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I've already explained many times why I think a rules-based increase in the quantity of money is the best option.
I can't find that message in this thread. What date was it posted on?
The 3-4% is just close to a long run productivity growth in a mature economy. The exact % increase is less important than the fact that it is A. fixed, and B. known to everyone.
It seems to me that growth is strongly connected to monetary policy and taxes. What empirical data is available on growth in large scale mature economies with fixed currencies and no (or at least very low) taxes?
1. if you do not trust a central bank to keep inflation low, why should you trust it to remain on the gold standard for generations?
I'm not proposing a gold standard - just a fixed currency. Btw, I have an itching suspicion that within our lifetimes there will be a rather dramatic phase transition to private, asset backed secure digital currencies, regardless of what governments want or do. Why would anyone choose to keep or trade their assets in a currency that is being artificially inflated if they have another option?
2. The impracticalities of the gold standard include, among other things, the fact that gold convertibility increases the likelihood of a run on the currency. This tends to amplify recessions.
I don't understand why a run on the currency (converting it to gold) would effect anything at all as long as every distributed unit of the currency is properly backed. The only motivation anyone really has to move their currency to the backing metal is when they have reason to believe that it's not fully backed - in which case you have a game of musical chairs where the music has stopped and the people that don't find a seat quickly (exchange their currency for the metal) are left with worthless currency when bank's supply of metal runs out.
Do you believe that being on the gold standard A. exacerbated, B. had no effect on, or C. mititgated what would have otherwise been much worse bank runs and depressions of the late 19th / early 20th centuries in the US?
A brief overview of the history of the gold standard:
suggests to me that the gold standard was abandoned before the depressions and banks runs. Some governments needed cash to fund wars so they abandoned it by printing unbacked currency. Others abandoned it by doing the equivalent by giving unbacked loans. So to answer your question: B - the gold standard had no effect because there was no longer a gold standard. It was the wars the led to the depressions and but the effect was both delayed and amplified by the abandonment of sound monetary policy. That said, this is just what makes the most sense to me so far - I'm no expert in this area.
-- Steve
Starchild wrote:
The first issue is whether the LP's goal/destination should be
minimization of aggression by enemies of liberty, versus merely abstention
from aggression by friends of liberty. The former principle is libertarian,
and the latter is anarchist. <BH
How do you tell who is a friend of liberty and who is an enemy? I think
the goal should be minimizing aggression, period. <SC
My point is that aggression doesn't end up minimized if the strategy for
minimizing it is just for liberty-lovers to promote "aggression virginity"
by the example of their abstinence. Anarchists claim that if we're ever
willing to initiate force to maximize liberty, then what we're maximizing
cannot truly count as liberty. They assume that the landscape of attainable
levels of liberty has no local maxima, i.e. that an investment in force
initiation could never lead to a net reduction in the overall incidence of
force initiation. This assumption is in my judgment obviously false, and is
what distinguishes non-aggression anarchists from anti-aggression
libertarians.
I think I've seen a lot more "anti-anarchism" than "anti-minarchism" in
the LP. Case in point: You're attacking anarchy in this conversation; no one
is attacking minarchy. <SC
Prominent Libertarians regularly use the Pledge's zero-force-initiation
logic to accuse people like me of being un-Libertarian or worse:
Starchild wrote:
> The first issue is whether the LP's goal/destination should be minimization of aggression by enemies of liberty, versus merely abstention from aggression by friends of liberty. The former principle is libertarian, and the latter is anarchist. <BH
> How do you tell who is a friend of liberty and who is an enemy? I think the goal should be minimizing aggression, period. <SC
My point is that aggression doesn't end up minimized if the strategy for minimizing it is just for liberty-lovers to promote "aggression virginity" by the example of their abstinence. Anarchists claim that if we're ever willing to initiate force to maximize liberty, then what we're maximizing cannot truly count as liberty. They assume that the landscape of attainable levels of liberty has no local maxima, i.e. that an investment in force initiation could never lead to a net reduction in the overall incidence of force initiation. This assumption is in my judgment obviously false, and is what distinguishes non-aggression anarchists from anti-aggression libertarians.
It might also be true that in some circumstances, receiving a severe unprovoked beating against one's will could turn out to be a character-building experience that would be to the net benefit of the person being beaten. After all, it is undeniable that some people *do* benefit from undergoing painful experiences. However, I think that acknowledging this "obvious truth" should not prevent one from adopting the general position that giving people severe unprovoked beatings without their permission is *never* OK.
If you make the mistake of getting into splitting hairs by talking about how an unprovoked beating is sometimes useful, you needlessly abandon the moral high ground and lose moral credibility with people who may not understand the intricacies of the issue and/or who mistake your willingness to be "realistic" with a lack of commitment to the cause of minimizing aggression. Most critically, you undermine that larger anti-aggression message that you are trying to promote. If you had a higher public profile, one could imagine an erudite Bush lawyer arguing in defense of conditions at the Guantanamo camp that "even libertarians like Brian Holtz readily admit that an 'investment in force initiation' is sometimes for the best."
> I think I've seen a lot more "anti-anarchism" than "anti-minarchism" in the LP. Case in point: You're attacking anarchy in this conversation; no one is attacking minarchy. <SC
Prominent Libertarians regularly use the Pledge's zero-force-initiation logic to accuse people like me of being un-Libertarian or worse:
They probably wouldn't say those things if they didn't see an active effort to distance the party from the Non-Aggression Principle which is (yes, I know you disagree) the foundation of libertarianism.
• A current LPC ExCom member privately warned me last year that some of my campaign positions constitute a violation of the Pledge, and that as a candidate I'm not allowed to "proactively oppose" any platform plank, but may merely express disagreement if specifically asked. He said he agreed "completely with the non-initiation pledge in its every possible application", but admitted that it was a "purity test" that he would like to see relaxed for tactical reasons.
Libertarian candidates *should* be actively discouraged from running on planks that are counter the party platform.
• Southern Vice Chair Mark Selzer told me that the Pledge means that not even the smallest amount of coercive taxation is allowed for the prevention of injustice. (He also wrote in the LPC newsletter: "Disagreeing with one part of the platform usually means disagreeing with all parts of it.")
• LPC ExCom member Paul Ireland wrote recently: "There are no 70% Libertarians. You're either libertarian or you're not. There are no gray areas. You either support the initiation of force for political gain or social engineering or you don't." Ireland refused to answer repeated questions from me whether there was any situation in which the government may initiate force -- even to compel on behalf of a defendant that a witness attend a defendant's trial for purposes of testimony. (Because of my support for liberating Iraq, Ireland also called me a "closet fascist" and tried to compare me to Pol Pot, Stalin, and Hitler.)
• Perennial (and 1994 LPC gubernatorial) candidate Richard Rider told us fellow candidates that "all taxation is technically theft". He proceeded to list seven government purposes that he nevertheless says somehow justify taxation, but promptly used Pledge-like reasoning to say it was un-libertarian for me to add to his list an eighth item (keeping people from starving).
• Former Orange County LP Chair Brian Lee Cross told me that it's wrong in principle to finance even just a police force or court system with coercive taxation.
I don't condone anyone calling you a fascist or things of that sort, and I do think there are degrees of being a libertarian and it's not just a "with us or against us" thing, but I otherwise agree with most of the comments of the Libertarians you cite above, so maybe you'll want to add me to the list.
While I in turn have said that anarcho-libertarians are more aptly called anarchist than libertarian, I've never accused them of not aiming north on the Nolan chart, nor have I said that they don't belong in the party.
Have any Libertarians accused *you* of not aiming north on the Nolan chart or said you don't belong in the party? If they have, I am sure they are few and far between.
> And if you're going to keep talking about anarchists as wanting to indulge in "nonconformity," please substantiate that charge. It certainly doesn't seem to square with your complaints about the pledge, since having an ideological pledge of any type is going to to encourage more ideological conformity within a group, not the opposite. <SC
The fact that a small minority of non-conformists all non-conform from the mainstream in the same way doesn't mean that non-conformity with the mainstream isn't one of their values.
What you term "non-conformity with the mainstream" is not simply being nonconformist for the sheer sake of nonconformity, but rather disagreement with a particular set of values. (Example: In George Orwell's "1984," protagonist Winston Smith indulges in "non-conformity with the mainstream.") To someone who valued nonconformity for its own sake, a pledge would be inherently objectionable.
>Since you argue from the premise that anarchists cannot be libertarian, and I disagree, there seems to be little basis for further discussion of this point.<SC
I don't think I've ever said anarchists cannot be libertarian.
I think you said something like "they aren't libertarians, they're anarchists." However I'll accept the clarification.
>That's a reasonable argument, however it provides absolutely no basis for assuming that the LP would have more electoral success without becoming corrupt or un-libertarian by following your suggestions. <SC
How many more decades of the current level of LP effectiveness would it take to convince you that Cato-style inclusivist minarchism is worth trying as an alternative to quasi-anarchist exclusivism? The Cato Institute has for several decades been much more "corporate" and inclusive than the LP. Do you consider it corrupt or un-libertarian?
The Cato Institute is fairly effective for what it is, and although I think Cato is somewhat less libertarian than the Libertarian Party, I wouldn't call it corrupt or un-libertarian. However it is not a good model for the LP. They have achieved much of their success by working closely with the GOP establishment. That is not really an option for us. It is vital that the LP strike a balance between left and right, so as to attract people roughly equally from both camps, so as not to fall into a vicious cycle of attracting people overwhelmingly from one side whose influence takes the party farther and farther in that direction.
At any rate, note that under my revised Pledge, the party automatically becomes more ideologically pure as it becomes more successful, because as America moves north in Nolan space, the revised Pledge excludes marginal liberty-increasers that it used to include.
I don't recall what proposed language you've come up with.
>An example of an insult is when anarcho-libertarians call me "socialist" or "fascist".<SC
>Or when you call them "exclusivist?"<SC
A label is not an insult if its dictionary definition plainly applies.
socialist n. An advocate of any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy.
fascist n. An advocate of a system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.
exclusivist n. An advocate of excluding some or most, as from membership or participation.
A political party which wishes to offer the ability to register with it and vote in elections to more of the world's people than any other political party in the country where it operates cannot credibly be called "exclusivist."
>You didn't even dispute my explanation that both characterizations can be valid, but instead merely denied an empirical premise underlying one of the characterizations.<BH
>Fine -- it's your overall characterization of anarchy that's self-contradictory, not your specific metaphor.<SC
That youdisagree with my premise still doesn't mean that I have contradicted mySELF.
>Even if [liberty-lovers]tended not to understand that anarchism doesn't maximize the incidence of liberty, that wouldn't make my characterization inaccurate.<BH
I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on whether your characterization of anarchy as extremist and watered-down is self-contradictory.
>Sorry, that's just technical quibbling based on an unsubstantiated (mistaken, in my opinion) claim which is in any case unprovable at present. In the real world, anarchism is *still* not viewed as watered-down anything, and I've never heard anyone try to use the term "watered-down" the way you want to use it here.<SC
We aren't debating the lexicographic meaning of 'anarchism', we're debating a conceptual claim about how anarchism relates to the maximization of liberty. Dismissing my claim as "technical quibbling" does not qualify as argument. Appeal here to the practice of a linguistic community is argumentum ad populum. We Libertarians know better than to think that majorities are authoritative in deciding among competing conceptual claims.
So you see appeal to the practice of a linguistic community as a poor argument, but appeal to the authority of a dictionary (which you make farther along in this message where you tell me that the words "anarchism" and "slavery" have English-language definitions which Libertarians "misuse") as a sound one?
>No, I would not exclude you from the LP for not pledging to be an anarchist.<SC
Would you exclude me for not pledging that government should completely abstain from the initiation of force, even just the minimal coercive taxes to finance police and court protection for the indigent? If no, then how you do reconcile that with the Pledge? If yes, then what do you see as the difference between anarchism and having a "government" that has no more power than any other institution?
First, let's get our terms straight. Being able to vote as a delegate and central committee member or hold office within the Libertarian Party is not a required part of belonging to the party. One can belong to the party as a registered voter or an associate member and not do these things. So when you ask about whether I would exclude you, I assume you mean from just the part of the party which includes voting on party policy. Now to answer your question -- I would not exclude you from such membership. The language of the pledge could perhaps be interpreted as excluding you, but I'll leave it up to you to make that interpretation for yourself. Given your generally libertarian views, my advice would be not to worry about it -- if you don't make a big deal about it, no one else is likely to either. But an LP member who publicly holds positions which are widely seen as incompatible with the pledge may see his or her reputation for honesty suffer somewhat in the party.
>I've already claimed to be more-libertarian-than-thou in wanting to maximize the incidence of liberty.<BH.
>When you accuse me of wanting to maximize liberty less than you do, you are revealing yourself as unwilling to credit me with the basic good motives with which I credit you.<SC
I don't think you were crediting me with very good motives when you
• implied I favor "watering down our principles to accommodate people who aren't libertarians";
• implied I oppose that our movement "be guided by libertarian principles, [instead of] indulging the need to feel like 'winners'." ;
• said I want to "remove the LP's ideological goals";
• said I don't want the "LP to stay 'the party of principle' and continue to speak truth to power";
• said I want to "let party policy be set by people who don't share our belief in limited government";
• implied I'm not someone with "outspoken principles and unafraid to demand adherence to them";
• said I "seem to want to throw every practical difference that distinguishes us from the political establishment out the window in order to pursue 'success'";
• said I "downplay the importance of ideology and simply focus on 'success' and 'results'".
My comment about "indulging the need to feel like 'winners'" was a response to your comment about "indulging nonconformity." I think most of the rest of my comments above can be accommodated under your statement that "A label is not an insult if its dictionary definition plainly applies."
Please correct me if I'm wrong on any of the following:
-You're OK with someone being a policy-making member of the LP who supports the status quo exactly as it is except for wanting to see a tiny bit more freedom on one issue
-When principles conflict with what's practical, you want the LP to do what's practical more of the time and adhere to principle less of the time than is done at present
-You want less focus on ideology in the LP and more focus on "success" and "results"
-You're afraid that being outspoken in voicing libertarian ideas such as "taxation is slavery" will cost us support, so you want to take this kind of language out of the platform
-You want the LP to emulate the way the Democrat and Republican parties operate in most respects other than their corruption and the ideas they espouse
-Although you've written an alternative pledge, you'd prefer the LP not to have any pledge at all
In contrast to the above, which approach will maximize liberty is not simply a matter of semantics, but a matter of speculation on which opinions will naturally differ. I've acknowledged assuming that you do believe that the approach you favor will maximize liberty (even if I think the approach is mistaken). Are you similarly willing to concede that Libertarians who support keeping a strong platform and retaining the pledge generally hold these views because they want to maximize liberty?
I've indeed said that anarchists (i.e. absolute opponents of any institution being able to initiate force) don't value maximizing liberty as much as I do. I've never said that they love the principle of liberty less than I do. Quite the contrary, I've accused them of valuing the theological veneration of liberty over its real-world protection. When I say I'm more libertarian than thou to an anarchist, it's shorthand for the point in my first paragraph above about local maxima.
I brought up L. Neil Smith's essay "Lever Action" previously. Have you read it? If not, I hope you get a chance to.
>You misunderstand that sentence. Please don't be so quick to leap to a negative interpretation. What I said is that the position of wanting more liberty on every issue but only wanting to move a little ways in that direction, is not the position you hold.<SC
I never said you said the "little ways" strawman characterized MY beliefs. I said it was a strawman (or fallacy of the excluded middle) to focus on the case of people who only want a "little" more freedom on every issue, and I offered myself as an example of someone in the middle you excluded -- i.e. who wants more than a "little" more freedom. It doesn't engage my point when you just focus on the extreme case of someone who wants America to move only a nanometer north on the Nolan chart and no further. Those people are irrelevant anyway, since my Pledge excludes them from the party as soon as America moves a nanometer north.
Would you then agree that it would be irresponsible to encourage such people to become LP candidates or decision-makers within the party, since as soon as we make a tiny bit progress, they will no longer share our goals? I assume you believe that people we elect to internal and external office ought to be people who share our goals?
Contrary to being "irrelevant," I think that people who favor only a little more liberty are central to our discussion, because it is your desire to rewrite the party platform and change or eliminate the pledge in order to accommodate them that seems to be fueling this debate.
> I wouldn't favor changing the party pledge to accommodate one person. Would you? <SC
>I only needed one example to prove that the set is not empty, but that doesn't mean you get to assume that the set has only one member. Your continuing evasiveness is all the answer I need: it's apparently embarrassing to say you would exclude people like me who agree with our direction but not completely with our destination.
>A question is not an assumption. <SC
I don't understand your point here, so all I'll say in response is that questions usually embed -- and reveal -- assumptions. My question about who you would exclude may finally get answered through my questions above about your interpretation of the Pledge.
I was not assuming anything about the size of the set, simply trying to find out whether you would want to change the pledge on principle if even one person was (in your view) wrongly excluded by it, or whether you want to change it for strictly pragmatic reasons (because you believe the set is large). However, you still haven't shown that the set of people who favor only a little more liberty on all issues is not empty.
As should be clear from my answer earlier in this message, I don't have a litmus test for excluding people from the Libertarian Party, and I don't think the LP needs one (unless you want to call the pledge a litmus test, but it's pretty hard to apply that description to something that works on the honor system). It would be extremely difficult to come up with a meaningful Libertarian litmus test, because there is no consensus on which issues are most important, and even if there were, a person's positions on these issues alone will not always be particularly helpful in determining how libertarian he or she is. For instance, someone who opposes a flat tax and opposes school choice could be your typical leftist, but could also be a hardcore libertarian who doesn't favor any taxes or government involvement with schools.
I do hope that Libertarians will expect their candidates and leaders to take stands based on reasonable interpretations of the Non-Aggression Principle (or reach most of the same conclusions by other means as do most of those who derive their views from the NAP), and I hope they will curtail political support for LP candidates and leaders who do not follow one of these two paths, in proportion to the degree to which they stray.
>You are the one who is evading the question of whether you'd favor changing the pledge to accommodate one person.<SC
Would I change the pledge arbitrarily just to pick up a single member? Of course not. Would I bother orienting the pledge toward direction rather than destination if 99% (or even 75%) of those wanting more liberty were in fact anarchists? Probably not.
Thanks for answering. I didn't expect that you would change the pledge for such cause, but just checking.
>You are also avoiding making an estimate of how many people belong to this set whose existence you've postulated<SC
I clearly said it would be wrong to "think that there are more people inside the LP who would pull north on the Nolan chart than there are outside". The unnamed Pledge-enforcing ExCom member himself told me: "I can think of thousands of people who would join the party if they could do it without having to complete their transition to relative purist first." My guess is that 5% to 15% of Americans eligible to vote would agree that America should have both more personal/social freedom and more economic freedom. I think the extremism of the LP is the most important second-order reason for it not having anything like that mindshare. The most important first-order reason is the wasted-vote syndrome, but the biggest enabler of that syndrome is that the LP is too extremist to adopt a big-tent voting-bloc brokerage strategy to counteract the syndrome.
You seem to assume that the LP would retain its general character of favoring more liberty across the board if it abandons the Non-Aggression Principle as a tool for determining proper positions on different issues, and if it opens the door to anyone who wants even a bit more liberty. In view of the strong real-world political incentives faced by politicians and political insiders to go along with bigger government, I don't find such an assumption very convincing.
> my point is simply that I don't believe it contains any significant number, if in fact it includes anyone. You still haven't proven to my satisfaction that it does include anyone, since I demonstrated that you do not belong to the set yourself.<SC
No, what you demonstrated was that you're unfamiliar with how anarcho-libertarians interpret the Pledge.
Your assertion here was that there are a significant number of people out there who favor more liberty on all issues, but only a little more liberty in each area (which I find hard to believe). I don't see what that assertion has to do with anarcho-libertarians or the pledge.
If the Pledge really meant that government may not initiate any force whatsoever in order to finance the protection of liberty, then I couldn't sign it.
I've agreed with you that this was not the original meaning of the pledge. However I am glad that it has taken on some of that meaning, since it helps keep the party focused.
Even many people who only want to move a little ways towards liberty may welcome safeguards intended to make it more likely that the people making policy for the Libertarian Party will be committed libertarians. I'll give you an analogy. Say I'm your typical American Protestant who holds a loose belief in the religion but doesn't buy into all of Christian doctrine -- I nevertheless expect certain churches to be staffed by people who *are* strongly committed to the tenets of the faith, and I would be somewhat disturbed if I took my children into a Southern Baptist church for a traditional Easter mass celebration and found a lesbian minister preaching that you don't need to be saved by Jesus in order to go to heaven, that all you have to do in order to be a good Christian is to believe people should exemplify more Christian values in their behavior than they do now.
How's that for being in touch with mainstream American values? 8)
By the way, I've had San Francisco voters tell me in so many words that they didn't necessarily agree with all my libertarian ideas but appreciated me taking principled positions and voted for me on that basis.
>It's pretty obvious which of these groups can BESTbe described as libertarian.<BH
>A group of people with a reputation for ideological purity could be libertarian.<SC
I didn't say the other groups couldn't be described as libertarian. See the now-capitalized word above.
Well, you've deleted the part of the thread where you described the other groups, so I guess we'll move on.
>You were in the room at the LPC Platform Committee meeting when multiple people told me that the Pledge means zero taxes. If one has to pledge opposition to all taxation in order to join the LP, that's obviously a purity test.<BH
>And were you kicked out of the LP for disagreeing with them?<SC
As you quote me telling you below: "I never said anyone was expelled from the party for violating the Pledge. I said the Pledge is used by anarcho-libertarians to keep minarchists out and to harangue the ones who join." The Pledge is still a purity test if it's only used to keep people out, and not to kick people out.
Fine, call it a purity test if you want to. That doesn't mean it's bad. Even becoming a U.S. citizen and running for public office in the U.S. have what you could call "purity tests" associated with them (renouncing foreign allegiances, pledging to defend the Constitution). Do you think those should be eliminated too? After all, a principled person could be dissuaded from running for office if they feel they have to defend the Constitution as a condition of running (maybe they advocate a return to the Articles of Confederation instead). Or a person might agree with much of what the U.S. government is currently doing but wish to get rid of the Constitution. (Indeed, I don't think it's possible to honestly support the Constitution and simultaneously support anything resembling the political status quo!)
>From what you've written in this exchange, your idea of libertarian ideology seems to be that anarchy is incompatible with libertarianism, while someone who merely wants *a little* more freedom than we have now *is* espousing libertarianism. I think that's exactly > backwards.<SC
I never said that anarchism is anti-libertarian, I just said it's suboptimally libertarian. I never said that merely wanting more liberty defines libertarianism; instead I said that 1) maximizing the real-world incidence of liberty is optimal libertarianism, and 2) rational liberty-maximizers should gladly join with liberty-increasers because they're both pulling in the same direction.
The idea that maximizing liberty requires the LP to stop promoting a state of maximum liberty is merely a supposition, not proven fact. Those like yourself who advocate this approach do not possess a monopoly on rationality.
If you were convinced that a hypothetical Republican or Democrat wanted a bit less liberty overall than exists now, would you say that he should gladly join with the Nazis or Communists if he is rational, since they are both pulling in the same direction? 8)
>Although our goal should be the elimination of the initiation of force, realistically rights violations will probably be with us for eons if not forever, and I feel that a limited government would stand a better chance of minimizing them on a sustainable basis.<SC
So what precisely do you mean by "a limited government"? What do you consider a government, and what limits would you place on it? I define a government (i.e. the state) as the institution, or hierarchy of institutions, that maintains a formal monopoly on the initiation of force in a given territory.
Those are good questions. I think any state no more intrusive than the U.S. government would have been in the late 1700s if it had granted equal rights on the basis of gender and ethnicity could be characterized as "limited government," but I do not think that such a government quite meets the "limited government" libertarian ideal.
I admit that this ideal is not clearly defined; I expect that as we get closer to a libertarian society, it will become more apparent which structures will tend to maximize liberty without creating the power vacuum and consequent potential for a massive loss of liberty that I see as the drawback of anarchy. The only instances I can immediately think of in which I would favor government *initiating* force are to prevent actions which hold a significant potential for causing great loss of life, liberty, or property (for example, preventing the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction), and to compel people accused of crimes to stand trial (I think compelling witnesses would be stretching it). As far as what a libertarian government would do, it would protect individual rights and maintain structures and institutions necessary for that purpose (e.g. holding elections, and possibly maintaining "public" lands on which one could freely exercise one's rights).
>So you really think that libertarians who want the LP to remain committed to the libertarian idea that people have the right to do what they want as long as they do not hurt others (the Non-Aggression principle) are motivated more by a desire to be "contrarian" <SC
First, I dispute your apparent premise that the Non-Aggression Principle (or Zero-Aggression Principle) is the essence of libertarianism. I would say that the essence of libertarianism is the Anti-Aggression Principle, which says that the role and incidence of aggression in society is to be minimized. (This is precisely equivalent to saying the role and incidence of liberty in society are to be maximized.)
I think an effective way to minimize aggression in society is by promoting the concept of the Non-Aggression Principle.
Second, I dispute your apparent implication that I do not want the LP to remain committed to the general principle that people have the right to do what they want as long as they do not hurt others.
Without the Non-Aggression Principle, what would be the basis for asserting this principle? Couldn't someone say, "By stopping you from watching porn I'm not hurting you, I'm actually helping you," for example?
To answer the implication-corrected version of your question, I'll just repeat two statements: 1) There is a contrarianism and clubby exclusivism that helps motivate many Libertarians to keep the party small. 2) If someone wants more liberty and less government on every issue, the most likely reason to exclude him is if one values one's badge of ideological purity/nonconformity more than one values the party's political effectiveness.
It's hard for me to take any concern about "clubby exclusivism" in the LP seriously if it does not include criticism of the party for things such as Harry Browne's upscale campaign events, the holding of conventions in luxury hotels, and the failure to strongly cultivate a bottom-up, mass movement approach.
>Do you really think that in politics, the most expeditious way to reach a goal (e.g. minarchy) is to demand nothing less than something beyond that goal (e.g. anarchy), and to decline to organize with those who share only the intermediate goal?<BH
How many times do I need to say it? I am not "declining to organize" with those who share only the intermediate goal of a bit more liberty. I just don't want to reconfigure the party around them or entrust them with setting party policy.
>Libertarians are not declining to organize with people who favor limited government but not anarchy -- you keep repeating that obvious misstatement. Most Libertarians favor limited government.<SC
So you would not object to a modification of the Pledge on the grounds that the modification allows membership by those who believe in the existence of a government with limited coercive power?
The problem I see in the LP right now is not that the party adheres too strictly to principle and is too unwilling to compromise libertarian ideals. If anything, there is a dangerous trend *away* from principles and ideals. So although I can see some merit to the logic of your suggestion (and please do not quote me out of context on that), I would be unwilling to support it as a stand-alone measure. I would be potentially willing to support it in tandem with another change or changes such that there would not be a net movement of the party away from libertarian ideals.
>My "aim" is straight north on the Nolan chart, and I consider it obvious that the more people pulling together in that direction, the faster we'll move in that direction. It's simply untenable to adopt your ballistic metaphor, in which you claim that the further you are from your goal, the more extremist and exclusive you have to be in order to best make progress toward your goal.<BH
>If someone wants to move straight north on the Nolan chart, they'll see that the LP is the party moving in that direction. As we've discussed, they can get out of the car whenever they feel it's reached their destination.<SC
Neither of these two truisms rebuts my two assertions above about the optimal rate of progress.
Those assertions would make more sense if the LP were the only vehicle moving north on the Advocates chart, or if there was no way to support the LP without signing the pledge. But neither is the case. Someone who wants to work for liberty on a particular issue without favoring more liberty across the board has many other organizations to choose from which do not have pledges, and someone who wants to simply register and vote Libertarian, write an occasional check, or volunteer a few hours for the party here and there can already do these things without signing the pledge.
>The current platform envisions no government -- unless you want to call voluntary associations like AAA a government.<BH
The LP platform doesn't specifically envision government, but neither does it specifically deny the possibility of having it. That's precisely the balance I think it ought to have.
>That is factually incorrect. Nowhere in the LP or LPC platforms does it say that the goal is zero government or that government has no role in protecting life, liberty, or property.<SC
If you know of anylanguage in the platform that distinguishes the power and authority of "government" from the power and authority of private voluntary associations like AAA or a book club, I'd love to hear about it.
The absence of such language is beside the point -- the platform does not preclude the possibility of government. If it did distinguish in the manner to which you refer, it would be coming down on the limited government side of the debate rather than leaving the anarchy/minarchy question open.
>As long as the party always stands for increasing liberty and decreasing government on every issue, it won't be "lost".<BH
> And how long do you think that will be, if your faction succeeds in downplaying the importance of ideology and simply focusing on "success" and "results"?<SC
Iagain dispute your implication that I don't have a rigorous libertarian ideology, or that I downplay the importance of such. In fact, I consider libertarian ideological goals so important that I say we cannot afford the luxury of refusing to join with imperfect libertarians (e.g. anarchists) whose efforts would nevertheless increase the probability or speed of reaching those > goals.
Once again, with respect to "imperfect libertarians": I am not "refusing to join with them," "declining to organize with them," or any other permutations of that phrase!
>The main thing keeping the Libertarian Party small, in my view, are the attitudes of trying to be "respectable," corporate, top-down, etc., rather than trying to build a mass movement.<SC
Since (as Mike Denny reminded me) this is a San Francisco forum, I'll just agree to disagree on which of us has more insight about how to maximize LP-USA membership among the people across the country who want more liberty.
Now you're implying that you have more insight than I do because you're not from San Francisco? Of course you did include a smiley face, so apparently you are not seriously asserting that just being in San Francisco means you are less in touch with people who want liberty. Please note that in many respects there is more freedom in San Francisco than in many other places in the United States.
>It's true that keeping the LP as a club for comparing anarchist tattoos will guarantee that it will never be corrupt.<BH
>Yeah, encouraging people to wear (but not look at) their "I'm a happy tax slave" tattoos sounds like a much better recipe for being effective!<SC
I've quoted above some prominent LPC officials whose statements exemplify what can reasonably be called anarchist exclusivism. Nothing I've said can reasonably be called advocacy of "tax slavery".
Weren't you disagreeing with the idea that "taxation is slavery" and asserting that some coercive taxation is OK?
Anarchism and slavery are actual English words, and Libertarians only marginalize themselves when they misuse such words.
Slavery means working for someone else involuntarily for a period usually of long duration. Coercive taxation meets that definition.
>Do you think there are more Americans who want increased liberty inside the 200K reglibs or outside?<BH
Outside, no question.
>*Your* context may be politics in America. I am for worldwide liberty, and I think that should be the Libertarian Party's goal -- in cooperation with libertarian groups in other countries, of course. My stating a context where no explicit context had been stated was not an attempt at evasion, but simply an attempt to get you to think globally.<SC
There is no global Libertarian Party, so when Americans talk about membership in the "LP" and the "Pledge" required for it, the context is America. I made that context explicit in my question above.
Sure, I realize when we talk about "the LP" or "the Pledge" we are talking about the LPUS. However when you start making statements that sound universal, I may take your words at their plain English value, even if *you* only meant them to apply to the United States.
>If you believe that the power of the "government" to use force is the same as that of AAA -- i.e. self-defense and contract enforcement -- then you're an anarchist. <BH
>I don't understand what you mean by that.<SC
See my reference to AAA above.
OK, I would say government ought to have a bit more power to use force than the AAA.
>Are you saying it's impossible to believe taxation is theft unless you're anarchist?<SC
I'm saying that if you consider even the least amount of taxation to be impermissible for any reason, then there is no practical difference between you and an anarchist.
I repeat -- are you saying it's impossible to believe taxation is theft unless you're an anarchist? I'm sorry, but I'm unable to tell whether your answer above translates into a "yes" or a "no."
I'm fine with some taxation, as long as it is voluntary (though I do not think government should be allowed to collect taxes even voluntarily for purposes which exceed its proper scope).
>It sounds like you are defining a minarchist as "anyone who wants to increase liberty."<SC
I don't remember saying anything like that. You seem to think I share your belief that pledging to some ideological destination/goal/endstate should be a requirement for LP membership, and that any party pledge one advocates must be the essence of one's libertarian ideology. I don't know how many times or how many ways I can say that I do NOT share these beliefs.
Have I been saying you believe those things?
>I don't see such people being pressured to stay out of the party, or being harangued by other Libertarians.<SC
No, you instead see "corporate, top-down" attitudes as the party's main problem. I guess what we notice depends on where we stand.
>please show me a minarchist who has been kept out of the LP.<SC
On Tuesday my would-be constituent Jacob Ablowitz identified himself as one in response to this discussion: Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos. Jacob is as far as I can tell a minarchist, and says: "I would definitely say I want more liberty and less government on almost every issue. [...] I'm not presently a member, because I find the platform far too radical for my tastes, and I don't wish to support such extremism."
carrying Libertarian and was proud of it. [Extremists] convinced me that the party would never be viable."
Those are examples of people who *voluntarily* choose not to belong to the LP, not people who were kept out.
While it's not clear that my revised pledge would by itself convert such liberty-lovers to membership, I think the LP could be several times its size if it maintained 90% of its ideology while embracing the tactic of brokering the votes of the millions of Americans who want a net increase liberty.
Those people can vote Libertarian now without any modification of the pledge. But if someone's reason for not voting Libertarian is because they think the party is too extreme, I think it would usually take more than a 10% ideological adjustment to get his or her vote. Some new people would surely join, but some current Libertarians would leave, too. Hard to say which group would be larger.
And it's *still* not clear how you'd maintain 90% of our current ideology in a Libertarian Party several times its current size with most members being people who think what we stand for now is too extreme.
Yours in liberty,
<<< Starchild >>>
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If the Pledge does not exclude one who you say advocates “slavery”, who precisely does it exclude?
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Of 13 claims and implications I quote here by you about my positions, 12 are flatly false the other is unintelligible.
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This is the fourth consecutive email in which I’ve diagnosed as a strawman your claim that my goal is accomodate those who want only “a little bit” more liberty. Please stop misrepresenting my positions.
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Unless you’d allow concealed carry of nuclear mortar rounds and smallpox bullets, you’re not a purist on gun control.
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There is no ethical system which can guarantee that false ethical claims are mechanically identifiable as such. The naive or intellectually lazy hope for such a system is what attracts a lot of people to anarcho-libertarianism.
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You claimed earlier that you personally agree there are exceptions to the absolutist NAP that you say underlies the Pledge, but you failed to identify any actual cases in which the government should be allowed to initiate force
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The best way to move America in a given direction in Nolan space is to aggregate into the same party everyone who prefers that direction.
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Being a taxpayer plainly does not satisfy the English definition of being a “slave”, and it’s laughably hyperbolic to claim otherwise.
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So unless we actually take a scissors to their party membership card, no practice or policy of the party counts as discouraging membership?
Starchild wrote:
aggression doesn’t end up minimized if the strategy for minimizing it is just for liberty-lovers to promote “aggression virginity” by the example of their abstinence. Anarchists claim that if we’re ever willing to initiate force to maximize liberty, then what we’re maximizing cannot truly count as liberty. They assume that the landscape of attainable levels of liberty has no local maxima, i.e. that an investment in force initiation could never lead to a net reduction in the overall incidence of force initiation.
It might also be true that in some circumstances, receiving a severe unprovoked beating against one’s will could turn out to be a character-building experience that would be to the net benefit
First, it’s utterly against libertarian principles to force a competent adult to do something that is primarily for his own good.
Second, when I talk about investing in force initiation, I’m not talking about an agent having plenary power to initiate near-lethal force under the unreviewed and arbitrary determination that it would net reduce the overall incidence of force initiation. I’m talking about a strictly-limited constitutionally-defined marginal taxation power that must be applied in an equitable way under due process of law. To analogize this to a “severe unprovoked beating” is simply to flee from engaging my position. If the 5% taxes in my libertopia qualify as “slavery” as you claim, then they should be sufficiently horrific that you need not invoke such silliness as “severe unprovoked beatings”. The yawning chasm between my proposal and your hypothetical is a measure of how far you are from engaging my actual position.
If you make the mistake of getting into splitting hairs by talking about how an unprovoked beating is sometimes useful, you needlessly abandon the moral high ground
This proves my point that you choose the non-aggression principle more because of your interest in the height of your own moral ground, whereas I choose the anti-aggression principle more out of a desire to maximize the net liberty of everyone.
and lose moral credibility with people who may not understand the intricacies of the issue and/or who mistake your willingness to be “realistic” with a lack of commitment to the cause of minimizing aggression.
The overwhelming majority of Americans understand that if the weak depended only on charity for their protection, they would become the victims of the strong. This is an “intricacy” only to anarcho-libertarians who are conflicted between the values of minimizing aggression and having clean hands.
Most critically, you undermine that larger anti-aggression message that you are trying to promote. If you had a higher public profile, one could imagine an erudite Bush lawyer arguing in defense of conditions at the Guantanamo camp that “even libertarians like Brian Holtz readily admit that an ‘investment in force initiation’ is sometimes for the best.”
This slippery-slope argument just doesn’t work, because I advocate force initiation to solve only the specific textbook problems of market failure: http://marketliberal.org/Lesson.html#Rivalry.
You’re attacking anarchy in this conversation; no one is attacking minarchy. ;
They probably wouldn’t say those things if they didn’t see an active effort to distance the party from the Non-Aggression Principle
No kidding. My point still stands: they, like you, use the Pledge’s NAP to attack minarchism as the advocacy of “slavery”.
Libertarian candidates should be actively discouraged from running on planks that are counter the party platform.
So you agree with this person that someone should be disqualified from LP nomination if they proactively advocate any change in the LP platform?
Have any Libertarians accused you of not aiming north on the Nolan chart or said you don’t belong in the party? If they have, I am sure they are few and far between.
Not on the Ex-Comm they aren’t. In calling me a “fascist”, Paul Ireland effectively said I was aiming south. And Mark Selzer openly admits that he doesn’t want people like me in the party. Now you yourself – a Judicial Committee member – say that my positions violate the LP membership pledge.
The fact that a small minority of non-conformists all non-conform from the mainstream in the same way doesn’t mean that non-conformity with the mainstream isn’t one of their values. <;BH
What you term “non-conformity with the mainstream” is not simply being nonconformist for the sheer sake of nonconformity, but rather disagreement with a particular set of values.
I never said “sheer” sake of nonconformity. I said “more about indulging in nonconformity than it is about increasing liberty in the real world”.
To someone who valued nonconformity for its own sake, a pledge would be inherently objectionable.
If you’re unfamiliar with the phenomenon of small groups of non-conformists all rigidly non-conforming the same way for purposes of cohesion with their small non-conformist group, then we’ll have to table this issue due to the divergence in our respective empirical understandings of reality. 
Since you argue from the premise that anarchists cannot be libertarian
I don’t think I’ve ever said anarchists cannot be libertarian.
I think you said something like “they aren’t libertarians, they’re anarchists.”
I didn’t. I said “anarcho-libertarians are more aptly called anarchist than libertarian”. You were probably confused by my earlier statement that “The former principle is libertarian, and the latter is anarchist.”
[Cato] is not a good model for the LP. They have achieved much of their success by working closely with the GOP establishment. That is not really an option for us. It is vital that the LP strike a balance between left and right, so as to attract people roughly equally from both camps, so as not to fall into a vicious cycle of attracting people overwhelmingly from one side whose influence takes the party farther and farther in that direction.
As far as I can tell, Cato’s positions are unchanged in its multi-decade history. I know of no self-designated libertarian organization that has ever succumbed to this “vicious cycle” you worry about. Meanwhile, the LP has for decades been mired in the self-marginalization that I’ve diagnosed.
under my revised Pledge, the party automatically becomes more ideologically pure as it becomes more successful, because as America moves north in Nolan space, the revised Pledge excludes marginal liberty-increasers that it used to include.
I don’t recall what proposed language you’ve come up with.
“The Libertarian Party will always advocate increasing liberty and decreasing government on every issue. As a member of the Libertarian Party, I will not attempt to change this.”
exclusivist n. An advocate of excluding some or most, as from membership or participation.
It’s untenable to say a political party cannot be called exclusivist merely because it’s on the ballot in all jurisdictions. But thank you for moving closer to my view that LP registration is a better focus of party efforts than is loyalty-oath-abiding dues-paying anarchy-club membership.
So you see appeal to the practice of a linguistic community as a poor argument, but appeal to the authority of a dictionary (which you make farther along in this message where you tell me that the words “anarchism” and “slavery” have English-language definitions which Libertarians “misuse”) as a sound one?
Appeal to community practice (as codified in a dictionary) is a good argument in a semantic debate about what words mean. Appeal to community beliefs is a poor argument in a sociopolitical debate about the hypothetical effects of two alternative policy proposals.
; Would you exclude me for not pledging that government should completely abstain from the initiation of force, even just the minimal coercive taxes to finance police and court protection for the indigent? If no, then how you do reconcile that with the Pledge? If yes, then what do you see as the difference between anarchism and having a “government” that has no more power than any other institution?
First, let’s get our terms straight. Being able to vote as a delegate and central committee member or hold office within the Libertarian Party is not a required part of belonging to the party. One can belong to the party as a registered voter or an associate member and not do these things.
Are you claiming that the party has any choice about the conditions under which American voters may register as Libertarian? As for associate membership, that concept is not found in the national LP bylaws, and in the LPC bylaws it appears mainly to be a way to extract dues from sympathetic non-members. I had never heard of associate membership, and I’d be surprised if there are even five associate members statewide.
I would not exclude you from such membership. The language of the pledge could perhaps be interpreted as excluding you, but I’ll leave it up to you to make that interpretation for yourself.
So if the pledge does not exclude one who you say advocates “slavery”, who precisely does it exclude?
an LP member who publicly holds positions which are widely seen as incompatible with the pledge may see his or her reputation for honesty suffer somewhat in the party.
I honestly agree with David Nolan’s original idea that party members should not initiate force to achieve the party’s political goals. If party members don’t understand the intention of their own party’s pledge, that says more about their ignorance than about my honesty.
I don’t think you were crediting me with very good motives when you
• implied I favor “watering down our principles to accommodate people who aren’t libertarians”;
̶6; implied I oppose that our movement “be guided by libertarian principles, [instead of] indulging the need to feel like ‘winners’.” ;
• said I want to “remove the LP’s ideological goals”;
• said I don’t want the “LP to stay ‘the party of principle’ and continue to speak truth to power”;
• said I want to “let party policy be set by people who don’t share our belief in limited government”;
• implied I’m not someone with “outspoken principles and unafraid to demand adherence to them”;
• said I “seem to want to throw every practical difference that distinguishes us from the political establishment out the window in order to pursue ‘success’”;
• said I “downplay the importance of ideology and simply focus on ‘success’ and ‘results’”.My comment about “indulging the need to feel like ‘winners’” was a response to your comment about “indulging nonconformity.”
Your comment remains unjustified. I never implied that exclusivists oppose that our movement be guided by libertarian principles. I just said that exclusivism is “motivated more about indulging in nonconformity than it is about increasing liberty in the real world.”
I think most of the rest of my comments above can be accommodated under your statement that “A label is not an insult if its dictionary definition plainly applies.”
Each of your assertions and implications about me above is flatly false, and I defy you to produce quotes from me substantiating any of them.
Please correct me if I’m wrong on any of the following:
-You’re OK with someone being a policy-making member of the LP who supports the status quo exactly as it is except for wanting to see a tiny bit more freedom on one issue
False. I can’t imagine favoring such a person for a policy-making position over the alternative members that would always be available.
-When principles conflict with what’s practical, you want the LP to do what’s practical more of the time and adhere to principle less of the time than is done at present
False. I’d prefer that the LP adhere more to optimally minarcho-libertarian principles and less to its current suboptimal anarcho-libertarian principles.