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Politics : Libertarian Discussion Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (8440)	6/7/2011 6:15:29 PM
From: TimF	2 Recommendations Respond to of 13060

Where ever humans gather, the first thing they do is give power to the few over the many. Its not a rare activity, but its not the most common first thing people do upon gathering, let alone a universal first thing. Every group has leaders. Again not true, but only because your stating your case in too strong of terms. Make a less extreme claim, something like "most organizations have leaders", and it would be correct. (Although not every group is an organization, organization is almost defined by having structure, and presumably leadership, many, probably most, groups have no leadership, even if many, perhaps almost all, organizations have some form of leadership.) No animal cooperates like humans. Enforced rules is a different thing that cooperation. Both are different from leadership. You jump from once concept to another as though they where all the same when they are not. At least you use concepts with some overlap or some relation, your not calling black, white, and white, black, but still your blurring distinct things in to one blob. The main way adults cooperate is through voluntary relationships, cooperation with family, with friends, through market relationships, through helping out an acquaintance or stranger because they need it (actual altruism), or to appear nice (desire to signal altruism). Cooperation doesn't imply or even suggest government enforce rules. Only a minority of our cooperation is through government enforced rules, and government enforced rules can also get in the way of cooperation. If one steps out of line, and decides it's his liberty to drive on the left side, the whole human social fabric breaks. WE TRUST that every one of those 1000 vehicles we pass in an hour is going to precisely obey all the regulations. If we didn't we couldn't function in today's world. Driving on the right, is a convention, a norm, more than it is a regulation. It doesn't get maintained because of fear of enforcement, or because of an instinctual deference to obeying rules, but because its what people are used to doing, because few see any reason not to do it, and because there is an immediate and obvious risk from not doing it. Driving on the right (or the left, or any other scheme) is also quite compatible with a libertarian viewpoint, as is enforcing such driving. Rules like that can be enforced by a very minimal government. 2600 page health care bills, not so much. Spontaneous order (either arising anew, or having arisen years or millennia ago and now maintained as a convention), simply doesn't amount to an argument that people are anti-libertarian compulsive obeyers. Libertarianism doesn't amount to a campaign to throw out social conventions and habits of tradition. Even anarcho-capitalism (and perhaps some other forms of anarchism, but I don't really understand leftist anarchism) is fully compatible with such conventions, culture, traditions, and habits. Those political ideas do not amount to a rejection of such traditions and accepting such traditions doesn't amount to a rejection of libertarianism or even anarchism.