If someone dumps toxic waste onto their property, which then bleeds into your property because they failed to contain it, the dumper is effectively dumping toxic waste onto your property and you are able to respond with legal action. This is the case in any society that recognizes and enforces property rights, libertarian or not.
How far away does it have to be from you to count? What do I need to prove that it is getting into my water? Do I need to hire a lab to prove that a certain chemical causes cancer 20 years later and that it is in the product they are putting in the water? What if it is air, instead? What about climate change? What if they operate a business, say, they buy tiger feet, and it is causing a growth in a market for tiger feet which leads to poaching of tigers who have been endangered and are needed for a local ecosystem which I rely on to work?
The courts will decide how the damages for the toxic waste dumping should be assessed. The government regulates the use of public and common goods, and it can also file lawsuits.
When you said:
> The state works because they have a monopoly on violence and imprisonment. As long as they operate for general good and operate via a strict system of laws which prevents abuses and maintains rights, then that is a good thing.
did you think that most libertarians would disagree? The status quo is that the state has a role in protecting human and property rights, and in regulating public and common goods. No pragmatic libertarian would suggest removing the state from these roles without finding a suitable replacement.
> did you think that most libertarians would disagree?
If you believe that a state should exist and should protect human rights, even so far as to use their monopoly on violence to shut down a private property holder who is causing damage to property owners no where near them based on economic externalities such as providing markets for endangered species parts, then what is the difference between a 'statist' and a 'pragmatic libertarian'?
The government with jurisdiction over the tigers would be filing the lawsuit against the poachers for misusing common goods (killing endangered species), not necessarily the purchaser.
Because most libertarians are not anarchists, and because statism encompasses all sizes of governments, statism can be compatible with libertarianism. However, people who want to abolish government altogether cannot be statists, and people who support government expansion to an excessive and unnecessary extent cannot be libertarians.
You haven't clarified anything except that you don't actually consider externalities. If buying endangered animal parts and thus creating a market for poaching animals is not an externality then I must not understand what an externality is. Let's try another one. I put kiddie pools full of stagnant water all around my property in order to breed mosquito larvae to feed my pets. These mosquitos end up causing a malaria epidemic for everyone around including you but I am not affected by malaria and don't care. Are you saying that you have to go to court to sue me and prove that it is my mosquitoes giving you malaria? Why not sue the person the mosquito bit who had malaria who then gave it to you? You say the government would do this, but I have trouble believing a libertarian state would allow them to act in such a way since it would involve having departments extremely similar to the EPA and CDC.
The problems I have with libertarianism are around these issues and your handwaving of them, and this is compounded by the fact that you haven't defined what libertarianism actually is, besides that it is 'not anarchy'.
Have you really thought about these things, or do you just find the idea of self-sufficiency and absolute personal freedom enticing?
Both the government and the individuals who caught malaria can sue the person who created the code-violating pools, especially since that person is aware of the resulting health effects. A lawsuit against someone who inadvertently caught malaria will obviously go nowhere, because courts consider intent.
Since the status quo is that public lands are regulated by the state, the state will sue people who illegally poach endangered species within its jurisdiction. However, if another state allows the poaching of the same endangered species within its jurisdiction, a libertarian approach in the first state would allow for animal parts to be imported from the second state and sold within the first state.
A comprehensive definition from Wikipedia:
> Libertarians seek to maximize autonomy and political freedom, and minimize the state's encroachment on and violations of individual liberties; emphasizing pluralism, cosmopolitanism, cooperation, civil and political rights, bodily autonomy, free association, free trade, freedom of expression, freedom of choice, freedom of movement, individualism and voluntary association. Libertarians are often skeptical of or opposed to authority, state power, warfare, militarism and nationalism, but some libertarians diverge on the scope of their opposition to existing economic and political systems.
You seem to be painting all libertarians as a homogeneous extremist bloc, which is just as fallacious as ascribing minority hardline stances to "all liberals" or "all conservatives". The above describes general concepts that libertarians support, and absolutes such as "absolute personal freedom" are ideologies that pragmatists recognize as infeasible.
> You seem to be painting all libertarians as a homogeneous extremist bloc, which is just as fallacious as ascribing minority hardline stances to "all liberals" or "all conservatives". The above describes general concepts that libertarians support, and absolutes such as "absolute personal freedom" are ideologies that pragmatists recognize as infeasible.
No, libertarians are not like 'liberals' or 'conservatives', they are libertarians, and they believe in an absolutely minimal amount of state intervention. Have you talked to any before? It seems like you read a few books and have some notion of some kind of libertarianism which is not at all what is advocated for by real life 'libertarians'. There is a 'Libertarian' party in the USA and they have candidates and an agenda. You may believe one thing, and call other people's views 'fallacious' but those views are based very much on Libertarianism as represented by Libertarians.
Here are some candidates for the Libertarian party.
The U.S. Libertarian Party does a better job of representing libertarian values in general than the two major parties, but the Libertarian Party platform does not encompass all of libertarianism, just like how there are conservatives who disagree with parts of the Republican Party platform and liberals who disagree with parts of the Democratic Party platform.
Since the first-past-the-post voting system used in most U.S. states makes it difficult for third parties to gain traction, most politicians who prioritize winning elections run under one of the two major parties. A libertarian candidate who focuses on reducing taxes is more likely to become elected on the Republican ticket than the Libertarian ticket. A libertarian candidate who prioritizes legalizing marijuana will stand a better chance on the Democratic ticket than the Libertarian ticket. The goal is to push for changes that would advance the libertarian agenda on specific issues while maintaining the status quo party line on other issues, since it is easier to enact targeted changes than to fight on all fronts. Political candidates who choose to be affiliated with the Libertarian Party need to be sufficiently radical to reject the two dominant platforms that are much more likely to win them elections.
Voters know that third parties including the Libertarian Party are disadvantaged in U.S. elections, and in races that Libertarian Party candidates are certain to lose or do not participate in, many libertarian voters select the candidate from one of the two major parties that they believe would do the best job advancing or preserving the parts of the libertarian philosophy that they prioritize. This is the most effective short-term voting strategy when voter prefers one of the major party candidates more than the others. In the long term, libertarians in the U.S. support ranked choice voting and other reforms that would empower third parties like the Libertarian Party. If the Libertarian Party does manage to gain traction, its platform would adapt to become more moderate, mainstream, and pluralistic to accommodate its larger voter base and encompass more of the libertarian philosophy.
There aren't many surveys that focus on libertarians, but this 2014 one from the Pew Research Center shows that self-described libertarians tend to be more diverse and less radical than you perceive them to be:
> Self-described libertarians tend to be modestly more supportive of some libertarian positions, but few of them hold consistent libertarian opinions on the role of government, foreign policy and social issues.
...
> None of the seven groups identified by the 2014 political typology closely resembled libertarians, and, in fact, self-described libertarians can be found in all seven. Their largest representation is among the group we call Business Conservatives...However, they are also supportive of an activist foreign policy and do not have a libertarian profile on issues of civil liberties.
Libertarian's as described in that survey (and as you probably are as well) are 'Republicans who like smoking weed and don't have a problem with homosexuals'.
The article shows that self-described libertarians do not uniformly align with the Libertarian Party platform. In the same way, self-described liberals do not uniformly align with the Democratic Party platform and self-described conservatives do not uniformly align with the Republican Party platform.
Your perception of what libertarians believe in is more closely attuned to anarcho-capitalism, which is a radical subset of libertarianism. Most libertarians are not anarcho-capitalists. I described your comments as fallacious because you are attacking libertarianism using arguments directed at anarcho-capitalism (straw man).
I have never described my political affiliation here, so please don't make assumptions. The Pew Research survey says that 12% of Republicans, 6% of Democrats, and 14% of independents describe themselves as libertarians, so it is not reasonable to label all libertarians in that survey as Republicans.
The Pew study said exactly 'not in line with libertarianism'. If you want to keep trying to redefine what libertarian is, you are welcome to, but you shouldn't use sources which directly contradict you.
At this point in time it is clear you are not going to change your mind on this -- and as long as you continue to claimn that I am wrong and fallacious for making assumptions about libertarian political ideas based on my direct experience with people espousing them, then I am afraid we are at an impasse.
The Pew study never used the phrase "not in line with libertarianism". It said that "few of them hold consistent libertarian opinions on the role of government, foreign policy and social issues", meaning that self-described libertarians in the U.S. do not tend to subscribe to the entire libertarian agenda, even though their positions are "modestly more supportive of some libertarian positions" than the general population. Libertarians are free to break from libertarian positions on certain issues, just as liberals and conservatives are able to break from liberal and conservative positions. Most people are not ideologues who treat party platforms like religious texts.
Radicals tend to be louder than moderates, but judging an entire demographic based on the opinions of its most radical subset is not going to yield a realistic picture of the demographic. If you only consider people libertarians if they pass a purity test that requires them to subscribe to radical beliefs such as the complete abolition of the state, then the resulting group of people will be radical and non-representative of libertarians as a whole.
It is not wrong to be suspicious of someone clearly trying to minimize the extremely negative aspects inherent in a political ideology in order to make it appear reasonable, especially when personal experience is contradictory. If the loud extremists are making all the noise then why are the pragmatic ones not doing anything about it? You seem more intent on convincing people how reasonable you can be instead of distancing yourself from the crazies. There is no reason to latch on to a term that you have to constantly defend because people misinterpret it due to others using it as you do not. I know I am Godwin'ing this thread now but the term National Socialists might key you in to the dangers of not fleeing a right-wing take-over of your group.
The Pew Research survey is real data on what self-described libertarians in the U.S. actually believe. Your personal anecdotal experiences may be different, but frankly, your opinion is a minority view on HN (which leans libertarian compared to the general population), and I'm going to trust Pew Research's survey over your word.
> convincing people how reasonable you can be instead of distancing yourself from the crazies
Again, I did not express any political ideology. When I saw you making comments conflating libertarianism with anarcho-capitalism, I explained the difference and brought in evidence to show that self-described libertarians generally do not hold the radical views that you believe they do. Equating libertarianism to anarcho-capitalism makes as much sense as conservatives equating progressivism to antifa and warning of a far-left takeover.
