General

Re: The constitution of the Gold Party

graham34 — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 04:40:19 GMT

MacFall:
I'm generally opposed to political partisanship at all, and to political libertarianism in general.
However - if there were a political party I'd join, I think this one could be it.

I've thought about this a little bit, and I think there are some advantages to be gained by using politics to achieve liberty, but I think the problems outweigh them. These reasons may not apply to everyone, depending on what their ultimate objective is. If you think I have this completely wrong, please correct me!

The advantages, as I see them, are:

The publicity that comes with a campaign, e.g. how Ron Paul introduced the Austrian school to thousands of people.
The energy generated by the excitement of a political campaign, inspiring people to mobilise (e.g. RP campaign, it was unprecedented and amazing)
The chance to directly change policy and implement libertarian ideas.This is probably the most tempting reason for those of us desperate to see change in our lifetimes.

But the disadvantages:

Being forced to compromise, form alliances and cut deals with statists, diluting your message to hold on to power
Associating timeless libertarian theory with fallible politicians, so that if a genuinely pro-freedom politician made a mistake or if things happened to go bad while (s)he was in office, the philosophy would be unfairly tarnished without having been refuted. The politician doesn't even need to make a terrible mistake - see how statists used a smear against Ron Paul as a weapon with which to bash everything he stands for.
The unpredictable probability that a libertarian official would have the strength to implement his/her platform in the face of opposition from all other parties and the public sector industries.
The low probability that a libertarian official could gain a very significant decision-making position in the political climate of modern times.

For me, the huge financial costs associated with providing a pro-freedom politician with even a small chance of gaining power, and the uncertain outcome in the event that the campaign is successful, is good evidence that we would be better off throwing our weight behind non-partisan intellectual endeavours. In many countries the game is rigged against small parties and new candidates at the start, so the whole thing is very difficult and expensive. How much simpler to write a speech, pamphlet, blog post or scholarly article!

I've been a member of a political party myself, and convinced a few of its members of my ideas, but I found that it was only a disadvantage when speaking generally. You are asked to defend the actions and reputation of your party members, which you may or not be interested in doing, but which is almost certainly going to distract from a debate about liberty. If you defend your party, you are written off as a partisan, but if you refuse to defend them, you look hopelessly inconsistent.

It's not that hard to speak up for freedom from outside the political system, and I think most curious people are more interested in what you have to say when you do. Rather than trying to force through an agenda while most people oppose us absolutely, and rather than playing the dirty game of party politics, I prefer a modest goal of challenging the mainstream consensus with ideas in whatever way I can as an individual, and seeing how many people I convince. If enough people were in agreement with us, the political parties would be forced to change anyway.

Re: The constitution of the Gold Party

MacFall — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 17:58:10 GMT

I'm generally opposed to political partisanship at all, and to political libertarianism in general.

However - if there were a political party I'd join, I think this one could be it.

Re: The constitution of the Gold Party

Stranger — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 17:01:29 GMT

One detail I think needs to be seriously explored: the abolition of a primary system. If we are to be opposed to democracy, it follows that the party's constitution cannot itself be democratic. This implies that we need a different system for fielding candidates for offices we wish to hold.

Given what we know about economics, the best way to find candidates is to let them homestead and own specific offices. The first person to run for an office, whether it is school board or president of the United States, retains the right to select the party candidate in the future. This not only encourages people to invest themselves even in losing campaigns, because they will keep the value of the publicity they generated in the future, but it also allows alternative means of fundraising by selling shares of an office. Should someone no longer want an office, he could give it to someone he deems desirable, or just plain sell it to the highest bidder, therefore establishing a market in the party.

Re: The constitution of the Gold Party

ChaseCola — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 23:48:14 GMT

Stranger:

Here's Rothbard.

The true greatness of this plan is the rapist can get a job as a proffesional rapist after his crime, raping those who have raped others.

Re: The constitution of the Gold Party

DrunknMunky — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 20:33:59 GMT

kingmonkey:
Stranger:
- The reform of the justice system to abolish prisons and lifestyle wars, redefining justice as compensation to victims.

Explain this one to me. Just what compensation can you provide for someone whose 12 year old daughter has been raped and beaten? Or what compensation is there to a wife whose husband has been killed in a gas station robbery? What compensation does someone have whose 9 year old was abused by their uncle? How do you compensate for those things? Are you suggesting that I can go out and rape and murder some little girl as long as I can "compenstate" the victims family?
No disrespect, but I don't get how this is fair. Please explain.

Ruh roh emotional argument time? One thing you shouldn't forget is that the state adds insult to injury to the victim when they charge you(taxation) to finance the wrongdoer in order to keep him alive for a period of years. So how in any way is that justified? Plus if you were one of those types...in Anarchy you would probably be forfeiting your rights to whoever you raped and that person could have you killed. That is if they region you live in allows for that kind of justice.

Re: The constitution of the Gold Party

Stranger — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 00:01:08 GMT

JAlanKatz:

Give me a break. There are fringe lunatics in every area - the Republicans are set to nominate one for President. If there are more around the LP than around other parties, it's because the LP happens to be right - and in a crazy world, only the crazy will notice that. I don't know what your problem with hippies is - sure there are hippies associated with the LP, and good for them. I'm glad the hippies didn't walk away from Ron Paul after noticing how many uptight suits were supporting him. Cato and Reason are more right-wing than libertarian in my mind, and are the result of having taken money with strings attached. We won't fix that by forming yet another party. What we will do is give libertarians something else to fight about, and further splinter the anti-government forces. This is an extremely bad time to do that.

Moreover, Sabrin suddenly has a new identity that will undoubtedly attract fresh attention and create excitement that wasn’t there the last time he ran for office. That identity appears on his campaign website, printed on a picture of a gold bar—Sabrin is a Ron Paul Republican, representing the gold standard of political honesty and integrity.

What a luxury this new label is for right-wingers of all varieties! “Libertarians” are kooky and overeducated. “Constitutionalists” are probably racist theocrats. “Conservatives” are rednecks and hawkish super-patriots. No one has ever heard of a “paleoconservative,” much less a “Tory anarchist.” But call yourself Ron Paul Republican and you might get a friendly greeting from people who would hate you in any other of your political postures. You put yourself at risk to be considered hip, even. And you definitely make it clear that you have out-radicaled all those canned radicals who enthuse over dismal candidates like Barack Obama.

http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/the_rise_of_ron_paul_republicans/

Re: The constitution of the Gold Party

kingmonkey — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 05:15:10 GMT

Stranger:
kingmonkey:

Explain this one to me. Just what compensation can you provide for someone whose 12 year old daughter has been raped and beaten? Or what compensation is there to a wife whose husband has been killed in a gas station robbery? What compensation does someone have whose 9 year old was abused by their uncle? How do you compensate for those things? Are you suggesting that I can go out and rape and murder some little girl as long as I can "compenstate" the victims family?
No disrespect, but I don't get how this is fair. Please explain.

Here's Rothbard.

I had never thought of this concept before and really it does make a lot of sense. This is one of the things I had always struggled with concerning a truly libertarian society. See, I'm a minarchist by necessity. As much as I'd like to see the state disappear I don't see it happening, at least not in my life time, though it is the ultimate goal one needs to work towards. Right now I'm content with fighting the establishment and working on getting people to accept even the idea of a limited government. Once you can get people to accept that governments role in our lives really should be limited it's only one small step towards a true stateless libertarian society.

Thanks for the link! I'm going to have to buy that book.

Re: The constitution of the Gold Party

JAlanKatz — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 05:08:16 GMT

Stranger:
With the Libertarian Party associated with hippies and fringe lunatics, and libertarianism associated with immorally greedy, lifestyle-enabling establishment groups like Cato and Reason, the need for a new label to give the movement against political power, that is to say both the old "remnant" and the young activists that have rallied to Ron Paul's presidential campaign, is urgent.

Give me a break. There are fringe lunatics in every area - the Republicans are set to nominate one for President. If there are more around the LP than around other parties, it's because the LP happens to be right - and in a crazy world, only the crazy will notice that. I don't know what your problem with hippies is - sure there are hippies associated with the LP, and good for them. I'm glad the hippies didn't walk away from Ron Paul after noticing how many uptight suits were supporting him. Cato and Reason are more right-wing than libertarian in my mind, and are the result of having taken money with strings attached. We won't fix that by forming yet another party. What we will do is give libertarians something else to fight about, and further splinter the anti-government forces. This is an extremely bad time to do that.

Re: The constitution of the Gold Party

JAlanKatz — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 05:03:00 GMT

kingmonkey:

Explain this one to me. Just what compensation can you provide for someone whose 12 year old daughter has been raped and beaten? Or what compensation is there to a wife whose husband has been killed in a gas station robbery? What compensation does someone have whose 9 year old was abused by their uncle? How do you compensate for those things? Are you suggesting that I can go out and rape and murder some little girl as long as I can "compenstate" the victims family?

No disrespect, but I don't get how this is fair. Please explain.

Good question. Suppose we do something else - if you rape and kill my daughter, you get locked up in a building for some number of years, and make license plates for the state, and give me nothing. Am I now more or less compensated than if you had, say, paid me $12million?

There can be no full compensation for rape, murder, and so on. Is this a reason for not offering partial compensation?

Here's one method I've come up with for determining the amount of compensation - let the family of the victim choose the amount. The catch is, they can also choose death. If they ask for $1, they get $1. So, of course, you think they'll ask for an absurd amount, say $1 billion? If they do that, they get nothing, because the murderer can't pay, so he gets killed. What I'm saying is, just ask the family "how much money will you take to not kill this person?"

Roderick Long relates a hypothetical along these lines. Suppose we set the compensation at a level you think is too low - you think it allows the rich to kill for sport. Now, picture some rich guy actually doing that. He kills a poor person, then hands the family $500,000, which is the compensation level. Well, the family now has a choice. They can keep the $500,000 - or kill the son of a *** and hand the check back to his family. The point is not that this would happen, but rather that it's a pretty good incentive for the rich not to engage in murder for sport, regardless of compensation level.

Re: The constitution of the Gold Party

ryanpatgray — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 00:56:32 GMT

allixpeeke:
We have too many libertarian parties already, we do not need another.

If more U.S. States had run-off elections of one type or another this would not matter as much. The Instant Run-Off Voting system is a concept popular with many libertarians in the United States. The more common type of run-off system in the U.S. is the kind employed by Georgia. In the case of IRV it would not matter if we had 250 libertarian candidates for the same office. Libertarians would just mark all 250 as their 250 favorite candidates. It COULD matter in a Georgia style run-off in the sense that it might prevent a libertarian candidate from getting to the run-off. But the two remaining candidates would try to court libertarians if they would have made a made the difference between winning or loosing the election.

Re: The constitution of the Gold Party

Stranger — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 20:22:07 GMT

kingmonkey:

Explain this one to me. Just what compensation can you provide for someone whose 12 year old daughter has been raped and beaten? Or what compensation is there to a wife whose husband has been killed in a gas station robbery? What compensation does someone have whose 9 year old was abused by their uncle? How do you compensate for those things? Are you suggesting that I can go out and rape and murder some little girl as long as I can "compenstate" the victims family?
No disrespect, but I don't get how this is fair. Please explain.

Here's Rothbard.

Re: The constitution of the Gold Party

britainland — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 20:04:01 GMT

allixpeeke:
We have too many libertarian parties already, we do not need another.

Consider yourselves lucky. Here in the UK, we have very, very few and I doubt your average person on the street would have heard of them. It's sad, but the US has a much older tradition of liberty so it's not particularly surprising.

Re: The constitution of the Gold Party

kingmonkey — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 07:13:11 GMT

Stranger:
- The reform of the justice system to abolish prisons and lifestyle wars, redefining justice as compensation to victims.

Explain this one to me. Just what compensation can you provide for someone whose 12 year old daughter has been raped and beaten? Or what compensation is there to a wife whose husband has been killed in a gas station robbery? What compensation does someone have whose 9 year old was abused by their uncle? How do you compensate for those things? Are you suggesting that I can go out and rape and murder some little girl as long as I can "compenstate" the victims family?

No disrespect, but I don't get how this is fair. Please explain.

Re: The constitution of the Gold Party

DrunknMunky — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 01:47:51 GMT

I like being partyless

Re: The constitution of the Gold Party

Stranger — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 19:22:00 GMT

allixpeeke:
We have too many libertarian parties already, we do not need another.

That's true. That is why I am not proposing a libertarian party, but a coalition against political power and for justice.

Has the Libertarian Party made a commitment for gold money and against the prison system? If they do not endorse these policies, I see no reason at all to join,