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Aggie
Can you just quote the relevant part? Its a long article and I read down to the part where this Gauthier said he's not a libertarian. I want to know where this guy embraced your social contract where I am guilty for the actions of politicians you elected.
As a libertarian my "social contract" is to respect the rights of others, that is not your social contract.
Apparently they aren't much in democracies either because according to y'all there are a bunch of people in this country who are not being punished by the judiciary for their guilt.
Not your social contract.
No they didn't, they voted against them.
The fact I vote does not mean those elected are legitimate. Anyone can read the Constitution to see just how illegitimate they really are. This is your social contract and I didn't find Gauthier claiming legitimacy is defined by my vote.
The rules of the game mean the winner of an election enters office, it does not mean they get to do whatever they want in office or that those who didn't vote or voted against them are guilty when they commit crimes.
So people who don't vote are guilty because it makes it easier for politicians to govern?
Why?
Why can't they complain? Not choosing between tweedle dee and tweedle dumb is still a choice - a 3rd choice. And why are they guilty? You said they are guilty because that makes it easier for politicians to govern. So what? Politicians could govern even more easily if we did away with our rights, if they did and you opposed them by voting for their opponents, why are you guilty when you lose and our rights are removed to ease governing?
The people who did wrong should pay (I said that already). But if we assume that to make governing easier we all pony up, why does that mean we are guilty when politicians go abroad and intentionally wrong people? There is a disconnect between this guilt and the practicality of governing. Even you said the reason non-voters and opponents are guilty for the actions of those elected is to make it easier to govern, not because non-voters did something wrong.
Then democracy is loony.
Yes.
I said yes and I don't believe in democracy.
Democracy is not 1 man, 1 vote, democracy is majority rule and that means the majority thru its elected officials get to make decisions about how others live their lives. I could care less who gets elected, its when they start speaking for the majority about how others get to exist that I have a problem.
Why?
But you said non-voters and opponents are guilty because this guilt makes it easier to govern.
Not true, when a business, e.g., Enron, screws people, the employees who had no part in the mis-deed are not punished - they are not guilty.
That's a device used by the business, not a requirement for justice. Justice would have the people who hired the employee pay the price, not other employees who did not hire them. When a court rules against a business, the court doesn't demand innocent employees pay up, just that the compensation come from the company and the manner of payment is left up to the business, i.e., who in the company pays.
Who agreed its fair? Its rigged, its a system of legalised bribery with our freedom and property on the auction block awaiting the highest bidder.
And I'd call politicians who run around killing foreigners rogues. That's why they try to keep their activities abroad secret, not to keep the "enemy" in the dark, but to keep us in the dark.
Nonsense, your social contract has little to do with freedom and more to do with an ideology of equalising people in violation of their freedom.
That isn't even true, a jury gets to decide if my actions were wrong, not politicians. Libertarians generally oppose the death penalty because they don't trust this legitimate government to employ it, but libertarians do believe it is okay to kill in self-defense.
Your only attempt to prove libertarians accept your social contract is citing a guy who says he's not a libertarian. You didn't even quote the guy embracing your social contract.
So what? This is not your social contract.
Geez, I already said the judiciary in a libertarian system has the authority to punish people who wrong others. It doesn't have authority over people who simply reject the government.
But your social contract does violate natural rights, so how can you claim libertarians accept it? And if I murder someone, it doesn't matter if I think the system is fair. What matters is my crime...
Molly
Why does Republican behavior mean the Sandinistas didn't slaughter Indians? That's why your comment about the GOP war on the Sandinstas is irrelevant.
If all I'm doing is giving you information you already had, why did you ask for sources for the Sandinstas crimes? And that last bit is BS, the Miskito Indians never felt any "solidarity" with the Sandinistas. Nicaragua is essentially 2 countries with the Indians on one side and the "Spaniards" on the other. The conflict began when Sandinistas won their revolution and acted as if this was a green light to walk into Indian lands and run their lives.
Kid
I'll repeat myself again, "You didn't answer my question, you changed your argument. Tell me why a person who is opposed to "jerking off" is responsible when a person who says they oppose it and then does it."
If you can't answer that, don't go off on another rant and act like I changed your argument.
Here's an argument by a well-known Libertarian stating that the social contract is fundamental to Libertarianism
Well, they should read the article. In any case it is obvious that Libertarians believe in some sort of social contract, otherwise they have no way of empowering their judiciary.
Don't quibble. You know that I don't happen to think that judiciaries in non-democractic societies are up to much.
That is the essence of social contract theory. Even Locke, the primary source for modern Libertarianism has a social contract theory.
They are: they voted for them.
It includes the people who voted otherwise because they voluntarily agreed, by the very act of voting, to accept the representatives of the winning side as the legitimate authority. If they didn't then they were voting fraudulently and could not have complained if they had won and the other side had ignored the result.
In other words, if you vote, you accept the rules of the game by voting.
If you don't vote, you must still accept the authority of the state to make laws and punish people, because if you didn't there would be no possibility of practically enforcing the law (since Libertarianism does not allow individuals to punish others, but only the state as the representatives of the general will).
Of course they are, they should have voted. It is the responsibility of every citizen to vote.
If they don't they cannot complain about the goverment, but not voting does not magically absolve them of responsibility for their own government's actions.
That's avoiding the question. Who pays when the government does someone wrong unintentionally?
No. It is called democracy.
When you vote, do you expect that the voting process will be governed by rules of fairness such that your vote will count as much as anyone else's?
If you say no, then you don't believe in democracy.
If you say yes, then you have agreed that the election is a legitimate decision making procedure and that any decision made by it is legitimate.
Therefore: if your side doesn't win, you must accept that the winners are the legitimate government, just as they must accept that your side is, if you win.
Therefore: they are your government and their actions are legitimized by everyone who voted, even if they voted against them (again, because everyone agreed to certain rules of fairness in the process).
Yes it does. Company boards (and political cabinets) assume collective responsibility for democratic decisions they make. Corporations also assume responsibility for decisions made according to their internal rules.
If a company hires an incompetent as an employee, and the incompetent damages the property of the a person who has contracted with the company, the company is responsible for paying for the damage whether or not the incompetent person can pay for it.
Similarly, if a body of people elect a government through a process they all agree is fair, and that government's agents commit some wrong to someone they contract with as the government, the owners of the government (i.e. us) are responsible for making recompense, whether or not the damage done can be compensated by the specific individuals who caused it.
In extreme cases a corporation can disavow responsibility for a "rogue" employee, but you well know that such circumstances are rare and involve gross and unforeseeable events.
Nope. Wrong again. The social contract is the means by which freedom is secured. Everyone agrees to give up certain freedoms (the freedom to coerce others) to the state, in order that the state can punish those who violate the rights of others by coercion (i.e. execution, imprisonment).
Libertarianism allows you to kill in self defense, it does not allow you to conduct personal trials and executions of criminals who wrong you. Such things can only be carried out by legitimate authorities (courts), and that means by people whom everyone has agreed (either by consensus, or by agreeing to fair elections) to cede those powers.
Which is exactly the reason you don't understand it.
My position is simply that to have a functioning minimalist state in a Libertarian society, the citizens of such a society must agree to give up certain coercive powers to officials. If they don't do this, they will end up in a state of nature where no-one's rights are protected.
You can't just allow people to decide that the judicial system doesn't apply to them, for example. In order to make sure that people don't act that way, the judicial system needs coercive powers in order to punish people who do.
No Libertarian can disagree in principle with this scheme, because it doesn't violate anyone's natural rights. You cannot complain that a court is prosecuting you for violating someone else's rights, unless you don't have a say in who is on the court. If you do have an equal say, along with every other citizen, you cannot complain - the court was appointed according to the only fair and reasonable process available - a process you agreed to by voting.
Molly
Actually it isn't irrelevant- one doesn't justify having aided and armed the Somoza regime and then Contra terrorists by anachronistically justifying one's action based on what the Sandinistas did after they came to power.
At least not outside the looking glass world of Republican politics.
I was in fact asking where was the 'tribal slaughter' reference in the link you posted. Pardon me for not being more obvious.
At least not outside the looking glass world of Republican politics.
I was in fact asking where was the 'tribal slaughter' reference in the link you posted. Pardon me for not being more obvious.
In any case all you're doing is catching up on the history I already knew about, and in more detail. Not all of us in the Nicaraguan Solidarity Campaign wore ideological blinkers. And note- that's 'Nicaraguan', not 'Sandinistan' solidarity.
Kid
No you are changing my argument. Americans today are no different from Americans in the past who have hunted down Native American children like they were animals, enslaved African Americans, commited complete innocent Japanese to internment camps, dropped nukes on people, used violence against the working class for struggling for a living wage, deported and used violence against other peoples who they thought would contaminate their society, used our military to buly and force other nations to accept govts that were favorable, and more. Americans are not different today than they have been in the past. Don't tell me they are innocent. You know what they do. Yet you live your life like they don't do those things, and even defend them.
If you can't answer that, don't go off on another rant and act like I changed your argument.
You need to go back and look at what I said. That's where the problem is. I never said that a person is guilty of jerking off because they oppose it. You're changing my argument. I'm not going to play your games.
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