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.
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.
Turns out, life is complex. It’s either this or you end up having “rules for me but not for thee”.
But to this point, what would you have your central government in charge of? I’m certainly for axing parts of the central gov and expanding others (For example, I’d nationalize healthcare and drug production and abolish ICE and the DEA). That is, I’d push for a government more concerned with taking care of citizens and less concerned with penalizing inconsequential things like not being born here.
The reason for the miles long laws is because when you don’t have them, a capitalist society will work around them. A recent behind the bastards episode on the hawks nest tunnel ( https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/part-one-the-deadliest-workplace-disaster-in-u-s-history/id1373812661?i=1000632417312 ) is a perfect example of how these sorts of regulations get created and grow.
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
Child porn and slavery are being produced in societies with central government right now and very little is being done about it.
There’s a difference between very little and nothing. In pretty much every libertarian model I know of, if a bunch of child porn producers band together to make the child porn production center, nothing would stop them. The socialist libertarian movement relies heavily on local community action, but that falls apart quickly when the community is, say, a cult.
Centralized gov doesn’t have 100% of a solution here, obviously, but it has a lot more power to act, criminalize, and/or force treatment.
In a stateless, moneyless society there would be no incentive for slave labor and I think that would largely/entirely disappear.
I disagree. So long as there’s a need for labor, slavery is going to be a possibility. Some jobs suck and in a moneyless society figuring out a way to incentivize someone to take that job will be tough.
There’s more than a few examples of slavery in non-capitalist societies.
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.
Yes, there has. Just because there’s not sure fire solutions to it doesn’t mean it’s not widely researched. Would it surprise you to learn that one of the best treatments for pedophilia is talk therapy? It doesn’t eliminate the urges but it lowers the risk of injuring a child. The problem is, like other mental illnesses, we don’t have cures only long term care to reduce harm.
Putting that aside, covering a philosophical flaw with “Maybe someday research will solve this” is sort of like saying for capitalism “Maybe someday replicators will solve this”.
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.
A doesn’t follow B. There’s no evidence that libertarian socialism would eliminate poverty. And, in fact, I’d argue that while it may solve poverty in some regions it would exacerbate it in others. One of the benefits of a global economy is that we can take advantages of the growing season in one world region vs another. Libertarian socialism imagines a world of isolated islands which is entirely counter productive general efficiencies with the production of goods.
Think about it this way, You can grow oranges in California. You cannot grow oranges in Alaska. In a world where libertarian socialism has taken hold, how would an Alaskan community survive and thrive? On the charity of other communities? What happens when one community sees that “Hey, I could send my aid to alaska, but if I send it to Florida they have some delicious gator meat and maybe they’ll be willing to send me more”… opps, just reinvented capitalism.
One of the strengths (and weaknesses) of capitalism is the global marketplace it creates. Localizing with libertarianism presents the same problems faced by rural communities in the old west. If you can’t grow it, you do without it.
There are certainly benefits to libertarian socialism, it allows for very fast actions at the local level. But there’s a major downside in that without an overarching government getting every community to play nice with one another is basically impossible. In a lib social world you couldn’t stop the an-cap dingbats from creating their feudalistic hellscape.
This comes to another fundamental issue with libertariansim of all flavors. They all envision of world where everyone has the same ideology. That world doesn’t and will never exist.
