What does "libertarian" mean to you?

And tang was developed by NASA.

au, I will say again, which is back on subject, libertarianism to me is choice - in everything (of course, that is as long as it doesn't harm or interfer in someone else's choice).

You're funny fishin'. The Internet was built and is being powered and programmed by giant corporations, one of which is in some serious trouble -- WorldCom. This site would never exists without Craven which is a tribute to true objectivism. Nothing great was ever created by a committee. His initial inspiration and desire to do something is now augmented by picking those who had experience in running a site like this (and willingly, for free). That has little to do with building the Pan American highway. Your analogy is flawed.

Libertarianism and business -- now there's a novel idea. We could all arrive at work when we please, make our own work week, do our work with no direction of bosses on our own work ethic...nice concept and since I own my own business which is myself, I could endorse. It will never happen because you would have to convince (sell) everyone simultaneously of the same ideal. This is ideology, pure and simple -- fun to make conjectures about but fundamentally impratical.

It was developed by DARPA which is a DoD agency, not part of the Army, and at that point in time it was designed to operate on the x.25 protocol (not TCP/IP). At the point where DARPA withdrew from the "Internet" as we now know it there wes the DoD and a few Universities connected to it. Since then, as I stated earlier, it has been funded by and built by private enterprise.

The first relational database was conceptualized by Dr. Edgar Codd at IBM Research, Almaden, California in 1969 and actually developed by Ingres Software which we now know as Oracle Corporation.

The first modern (all electronic) computer was developed and built by Konrad Zuse for the German military in 1941 (It was known as the "Z3"). The British military built the "Colossus" in 1944 and the US military got it's first computer in 1944 and that was developed for the US military by Harvard University and IBM.

So says you. You didn't identify a single flaw in it however.

Have you been paying attention here at all or are you just busy jerking around? Is the government in any way involved in your daily arrival or departure from work? Has the government passed a law stating what time you will arrive or depart or specified your method of transportation?

You see it as fundamentally impractical because you haven't bothered to actually stop and think about what has been said. You keep running off on tangents that have absolutely NOTHING to do with libertarianism.

No where in the concept of libertarianism is there anything about doing whatever you please. The concept is based upon you having the freedom to decide for yourself what agreements you want to make without the interference of goverenment.

Libertarianism can be applied to business as you conceded, so to be fair, the ideals of libertarianism would have to be extended to employees, not just government to business. I do believe there is a correlation. If you can't see it, I can't make you drink the water. You were challenged that the Internet is not the result of a bunch of neighbors getting together to build it -- in fact, government had to pass laws in order to make it possible to interconnect computers. This is something Al Gore was involved in even if he didn't invent it. If you want to stick to your idea that groups or committees are what will make our life better, that you can obtain cooperation from your neighbors to create what has become at least one of the most complex infrastructures in the world, you can. I don't buy it and no amount of hard selling will convince me.

Incidentally, I guess you approve of the anarchy of the Internet with all the porno, how to build bombs, uncontrolled mud slinging a la Abuzz. Maybe you can get your neighbors together and do something about it.

I think that some people still confuse libertarianism with anarchy. It is definitely NOT the same.

It occurs to me that people may have been so infantilized by government, that there may be a fear that the opposite of government control, is chaos.

No, no confusion at all. It's just that some libertarians go off the map and advocate what is basically an anarchy.

lightwizard- I learned a long time ago that there are cuckoos and nutjobs in any group, be it mainstream, or not. I have found that non-mainstream groups tend to attract "true believers", those folks who will take a concept and carry it to the nth degree. That should not detract from the spirit for which a group is standing.

In other words, in one of my favorite cliches which has served me very well in life,

"You don't throw out the baby with the bathwater"!!

It isn't a matter of me not seeing it. You made a quantum leap in logic that doesn't hold. Originally you said "Libertarianism should apply to business as well." to which I responded "Libertarianism should apply to everything. It isn't a concept that applies to only one segment of a society. I've never said it shouldn't apply to businesses." You somehow came up with the idea that that means that there are no rules which was never said or implied. Libertarianinsm should apply to business! Government should get out of regulating business and business should operate under the ethical guidelines that follow libertarian principles. That is FAR from anarchary.



Find one single place where I said a bunch of neighbors got together and built the Internet. It doesn't exist. Once again you are reading things that aren't there. What I DID say was "The spirit of libertarianism has worked pretty well in building the Internet..."



Yes.. By and large I do approve of the Internet just the way it is! It affords me the opportunity to visit whatever sites are available. If I don't lkike them I have the CHOICE of not going back.

And BTW there LW, I haven't advocated any anarchy at all. You, on the other hand, have managed to misread, misinterpet and misrepresent what has been said to fit your notion of how things should be.

Unfortunately, it is too often the cukoos and nutjobs that appeal to the mob and end up being the leader. I don't think because on the vast eccentricities of our society that an idealistic utopia is possible. I do concede that some of the principals can be pragmatically applied. Well, now, I have to go out and plant some flowers in the front including my neighbor's planter because I've become weary of waiting for the home owners's association to do it. You're right! My neighbor is no gardener -- waters their plants with a blowtorch!

As far as trespasser's original question, "libertarian" means exactly what the dictionary says it means. The consequences or effectiveness of the ideology is something else again, so if I appear to be going off on a tangent it's because I don't believe ideologies make good governments. I am of the camp like many Americans that government is a necessary evil in any form, so deal with it. Authoritarianism is another story.

fishin said: But we know they won't. That is, enough of them won't and enough of them will be operating at such a scale or in such critical areas (say, regarding health) that your hope seems as fanciful as saying that governments should behave ethically and not allow themselves to get all big and oppressive. I would not be comfortable driving over a bridge designed and built without codes and inspections (and inspections are intrusions before the fact of finding wrong-doing). But our experience tells us there are just too many shysters about to trust to human responsibility and good will.

fishin' -- it wasn't necessary to assume I believe you are advocating anything like anarchy. I, of course, don't believe that.
You working plan of a libertarian society was to get a group of neighbors together to build highways. What's the difference? The fact is that the government was very instrumental in building the Internet -- they were the first to use it. It would have never have been without the government.

I can see that we are thinking on different planes and aren't exactly on the same track so, as usual, we're going to have to agree to disagree.

Phoenix -- I am very much an objectivist in respect to individuals not being hindered by the government and the collective not being in controll of the individual (the architectural critic and the cabel of mediocre architects in "The Fountainhead" illustrated the point with vengeance). Rand wrote the speech Gary Cooper gave in the final moments of the film and fought to have no word omitted or changed. When she got off on "Atlas Shrugged," however, she lost me on her ideology in many ways. I love your signature, "Thinking men cannot be ruled" which has a lot to do with libertarianism. Trouble is, I know very few thinking men or women (most of them happen to be on this site) -- even my freinds who I like to socialize with are hardly what Rand would consider in her premise. We do live in a mobocracy. Like all isms, they look fine in print but in pragmatic application, they usually stink.

Right, blatham -- that's another fantasy, that business will take care of policing it's own corruption. Perhaps if Ayn Rand were alive today, she could conjure up one of those pagan Gods from her fabricated religion she concocted towards the end of there life (that's when I saw she'd really blown a gasket).

I worked for two very large multi million dollar corporations. Starting on the bench and up to relatively high middle management position. From that experience over 40 years I came to away with a fair understanding of people and the stimulus required to get them to act as a group. It was direction, in government it would be called laws. Most people if left on their own they will do only as much as they have to and only that which benefits them.
Basically that is the fallacy of libertarism it expects that people will act for the good of the community. All I can say is lot's of luck. Anyone who expects that also believes in Santa Claus.

You said it, au1929. I was involved with writing the policy manual of a small corporation -- a company with over fifty art galleries when I joined. These were actually the "laws" and this was my point about libertarianism in business. The employess don't get to write the company policy manual, it's given to a few in authority and then, in this case, run through the legal department to polish up. The federal government may get overbearing in giving directions to states and, in the case of telling us as individuals to exercise more, one too many directions for individuals. Did Clinton set off a stampede to MacDonald's because he set an example and therefore could be said is giving directions? Apparantly it failed as MacDonalds isn't doing very well -- I think it's because the public is getting wise to bad junk food. Is it Dubya's place to give directions to exercise more? I found it ridiculous and condescending.

To me, libertarianism in the economic sphere means that the free market, and not the government, controls the economic life of businesses. In a company, the owners, directors, etc, have a perfect right to set the rules for their employees. Of course people need to have guidelines about how they are to behave while they are at work, but these guidelines should not be set by the government!