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To clarify, I think it's when you help other people without expectation of reward.
A libertarian cop would happily save your life from an angry grizzly bear if you paid them for the cost of bullets used, services rendered, and the bear disposal fee.
Obligatory Libertarian Police Department
spoiler
I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief.
“Bad news, detective. We got a situation.”
“What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?”
“Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.”
The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?”
“Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.”
“Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.”
He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.”
I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside.
“Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t.
“Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up.
“Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?”
It didn’t seem like they did.
“Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.”
Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing.
I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it.
“Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled.
Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him.
“Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen.
I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!”
He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose.
“All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.”
“Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy.
“Because I was afraid.”
“Afraid?”
“Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.”
I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head.
“Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.”
He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me.
Why Penn Jillette though? Is he for some reason popular with libertarians?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penn_Jillette#Politics
Jillette has previously identified as a libertarian, and stated in 2003 that he may consider himself an anarcho-capitalist. He was a fellow at the libertarian think tank the Cato Institute.
Huh. Thanks. I didn't even know he was a libertarian, only knew him as an atheist skeptic guy (besides the illusionists part). And according to Wikipedia, seems he's no longer a libertarian:
In a 2024 interview, he said he renounced his libertarianism […] adding "Many times when I identified as Libertarian, people said to me, 'It’s just rich white guys that don’t want to be told what to do,' and I had a zillion answers to that — and now that seems 100 percent accurate."
Wow. He has completely changed. Good on him for seeing the errors of his ways. Also, I'm going to paste a bit before what you pasted to add context, because I think it's worth adding.
In a 2024 interview, he said he renounced his libertarianism as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic after a libertarian group asked him to speak at an anti-mask rally. "The fact they sent me this email is something I need to be very ashamed of, and I need to change"
In 2020, Jillette distanced himself from aspects of libertarianism, particularly surrounding COVID-19. In an interview with Big Think, he stated, "[A] lot of the illusions that I held dear, rugged individualism, individual freedoms, are coming back to bite us in the ass." He went on to elaborate, "[I]t seems like getting rid of the gatekeepers gave us Trump as president, and in the same breath, in the same wind, gave us not wearing masks, and maybe gave us a huge unpleasant amount of overt racism."[53]
AnCaps are among the most extreme libertarians. Lots of more moderate libertarians think of them as kooks, similar to how leftists think of tankies.
I myself believe in altruism, mutual aid, but also smaller and more effective government. I view large governments and large corporations with skepticism: concentrations of unchecked power are prone to abuse.
I just think humans work better in smaller groups overall. That’s where empathy and personal relationships actually work. When everything turns into statistics we lose our humanity.
AnCap here. Unfortunately in our world there is no possible way to create an AnCap society, so you live within the bounds of what you have.
I’m of the mind that all of the forms of anarchism are utopian. They assume people will behave in certain ways which are contrary to reality. When people don’t behave in those expected ways the whole system breaks.
Game theory helps, as does training in computer security for similar reasons. Basically the idea is that you need to always assume people will try to break the system somehow if they think they can benefit from it.
That's one of the reasons AnCaps believe in voluntary communities, that way those who didn't advise but whatever the community's rules are they can a) be punished based on the rules of the given community, or expelled.
Congrats, you reinvented the government.
I disagree. Voluntary communities are made up of volunteers. There is nothing coercive about it. Voluntary communities provide a way for like-minded people to live in harmony. If your beliefs do not match the beliefs of a voluntary community, you are free to to argue that your beliefs should be included, leave the community, or start a new one and include anyone who believes the same things you do.
Granted within current systems you can do the first, but you are completely unable to do either the second or third.
I live in the USA. But I did not volunteer to live in the USA. I certainly may be able to move to a different country, but I certainly won't be able to find a country with the same beliefs as I have. (The States with our Constitution and Bill of Rights is likely the closest to my beliefs).
No one is preventing you from leaving the USA. Most countries are just making it difficult to enter. I'm all for having more open borders, but that's probably not what you're arguing for.
No one is preventing you from starting your own community either. There just isn't any land remaining that isn't already owned.
And the "punished based on the rules of the given community, or expelled" thing is describing a government, although because of the aforementioned lack of unowned land, they only expel immigrants nowadays.
There have been anarchist communities out there before. (Anarchist proper, not ancaps.) Most (though not all) of them have been destroyed by states who... well, not to put too fine a point on it but: states who hate freedom. I don't necessarily know what people mean by "utopian", i think anarchism is quite practical in a lot of cases but i think it also faces a number of significant obstacles.
I use the word utopian because it makes assumptions about people that aren’t true. Utopian systems can’t survive staunch and organized opposition.
This is a basic requirement for any system to survive. Look at the human body: the immune system is constantly fighting off threats. A person without an immune system (full blown AIDS) has a very difficult time surviving for very long.
I think that's an ineffective and inaccurate way of looking at things. It's not reflective of the reality of the situations where we've seen anarchist communities rise (and fall). The Ukrainian anarchists all got killed by the Soviet Union, but so did everyone else. They beat the hell out of the monarchists, capitalists, etc in the region and had a good chance at establishing a major anarchist force in the world but ultimately the Soviets betrayed and killed them all. Does the fact that the Soviets killed all the capitalists and monarchists, too, mean their philosophies are utopian? After all, they couldn't fight off the Soviets in the same way the anarchists couldn't. They were even less effective at doing so in a lot of ways.
Yeah, the governments of the world do tend to all murder any anarchists they can get their hands on but that's not an argument in favor of big state governments. That's not really an argument against anarchism, either. Really, it's an argument against big state governments. It's weird to me that it's held up so much as if it "disproves" anarchism or whatever.
That said, if you want examples of anarchist groups that have managed to survive let's talk about two:
The first is the Zapatistas. This is a small group in Mexico that has been at war with the United States government and Mexican government for decades now. If the US government wants you dead but can't kill you, i'd say that's a pretty good "immune response". There are not a lot of people who can actively fight the US government and survive and there have been many, many, many other leftist movements in Central and South America that the US government has killed in the forty years since the Zapatistas got their start.
The second one is Rojava, aka more properly: the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES). They're a bit younger, only officially establishing their independence a little over a decade ago, but they're in some ways in an even more hostile part of the world. They're a larger organization than the Zapatistas, too. It's unclear what the future holds for them, but then again that's ultimately true for all states. We'll have to wait and see.
What a great read, thanks!
Don't need a bear disposal fee so long as you have RFK Jr. around.
But is it really help if it is necessarily transactional? I wouldn't say my mechanic helped by fixing my car because I paid him. If my neighbor fixed my car, I'd say he helped me.
I think the concept of "hired help" is a thing, at least. They're not helping you out of the goodness of their heart, but they are helping you because they're being paid to. If my mechanic is able to solve a car issue that I struggled with for a while on my own, I'd still call that a help even when the relationship is entirely transactional.
I think what you're describing with the neighbor is more like doing a favor, if I were to put words to it.
Plus it's a psychological trick "Hey, if you help me out with this, I can help you with this". That tells the person you want their help, and you are willing to help them. That's a transaction as well, and improves relationships
100%. Humans are social animals primarily because we've been conditioned into behavior where helping someone means you are more likely to be helped in turn later on.
If other members of a social unit are dependent on you, that is a transactional relationship, but providing a service for the social unit helps improve everyone's overall quality of life, even if that service is transactional.
People focus on the bears thing, and not that most of the libertarians who joined the Free Town Project were men (wonder why women didn't feel safe joining; it's a mystery), and many (surprise surprise) turned out to be sexual predators or even murderers. They also quickly (and deliberately) bankrupted the town through budget cuts and spurious lawsuits, making life worse for everyone who lived there. The whole thing was a shitshow. Who knew that a philosophy of self-centeredness would attract the worst sort of people?
Libertarianism. Not even once.
We focus on the bears thing because that's the unexpected, humorous part, as humor is about subverting expectations. The rest of it—sexual predators, budget cuts/bankruptcy, antisocial behavior, declining quality of life—is exactly what most people expect from a libertarian town experiment. It's the bears that turn a depressing shitshow into a hilarious shitshow.
Big L, not little l. Big L is the party, little l can vary wildly, even starting out along the lines of anti-state socialists / social anarchists.
Like so many things, the modern right in the US has polluted the meaning.
For example, left libertarians will support redistribution of resources, support of green policies, and is strongly anti-war.
The Libertarian Party is just maga that... Well some of them think smoking weed is fine. And they dont want to pay taxes.
I asked a CA Libertarian senate candidate where she stands on us left libertarians?
she said left libertarians don’t exist.
US is doomed.
Universal healthcare, universal education to a collegiate level, and UBI replacing most/all welfare results in much less government interference/involvement and results in the greatest individual freedom via geographical/socioeconomic/employment mobility.
It's also not incompatible with capitalism, and in fact the increased mobility will spur more entrepreneurialism.
Equivocation.
So taxes?
Well, under a Libertarian model, t*xes are a dirty word.
It's "unfair" that you should have to help support public services that you might need someday, so it's better to push the full burden of cost on the specific people who need it at any given moment.
Insurance is fine though, which is basically privatized taxes. There'd probably be cop and bear insurance plans available in a perfect Libertarian world, so those with good foresight and the means to afford them wouldn't have to worry about having to pay to have their life saved.
As long as, you know, the situation also doesn't include the following criteria:
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Only 1-3 bullets are covered by the plan, after which the policy holder is responsible for the full cost of any subsequent bullets used.
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The policy covers the services of [1] officer at standard working rate. Additional cost due to surge pricing rates will be covered by the policy holder. One additional officer will be covered by the policy at a rate of 50%, with the remaining 50% covered by the policy holder. Any additional officer fees are the full responsibility of the policy holder to cover.
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Bear disposal is covered in full by the policy, for bears up to 200kg. For bears greater than 200kg, the policy will pay 20% per additional pound up to 50lbs, after which the policy holder pays a flat rate of $50 per additional stone of bear.
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The policy does not cover bear- or officer-related damages to your person.
The criticism of taxes is based on the idea that you, an individual should not be expected to pay taxes by force. Corporations, trade goods, products should be taxed and enforced, but tell a person "you have no choice and no option and there are serious legal troubles (fines, garnishments, jail time, etc...) is not just because you're given no other option. The individual person is being forced to pay taxes because they were born in a certain region of the world?
Now let's be pragmatic; it would take a lot of work, time, and money to change a taxing standard. However it is not right to force each head in a country to pay taxes.
Edit: Also even as a libertarian, I think most insurance is bullshit lol
The individual person is being forced to pay taxes because they were born in a certain region of the world?
I'm actually not seeing what's weird about it. They are using and benefiting from the infrastructure that is paid for by those taxes, and pooling the resources this way allows the whole community you benefit in ways that can't be done otherwise. The extension of this is that if you are able to pitch in but don't then you're essentially "stealing" from the rest of the population.
I'm not well versed in the subtleties of a libertarian system; in a libertarian community, what's done with people who try to benefit from what others are doing without pitching in?
I'm not well versed in the subtleties of a libertarian system
That's because no such system has ever worked for more than a few months. In the few attempts that have occurred, there's no way to prevent tragedy of the commons type situations and everything quickly goes to shit. They either end up reinventing taxes or getting overrun with bears.
I'm having an "akshually" moment here. For what it's worth, the Tragedy of the Commons refers to over-exploitation of material resources that are held in common by a community, like public grazing land in Hardin's famous essay. That can't happen in a libertarian system, because there wouldn't be any commons; all of the land would be privately-owned.
The closely-related concept that plagues libertarian systems is the Free-Rider Problem, which refers to people not paying the cost of a public good, which is defined as one that is non-excludable (can't stop people from using it), and non-rivalrous (use or benefit by one person doesn't prevent use or benefit to anybody else). A classic example of a public good is a lighthouse. Any ship can use a lighthouse, even those that don't help pay for its maintenance. The incentive is not to pay, so public goods are the things that every successful society has to re-invent taxes to pay for.
"Akshually" away! That was well written and informative. :)
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I’d even go so far as to say “help an unknown person out financially without expectation of reward.”