Must Libertarians Believe in Open Borders?

[Sola_Fide]

You don't sense it in mine?

Two ships just passed in the night.

[Occam's Banana]

[Liberty] requires a monopoly on the lawful use of violence within a defined territory (which is the definition of sovereignty). This is the "necessary evil" part of the libertarian description of government.

What makes it necessary is that this arrangement provides for maximum human liberty, far more than the every-man-for-himself anarchist approach, where the only liberty you really have is your natural right to violence. Which will make for a bloody affair, by the way, as everyone else will also have theirs as well, and if you understand human beings at all you know they will use it liberally and without conscience.

Anarchists don't understand this, and view themselves as more liberty-oriented than minarchists, when they are really simply not well-versed in just how ugly human behavior is in our natural state and how forbidding to liberty such a situation would genuinely be.

The reason I find it impossible to take arguments like this seriously is that the people who make them so obviously do not take them seriously, either.

You can make as many breathlessly Hobbesian pronouncements on the matter as you like - but you don't get to have it both ways.

If what you are pleased to call (and to so contemptuously regard as) "human nature" is as ugly, vicious, conscienceless and "every man for himself"-ish as you need it to be in order to prop up your thesis, then it is grotesquely absurd to declare that this can be mitigated by placing sole and exclusive authority to employ violence in the hands of some few of those miserable wretches whose nature you say is so ugly, vicious, conscienceless and "every man for himself"-ish. Indeed, to the extent that "human nature" is as depraved as you assert, then far from the amelioration of the consequences of that nature, the existence of a monopoly on the use of force can serve only to aggravate and magnify those consequences ...

The debate between statists and anti-statists is in my judgement not evenly matched. Defending the continued existence of the state, despite having absolute certainty of a corresponding continuation of its intrinsic engagement in extortion, robbery, willful destruction of wealth, assault, kidnapping, murder, and countless other crimes, requires that one imagine non-state chaos, disorder, and death on a scale that non-state actors seem completely incapable of causing.

If you intentionally misconstrue the argument, it is no wonder that you can't take it seriously.

Why not try getting the argument correct and considering that idea, instead?

There is no proposal to "place sole and exclusive authority to employ violence". It is very specifically "placing sole and exclusive authority to employ violence" for the well-defined and sharply limited set of responsibilities for which there is no better alternative than to have a state.

When you leave out that last part it completely changes the character of the argument, and of course becomes advocacy of open-ended use of the monopoly on violence for any purpose - an advocacy completely at odds with libertarianism.

It's not an optional part of the argument - it is absolutely essential to the nature of what libertarianism is, and the very thing that differentiates libertarianism from other philosophies of government.

I have not misconstrued your argument, intentionally or otherwise.

You complain that my statement regarding the placement of an ostensible "sole and exclusive authority to employ violence" omits a necessary qualification to the effect that said authority is to be "for the well-defined and sharply limited set of responsibilities for which there is no better alternative than to have a state." You insist that such a proviso is not optional and is absolutely essential. Very well, then. But this does nothing whatsoever to address my point. It does not in any way militate against or eliminate the absurdity of the argument. To the contrary, it only serves to more boldly highlight the grotesqueness of that absurdity (see below).

Furthermore, it is you and not I who has elided the most salient factor in the satement - namely, that any "sole and exclusive authority to employ violence" (however you might care to hypothetically qualify that authority) must necessarily be placed in the hands of people whose "human nature" you say is to be ugly, vicious, conscienceless and "every man for himself"-ish. And given that this depraved "human nature" is the very point upon which your assertion of the necessity of the state rests in the first place, your elision of that factor is bizarrely inconsistent. (Hence the fact that I cannot take your argument seriously, as you clearly do not take it seriously yourself.)

Here is my original statement:

If what you are pleased to call (and to so contemptuously regard as) "human nature" is as ugly, vicious, conscienceless and "every man for himself"-ish as you need it to be in order to prop up your thesis, then it is grotesquely absurd to declare that this can be mitigated by placing sole and exclusive authority to employ violence in the hands of some few of those miserable wretches whose nature you say is so ugly, vicious, conscienceless and "every man for himself"-ish.

Here is a recasting of my statement, with your proviso underlined and your elision bolded:

If what you are pleased to call (and to so contemptuously regard as) "human nature" is as ugly, vicious, conscienceless and "every man for himself"-ish as you need it to be in order to prop up your thesis, then it is grotesquely absurd to declare that this can be mitigated by placing sole and exclusive authority to employ violence for the well-defined and sharply limited set of responsibilities for which there is no better alternative than to have a state in the hands of some few of those miserable wretches whose nature you say is so ugly, vicious, conscienceless and "every man for himself"-ish.

If the grotesque absurdity of this is still not plain to see, then consider the following questions:

By whom are the "responsibilities" of the state to be "well-defined," if not by people whose "human nature" you say is to be ugly, vicious, conscienceless and "every man for himself"-ish?

By whom are the "responsibilities" of the state to be "sharply limited," if not by people whose "human nature" you say is to be ugly, vicious, conscienceless and "every man for himself"-ish?

And even having (theoretically) defined so well and limited so sharply the state's "responsibilities," by whom are those definitions and limitations then to be maintained and enforced, if not by people whose "human nature" you say is to be ugly, vicious, conscienceless and "every man for himself"-ish?

Either "human nature" is as depraved as you say it is, or it is not. If it is not, then the entire basis for your assertion of the necessity of the state is destroyed. But if it is, then your assertion that the state is necessary in order to mitigate the depravity of "human nature" is absurd, given that any state must necessarily be composed of people whose nature is as depraved as you say it is. In other words, if people are wicked and bad by nature, then the nature of any states they may form (which will be composed only of people) cannot be otherwise. You don't get to have it both ways.

Even if "human nature" is every bit as depraved as you say it is - indeed, especially if it is as depraved as you say it is - then any state will be a grossly counterproductive means of dealing with the consequences of that depravity. By definition, any state will monopolistically concentrate coercive power in the hands of people who, by your own assertion of the depravity of "human nature," cannot be trusted to wield such power and should not be tolerated to do so.

To the extent that "human nature" is as depraved as you claim, the existence of the state - that is, of the "sole and exclusive authority to employ violence" (however hypothetically qualified) - can serve only to amplify the scope and scale of that depravity by many more orders of magnitude than otherwise could have been the case. That was the point to which I was alluding in my earlier citation of Robert Higgs, which I repeat here with emphasis:

The debate between statists and anti-statists is in my judgement not evenly matched. Defending the continued existence of the state, despite having absolute certainty of a corresponding continuation of its intrinsic engagement in extortion, robbery, willful destruction of wealth, assault, kidnapping, murder, and countless other crimes, requires that one imagine non-state chaos, disorder, and death on a scale that non-state actors seem completely incapable of causing.

[presence]

[PierzStyx]

You, and several others in this thread, seem to believe that "libertarian" is a direct synonym for "anarcho-capitalist." It should be petty obvious that this is simply not so.

Not quite. Though I do believe that a libertarian cannot support the state, because a libertarian holds to the NAP and the whole purpose of the state is to initiate violence. The difference between a libertarian and an anarchist is that a libertarian finds some degree of voluntary government desirable and/or necessary while an anaracho-capitalist finds no government structure, voluntary or otherwise, necessary, and in facts see it as inherently dangerous.

[PierzStyx]

Ask the Cherokee or Apache people what they think of "open borders".

Closed border or open is irrelevant when you're being invaded. And let us be clear, the largest groups of Europeans were not immigrants. They were militarized colonizers. Your closed border would have failed the natives just as much as any open borders. That is the point. Closed borders demand a limitation on liberty and return nothing but tyranny never actually doing what they are supposed to be able to do, "keep people out." So why have them at all? All you're doing is hastening the end of liberty.

[PierzStyx]

I'm not confusing libertarian for minarchist. You and others who are not comprehending what I am saying are confusing libertarian for something other than minarchist. A libertarian would be a subset of minarchist, should any other types of minarchist (not motivated by preservation of liberty) actually exist.

Let's make this simple.


If you are a libertarian you are a minarchist.

If you are an anarchist you are not a libertarian.

If you are a libertarian you are not an anarchist.


Your first assumption is flawed. Minarchists are not libertarians. You can easily believe in minimal government while having no problem violating the NAP. Minarchism is minimal statism. You don't even really have to be concerned with rights as an issue in order to be a minarchist. You can be a minarchist for purely pragmatic functional reasons. But minarchists are not libertarians. They have similar ideas in common about limited government, but that is all. They are similar in the way that a Whopper and a McChicken are the same thing. Sure they're both fast food sandwiches, but there are inherent differences. Libertarians accept the NAP, minarchists do not.

Why anarchists are so dissatisfied with being called anarchists is beyond me; you believe it, you should own it. Regardless, what you are not allowed to do is redefine a very distinct and different term to shoehorn it into your belief system because it has more positive connotations than the correct word for your beliefs.

A libertarian is someone who believes the fundamental principle expressed in the Declaration of Independence: that government should exist for the sole purpose of protection of liberty - and should have no other role. NOT that government shouldn't exist at all.

Sure. But that has nothing to do with the imposition of violence.

Yes this requires a monopoly on the lawful use of violence within a defined territory (which is the definition of sovereignty). This is the "necessary evil" part of the libertarian description of government.

You are wrong here. There are plenty of governments that do not rely on violence to function. Churches, the PTA, Burger King, the list is practically limitless. People organize themselves into a variety of governments without the need to use violence. Only bad governments need to form statist regimes to force themselves onto others. Which, by the way, is antithetical to the values of the Declaration of Independence.

What makes it necessary is that this arrangement provides for maximum human liberty, far more than the every-man-for-himself anarchist approach, where the only liberty you really have is your natural right to violence. Which will make for a bloody affair, by the way, as everyone else will also have theirs as well, and if you understand human beings at all you know they will use it liberally and without conscience.

You have a flawed understanding of anarchy. But then again, I'm not sure you understand minarchism and libertarianism completely either. Anarchism is order without violence, not the absence of order at all.

If you believe government should not exist at all, there is a perfectly good word already available for you to use: "anarchist". It literally means absence of government, and if that's what you believe in, that's what you are.


Also, "individual sovereignty" is the same thing as anarchism, it's just a more complicated way to say it.

No, it is the foundation of the Declaration of Independence, going back to John Locke. The only sovereign is the individual. This is why neither the king nor government is every sovereign. Only the individual has rights, the government never does. The government has powers, and can only act as it is empowered to do with authority and power delegated to it from the individual. The individual can only delegate the government the power to act in ways the individual already can act. And the government cannot force its will justly on the individual, or grant itself powers that are not delegated to it or which the individual does not have. This is why Jefferson asserts that just governments can only rule with the consent of the governed. When the governed do not consent, the government cannot justly rule. The ideas of government put forth in the Declaration are supreme voluntartist and opposed to statism.

Response in bold underlined. Libertarians accept the NAP- that it is wrong to initiate violence against someone else. They also recognize the inalienable rights of the individual. This is why many libertarians are also voluntaryists. This is not the same as being an anarchist. Anarchism rejects any need for any form of politicized or social government and believes in the power of private means to organize and order to be superior. Minarchist, libertarian, anarchist, they all exist on different parts of the liberty-minded spectrum, but are not the same. All libertarians are not minarchists, all minarchists are not libertarians.

[PierzStyx]

They want YOU to not understand the difference so as to attempt to convert libertarians to the anarchist cause. Sadly, the defense of liberty also requires wariness of ideologies which may have a lot of surface appeal, before you consider how exactly they may play out in the real world.

Personally I think most anarchists are just staggeringly naive about human nature. They think their anarchic world will mean liberty for them, rather than being the express superhighway to another form of tyranny. It should be self-evident... after all, look at the tyrannies people are crying out for in the absence of lawful government. A deliberate absence thereof would be nothing but a very brief interregnum, all it really represents is a random roll of the dice. Given that human nature leads most probably to pretty nasty outcomes and that the concept of liberty itself is a grand achievement of humanity that took nearly our entire existence to express in clear terms, the outcome of anarchy is astronomically unlikely to result in liberty.

Anarchists don't understand this, and view themselves as more liberty-oriented than minarchists, when they are really simply not well-versed in just how ugly human behavior is in our natural state and how forbidding to liberty such a situation would genuinely be.

The only naivete on display is that which you display about anarchists. Anarchists realize the nature of people, when they are given even a little bit of it, is to abuse it. Government will always lead to tyranny. Absolutely not everything will be a utopia in an anarchist society. But here is the difference, give one person a gun and he will kill a hundred people. Give the government guns, and they will slaughter millions and oppress hundreds of millions. Every potential problem in an anarchist society is already existent in our current statist society, and a billion times worse than it could be in an anarchist one. The only naive ones are the ones who think statism will ever lead to anything other than tyranny.

[PierzStyx]

wreckt

To have come out of a situation, conversation, altercation or competition for the worse by a considerable measure. Generally used in such a way as to rub said loss in.


Example: "Did you see how American Spartan and thoughtomator lost that argument? Man, they got absolutely wreckt by Occam's Banana."

[r3volution 3.0]

They want YOU to not understand the difference so as to attempt to convert libertarians to the anarchist cause. Sadly, the defense of liberty also requires wariness of ideologies which may have a lot of surface appeal, before you consider how exactly they may play out in the real world.

Personally I think most anarchists are just staggeringly naive about human nature. They think their anarchic world will mean liberty for them, rather than being the express superhighway to another form of tyranny. It should be self-evident... after all, look at the tyrannies people are crying out for in the absence of lawful government. A deliberate absence thereof would be nothing but a very brief interregnum, all it really represents is a random roll of the dice. Given that human nature leads most probably to pretty nasty outcomes and that the concept of liberty itself is a grand achievement of humanity that took nearly our entire existence to express in clear terms, the outcome of anarchy is astronomically unlikely to result in liberty.

Anarchists don't understand this, and view themselves as more liberty-oriented than minarchists, when they are really simply not well-versed in just how ugly human behavior is in our natural state and how forbidding to liberty such a situation would genuinely be.

Very well said

[AmericanSpartan]

wreckt

To have come out of a situation, conversation, altercation or competition for the worse by a considerable measure. Generally used in such a way as to rub said loss in.


Example: "Did you see how American Spartan and thoughtomator lost that argument? Man, they got absolutely wreckt by Occam's Banana."

If anything you open borders/mass immigrationists are losing the debate, losing in the polls, and losing the debate. If you want open borders, take the doors off of your home. I mean if its sooo good for a nation, why would it not be great for you.

[AmericanSpartan]

It's impossible. If you have any other color skin than white, you can't believe in the free market.

I guess you love putting words into the mouths of others.

[AmericanSpartan]

They want YOU to not understand the difference so as to attempt to convert libertarians to the anarchist cause. Sadly, the defense of liberty also requires wariness of ideologies which may have a lot of surface appeal, before you consider how exactly they may play out in the real world.

Personally I think most anarchists are just staggeringly naive about human nature. They think their anarchic world will mean liberty for them, rather than being the express superhighway to another form of tyranny. It should be self-evident... after all, look at the tyrannies people are crying out for in the absence of lawful government. A deliberate absence thereof would be nothing but a very brief interregnum, all it really represents is a random roll of the dice. Given that human nature leads most probably to pretty nasty outcomes and that the concept of liberty itself is a grand achievement of humanity that took nearly our entire existence to express in clear terms, the outcome of anarchy is astronomically unlikely to result in liberty.

Anarchists don't understand this, and view themselves as more liberty-oriented than minarchists, when they are really simply not well-versed in just how ugly human behavior is in our natural state and how forbidding to liberty such a situation would genuinely be.

They never do understand human nature, but then always attack those that do, they want to force open the gates and allow us to be over run by the hordes of the 3rd world, claim our actions to protect ourselves are "unjust" while others "have the right to trespass and destroy".

[Cabal]

[cajuncocoa]

I guess you love putting words into the mouths of others.

Like you just did to me in the other thread?

[Dr.3D]

Notice that tongue again?

[AmericanSpartan]

Like you just did to me in the other thread?

How so?

[cajuncocoa]

How so?

Right here:

[AmericanSpartan]

Right here:

You assume I value your opinion...I dont.

[cajuncocoa]

You assume I value your opinion...I dont.

I don't care if you do or don't. That wasn't the point.

[GunnyFreedom]

You assume I value your opinion...I dont.

That's one way to try and deflect attention from a demonstration of hypocrisy.

[AmericanSpartan]

You don't post about liberty here. You don't post about freedom.
All you ever post about is how the country is being brought down.
You don't fear the county that would come in after. You fear losing the county you have.
If you concentrated on liberty, and not the flag, then we might have hope of getting liberty after a collapse.
But you're double barring the door of your cage, and the only reason you do this is because it's your cage.

Because the nation is being brought down, how you can not see it is beyond us. Why should we not fearing having this nation stolen from us, the idea anything better will come after it is ignoring human nature and the nature of goverment.

Please keep spewing your nihilism/declinism.

[Sola_Fide]

Because the nation is being brought down, how you can not see it is beyond us. Why should we not fearing having this nation stolen from us, the idea anything better will come after it is ignoring human nature and the nature of goverment.

Please keep spewing your nihilism/declinism.

White power!

[AmericanSpartan]

That's one way to try and deflect attention from a demonstration of hypocrisy.

Find me a person who has never commit hypocrisy?

[AmericanSpartan]

White power!

Hope you love losing everyone by default as the left stacks the deck with voters that will vote against you.

[cajuncocoa]

Because the nation is being brought down, how you can not see it is beyond us. Why should we not fearing having this nation stolen from us, the idea anything better will come after it is ignoring human nature and the nature of goverment.

Please keep spewing your nihilism/declinism.

For all of this "culture" bull$#@! you keep spouting off about, I have to wonder if English is your primary language. Your vocabulary is atrocious.

[Sola_Fide]

Hope you love losing everyone by default as the left stacks the deck with voters that will vote against you.

Anglo power!

[Sola_Fide]

For all of this "culture" bull$#@! you keep spouting off about, I have to wonder if English is your primary language. Your vocabulary is atrocious.

Racism usually appeals to extremely dull and cowardly people.

[AmericanSpartan]

For all of this "culture" bull$#@! you keep spouting off about, I have to wonder if English is your primary language. Your vocabulary is atrocious.

Racism usually appeals to extremely dull and cowardly people.

[cajuncocoa]

That didn't answer my question. Is English your primary language?

[AmericanSpartan]

That didn't answer my question. Is English your primary language?

Yes but I currently working a few AR lower designs in CAD and I have to use voice to text software.