[ExI] Is there a potential libertarianism / democracy tension?

[Dan]

On Monday, September 26, 2011 4:26 AM  Amon Zero amon at doctrinezero.com wrote:
> The exchange above seems to point to a potential tension between
> democracy and libertarianism. What I mean is that the libertarian
> political impulse is to minimise or eliminate government and tax,
> but what if it turns out that, in the end, that's not really what
> people turn out to want. That the reason they continue to pay tax
> is not because they fear the guns, but because it seems not
> unreasonable to pay some tax. Sure, a lot of people don't like
> paying tax (or too much of it), or like seeing it mis-spent event
> less, but I wonder what the "average libertarian" (if there is
> such a creature), but the vast majority don't talk about taxation
> as if they've been robbed at gunpoint, in my personal experience.
 
A good way to find out what people want is to allow them the option of not paying taxes or not obeying various rules and regulations. Force or the the threat of it makes this nearly impossible. If people want, for instance, to fund this or that program or to not, say, smoke pot, then, absent force or its threat, they will simply do or not do these things. Force or its threat make it hard to determine here.
 
Now, regarding taxes, the funny thing, yes, most people pay with little griping. But the examples of non-payers have their property seized or being hauled off to jail seems fairly telling. Why not, if you believe most will pay anyhow, remove the the threat of this. (And, in fact, mere social pressure could be used, if you feel this or that program is truly a good thing. In other words, you and others could try to persuade non-payers to fund it voluntarily or use non-coercive sanctions against them.)
 
> So, say that a libertarian party of some sort came to be running
> a major country (not to name names), government was radically
> pruned accordingly, but then the voters reacted in a strongly
> negative way. Are there any indications how libertarians would be
> likely to react?
 
Libertarian government in the usual sense is, in my mind, an oxymoron. In the "usual sense," I mean a coercive monopolist -- not the absence of any social order or rules. In other words, a truly libertarian society would be anarchistic but not antinomian. That, of course, in the context of current society and culture, not only taboo, but also a long way off -- not impossible, but it will take time for enough people to grasp and become comfortable with the idea.
 
> The reason I ask is because libertarianism seems, on the one hand,
> to be quite a mild, democracy-abiding mainstream-ish point of
> view, and so I'd expect no more desire to subvert democracy than
> you'd get from the major parties. On the other hand, however,
> libertarianism is sort of a "meta"-political movement in that
> libertarians hope to radically restructure the system itself, and
>  that kind of revolutionary sentiment - ironically - doesn't tend
> to like being told that it's time is up.
 
It depends on how you define "libertarianism." For some, this is just a fuzzy idea of lower taxes and less regulations. In my mind, that's not libertarian any more than free trade is when government bureaucrats foist all sorts of regulations on commerce, including tariffs and even prohibiting certain trades, but do this slightly less than the anti-trade types would like. In my view, libertarianism is the view that coercion should not be initiated against people and their property. This simple view is quite radical and, yes, it does clash with democracy as commonly understood -- either in its pure majoritarianism fashion or its more lukewarm constitutional republic one. In the latter, coercion may be initiated if enough people agree and vote on it.
 
Of course, just because an idea is radical or uncomfortable doesn't mean it's invalid or wrong. Also, I'm not sure anyone here has made a case that libertarianism had its day and now its time is past. I don't know what that means here or why any idea would be judged that way by people pretending to be rational and scientific (in the broadest sense). I would expect folks like that to judge any idea, including libertarianism, on its merits and against such evidence that would be relevant to it.
 
Add to this, just because an idea is radical doesn't also mean it would be impossible to implement or for large numbers of people to attempt to do so. Here, I believe, libertarianism has an advantage: almost all human interactions, especially interactions on this list, are non-coercive -- even don't bear the threat of coercion in them. Such relationships are the basic stuff of society. Coercive relations, especially coercive ones organized around government, though by no means insignificant, are the exception not the rule in society. Libertarianism in practice would mean removing those coercive relations -- well, as much as possible. One can look at this as wanting a triumph of reason and freedom over irrationality and force. Surely, that would be more Extropian than the alternative.
 
Regards,
 
Dan