How would Libertarianism work in an Irish context?

Soldie wrote: »

I see this has predictably turned into yet another of those "but what about...?" threads.

I don't know to what extent this is directed at my questions about the preservation of culture, but "what if" questions are essential to probe the limits of how an ideology would actually function if actually implemented.

When I propose new processes or procedures at work, I expect to be robustly questioned as to how well those process will actually work; I know I'll have to explain how they not only meet all our existing business requirements but will also yield measurable improvements that justify the costs involved in making those changes.

There are those who will believe that the destruction of a ring fort, while regrettable, is an acceptable price to pay for the unquestioned sanctity of private property rights. There are those who believe that a few very minor restrictions on those rights are an acceptable price to pay for the preservation of archaeological heritage.

I don't believe in blind adherence to a simplistic ideology precisely because I feel it is ill-equipped to deal with edge cases like this. I ask "what if" questions to clarify my understanding of the ideology by asking its adherents what they believe. I'm not sure why that's such an offensive thing to do.

Permabear wrote: »

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Apply the same logic to listed buildings: if we want to preserve quality examples of past architectural styles, we're dependent on another such society to buy every building that's currently protected? If the society can't afford to buy a given building, and its current owner wants to demolish it and build a McDonalds, that's just the way it is?

In the picturesque town of Skagen in northern Denmark, there are only two or three colours a house can be painted by law. As egregious an interference as that may seem on private property rights, the result is very aesthetically pleasing. Is it such a bad trade-off?

Valmont wrote: »

It will however, assert its ownership over its property if you don't (a) pay taxes or (b) use the land according to their guidelines. I won't frame my arguments according to the 'social contract' because such a transparently ludicrous excuse for institutionalised robbery is hardly worth talking about, not to mention tautological in this debate.

I guess an assumption I am making (open to correction) is that an individual's private property (if we apply the actual meaning of the term) is sovereign i.e. theirs alone if they aren't violating anyone else's property rights in doing so.

If you're only prepared to have a discussion in which I accept your premises in advance, then we don't really have a great deal of scope for a meaningful discussion.

The problem is that your definition of private property - i.e., property with which you can do absolutely anything you want with no restrictions whatsoever other than "an it harm none" - is the ideal you are espousing; whereas the social contract, despite being an abstract concept, is something that is widely accepted as existing, however much you'd rather it didn't.

I don't accept that animals should be granted 'rights' -- however, if I were to learn of a farmer engaging in such a brutal act I would not support the initiation of aggression against him but I would definitely partake in publicising his cruelty with a view towards a complete boycott of his farm's produce. I don't know about you, but I can't imagine many people standing for such behaviour in their community.

Hmm, so you would attempt to damage his business in response to him using his own property in a way that he wants to - but that doesn't constitute initiation of aggression against him. Interesting.

Let's move the goalposts: your neighbour, who has a mid-level job in a large company (at which is very competent), is cruel and abusive towards his pets. He has every right to do so; they are his property, after all. What's an appropriate response to that behaviour?

Permabear wrote: »

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And I'm arguing for a qualified right to one's property. I don't think that owning a ring fort should give you the right to bulldoze it; I don't think that owning a Gandon-designed building in Dublin should give you the right to replace it with a concrete box; and I don't think that owning a horse should give you the right to mistreat it until it dies.

The false dichotomy stems from the idea that such qualifications extinguish property rights, which is Valmont's argument.

But why base our argument on property bubble prices? We all know that land prices were anomalous during the bubble — indeed, they have fallen by more than half since 2007. We probably will not see another 2007 again in our lifetimes.

Because ignoring edge cases is how badly-designed systems come into operation.

But archeologists and preservationists tell us that despite this alleged state "protection," these historical sites are being destroyed at a relatively rapid rate. I wouldn't have much faith in the current legislative system either, frankly.

That's a problem of lack of enforcement.

What's interesting to note from this discussion is that both our approaches are failing. Legislative protection of national monuments isn't working, presumably because not enough landowners are being prosecuted for destroying them and so the disincentive is mostly theoretical. On the other hand, there's nothing to stop a society such as you have posited from buying them - but it hasn't happened.

Permabear wrote: »

Conversely, excessive government-mandated "preservation" can stifle healthy architectural development and renewal. Just because a building has been on a particular site for the past two hundred years, and has been deemed as "listed" by the state, should we really strive to keep it there for the next two or three millennia? What happens when our cities essentially become museums, and there is literally no space for new architecture, i.e., cultures of the future can't express themselves because of the weight of the past?

Once again you manage to create a false dichotomy. It's not a stark choice between preserving every building for eternity on the one hand versus a complete free-for-all on the other; this is also a continuum.

The Valmont argument is that if I buy a Georgian house in the middle of a terrace in Dublin's leafy suburbs, I should have an unfettered and unqualified right to demolish it and replace it with a steel-and-glass tower block, and that any qualification of that right is fascism. There doesn't seem to be any scope in that worldview for a reasonableness argument, and I am suspicious of worldviews that reject reasonableness.

It's a trade-off that I wouldn't be willing to accept, personally. What if the government decided that Dublin would be a much more pleasant city if every man had to wear slacks and a shirt, and every woman a dress and heels? The result might be aesthetically preferable (no more tracksuits and goth attire) but could be achieved only by quashing individual preferences and having everyone submit to the will of the collective.

Similarly, I don't want to have to go to court because I've painted my house a color that falls outside the state-mandated scheme. The color of my house should be my own business and nobody else's.

Skagen has looked much the way it does for over a century. Allowing people to do what they want with their own properties would change it from what it is - and what it is is a large part of the reason it's a popular tourist destination - to something else; something less. It would be diminished by the unfettered exercise of individual property rights.

I guess no individual resident of Skagen would be able to directly quantify the loss to them of having something intangible taken away from their town, and I guess in a world that's defined solely in terms of market value, that means that they wouldn't have lost anything at all.

I doubt you'd get many of the residents of Skagen to agree with that perspective, however.

Permabear wrote: »

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And yet, those same "forces of bureaucratic preservationist stasis" allow buildings such as those I've linked to define new vistas in the towns and cities that contain them.

Which, ultimately, is my point. If we were arguing about the two sides of an either-or absolutist dichotomy, then the choice would be one between either preserving all historical architecture in aspic, or allowing a complete free-for-all. But we're only discussing one of those extremes here: the one that says that there are no circumstances under which it is ever acceptable for anyone but the owner of property to have any input into the design of that property, because that would (apparently) be fascism.

(As an aside, I wouldn't mind being a fly on the wall when Valmont tells the Danes that they are fascists, what with them having been occupied by Nazi Germany and all.)

Skagen has very little going for it other than fishing and tourism. The main tourist draw is nostalgia for a time when it was an artist colony (along with some beautiful scenery). The town optimises that tourist draw by preserving a sense of the past, and it works well. Other towns find different balancing points between preservation and progress - there's no compelling reason for Skagen to be a hub for architectural experimentation, and good reason for it to cling to its nostalgic vibe.

The private property fundamentalist will argue that what's good for the town as a whole is irrelevant to his particular wants and desires, and that nobody else in the town has any right to have any input into the visual impact that his property has on the town.

As strong as you believe the foundations of the philosophy to be, it's very hard to argue against the idea that its underpinning motive is selfishness.

Well, this thread is about how libertarianism might work in the Irish context — and as I've said, we tend to be a bit more resistant than the Danes to having the government tell us what color we should paint our houses.

Be careful of caricaturing Danish people as obedient sheep that simply let the government tell them what to do. The local government in Skagen - elected by the people of Skagen - enforce the rules on house colours in Skagen, for reasons that make sense to the electorate of Skagen. Other areas have different sets of rules that make sense for them.

I'm not going to argue that every set of rules that is endorsed by a large group of people is objectively correct - I'm not a democratic fundamentalist either - but we are a gregarious species, and I'm naturally suspicious of philosophies that reject the very concept of society.

SupaNova wrote: »

In practice neither would be absolute though. The market won't preserve 60,000 ring-forts but likely still preserve Bunratty Castle and in a system where the State claims all 60,000 ring-forts are to be protected, it will eventually have to make concessions.

Well, I guess if we have Bunratty Castle we don't need ring forts, because they're exactly the same thing.

Valmont wrote: »

Yet I could equally accuse you of blind adherence to the ideology of the State (social contract?); which is as very real as the ideology behind libertarianism. However, this point is always swept under the carpet.

Even though you argue that exact position with the only difference being you favour the state over the individual.

That's such a caricature of everything I've said that I genuinely can't decide whether you are physically incapable of understanding any point of view other than your own, or have such a desperate need to win an argument at all costs that you have your straw man factory working overtime.

I don't favour the state over the individual. I have explicitly - in as many words - in this very thread expressed support for private property rights. I have suggested that there is an argument for qualifying those rights under some circumstances. If your frame of reference only allows for the monochrome possibilities of unqualified property rights on the one had versus complete serfdom and slavery on the other, and you are literally mentally incapable of grasping the idea of a continuum between the two, then we quite simply don't share a common language, so if that's the case let me know and I can stop wasting time discussing this with you.

Your need to have the state lord over ring forts and the colours people paint their houses is exactly an attempt to beat the world into a simplistic framework i.e. the simplistic framework of State either having the unqualified right to property or not having it.

I have never once argued for the State to have the unqualified right to people's private property. Not. Once. Ever.

Again, you seem to be begging the question and arguing from your conclusion that any qualification on the right to do anything whatsoever you want with your own property means that the State has the unqualified right to do anything whatsoever it wants with your property. I can't even begin to understand the logical processes required to arrive at that conclusion.

I'm pointing out these contradictions because I think you should either criticise the ideology specific to libertarianism rather than attack it because it is ideological in nature. All political beliefs are based on philosophical assumptions concerning how men should act towards one another; necessarily, all political beliefs are ideological in nature i.e. how we should be doing things.

I'm not attacking it because it's ideological - I'm pointing out what I perceive as flaws in the ideology, and in turn the rather strange mental contortions its adherents will go through in order to avoid compromising it in any way.

Your axioms are structured such that the concepts of a state and private property are mutually exclusive - if one exists, the other does not. You then frame your every argument around those axioms, no matter how contrived the resulting mental gymnastics. You appear completely incapable of relaxing your constraints in any way to accept the possibility that both a State and private property can exist simultaneously. Which is strange, because - presumably - you live in a state, and own property. How do you reconcile that contradiction?

I have identified a key feature of fascistic governments and demonstrated it is alive and well in many western countries -- if you don't want to call those countries fascistic in nature you could stop mocking me and explain why you disagree.

I disagree because, by your definition, pretty much every single state in existence is fascist. Given that pretty much nobody outside of die-hard anarchists believe that that is the case, I think you need to check your premises.

Reject your concept of society, yes, reject the fact that individuals are social creatures, no. One of the greatest conflations perpetrated by statists is assuming that because man needs society, man needs the state. Now, that is a leap of logic.

It's not my concept of society. It's society's concept of society. Almost everyone accepts that, to a greater or lesser extent, individual rights are tempered by the greater good. The argument is usually about where that balance should be drawn. There are a few extremists who believe that you have no right to any private property, and that society should own everything. This is self-evidently nuts. Then there are extremists who believe that there is no greater good, and that everything can be defined entirely in terms of private property rights. To some of us, that extreme is self-evidently nuts as well.