Niels's positions

Let's continue:

* A country can be best helped by supporting initiatives for improvement of their freedom. A country is not helped by supporting a corrupt government and thus perpetuating the bad political situation.
http://www.libertarian.to/NewsDta/templates/news1.php?art=art8..
http://www.libertarian.to/NewsDta/templates/news1.php?art=art3..
http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/global/s26/cork/whatswrong.html

* Religion is anti-science. Their 'knowledge' is not spread by means of testability, evidential support, consistency, repeatability, etc. Instead it spreads like a virus of the mind. This way religion has come up with all kinds of non-defined words (god, soul, supernatural, hell, satan, sin, etc.) that the individual believer fills up with his own imagination. We should fight against the use of non-defined words because they perpetuate imagined reality.
http://www.simonyi.ox.ac.uk/dawkins/WorldOfDawkins-archive/D..

* Getting government out of education is paramount. A government monopoly on education creates the least pressure on schools to give customers what they want. And do you think a collectivist education has any notion of individualism and how to encourage or serve it? No. It delivers people who aren't fit for the scientific world. Who aren't fit for entrepreneurship. In fact, who aren't fit for dealing with the real world.

* Globalisation is good because any upscaling of capitalism is good, "except in cases that bear sharply on national defense" (see link). Trying to prevent international trade simply holds the country back globally.
http://www.objectivistcenter.org/objectivism/q-and-a-answer.asp..

* Violence is not justified in retaliation against even worse atrocities, or as pre-emption against future atrocities.
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0361959/

Value-based politics part 2

A common criticism of libertarianism is that libertarians are too negative and only oppose things. Value-based politics turns back this criticism against them. Libertarians are not opposed to any value expression which does not hurt anyone else. Statists, on the other hand, are the ones who are always opponents - opponents of other value systems.

What do we stand for ? We stand for freedom, we stand for progress, we stand for prosperity. What we don't stand for, is any statist belief system that ultimately only lines bureaucrats' pockets and help someone get elected, instead of trying to make life better for the great majority of people living in a given society.

Tyranny benefits the ruling class, but libertarianism and capitalism, coupled with scientific and technological progress, benefit everyone, especially "the masses". While the lifespan of a member of the ruling class has only been marginally raised, the lifespan of the average person in a modern society has shot up by 50% in the last century. While the amount of years lived is by no means a sufficient standard of life, it's a good indication of benefit, especially if we couple this with the incredible technological advances in that same period of time and their fast propagation due to capitalism, as well as the fall in extreme poverty around the world. So that's what we stand for.

But these are survival and social values, not political values. When we talk about political values specifically, we're talking about how the institutions and structures that regulate our society function and act (through their agents of course). We're talking about guiding institutional principles. So what are these values, what should we seek in our political institutions ?

The Logical Structure of Objectivism, my reference book on morality, gives three examples of political values : individual rights to freedom and property, the rule of objective law, and limited government. To these I would add secondary principles like a process of non-participation, private governance (which Kelley would no doubt argue against) and value-neutrality (represented to a small extent by the separation of church and state).

I've already touched on the value of individual rights. Rights are rules which describe the extreme limits to which both individuals and institutions must be subject. When we say, for example, "the right of free speech", we mean that absolutely no one may initiate force in trying to stop the speech of another, and that such initiation of force must be stopped. Right are inherently negative, as freedom entails responsibility (in that we are responsible and accountable for our actions) but not duty (in that we cannot be forced to serve another person's rights, only to respect them).

So rights, therefore, are valuable because they are the basic unit by which we describe the expression of values. "Right of free speech" means that we are free to communicate ideas, amongst other things, even those which contradict other value systems. Even though there are many of our Christian cultural enemies who would rather we not be able to say things like "there are no gods" or "Christianity is evil", and I'd rather Christians not be able to propagate their own immoral and irresponsible beliefs, the right of free speech ensures that we are all protected in being able to express our values.

The value of limited government is more immediate. The bigger government is, the less place private citizens can hold in a given society, and thus there is less possibility for value expression. The smaller the government, the better.

According to David Kelley, the rule of objective law is composed of four elements :

The rule of law consists in law that is (a) universal, so that everybody has a determinate standing before it. It must be (b) known in advance, because one cannot be held responsible for violating a principle one could not have known of. It must be (c) consistently applied, simply as a matter of logic: to do otherwise would introduce whim and subjectivity to any attempt at adjudication. Finally, it must be (d) applied by an objective process. This means a process of established procedures and methods, based on the analysis of facts. This is another preservation against whimsy and distortion, and is essential to ensuring that the law proceed in a rational manner.

What this means, basically, is that law and fact, not the "human factor", should rule. This obsession about law and fact is precisely what makes many people complain about the justice system, and demand juries as a basic right : but if the law was objective to begin with, there would be no need for juries, and bad laws are not a justification to forcibly enroll citizens into replacing justice anyway.

Aaron's Positions

Since I'm also a Radical Libertarian, many of my non-negotiable positions are the same as Franc's. To help prevent redundancy, I will only include points in which I differ from him, or which were previously unstated. As a result of this, my list is much smaller:

* Everyone has a right to freely pursue their values, but nobody has a right to their values. For example, while you have a right to freely pursue housing, you do not have a right to housing.

* Parenting, as a value, can be freely pursued, but must be earned. This is not unlike driving a car. You need to prove yourself capable of driving a car, otherwise you could hurt someone. In the same vein, you need to prove yourself capable of raising a child, otherwise you could hurt the child.

* Censorship of any kind is unjustifiable, even censorship against religion or hate speech. A free marketplace of ideas is essential, for all ideas must be able to stand up on their own merits. In a free marketplace of ideas, if an idea has no merits, it will fail of its own accord, making censorship superfluous. In a free marketplace of ideas, the bad ideas fail fairly. But with censorship, bad (and sometimes good) ideas fail unfairly.

Value-based politics part 1

To examine individualist politics, we have to start from the premise of individual values. A value is something that we seek to gain or keep. Values are rationally determined from the needs that all human beings have, as separate beings and as a part of society. These needs are themselves derived from natural facts. To take a simple example, we have a metabolism that requires nutrition, therefore we need nutrition, therefore nutrition is a value.

There are four categories of values : physical values (air, food, shelter), mental values (rationality, education, well-being), social values (friendship, love, visibility) and political values. This last category is the one that interests us.

Why are there political values ? Because, to have any standard of living beyond the tolerable, we need to live in society. And when living in society, people naturally build institutions and structures in order to regulate interactions between people. These institutions and structures can be oppressive, dictatorial, using force to impose one value system over all others, creating statist social warfare. There can also be a lack of needed institutions or structures, creating anarchic social warfare. Finally, others can stop coercive actions while leaving people free to exist within their value systems, eliminating social warfare.

So we have all these possibilities. Now, to be a value, it must be within the realm of choice. And indeed we all play a little role in determining what these institutions are like - not because of democracy, since voting doesn't change anything, but because we determine (to a certain extent) where we want to live, what causes we want to support, and what behaviour we adopt towards our fellows. Besides, institutions and structures are not a given, they were made by people, and so we can also evaluate them morally.

It's easy to see that the type of system we live in has a direct bearing on the values we can effect, especially if we're not part of the ruling class. A society where only specific value systems are permitted, will alienate a great proportion of the population. Since moral rules that seek to eliminate behaviour are anti-values, such a system is anti-moral - it is the reverse of the expression of values.

So I, as a living, value-driven being, need to live in a society that allows me to express my values while stopping others from trying to stop me from doing so. And in order to reap the benefits of living in society, I wish for everyone else to benefit from the same rights. This is, therefore, a "free society". I value a free society because such a value is necessary for the expression of all my other values. Social warfare, physical warfare, crime, oppression, only engenders death.

So you get political values, and the justification for a free society from the individualist perspective (there are ways to derive a free society from epistemology, but these are irrelevant here). On my next post I'll look at some of these values.

This is an article in two parts. The second is available here.

Franc's positions

Epistemic and political positions I consider non-negociable :

* Only the individual can think and evaluate for himself. No one can do it for him, as much as he'd like to. The best we can do is consciously surrender our judgment, which itself requires judgment.

* We all have individual, personal values. To follow these values rationally is our sole, inescapable ethical imperative.

* Society, organizations, corporations, families, do not exist ontologically. They are expressions of the interactions between individuals sharing values and cooperating based on that fact. People cooperate because they desire, want and need to cooperate in order to progress. Self-interest is the greatest motor of progress and its necessary prerequisite.

* We value political institutions because they help ensure that no one is hampered in the expression of his values. Therefore, political institutions should only serve to help the expression of individual values, and stop coercive attempts to stop the expression of individual values.

* If people voluntarily agree to "harm themselves", they should be free to do so. People always have reasons to do things, even if they are not apparent to us. To assume that people have "no good reason to do" something is lunacy.

* In a free society, there is a harmony of values, in that no one's self-interest is ensured by violence, fraud, or political struggle - only by voluntary trade (whether social, economic, affective, etc).

* Democracy is epistemically, morally and politically absurd. Democracy is not individualist - it puts individual values and rights at the mercy of mob rule. A free society promotes the harmony of values, democracy forces people of different value systems to fight against each other. Forcing people to vote on basic human rights is a disgrace. Democracy must be eliminated if we are to ever live in a free society.

* Everyone should be equal under the law, regardless of income, social or economic power, race, political affiliation, or age. This is not the case in democratic systems, where individuals who have the most political clout win.

* The initiation of war is never justifiable. Interventionist foreign relations are never justifiable. Tariffs, trade disputes and barriers to entry for foreign companies are never justifiable.

* The right of one's own body is inalienable. The War on Drugs is unjustifiable. Laws against abortion are unjustifiable. Laws against cloning and other technologies based on one's genetic material are unjustifiable.

* The right of one's actions is inalienable. Laws against privacy are unjustifiable. Government monopolies are unjustifiable.

* The right of one's own property is inalienable. Taxation is unjustifiable. Eminent domain laws are unjustifiable.

* Parenting is not a right. At best, it is a highly suspicious substitute for real child-raising.

* People should be made free from dogmas and collectivist beliefs, so they can express their persona values. If they are fully conscious of what they sanction and still disagree with us, they should be left alone.

* If you don't like someone's lifestyle or choices, and they're not coercing or defrauding anyone, be responsible and let them do whatever they want. You're free to fight them with rhetoric all you want, but using government power as a tool to bludgeon others (however right you think you are) only enslaves everyone to that power, creating political struggle and social warfare.

* We only fight against collectivists because they endanger everyone's freedom and well-being, due to the fact that we live in democratic systems. In a free society, there would be no need to fight over disagreements, since everyone would be free to live in the way he desires. Therefore, we should not focus solely on why our opponents are wrong, but also on how the system can be changed.

Radical Opening Post

I suppose I should introduce what this blog is about...

This is a way for myself, Aaron (who is currently sick but will join the blog soon) and Brad (to whom I already sent an invite) to join the very few libertarian voices on the blogosphere. We are both rather annoyed that most "libertarian" blogs are right-wing, conservative, pro-war voices. And we hope to contribute to change that, through theoretical, radical discussions of libertarianism and politics in general.

We have called it "radical" because our position is radical - that politics should be seen as a subset of moral values. Our position is individualistic, and our politics consists of the radical idea that "political institutions should only serve to help the expression of individual values", and the fundamental libertarian idea that "no one owns anyone else".

More to come soon.