Ye Olde Libertarian Pub

[zoink]

I was helping set up for a Ron Paul visit. A cute volunteer walks up to me:

Her: So you go to school around here?
Me: Nope I'm all done. What about you?
Her: Yep
Me: O cool, do you go to <insert list of local colleges>
Her: Nope, I graduate in two months from <insert highschol>

Spoiler:

 

[MacFall]

Hahaha. Run, RUN from the jailbait.

NILLOC: A lot of libertarians use the term "statist" to describe anyone who believes in government. And in a technical sense, it's accurate. But it's certainly uncharitable, and not the way the word gets used by most "normal" people. So I only use it to describe people who think that the state is actually good rather than the "necessary evil" that most people on the northern half of the Nolan Chart would consider it to be. Also there's a useful distinction to be made between those who think that it is legitimate, and those who think that it is merely inevitable. I think it's neither, but we're WAY too far away from achieving a stateless society at this point for me to eschew allying with those who will go 99% of the way with me.

 

[Nilloc]

NILLOC: A lot of libertarians use the term "statist" to describe anyone who believes in government. And in a technical sense, it's accurate. But it's certainly uncharitable, and not the way the word gets used by most "normal" people.

Thanks. Although I describe myself as a minarchist (note the small m), I never think of myself as a statist. The kind of governement I could accept in a minarchist society I would not describe as a 'state'. But keep in mind I relativly new to the libetarian movement. The first seeds were planted back in late 2007, early 2008 when I heard about Ron Paul. It wasn't until the latter half of 2009 I started calling myself a libetarian and probably not until early 2011 I learned about the Mises Institute and Lew Rockwell's site. Needless to say I have a long way to go and a lot to learn.

 

[zoink]

I've known "minarchists" that other than semantics were what I would anarchists. Like Michael Badnarik, he's for voluntary taxation and is OK with polycentric law. I just think he likes teaching his classes on the constitution to much to come out as an anarchist. Here's a debate between Stefan Molyneux and Badnarik. While Molyneux isn't a fan of religeon he's had several good conversations with minarchists in the last month. [James Corbett] [Laurette Lynn]

You've probably seen Rothbard's definition of a state:

as that institution which possesses one or both (almost always both) of the following properties: (1) it acquires its income by the physical coercion known as "taxation"; and (2) it asserts and usually obtains a coerced monopoly of the provision of defense service (police and courts) over a given territorial area. An institution not possessing either of these properties is not and cannot be, in accordance with my definition, a state.

I don't know what's keeping from going yellow and black but usually it seems like polycentric law is the hold up. If that's the case Robert P. Murphy does fantastic work on the subject.

The Market for Security

Chaos Theory [PDF] [MP3]

 

[SmellsLikeCurlyFries]

Oh God, don't I know all about that.

I'd never had a date even when I was a neocon. And now the idea of dating (actively) statist women turns my stomach, so that hasn't made things any easier. I'm probably going to have to settle for politically apathetic.

I dunno, I got lucky. My fiancee is a libertarian Austrian just like me

 

[Nilloc]

I dunno, I got lucky. My fiancee is a libertarian Austrian just like me

Does she have a sister?

 

[MacFall]

...Or two?

 

[SmellsLikeCurlyFries]

Unfortunately, no

 

[Nilloc]

I've known "minarchists" that other than semantics were what I would anarchists. Like Michael Badnarik, he's for voluntary taxation and is OK with polycentric law. I just think he likes teaching his classes on the constitution to much to come out as an anarchist. Here's a debate between Stefan Molyneux and Badnarik. While Molyneux isn't a fan of religeon he's had several good conversations with minarchists in the last month. [James Corbett] [Laurette Lynn]

You've probably seen Rothbard's definition of a state:I don't know what's keeping from going yellow and black but usually it seems like polycentric law is the hold up. If that's the case Robert P. Murphy does fantastic work on the subject.

The Market for Security

Chaos Theory [PDF] [MP3]

I'm not familiar with what polycentric law is, but looking it up on Wikipedia, it seems to be describing people have multiple governments to choose from? That seems to me what would naturally happen in an AnCap society anyway. And from some of those states would probably spring up. I'm not saying I'm okay with the states (as Rothbard defines) growing out of that, it just seems like that's only logical.

Some of the reasons why I ain't AnCap are:

(1) As I said, I'm relatively new to libertarianism.
(2) "Converting" to AnCap seems like a much bigger leap than going from a (kind of) NeoCon, to libertarian Constitutionalist, to something a little more than minarchism, to minarchism.
(3) The only actual book I've read on the subject is The Ethics of Liberty, which overall I really enjoyed, but some of it was kinda weird.
(4) I'm currently reading Man, Economy, and State (though I am stuck and it's caused me not to read in the last few days). I know Wendy McElroy said MES is what brought her to anarchism, so we'll see where I am when I get done with that. I hope to finish it before summer starts.

 

[MacFall]

Technically, you could skip to Power and Market to get to the controversial stuff and not have much trouble in understanding it. But on the other hand if you read the whole thing and agree with most of it, it won't end up being so controversial.

 

[Nilloc]

Technically, you could skip to Power and Market to get to the controversial stuff and not have much trouble in understanding it. But on the other hand if you read the whole thing and agree with most of it, it won't end up being so controversial.

I doubt I'll skip anything; it'd just feel weird. And I'm mainly reading MES cause economics has been an interest of mine since my Junior year of high school. Then I became a libertarian, later learned about Austrianism and the Mises Institute with all of it's free crap online and it seemed like destiny.

 

[zoink]

I feel anarcho-capitalism/voluntarism are the logical consistent end of deontological libertarianism. We aren't exactly the ends justify the means type of people.

Now if MacFall will just get me over the Romans 13:1-7 and Matthew 21:21 hump so I can become an agorist and get some bitcoins.

 

[MacFall]

...As far as I know there's nothing illegal about bitcoin (yet).

By the way, there's a fairly large Christian libertarians facebook group (started by Norman Horn, who runs libertarianchristians.com). Discussions of Biblical views on secular government are ubiquitous there, and usually remain fairly civil and informative. One such discussion is at the top of the page right now.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/290101931017604/

 

[Nilloc]

Now if MacFall will just get me over the Romans 13:1-7 and Matthew 21:21 hump so I can become an agorist and get some bitcoins.

I could offer my perspective on those, but I don't know if it would help much. I'm theologically/religiously liberal, while most Christian libertarians seem to be theologically/religiously conservative. I doubt they could accept what I say, because I read, interpret, and apply the Bible differently. Despite that, I’ll give you my view.

The only sense in which Second Temple Jews would have understood God ordaining Pagan governments was that He used them punish Israel. I suppose some would have thought of the Noahic covenant’s death penalty for murder and saw that as the one thing God ordained in the Pagan nations (Paul certainly held that perspective), but beyond that, the Jews viewed the Pagan powers as under the influence of demons. Luke 4:5-7 shows this, as does the book of Daniel, Colossians 2:15, 1 Corinthians 2:8, and the Book of Revelation.

So if Satan/demons are what’s really behind the Roman’s government, how can it be ordained by God to do good? Well that’s just the thing, I don’t think those two ideas are reconcilable. The only real way to from my perspective is to say the powers are only ordained when punishes wrong doers (according to God, not whatever the state says), but that wouldn’t make a lot of sense given what Paul’s addressing.

He’s addressing a group of people who want to rebel against the Roman government. Paul, like Jesus with the Jews, wants to prevent that from happening. Both Jesus and Paul knew what the result of rebellion would be and the Jews got it in A.D. 70. The Jews wanted to overthrow Rome to specifically set up the kingdom of God. Jesus told them that the kingdom (an anti-Caesar/anti-Rome movement) doesn’t come from political violence, but comes from love and service (such as the Crucifixion).

Paul agrees with Jesus on this, but he can’t use that reason to prevent the Roman Christians from rebelling. Why? Because they weren’t trying to setup the kingdom, they would have agreed with Paul it was already here. The just wanted to get rid of the Romans because they were really crappy. And does saying that the Pagan governments are in fact under the influence of Satan and his demons sound like a way to try and calm the rebellious spirit? Probably not. So how then can Paul stop an insurrection that would mean the end of Christianity? The result is Romans 13. What was originally a passage designed to stop a massacre in the first century has been turned into a justification for violence. Ironic isn’t it?

Even more ironic is what happened to Paul less than a decade later. I’d find it funny, if, you know, it didn’t involve people dying. The Neronian persecution starts and Christians are violently killed by the “ordained powers.” I imagine Paul probably regretted writing Romans 13 the way he did. Some Christians very well could have thought there fellow believers had done something wrong and God was punishing them. Paul really must have regretted writing what he did when he found himself on the chopping block. Executed by the people who he had written only several years only punished wrong doers.

I suppose from a conservative, (but maybe not inerrantist) perspective one could just say that Paul’s writing, while inspired, only applied to the Roman government in his day and was not intended as an eternally binding commandment. After all, Paul thought Jesus would return in his lifetime, he wouldn’t have thought anyone outside the Roman empire would read Romans, and there’s no way he ever could have thought people from a country thousands of miles away two thousand years in the future would be discussing if this passage applies to their own government that’s only existed for two hundred years. Put in that perspective, do you really think Paul was talking about you paying taxes to the IRS?

Also, Paul doesn’t have much of a problem with slavery or some sexism, yet who follows that today? He tells slaves to obey their master’s as Christians obey Christ (sounds rather like “obey the government because God’s behind it), but I really can’t believe God saw the run-a-way slave in the South as sinning.

As for the render unto Caesar passage: I haven’t come to a firm conclusion as to what the means, but again I really have no reason think it’s an eternally binding commandment. I mean, He said that to His Jewish enemies who were trying to arrest Him; He never said that to His disciples. In Luke 23:2 the Jews say that Jesus was forbidding people to pay taxes. Now I know a lot of people think that the Jews were lying there, but not all interpreters agree. N.T. Wright, the greatest living New Testament scholar and far from a libertarian (he’s probably a mild socialist), actually said it’s very possible the historical Jesus forbade His disciples from paying taxes. I’ve read Wright’s interpretation of the render unto Caesar passage and he never uses it as a justification for a socialist state (nor does he with Romans 13).

And to be perfectly blunt: given what Jesus’s ethical concerns were about (Mark 12:28-34, Matt. 25:31-46), and how rabidly anti-Caesar Jesus and the kingdom are, I doubt God really cares whether you pay your taxes or not.

 

[SmellsLikeCurlyFries]

Are you guys aware that the Mises Institute has over 1200 free books for download on their site?

Literature Library: free books from the Ludwig von Mises Institute

 

[MacFall]

I've downloaded hundreds of them. ^_______^

 

[zoink]

I’ve read Wright’s interpretation of the render unto Caesar passage and he never uses it as a justification for a socialist state (nor does he with Romans 13).

Thus far I haven't found scriptural evidence for Christian forcing socialism on non-Christians. I ask it over and over again, and every time they point to Romans 13 and Matthew 21:21. Yes, that's an argument for paying taxes. Since we live in representative democracies that doesn't mean you should vote to force it on other people.

**********

Are you guys aware that the Mises Institute has over 1200 free books for download on their site?

Literature Library: free books from the Ludwig von Mises Institute

Get a Kindle or a Nook and you're set. I set up my Kindle to get the Mises Daily.

They kind of have to publish a lot of their work for free since Kinsella has pretty much destroyed the legitimacy of IP.

 

[SmellsLikeCurlyFries]

I've downloaded hundreds of them. ^_______^

Me too I'm downloading three at a time, reading them, then going in for another three

Right now I've got Planned Chaos and A Critique of Interventionism, both by Mises himself, and Mises and Austrian Economics: A Personal View by Ron Paul downloaded. Soon as I finish Liberty Defined by Ron Paul (actual paperback book), Who Killed the Constitution?: The Federal Government vs. American Liberty from World War I to Barack Obama by Thomas E. Woods Jr. and Kevin R.C. Gutzman, and Jesus In America: A History by Richard Wightman Fox, I'll be starting on the three Mises downloads.

 

[SmellsLikeCurlyFries]

Get a Kindle or a Nook and you're set. I set up my Kindle to get the Mises Daily.

I already have a Nook How do I get it set up?

 

[zoink]

I already have a Nook How do I get it set up?

I have no Idea on the Nook. I just set up my Kindle to use Google reader to access them.