What's wrong with "coercion" as defined by Libertarians?

Failed troll is failed

"Take your (...) hippy dream world, I'll take reality and earning my happiness with my own efforts" - Barkey

In which case make sure that stuff remains accountable, invest in bodies to ensure a lack of corruption, elect people who you know to be trustworthy or whom you think will most likely tackle things you don't like, investigate etc.

Governments have significantly more oversight of their bureacracy than private corps and ordinary people (for the most part) so they are the ones I tend to side with, if only because the PR for governments is absolute shit and no-one believes it anyway.

You could live alone in a cave and then maybe you would have sole control over your life? You'd spend most of your time trying to survive, but humanity tends to accomplish more when it works as a unit and that means that you DON'T have total control.

And no I DON'T think everything should be controlled collectivly, its just that people don't live on their own and that oversight tends to be good.

(reposting as edit may have gotten lost)

Oh and savage? You might get more people to listen to you if you didn't invest in rhetoric that sounds as if its from a 1920's Soviet Propoganda piece.

edited 29th May '11 10:36:56 AM by JosefBugman

The goverments have no intention on doing that. Administration as it is allows them to do things through Sequence Breaking - without voting, without courts' decisions etc. Administrative decisions are a hidden power that lets goverments control us without us knowing about it

Also lololol how does any pro-market and/or pro-individualist opinion sound Soviet? Soviets were quite the opposite of that

edited 29th May '11 10:39:35 AM by nzm1536

"Take your (...) hippy dream world, I'll take reality and earning my happiness with my own efforts" - Barkey

You're confusing reality with propaganda.

In which case alter it, and your using a worse idea than me if you think that all governments operate exactly like your imagined one.

And once again I must ask you to Proove it. Governments have a huge amount of difficulty in actually gettting anything done, especially if the population resents it (c.f. Prohibition), a government can still be observed and acted against far more easily by ordinary people than large multinational corporations and large bodies of self appointed people.

I'd send you an article about administrativization of law but can't find it. Anyway, modern legislature is giving more power to the administration and it's a fact. The recent controversy about ACTA was partially because it could allow the administration to put giant fines on people and ban them from using the internet without court's decision

"Take your (...) hippy dream world, I'll take reality and earning my happiness with my own efforts" - Barkey

But governments don't want effective enforcement of their authoritarian crap!

Their strategy is to ban mostly harmless stuff that people do. Keep unreasonably low speed limits, keep absurdly high ages of consent or drinking ages, ban drugs that people like to consume, ban gambling, prostitution, vice, sports that are considered risky...

Whatever things are non-mainstream, they ban. Of course the enforcement is haphazard! Then they get discretion and selective enforcement: When most people are criminalized for one reason or another, you're able to screw people over at will. After all, mostly everybody breaks some laws.

We say well, it's not so bad, it's mostly others getting oppressed and keep to our own lifestyles in secret, hoping that we're not the ones being targeted for the next crackdown. But there's no guarantee, and there cannot ever be.

edited 29th May '11 10:47:34 AM by SavageHeathen

You exist because we allow it and you will end because we demand it.

Population has more power than you might think, just look at the Indian Revolution against the Brits.

In war, courage. In peace, wisdom. In life, friendship.

I disagree for numerous reasons, but for the moment, I'll only mention two— a single fist is easier to see coming, and slower to arrive.

I can't get friends by paying taxes, and I can't have friends in every city in the country on call all the time, with training and equipment, who are willing to help me even if they don't know me or have any personal stake in my life.

Good. Then I don't have to be on guard against an indefinite number and variety of threats. I can focus on the one gang. A gang that I could join as easily as getting a job. A gang that actually helps me by providing things I couldn't provide on my own. A gang whose attention is divided between many different activities besides fucking people over, such as fighting the smaller gangs. A gang secure enough in its unchallenged dominance to be relatively laid back.

If it's a gamble, it's one that's worked out for me for 27 years. That's much longer than I would bet on being safe in a world where there are lots of little gangs without the big gang looming over them.

Temporary safety beats "FUCK SAFETY".

It doesn't need to guarantee safety to be worthwhile. It just needs to be better than the alternatives. And it is better than the alternative you're describing.

If there were no drinking and driving laws and no speed limit laws I'd never get on the road.

People are fucking insane enough as it is.

edited 29th May '11 10:48:51 AM by Thorn14

Strawmanning detected

"Take your (...) hippy dream world, I'll take reality and earning my happiness with my own efforts" - Barkey

How?

Let me guess, it goes something like this "Increasingly our liberties are under threat [bla bla bla] faceless bureacrats trying to make us all the same [yada yada yada] must rise up and prevent them from doing so [etc etc etc] blood in the streets [thomas Jefferson quote]" and then a conclusion wherein it becomes increasingly obvious that the guy just happened to get a parking ticket and then decided he was being targetted by the government?

Ofc this is hyperbole and (I hope) a slightly amusing bit of it, but it seems as if a lot of my arguements are not actually addressed by people who dislike government. I mean I DO think that government needs more oversight and scrutiny, I am in no way in favour of seeing government run everything. But at the same time the alternatives are not especially good AT THIS MOMENT.

Nobody said about removing all the drinking laws and speed limits. There is a difference between 'less restrictive' and 'no law'.

Obviously, blah blah security, blah blah social justice, blah blah making people equal and blah blah preventing people from hurting themselves is better

"Take your (...) hippy dream world, I'll take reality and earning my happiness with my own efforts" - Barkey

I've heard the argument before, and I was responding to the post above me about removing vice laws.

I was simply discussing what I had heard before. Theres no strawman in that.

Can you tell me why it isn't if it doesn't neccesarily directly harm peoples ability to complain/ do something about it?

Personally, I think the current problem is that the government is authoritarian in all the wrong ways, i.e. Socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor.

Anyway, getting back to coercion, what it often feels like to me is that even though libertarianism should prevent coercion by others individuals and corporations, libertarians seem to object to anything that would effectively prevent them from doing so, thus de facto allowing powerful individuals and corporations the use of power.

"Despite John Mc Cain's claims, hair transplants are not generally covered by insurance. The only times they are covered is when it's part of re-constructive surgery, after a severe accidental injury. "

If true, fine, bad example, But there are many stupid requirements.

Perhaps, but I'll expect you to be accurate in your criticisms.

There are cases of legitimate claims which were intentionally misfiled so as to keep insurance companies from paying out. This dates back to the first life insurance policy, when the insurance group decided that the only way to weasel out of paying a massive (at the time) amount of money was to define a year as 12 units of 4 weeks, which was before the man had died.

I would much have a government provided health insurance plan which would be required by law to pay out rather than an insurance company trying to swindle me for all it can get and then not pay out. Medicare and Medicaid are well loved by all who use them, as is the government provided healthcare for legislators, all provided more cheaply and efficiently than private groups, and I would happily pay more taxes if I didn't have to have a private group insuring me which could drop coverage at a moments notice.

Very big Daydream Believer. "That's not knowledge, that's a crapshoot!" -Al Murray "Welcome to QI" -Stephen Fry

If they try to swindle you, there are courts for that.

TBH, Regulatory Capture makes those lawsuits generally not very productive.

Consumers' associations basically dictating the prices in the health care market would work wonders: Alas, 1)Insurance companies can't sell interstate, making the competition VERY imperfect. 2)Consumers can't collectively bargain and collectively purchase insurance... Because someone totally twisted antitrust laws to prevent the public from dictating health care prices.

You exist because we allow it and you will end because we demand it.

I don't have any arguments to dispute that...

I do dispute the notion, often held by libertarians I have noticed, that people "vote with their wallets" since lower income people have so few options. They cannot afford to move, they cannot afford to take their business to anywhere other than the lowest priced stores. The lowest priced stores (IE Walmart or other large corporations) are so low priced that they end up undercutting local businesses which cannot afford to lower prices any lower...

edited 29th May '11 12:40:02 PM by Enkufka

Very big Daydream Believer. "That's not knowledge, that's a crapshoot!" -Al Murray "Welcome to QI" -Stephen Fry

Good luck with that. They have armies of awesome lawyers, and not everyone can afford one.

edited 29th May '11 12:36:22 PM by Thorn14

And if they throw money at said court to make it vanish? Or simply throw money at YOU because you don't want to go through the effort and heartache of fighting it whilst you are slandered by their PR department?