The problem is libertarian groups themselves don’t stand up against anarchists joining them. I remember Gary Johnson getting booed at an official libertarian party gathering for saying he believes in driver’s licences.
Also we already know how libertarianism ends, with robber barons controlling everything and people living in company towns. It’s a terrible political ideal.
What’s wrong with anarchists? I’ve never seen anarchists defending pedophilia. Anarchism doesn’t mean you just freely cause harm to others; quite the contrary.
Oh most anarchists I know are nice people, they just completely fail to understand that not everyone else is. They don’t want to oppress, steal, rape, or murder, and so systems to prevent those things aren’t necessary.
You misunderstand when you say “systems to prevent those things aren’t necessary.” These things are absolutely addressed by anarchists. We’re not foolish enough to rely on the goodness of human nature to carry us through. There is no state, there are no hierarchies, but people causing harm absolutely can experience consequences under anarchism. Diffuse sanctions, for example. At worst, they can be removed from the community or group entirely.
But more than anything else, it’s important to recognize that mutual aid is just as much a part of human nature as things like rape and murder, and the rate at which rape and murder occur are greatly exacerbated by hierarchies. For example, things like masculinity have to go, and we need to stop putting people in positions of power over others and creating such hierarchies.
And this brings me back to the topic at hand. I cannot conceive of an anarchist who would in any way approve of sexually abusing someone young enough to be considered a minor. Above all, anarchists aim to remove hierarchies, and having a grown adult in a relationship with a young teenager – this would create such a power differential that I can’t imagine any anarchist approving of it or hand-waving it away. The anarchists I know very strongly disapprove of such a thing.
The people we colloquially call “libertarians”(1) on the other hand still seem to support the state as well as hierarchies such as those created under capitalism. In fact, most self-described libertarians I know want to do nothing to address the things you mentioned, as well as nothing to address other harmful things such as the social and systemic discrimination against groups like LGBT+ people, BIPOC, women, and others.
(1)yes, a bit of a misnomer since it would make more sense to call anarchists “libertarians,” though no one does, unless we append it with “libertarian left,” though even this seems like a silly term for anarchism
American libertarians are rebranded anarcho-capitalists. Outside of the US, libertarians are largely associated with anarchism and other anti-authoritarian socialist ideologies. Any left-libertarian (the kind that would identify as just anarchist, not ancap) want absolutely nothing to do with Gary Johnson. Don’t put their shit show of an ideology on us lol
Left libertarians are still opposed to a strong central government which is a core issue with libertarianism.
In your ideal government, how would child porn or slavery be addressed? Let’s assume there’s a community that formed because they think it’s a good thing.
I’m a libertarian and I’m not opposed to a strong central government. I think government only works when it has the power to militarily dominate any competing force.
I just think government should be simple, to minimize the number of ways it can break down and end up becoming a tool of the powerful to oppress the weak.
We currently have a set of laws that’s like twenty feet long when you print it out, bind it, and put it on the shelves.
That’s a lot of complexity for malicious code to hide in. A lot of places for petty tyrants to set up shop and spend their life hurting little people under a government seal of authority.
Shitty people exist and always will. It would be foolish of me to say otherwise. The shitty things they do may still happen in a stateless society. Child porn and slavery are being produced in societies with central government right now and very little is being done about it. In a stateless, moneyless society there would be no incentive for slave labor and I think that would largely/entirely disappear.
Child porn is obviously a lot more complex than that and there are several factors in play. First, anarchists and adjacent movement are staunch advocates of community engagement and vigilance. We want to radically change how society functions at the most base levels. If a child is being abused or exploited, it would ideally be easier to spot and act on. There hasn’t been a lot of research into what causes pedophilia or how to treat it in a way that would reduce/eliminate people acting on those urges. Research could be conducted into practical and holistic ways to treat their condition. Poverty is strongly linked to sexual violence of all kinds and the abolition of poverty would surely have a big part to play in the reduction of many things, including child sexual abuse. A society formed around the ideals of libertarian socialism present a real opportunity to end the cycle of abuse and that would certainly play a role in reducing child sexual exploitation.
There’s plenty more to say about this and there’s obviously a lot of detail not covered in my brief comment but there are solutions to this baked into the ideological framework of anarchism and libertarian socialism. I’m not going to say we have all the answers, of course we don’t. But a society organized from the bottom up, with a focus on equality, safety and prosperity for all would not only be incentivised to solve these problems, but would be much quicker to act due to the lack of bureaucratic red tape
