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Libertarians believe that individuals are ends unto themselves, never a means to other's ends.
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Well, it sounds that way in theory, in practice it`s a whole different matter. To get to do what you want, you more often than not needs money. To get money you have to trade with others, which means that you have to satifsy others, thereby becoming a mean for others to get what they want. The problem arises when you need the other person more than he needs you. Then you can easily become a mean for the ends of others.
Also, libertarians like socialists doesn`t really care about the individual. Both systems put abstract prinsiples above those individuals that does`t fit into the system. Libertarians set "freedom from coercion" higher than the well being of individuals.
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You are on record as supporting the "mob rules" notion that it is ok for citizens to vote with an eye toward taking money or resources from others with your comment
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Well, those that accusation can also be made against those supporting property rights. Property rights and even the rule of law are also state regulations that gains some people in comparison to others. If we should have a truly neutral society, we also have to abolish property rights and the rule of law, because these regulations make some people prosper at the expense of others.
Also, the reason for this is that many regard the market in itself to be unfair. They therefore feel that money should be redistributed to make it more fair. Another reason to do it is utilitarianism,a nd the diminishing utility value. A hundread dollars do more good for a poor than a rich person. Many of these people would also be better off in a total anarchy than libertarianism. It is therefore fair that those who gain the most from property rights, gives some compensation to those that lose out. If you should wonder, absolute material wealth does not produce more happiness in itself, as long as you don`t starve or freeze to death, it is what you have in comparison to others that produce happiness, bar a few things as living expectiancy and freedom from hard physical labour.
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To argue that such a notion of "democracy" is less moral than social darwinism is fallacious. Such a notion of "democracy" is tyranny of the majority.
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Well, that may be your point of view. Actually, what you call a mob is much more civilized than your economic elites. In a libertarian society, the poorest, large segments of the working class and even parts of the middle class gets really squezed into the mud. For them, society is completely ruthless. The mob is really much more moderate. The acutally lets the rich keep so much of their wealth, that they are still much richer than the common man. They don`t hire deathsquads to kill the children of the rich, they doesn`t try to move the rich peoples jobs to India and they don`t take any chance they get to squeze the rich even more.
If you look at history, revolutions have almost always came as a direct result of the elite failing to make a compromise with a lower class in a desperate situation. Those that you call a mob has actually a lot more understanding than that. They think that some form of capitalism is okay, and the feel that material differences are a good thing. Heck, they mostly even respect that their place in the societal hierarky, even if they are at the bottom! What they really wish is to be demanded fairly, to be safe from material hardship, to get a standard of living they feel is fair compared to the effort they give. They also feel that they just shouldn`t be left to die when the get sick, just because they work at McDonalds. The point is that the masses are much better at showing restraint towards the elite, than the elite is at showing restraint towards the masses.
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Interesting, so primitive cultures did not war on each other for resources?
Sounds like revisionist history to me.
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Well, I never claimed that. That a society, in this instance a tribe, has an egalitarian social structure, does not imply that that particular society does not wage war. Anyhow, the stone age can be divided in two in this regard, the hunter gatherer nomad period, and the latter more agricultural orientated period. Most of the violence of the stone age came in the latter of these periods. Most of the violence came as a direct result of population growth spawned by agriculture, which again was made possible by collective property rigths.
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Start with Lugwig Von Mieses "Why Socialism Fails" if you need proof that the socialist model is doomed. Then look at recent history. A reasonable man would assume that this is widely known.
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Well, you assume that all system either has to be libertarian or socialist, a dichotomy that has never been based on the facts. Almost any really existing economic and social system since the early egyptians have been a mixture of some kind of market and some kind of state. The normal thing is some kind of mixed economy, and the existence of the mixed economy existed for several thousands years before anyone really got the idea to either base society on the market or the state alone.
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Here you miss the point that the fisherman does not need to work for someone alse, and indeed can go one to employ others.
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If to many people fish for a living, they will deplete the resources in a few years.
