your "National" services.  The Nation is nothing more than another Club.  And an exclusive one at that.  One that denies entry on the basis of National origin to those that would voluntarily wish to pay their "dues" in order to receive the "benefits".

I think that the Social Gospel had an influence on the creation of some of the regulations we now have with regards to labour and poverty, as well as the creation of some social programs. A society is in a way an exclusive club, however its necessary at a national level in order to be able to respond to any problems or issues which may occur.

Does your sense of Universality extend beyond your National borders?

Depends, I think Canada overall aims to improve the quality of life for people outside of our borders.

The advantage of a Transnational Corporation is that the underlying contract is available to all on a voluntary basis.  No compulsion is required.

I'm somewhat split on globalization, I can see the benefits of it, but at the same time I know that their are downsides to it and it can be used to take advantaged of the less fortunate in other countries. It can have a negative effect on a fully developed country, especially when manufacturing jobs are lost to a country with fewer regulations. I'd say I'm more in favour of fair trade while at the same time maintaining policies that ensure countries we do business with respect human rights and attempt to improve the quality of life of their citizens.

Like yourself I recoil from extremes - extremes of any sort - including extreme nationalism and extreme socialism.

Agreed...
 
Reccesoldier said:

He's not the only one saying that.

Daniel Etounga-Manguelle, an engineer, author and lecturer from Cameroon, suggests that Africa needs a cultural adjustment before it can make any progress at all.  In Culture Matters* he says:

The Community Dominates the Individual

If we had to cite a single characteristic of the African culture, the subordination of the individual by the community would surely be the reference point to remember.  African thought rejects any view of the individual as an autonomous and responsible being.  The African is vertically rooted in his family, in the vital ancestor, if not in God; horizontally he is linked to his group, to society, to the cosmos.  The fruit of a family-individual, society-individual dynamic, all linked to the universe, the African can only develop and bloom through social and family life ...

The concept of individual responsibility does not exist in our [African] hyper-centralized traditional societies.  In Cameroon the word “responsible” translates as “chief.”  Telling peasants that they are all responsible for a group initiative is to tell them therefore that they are all chiefs – which inevitably leads to endless interpersonal conflicts.

Some members may recall that, some time ago, I complained/explained that during my time in Africa I became frustrated because most of the people with whom I was assigned to work had little if any concept of their responsibility to the larger, national community.  They were preoccupied with their local (family/clan/village) issues.  That's what Etounga-Manguelle is saying:  Africa is culturally unequipped to understand, much less function in a modern, liberal society – where the rights and duties of the sovereign individual dominate the social, economic and political systems.  I think (and so I've been told by some Asian colleagues and acquaintances) that the African (to continue with Etounga-Manguelle's overly broad generalization) is equally unprepared to deal with a modern conservative society.

Etounga-Manguelle proposes four 'revolutions' – initiated, led and controlled by Africans, in:

1. Education

2. Politics

3. Economics

4.Social Life

In short he proposes that, through great effort and accepting great hardship, Africans must spurn Western help and, instead, put themselves through a crash course (probably requiring generations) in enlightenment – while still retaining the humanism which is a hallmark of African culture.

It's quite a proposal.  I suspect that something that radical is required.


----------
* Lawrence E Harrison & Samuel P Huntington (editors), New York, 2000
 
I don't have much depth in the whole issue with foreign aid so forgive my ignorance, but I'm wondering if we have any say or knowledge of where that money goes to. In my own opinion we should stop with this notion that throwing money at a problem will make it go away, and find more innovative solutions when dealing with developing nations. If a nation wants our help then we should give it to them under the condition that the money will go towards something productive such as education/health care/infrastructure. I would prefer an emphasis on education simply due to the fact that the more doctors, engineers, lawyers, and educators, a country has the better off it will be for later generations.
 
Sigs Guy said:
I don't have much depth in the whole issue with foreign aid so forgive my ignorance, but I'm wondering if we have any say or knowledge of where that money goes to. In my own opinion we should stop with this notion that throwing money at a problem will make it go away, and find more innovative solutions when dealing with developing nations. If a nation wants our help then we should give it to them under the condition that the money will go towards something productive such as education/health care/infrastructure. I would prefer an emphasis on education simply due to the fact that the more doctors, engineers, lawyers, and educators, a country has the better off it will be for later generations.

I would suspect that our aid dollars would go to creat a flourishing education bureacracy rather than actually educating doctors, engineers etc. This is even the case here in Canada (in most fields, not just education), where our tax dollars fuel vast government offices but children are not noticably better educated, health care is falling apart, infrastructure is neglected........

I would support giving scholarships to individual candidates to be trained and educated here, so they not only receive quality education (at least a quality that is unobtainable in a third world nation), but are also exposed to the sort of cultural influences that Edward is talking about; Freedom of association and expression, property rights and the Rule of Law. I suspect that if a critical mass of people are exposed to and indoctrinated in the education and cultural values of the West then the social revolution that Edward is speaking of will finally happen in Africa. For a precient look at some of these issues, try Robert Kaplan's article "The Coming Anarchy" http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/prem/199402/anarchy

This is also the fatall weakness of "our" nation building efforts in SW Asia (Iraq and Afghanistan); there is not only a vast population of illiterate or poorly educated people to work with, but their cultural norms are not aligned with our concepts of individual rights, freedom of association and the Rule of Law either. We will have to work on cultural engineering if we want to achieve long term success.
 
Have not the British done this over the last 50-60 years....university educated the African elite, only to have them either disappear into the ether or come home to become dictators?
 
GAP said:
Have not the British done this over the last 50-60 years....university educated the African elite, only to have them either disappear into the ether or come home to become dictators?

You are correct in that regard, but maybe we are looking at the wrong "niche" to fill. The British (and to a large extent both Western and Communist powers) concentrated on educating government bureacrats and leaders in the belief that "government" makes things happen. Libertarians believe just the opposite, and I should have been more clear in my post that we should be educating individual candidates to become doctors, engineers, technicians, and so on rather than the "civil servent" class.

In the book "The coming of the French Revolution", the author makes the point that while there were rebellions all through history against the ruling class, at the time of the French Revolution there was a middle class with sufficient size and power to actually enter the arena in force and fight for their own political and economic rights. (In essence they fought for their economic/property rights but came to realize that these were derived from their political rights).

By creating the foundation of a middle class of professionals (and backing them with economic and perhaps even military help under certain conditions) we can provide a nucleus for the social revolution to take place. A critical mass of people with the belief in freedom of speech and association and the Rule of Law is needed. In the United States, this was accomplished because the initial settlers shared certain values unique to that time and place (Ideas about common and natural law and Dissenting Protestantism common in the 16 and 1700's), someone has to recreate these conditions if we want to see similar results in Africa or SW Asia.
 
E.R. Campbell said:
initiated, led and controlled by Africans, in:

1. Education

2. Politics

3. Economics

4.Social Life

I don't hold out much hope that any of these 'revolutions' will happen before Africa weans itself, or is weaned off the teat of international aid.
 
Reccesoldier said:
I don't hold out much hope that any of these 'revolutions' will happen before Africa weans itself, or is weaned off the teat of international aid.

As the article in SPIEGEL Magazine "For God's Sake, Please Stop the Aid!" states:

The Kenyan economics expert James Shikwati, 35, says that aid to Africa does more harm than good. The avid proponent of globalization spoke with SPIEGEL about the disastrous effects of Western development policy in Africa, corrupt rulers, and the tendency to overstate the AIDS problem.

Makes me wonder if the current push for increased aide will just make things worse which will then be blamed on global warming and demands made for even more aide.
 
The key thing to remember about Aid organizations and NGO's in general is they are also business entities, and their income is derived from donations, which in turn are derived from alerting "us" to the problem of (insert cause here).

You will notice this gives incentives to overstate the problems, as well as a perverse incentive to ensure the problem never gets solved (what would they do and whyere would their income come from when [insert cause here] is no longer a problem?). I would suggest that potential donors carefully research their causes, and shy away from those which have high percentages of their donations going to internal administration, fundraising and so on.

Frankly, the best organizations in my experience are local churches, since the donations come from the congregation, the project is usually small scale and focused (and run by one or more parishioners) and (most important) the congregation knows the project manager in person and can assess the probable success or failure for themselves, rather than donating to an impersonal and bureaucratic NGO or sending tax dollars to the government bureaucracy where there is little or no accountability.
 
The arbitrary nature of Socialism vs private spending

http://mostlyfree.blogspot.com/2007/06/public-service-announcement.html

Wednesday, June 20, 2007
public service announcement.

A quick lesson in semantics for all you spinners out there, as appparently you continue to be confused about a fairly simple topic:

A tax cut (or tax relief) has been put in place when, after implementation, Canadians are able to keep more of their money. The government never touches the money and has absolutely no say in how Canadians spend it.

Spending is when the government collects the money of hard-working Canadians and then redistributes it as it sees fit. Any money that goes through the government before being returned to the Canadians from whom it was wrested is spending, and in no way constitutes tax relief. It is spending even if it is done through the tax system, and especially if the money is returned only to groups arbitrarily specified by the government.

The former shows respect for Canadians by allowing them to make their own decisions with their money. The latter is nothing more than forced subsidization of the lifestyles and values the government wants Canadians to live at the expense of the lifestyles and values Canadians espouse for themselves.

This is true no matter how many times you mislabel your spending and no matter how hard you hope that Canadians swallow your spin.
 
The entire thread is in vain if that is what you think; Libertarianism is ALL ABOUT the Rule of Law; Laws limited in scale and scope, and people being held accountable for their actions.

If a person is intent on helping themselves to your person or property, then no law will stop them (the seeming intent of regulations like the Gun Registry); rather the law delimits the areas of freedom (i.e. the principle that "your rights end at the tip of my nose"), and provides the tools to protect your person and their property (police and the courts of law).

Since force is the ultimate guarantor of your rights (you have the right to self defence, and the Police and Armed Forces are the agents of the State to provide your protection from threats you cannot deal with in person), it is appropriate that severe limitations are placed on the scale, scope and use of State power, otherwise the State becomes tyranny.
 
I've actually read alot of material on libertarianism when I was in high school, I guess I'd be described as libertarian since I wanted less government intervention in all walks of life; however since then I've moved more towards being a progressive. However I'm just wondering what some of the libertarians on here think about the issues of today.

In the presidential election in 2008, would you support Ron Paul who is one of the most libertarian candidate in the United States, or is a more moderate libertarian preferable?

In your view would libertarianism ever support intervention in foreign conflicts such as Vietnam, Iraq, Korean War, Afghanistan, Rwanda, or is it better for a country to simply not interfere?

Another question I have is if we are a libertarian society and we are hit by a recession, and if their is a large gap between the rich and the poor won't that create more instability in a society with no social safety net?

As well how would a libertarian deal with social problems like child abuse, crime, poverty, suicide, etc? Could the free market in Canada possibly serve all Canadian's, or would some people simply remain marginalized due to the fact they do not have the financial means in order to have proper health care, and get a proper education.

In my own view at the very least we need to ensure that every person in Canada regardless of their financial situation should at the very least have access to education from Kindergarten to Grade 12, as well as basic health care. I personally don't see a free market being able to fill all of those needs for 100% of the population.


 
a_majoor said:
The entire thread is in vain if that is what you think; Libertarianism is ALL ABOUT the Rule of Law; Laws limited in scale and scope, and people being held accountable for their actions.

You completely misinterpreted what I was getting at.

The acceptance of the social interference of the left is what has made it possible for the Government of Ontario to willfully ignore the most basic of our Legal rights (innocent till proven guilty) in the name of "protecting society".

My argument is that this kind of social engineering is detrimental to a free society, unless I have it wrong and the glorious revolution was designed to replace the divine right of kings with the divine right of socialists.
 
Reccesoldier said:
This]=http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2007/06/20/streetracing-cars-seize.html]This is the kind of suspension of basic legal principal that socialisism/reform liberalism leads to.

Innocent till proven suspicious is all these people need.

Sorry Reccesoldier, I misunderstood what you were getting at in the highlighted portion. In fact, I thought you were conflating Socialism with Libertarianism. One serving of crow, lightly salted for me, please......

Sigs Guy said:
I've actually read alot of material on libertarianism when I was in high school, I guess I'd be described as libertarian since I wanted less government intervention in all walks of life; however since then I've moved more towards being a progressive. However I'm just wondering what some of the libertarians on here think about the issues of today.

In the presidential election in 2008, would you support Ron Paul who is one of the most libertarian candidate in the United States, or is a more moderate libertarian preferable?

The President is only one part of the equation. A more Libertarian Congress would be needed to ensure spending is brought down and under control (and of course the President would need to be able to work with the Congress to sponsor his own bills or pass legislation). Perhaps more practical, if less ambitious, would be to work at electing city councillors, aldermen, and other local government reps (up to the Provincial/State level). If local governments were to deal with their own levels of responsibility and cut spending and taxes accordingly, much of the Libertarian program could be achieved.

In your view would libertarianism ever support intervention in foreign conflicts such as Vietnam, Iraq, Korean War, Afghanistan, Rwanda, or is it better for a country to simply not interfere?

Unless very compelling national interests are being served, the use of Armed Force should be strictly limited. A true Libertarian State would resemble Switzerland or Sweden in its Armed Forces. Still, most of your examples can (and should be) debated on their relative merits and proximity to national interests as understood at the time.

Another question I have is if we are a libertarian society and we are hit by a recession, and if their is a large gap between the rich and the poor won't that create more instability in a society with no social safety net?

This question is based on the premise that governments can solve recessions. This is a debatable proposition at best, and many economists could make the case that government intervention in the economy causes recessions. Non government safety nets exist, mostly in religious charity groups. They have the distinct advantage in that the donor has access to the people being helped, rather than being insulated from the recipients by a remote and indifferent bureaucracy.

As well how would a libertarian deal with social problems like child abuse, crime, poverty, suicide, etc? Could the free market in Canada possibly serve all Canadian's, or would some people simply remain marginalized due to the fact they do not have the financial means in order to have proper health care, and get a proper education.

In my own view at the very least we need to ensure that every person in Canada regardless of their financial situation should at the very least have access to education from Kindergarten to Grade 12, as well as basic health care. I personally don't see a free market being able to fill all of those needs for 100% of the population.

Since the current system of governmental delivery of these services results in many people not being served, or being marginalized, you could make the argument that a Libertarian system being decentralized, flexible and responsive will be able to serve more needs for more people. Even if it only results in delivering similar amounts of "service" the elimination of bureaucratic overhead will save vast amounts of resources (and the economic argument is that freeing these resources will result in greater opportunities for all the people, hence the superiority of a Libertarian society. In history, societies closer to the Libertarian ideal outperformed their competitors, often despite great disparities in manpower and resources).


 
Some educated guesses:

1) You have to choose from among the available actual candidates.  If the presidential ballot names Ron Paul, Hillary Clinton, and Rudy Giuliani, then either pick one or do not vote.  There is always a better candidate that one might imagine.

2) Since libertarianism includes rule of law, there's no principle preventing a country from intervening where there is a manifest defensive imperative (ie. a just cause).  What one should also expect from a libertarian government is a marked disinclination to start its own conflicts or interfere where all parties to the conflict have weak claims to fighting a just cause (eg. most of what happened in the Balkans recently).

3) A large gap between rich and poor isn't the source of instability during economic crunches.  Comparing the propensity of parts of Europe to devolve to extremism against what happened in the US during the '30s, I surmise there are other characteristics of a society which determine how well it weathers a fiscal crisis.  I speculate that the more independent-minded the people (as individuals and families), the better they weather adversity.

4) Child abuse is a crime against a person, and crimes are a matter of law.  I am not sure any political structure except a remarkably paternalistic/maternalistic egalitarian one can resolve poverty.  The people capable of rising out of poverty mostly don't need heavy-handed assistance to do so; the people who need heavy-handed assistance arguably can get it right now and it doesn't help very much.  People living on the streets with mental illness are still there.  The question to be wrestled with is: by what criteria is a biologically adult person deemed unfit to be the judge of his own life?

5) A completely unfettered free market can provide health care and education or nearly anything else people want.  What a free market does not do is ensure everyone has the means to pay.  If pricing for health care and public education were allowed to float on a free market, I would expect the price of the former to rise and the latter to fall.  It is certainly possible to separate private provision from public funding (eg. single insurer or payer).  The free market can also provide enough child care, but many parents are not willing to pay a price high enough to attract more child care workers.  The problem with these "goods" is that people want them, but want to pay chickenshit prices (and ultimately to the workers, chickenshit wages).
 
But how far do we go in a libertarian society, do we get rid of child labour laws, the minimum wage, university loans, workplace safety and health regulations. As well if you're born poor then you are already at a disadvantage as compared to those in the higher class, if you can't pay for health care or education you don't have many options in life. As for the churches taking over all of the social services, they are still limited in what they can do simply because they may not have the manpower or resources to provide counselling, food, clothing, etc. to the poor and disadvantaged.

I myself think that in a perfect libertarian society everything would be great, one could say the same thing about communism if it was run perfectly, however in the end I don't think its practical or realistic to believe that a completely free market is capable of filling all of societies needs.
 
Sigs Guy said:
In your view would libertarianism ever support intervention in foreign conflicts such as Vietnam, Iraq, Korean War, Afghanistan, Rwanda, or is it better for a country to simply not interfere?

In my opinion foreign policy is one of the places where libertarianism falls down and hard.

Previously posted at http://uncommonsensecanada.blogspot.com/2007/05/divergence-of-thought.html

A Divergence of Thought

Although I do not ascribe my political ideology to anything as rigid as a political party it is quite obvious to anyone who is paying attention that my tendency is toward Classic Liberalism. This would seem to call into question my support for Canada’s role in the war in Afghanistan, indeed my acceptance and support of the “War on Terror” in general, but Foreign Affairs and Defence issues are where Libertarianism and I diverge.

First off, true Classic Liberalism forbids the existence of all but the smallest of standing armies, and demands that those armies exist only for the defence of the Nation. There would not even be scope within the Libertarian ideal for most peacekeeping missions, as those missions are usually focused on enforcing the will of the wider world upon the warring factions within a given territory.

In “On Liberty” J.S. Mill wrote “A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.” I would argue that this sentiment is doubled when the actor is a Nation.

This planet is composed of a community of nations. Each nation acts on its own self-interest but that self-interest does not stop at the border of the country. Nations of the world must be willing and able to defend not only their self-interest at home but interests abroad as well.

A perfect example of this is World War 2. Where would we be now if the nations of the world had held onto the myopic Libertarian ideal of national self defence? Germany, buoyed by its successes in Europe and gathering power as it went could have picked off the remaining nations one by one.

More recently in the former Yugoslavia could any human being embodying the liberal ideals of freedom and basic rights sit idly by and watch as entire races are slaughtered like farm animals? Could we as a Classic Liberal society sit back and watch, not daring to spend our own blood and treasure to stop it? Is it freedom to become a victim of genocide? Is it liberal to allow another human being to fall victim to it?

I can not advocate that we Canadians divorce ourselves from the problems of the world any more than I could, as an individual, watch my next door neighbour be raped and do nothing. There is too much evil in the world, too much tyranny. Edmund Burke said it best when he wrote “When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.”

Nations are no different from individuals; they have a responsibility to defend their ideals, even if sometimes they must fight to the death to do it.



With regard to foreign affairs, Libertarian thought allows for individuals to enter into “treaties” with foreign governments. The idea being that in order for a truly free market to exist, each individual or company must be free to do business with any person, group or government.

So in the context of today, Colt Canada, the makers of the C7 family of weapons in use by the Canadian Forces could enter into a contract to sell those same weapons to the Taliban. Although I would like to believe that based on liberal principal alone, any Company would refuse to sell them weapons, in my heart I know that there are those in this world unscrupulous enough to do it*.

*I am not implying Colt Canada is such a company!

Now a Libertarian would argue that any company that did make such a deal would be punished by the players in the market who, seeing this action as traitorous would themselves refuse to do business with the company. But that punishment would come too late for me. Too many Canadians and too many of our allies would already have paid for the company’s greed on the battlefield.

No, unlimited individual interaction within the free market can not always be permitted. In my mind, in cases of war, limited restrictions on trade can and indeed should be placed on the individual by government. That these special cases would be strictly controlled and bound by legislation is a foregone conclusion, after all, the tendency for government to creep into every aspect daily life must still be guarded against...

Must ALWAYS be guarded against.
 
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