Libertarianism and virtue

Robb @ 2:57 PM writes:

"As far as Jack's comment that we are childless, unmarried ideologues with our heads buried in philosophy books, I would like to point out that - like most of the other Libertarians I know - I am married with three kids and hardly have time for that sort of life of leisure. I lean Libertarian precisely because of my children...I have this novel dream that the Constitution might still be intact for them when they grow up. "

Robb, your version of libertarianism strikes me as being better described as pre-1865 federalism.

"Finally, I think we need to clarify that Libertarians are not anarchists. Libertarians believe in limited government, and there is a great amount of disagreement about what that entails."

My understanding of current-day libertarianism is that there are two major schools; the anarchocapitalists and the minarchists. The ACs want to pretty much abolish all formal forms of the State and rely on the so-called "private sector" to run things. For example, they would have everyone subscribe to "police services" that would function like , and perhaps in conjunction with, insurance companies for personal protection. Either that, or go "armadillo" and rely STRICTLY on one's own resources for self-defense. (Thanks to writers L. Neil Smith and Vernor Vinge for the terminology.) Welfare ? Nonexistent, unless one relies on churches or other charities. "National defense" ? Non-existent, outside the local level, although there is an entertaining treatment of how a system has been envisioned to work against a State apparatus in Vinge's "The Ungoverned".

The minarchists want to retain only a very few vestiges of government, a la the 1787 Constitution. Ron Paul's more public positions seem to come close to this. Pardon me if I seem to be putting words in your mouth, Robb, but you strike me as taking a position very close to that.
It has its attractions, under the circumstances.

From where I sit, the problem with straight anarcho-capitalism is that it relies too much on strict logic to make it work, and Humans are not rational beings. (James Burnham demonstrated that Human societies have a strong non-rational component in his book "Congress and The American Tradition".) It would seem that some form of the State is nearly inevitable, given this element---perhaps some would say "flaw"--in Human nature.

Just for example, what would prevent a company (NOT a corporation; corporations are chartered by governmental authorities and exist in the context of State authorities) from becoming a feudal-style entity through the use of force against its competitors ? What would prevent it from doing so against its employees to ensure their cooperation ? It seems to me that Humans are far too prone to the use of force to get what they want to make that sort of society work for more than about a day and a half.

The same criticism can be applied to the minarchists; a strictly-worded Constitution can be subverted, depending on how it is interpreted and how that interpretation is spun to the population as a whole. Just consider how the 14th Amendment seems to have been turned on its head to justify increased central-government intervention in non-State institutions. Liberty in Human societies seems to have a rather short half-life, and many Human societies do not seem to be capable of sustaining it at all. Many societies do not appear to even want to sustain it, for that matter. A cyclical model of Human societies, from liberty to empire to slavery to war to collapse and then back to liberty, seems to be the one that best explains Human history. (I leave the establishing of where our culture is on that cycle as an exercise for the student.)

Libertarianism (especially in its AC form) might do well, if it wasn't for the Humans who would have to implement it.

Your servant,

Lord Karth

As a Brit of the Catholic faith, I have a natural distrust of the Tories who poll-taxed my forefathers into penury. I am thus more inclined to sympathize with the Whigs who promoted the freedom of conscience of the anti-establishment-arians as opposed to the vested interests of the antidisestablishmentarians (which is just a feeble excuse to use the longest word in the English language).

I remain enthralled by the excentricity and ingenuity of my compatriots in rural England:

barclayscobhouse.blogspot.com

(H/T The Western Confucian at orientem.blogspot.com/2008/09/cob-houses.html)

Where were the L&I inspectors 500 years ago to check that the edifice was safe and conforming to "code"? There were none, but such houses stood the test of time anyway!

Where were the mortgage lenders 500 years ago to check the owners credit worthiness? The owner occupier was the builder, he self-financed the whole shebang

Where the big-box stores of home furnishings Made in China? The wife's "bottom drawer" aka dowry goods were made by herself, her friends and family from local raw goods such as flax or willow, woven into linen textiles or baskets for storage. Menfolk may have carved an inglenook out of a felled tree. The only thing Made in China likely to grace the domestic interior would have been the tea leaves inside the teapot!

There might be different kinds of libertarianism. To me just emphasizing "smaller government" isn't so much libertarian as Old-Right ala Robert Taft. Although even then the idea is undoing what even FDR's "New Deal." I still really doubt poorer people who are not self-employed would be drawn to the idea of eliminating Social Security and FDIC.

True libertarianism, of what I know of it, really is minarchist. There would be no income tax and few rules on corporations except to honor contracts. Considering the power they have now a libertarian society would inevitably allow corporations to fill the vacuum of a powerful state. Especially as a libertarian state would not have the power to do anything about monopolies. Even if the intent isn't Social Darwinist the result would be so. The closest thing we got to libertarianism was 1870-1900 and we abandoned it quite happily.