What does "libertarian" mean to you?

Lightwizard- I had studied Objectivism since the middle '60s, and had met Rand personally.I absolutely agree with you that Rand was going off the deep end for a long time before her death,( and would be a great discussion for another thread.) That does not take away from the fact that many of her ideas were sound, and very forward thinking.

Phoenix


Explain. What guidelines does the government set. Working condition, overtime pay, safety and etc. Left on their own devices do you think the company would implement fair labor practices?

au1929- I think that I have a lot of confidence in human nature. A company, competing with other companies for the best employees, will certainly conduct its business in a way that will be advantageous to its employees, which will enhance the bottom line of the company.

Are there people who would provide unsafe, unsanitary working conditions for their workers? Sure there are, now, even with the government regulations in place, but IMO those are the "bad apples"!

Employment is a contract between management and employee. No one forces a person to stay at a job, that they find aversive.

The purest form of the collectivism Rand approaches is communism.

Government does provide documents -- reams of them -- as suggestive for running a business, large or small, including the writing of a company policy manual. We found it extremely useful for writing the part of the manual involving government laws, including OSHA. OSHA basically save my life when I was in hands-on research and development engineering. I was using a tank of M.E.K. that was improperly ventilated and I was having respitory problems I wrote off to allergies. OSHA came in and made them fix the ventilation, just about the time I was seeing a doctor about the problem. I had listed that as one of the chemicals I was coming in contact with. Not only is it a dangerous solvent and I was also allergic to it but the doctor said if I had been exposed for another year, I could have easily damaged my liver and kidneys to the degree of it being life threatening. Tri-chlorothane was also used in the plant which was proven to be very dangerous and was then enclosed in a self-cleaning tank with no fumes being let out into the room. Don't tell me about unregulated business.

Back in high school I used to hack into University systems (and others) from the ARPANET.

Just type "@L" plus a two or three digit number and there you were. I used to spend hours just randomly trying numbers until - BING, Hawaii's Aloha Systems... BING, MIT's Macsyma (sp?) consortium... BING, Royal Systems and Radar Establishment, London...

I had no idea what I was doing, but had a lot of fun doing it.

Employees are of course free to attempt to create any arrangement they wish with their employers. To a large extent that is already true. But you keep treating this as if we are discussing anarchy, or an absence of rules governing society, rather than a fundamental rethinking of what rules should be made and how few of them really need to come from government.

Who has done so in this discussion?

I asked what it meant to people here, not what the dictionary definition is.



I agree that government is necessary, but does that mean we must deal with the one we have and not consider what might be better? I'm sure glad our founding fathers didn't think that way, or we'd still have a queen.

If J. Edgar Hoover had had aspirations to become President, we might have had a queen.

What founding fathers were libertarians? They did expound on what could happen to destroy a nation. The rabble taking over the government was one, a two party system another and many more too numerous to enumerate here. There also in a time and place where the size of the nation allowed less oversight and control of the federal entity. Did they foresee the robber barons? If you read what Jefferson has written, there was a definite concern about business abusing their reponsibilities. Thomas Paine wrote extensively on the subject.

I never said that anyone on this forum had established that they were anarchists. Are you volunteering? I don't think so, but some of the ideas of how a libertarian government would work push the envelope out where it could be interpreted as an anarchistic ideal. I do agree that in some areas, the government should mind its own business. A woman's right to choose is one of them.

Libertarians or those who call themselves libertarian are often very selective in what they want and don't want controlled. I have yet to meet a real, bonefide libertarian whose ideology isn't tainted by the far right -- sometimes even the far left.

Phoenix



Sorry to say I know better. When the economy is flying high that may be partially true. But when things are not so or you are in an industry which is not "hot" at the moment moving to another job is not an option. Have worked through thick and thin times and know where of I speak. Companies are only concerned about the bottom line not their employees welfare.

When I was with the same company that I mentioned I assisted writing the employee manual (it was an inch thick), it came down from one of the regional directors that someone high in the corporation said that employess had to be treated as units.

My retort, "Did you say "units" or "eunichs?"

She laughed (at the time she was one notch above me in management) but it was a nervous laugh and she turned the conversation elsewhere.

What company has anyone worked for that really showed that much concern or compassion for their employees? In large corporation, you're a number. I suggest one watch the film "Brazil" to get a satirical viewpoint on the subject.

I'm sorry but unless someone proves to me otherwise, this is the mindset of the majority who own businesses and especially the corporate management in a super corporation. Another good reason I am self employed. The authoritarianism in large corporations makes the federal government seem almost benign.

I do agree that the IRS became way out of control during Reagan in prosecuting and dealing harshly with taxpapers. That had to change.

I echo the skepticism of the benevolence of the Corporate Mind. Cost/Benefit Ratio is a more prominent determinant of policy than is compassion. The fines and judgements pursuant to prosecutions and lawsuits are accounting matters.



timber

All of them. They did not use that term, but they created a limited federal government with strong checks and balances. That fits the model. You could argue degrees, but what they sought to create was a society that allowed men the greatest possible liberty they believed was attainable. That to me is the definition of a libertarian government.

Now, please don't confuse what they sought to create with what we have today. There's a lot of miles between there and here.

I did not read all of the answers to what a Libertarian might be, but I am puzzled. Is a Liberial the same as a Libertarian? I know the words mean different things, but does a Liberal feel that they are the same as a libertarian?
My next question would be if they do believe that, how can there be a Liberal Democrat?

The founding fathers created a constitution and a working government commensurate with the size of the nation. They expected the Constitution to change and conform to the times. It hasn't. Why? The Peter Principle or as Franklin put it -- in river and bad government, the lightest things swim at the top. No influencial faction of our government sincerely wants it any smaller although Clinton took a stab at it. However, the cuts were nearly all due to the end of the necessity for a massive military bureaucracy. The government is now in a stage of growth, nearly unprecedented in our history. I like the spirit on libertarianism but in it's ideal form, I feel it's very near impossible. If you crusaders want to run for office and change this, be my guest.

I disagree on all three counts.

1) These men were not trying to set up a system to work for a few years, for the nation as it existed that day. They all had lived through unbelievable changes and several attempts at creating a government already. To suggest that they didn't look beyond the shape of things at that time seems a bit hard to sell. They knew first hand how much things can change in a very short period of time, and crafted a system of government flexible enough to deal with that reality.

2) They expected the Constitution, as black letter law, to be obeyed and upheld. They built into it a system for amending it to adapt it to changing times, values, and realities. They did not plan on us simply ignoring the law when it did not suit our desires.

3) How many amendments do we currently have?

Well over two hundred years and 27 amendments, two of them the institution and repeal of prohibition. The 27th took nearly 200 years to ratify. We can dissagree all day on how much the Constitution should have changed but the forefathers in the Federalist Papers and other writings obviously expected it to change more drastically that it did. Some of them didn't even expect it to last as black letter law in the form it was written. It's changes are remarkably small. My point is that for libertarianism to actually have some credible influence on our government, the Constitution will have to be amended to prevent reading things into the original document that many believe aren't there -- that includes Democrats and Republicans. However, we have had Presidents and administrations where mediocrity far outwieighs greatness and have had nothing like the group of men involved at the inception of the country. Name a group of men who have governed us who can come close.

Fact on the 27th Amendment:

The 27th Amendment (1992), proposed in 1789 by James Madison, became law more than two centuries later when ratified by the Michigan legislature on May 7, 1992, thereby completing ratification by the required two-thirds (38) of the states. It imposes a ban on mid-term congressional pay raises.

So THAT is what happend in 92...I woke and everything was different and odd and horrible.

GW,
...I disagree with you on the adaptability of the constitution. After all, as I said before, it ain't perfect, but it's 227 and a half years old , and still here. And it's so flexible, that two factions that weren't considered full human beings, or citizens, (blacks, and women, respectively) now are legally equal. This came about within the framework of the document written by the flawed, but inspired, and visionary forefathers. For ME to give praise to slaveowners, they must have done something right!

As an exterior observer (being Canadian) there are few ideas floating around in the American cultural psyche that I find more hare-brained than this interpretation of a perfect, one size fits all, unchangeable Constitution. I propose from the far north that you add an ammendment making it mandatory that all Americans read the writings of the men who wrote the constitution, and use nothing but an outhouse until completed.