I was trying to put into words, to convince a libertarian friend of mine, the internal contradictions of his ideology. If anyone can phrase it better, please do.
Civil rights, mainly property rights, cannot exist without a state. Money, property, possessions and Bitcoin can all be stolen. If they can be stolen without the punishment by a state, then that right to property does not exist. If the right is backed up by punishment, then other civil rights must be broken by the state in order to protect the right of property of others. Presumably the right to enforce a contract would be backed up by some punishment as well. Wealthy people will have more possessions and more land to be potentially stolen so, they would have more potential to utilize state power. As well as more opportunity to enter into contracts that benefit them which others would wish to void. This will give them a privilege others don't have which would only grow and compound over time. As already noted, the must be a state to enforce the right to property. The wealthy, with their accumulated privilege and capital, could very easily subvert this power to a point where it only benefits them and enriches them exclusively. The anti-authoritarian aspects of libertarian ideology are an oxymoron.
Does this make any sense? And has any writer phrased this general idea in a more succinct way?
Yeah, sometimes they talk about "the non-aggression principle" but capitalism itself violate the non-aggression principle. You pretty much laid out how and why. If you want a society based on the non-aggression principle (which ancaps tend to say they do) then it cannot feature capitalism as part of it.
the NAP in libertarian thought isn't a prohibition against doing harm. it's a tool to re-cast the violation of property "rights" as an "initiation of force" which justifies whatever "retaliatory force" is necessary to reassert one's right.
one wonders, in this moral universe, why the state couldn't justify its monopoly on violence by claiming ownership over everything and everyone, just like Sovereign Citizens claim it already does, especially since the entire country was already purged of its previous "owners" by force.
I was trying to put into words, to convince a libertarian friend of mine, the internal contradictions of his ideology. If anyone can phrase it better, please do.
Does this make any sense? And has any writer phrased this general idea in a more succinct way?
Yeah, sometimes they talk about "the non-aggression principle" but capitalism itself violate the non-aggression principle. You pretty much laid out how and why. If you want a society based on the non-aggression principle (which ancaps tend to say they do) then it cannot feature capitalism as part of it.
the NAP in libertarian thought isn't a prohibition against doing harm. it's a tool to re-cast the violation of property "rights" as an "initiation of force" which justifies whatever "retaliatory force" is necessary to reassert one's right.
one wonders, in this moral universe, why the state couldn't justify its monopoly on violence by claiming ownership over everything and everyone, just like Sovereign Citizens claim it already does, especially since the entire country was already purged of its previous "owners" by force.