Pseudo-libertarianism comes in two basic types. Here's an example of one type

[Curried Goats]

For you to hide from it except to make childish comments like that?

Yes, that is how I expected you to react.

I didn't expect a "libertarian defense of mandatory tax-funded education."

That's because of your limited understanding of my comments. The philosophy I espouse is similar to libertarianism but not quite. I recognize no right to personal ownership of natural resources. But for the purposes of expressing a philosophy in which collectively we do not have a right to use force against others in manner we would not have as individuals it will suffice.

 

[Seymour Flops]

That's because of your limited understanding of my comments. The philosophy I espouse is similar to libertarianism but not quite.

That's fine then. I thought you were claiming to be libertarian. My mistake.

I recognize no right to personal ownership of natural resources.

I have questioned that right also. The right to own land, for example. Obviously, it is very practical to honor private ownership of land that is being put to use. But the very ownership of land restricts the right of others to access that land.

I have an answer, that is also similar to libertarianism, but not quite.

But for the purposes of expressing a philosophy in which collectively we do not have a right to use force against others in manner we would not have as individuals it will suffice.

Fair enough.

Just as a practical example, is there a collective right to prevent parents from providing their children medical and surgical treatment to change their apparent gender? Is there a collective right to prevent parents from denying medical and surgical treatment to change their apparent gender if such treatment is recommended by someone in the transgender treatment industry? Or is there a right for parents to choose either way?

 

[Curried Goats]

That's fine then. I thought you were claiming to be libertarian. My mistake.

I have questioned that right also. The right to own land, for example. Obviously, it is very practical to honor private ownership of land that is being put to use. But the very ownership of land restricts the right of others to access that land.

I have an answer, that is also similar to libertarianism, but not quite.

I am in agreement. I can climb an apple tree to retrieve an apple and I can defend that apple in my possession from someone trying to use force to take it from me with a reasonable claim to self defense, I can not use force to keep others away from the apple tree while rationally claiming that use of force as defensive of my person.

Fair enough.

See what happens when you allow others room to answer.

Just as a practical example, is there a collective right to prevent parents from providing their children medical and surgical treatment to change their apparent gender?

Can you prove this action is in defense of harm? Harm being a term who's parameters aren't solely defined by you but collectively? For example you might claim that me slapping my wife on the ass is harmful but does she think it is? To her it could be foreplay. Or I could be intimidating her to say that. Each instance needs to be examined on its merits before that determination can be made. If children suffering from gender dysphoria, their parents and their physicians all are in agreement about a particular treatment, can you rationally claim harm on their behalf against their own objections? Personally I think in that case you'd need some really compelling evidence.

Is there a collective right to prevent parents from denying medical and surgical treatment to change their apparent gender if such treatment is recommended by someone in the transgender treatment industry? Or is there a right for parents to choose either way?

I don't think there is a right for parents to choose to harm their children, I do think there are situations were there are poor choices all around and to such extremes that harm in that case becomes subjective. For instance surgery to correct a serious medical condition that itself is risky and dangerous and who's outcome is uncertain.

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

Literally, guns are not pointed at us every day, but the guns are implied in every act of taxation.

Some grandmotherly CPA at the IRS who sends me a letter telling me that I was seventeen dollars short in my last tax calculation, may not fully understand this, but her letter drips with gun oil, and reeks of potasium nitrate and sulfer.

Sooner or later, they will come for my possessions and if I try to defend them, which would be my right against any other robber, they will not hesitate to shoot me.

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Examples?

"My Way or the Highway" Means That the Deciders' Way Is the Low Way

 

[Oddball]

I'm going to use one poster, Curried Goats as an example. I hope you won't consider it a "call out" thread. I'm making a thread to debate something he said that I thought would take a post about trannies getting drafted off of that important topic.

Having been challenged by another poster to defend his claim of being libertarian and not anarchist he said:


Asked if he supported "enFORCEing" laws (since libertarians believe in the Non-Aggression Principle) he answered

Ok, that is the liberatarian take. Police can arrest murderers and robbers and burglars, because, absent police, we could kill those bad actors in self-defense. Arresting them on our behalf is a lessor action we can legitimately authorized police to do.

Good, so far.

Challenged again, he said:



My libertarian heart sang. Then it sank.

Because asked about taxation, regulation of labor, regulation of food and water standards, mandatory public education, personal, physical, or real property, marriage or adoption, or discrimination based on race or religion or gender, his answer was:


What he missed was libertarianism.

This supposed loophole that government can be libertarian and yet regulate every aspect of your life that deals with commerce, protection, education, and all the other aspects of civilization because you choose to engage in those things, makes any idea of non-aggression a farce. What it says is that you can be libertarian and not be aggressed upon by government as long as you are willing to move far away from people and live like an animal.

But libertarianism is for humans, not animals. Bands of monkeys are not free, because freedom implies options and monkeys don't know that they have options.

Government is not a necessry ingredient for human activity and interacton. In North America we saw that time and again in our history until our frontiers were finally "closed," meaning completely under control of government.

When the Pilgrims came to America, they brought farm tools and personal weapons, not stacks of law books, an army, and a well staffed bureaucracy. Some thrived, some did not, but government did not take any interest in America until she started to turn a profit. Then as usual, government arrived to cash in.

Taking taxes by force is no part of self-defense. Forcing parents to send their children to school or to gender reassignment therapy is nothing to do with self-defense. Neither would forcing parents to send their children to gay conversion therapy, not matter how important that particular community thought it would be to help kids stop being gay. The idea that parents harm their children by not sending them to government schools has to be the least libertarian idea I read today.

There is an argument to be made that a government funded by taxes collected at gunpoint is a net benefit to humanity, with the real benefit of the protection and regulation it provides outweighing the less tangible and more theoretical benefit of freedom. Make that argument and I'll be happy to debate it with anyone.

But don't say that arguement is a libertarian argument in line with the non-aggression principle, because that is objectively incorrect.

Fauxbertarian is faux....

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

That's because of your limited understanding of my comments. The philosophy I espouse is similar to libertarianism but not quite. I recognize no right to personal ownership of natural resources. But for the purposes of expressing a philosophy in which collectively we do not have a right to use force against others in manner we would not have as individuals it will suffice.

Who Is John Galt? He's a Cash Cow for Corporate Cowboys.

What about people other than the inventor owning his human resources, as in corporate patents? He, rather than the investors, is the real Atlas that Libertarian Ayn Rand claims the investors are.

All these upper-class ideologies are bait-and-switch like hers is. She was the mirror image of Stalin, reversed from Left to Right but just as ugly.

 

[Rigby5]

This supposed loophole that government can be libertarian and yet regulate every aspect of your life that deals with commerce, protection, education, and all the other aspects of civilization because you choose to engage in those things, makes any idea of non-aggression a farce. What it says is that you can be libertarian and not be aggressed upon by government as long as you are willing to move far away from people and live like an animal.

But libertarianism is for humans, not animals. Bands of monkeys are not free, because freedom implies options and monkeys don't know that they have options.

Government is not a necessry ingredient for human activity and interacton. In North America we saw that time and again in our history until our frontiers were finally "closed," meaning completely under control of government.

I disagree.

Government should not "regulate every aspect of you life that deals with commerce, protection, education, etc."
The only things government should do is when it is necessary to defend individual rights, like build roads and ticket speeders.
Things like the War on Drugs are inherently illegal because they defend the rights of no one.

I am not at all a Libertarian and am Socialist instead, but that is only because I think multi national corporations are way too vast of an evil threat for Libertarianism to work.