1. A libertarian asking for more government is not very libert_rian.
If you answer number 1 correctly, the rest should be easy.
2. If you’re a libert_rian, you don’t make a case for mandatory GMO labeling of food products.
3. If you’re a libert_rian, you don’t make a case for the state recognition of gay marriage.
4. If you’re a libert_rian, you don’t make a case for a higher minimum wage.
5. If you’re a libert_rian, you don’t make a case for the Civil Rights Act.
This is simple category fallacy, but it has a moral component. If you’re asking for a government to “do something” it already does, but even more so or for an additional set of people, all you’re doing is asking for more loaded guns to be pointed at more sets of slaves.
Your pet crusades don’t magically become Kantian imperatives just because you’re “working with the system as it is now.” Working with the mafia is still working with the mafia. Even you minarchist sissies can’t brush off that inference.
The only thing a libertarian should ask government to do is to stop doing anything at all. But what good does it do for a slave to ask its master for his own freedom?
4 Comments
Most of this is just bad legislation on top of other bad legislation. Eventually, it all leads to a mountain of garbage. The one that creates a lot of struggle for me is the GMO labeling. I know it’s useless, but I have this desperate desire to know what I’m eating. Labeling leads to all manner of corruption and paradigm shifting. It’s not an answer. It’s a last gasp from the little people who don’t want to be stepped on and taken advantage of by agri-corporations who, for God’s sake, patent seeds. Unfortunately, there is no such thing as an ideal political ideology. In every system, the rich and powerful take advantage of those who are not. Those who are not fight back by attempting to change the system, and it never works. But I’m so glad you understand what an ideal libertarian is, for whatever good it will do us.
There can be non-state or voluntary labeling. Or that one app (probably more now) that tells you the ingredients when you scan the barcode. Governments are irrelevant at this point, but they feign legitimacy by red herring-ing everyone. They “fix” the problems that they create, like you said, by obfuscating the source (the government) and blaming it on something else (gays, capitalism, religion, guns). An ever-growing sh*tpile, basically.
Yeah, voluntary labeling is a much better idea, not that you can ensure that companies are being honest. But the stupid laws allow for dishonesty, anyway, so I don’t know why it matters. What really pissed me off, years ago, was Monsanto trying to get the government to *outlaw* companies labeling their products as GMO free. F*cking bastards are like a government regime unto themselves.
Well, sure. Any firm that uses government like that nears artificial monopoly state. I mean, it can never exist since there are laws against monopolies (except government monopolies), but government can dole (haha) out powers for the right price, since “power” is all the really have.
Think of how powerful Monsanto would be without state help. They’d be a hilt without the dagger.