(07-08-2016, 07:08 AM)Odin Wrote: And property is the creation of the state and can only be enforced by state power protecting the Haves from the Have-Nots.
Your definition of property is either really skewed, or you're being obtuse. You don't need the state to have or defend property rights. Individuals have been defending their own property since time immemorial. Even animals defend their own territory without the help of a government.
Now if you were to say the state helps to enable a situation in which the haves can enforce a monopoly on property, I would agree with you. The state enabled the situation in which escaped slaves were forced to return to their masters. The state enables the situation in which huge corporations can lobby for more leverage over smaller businesses and institute government bailouts to the wealthiest 1%. The state enables the situation in which the central banks can keep borrowing against our children's future to keep their corrupt system afloat and keep the oligarchs in power. Yes, the state enables those types of corrupted property rights. But libertarians are opposed to that.
Quote:I still don't get it. "More localized government?" Like how local?
Most of all, I still maintain that Libertarianism is Utopian in the sense that the gap between where we are now and the DETAILS of what you would have to have for Libertarianism to exist are insurmountable. How do we get from HERE to THERE?
Look at the way Johnson governed NM. He was very selective about which laws passed, vetoing most of them, and made sure each went through a rigorous cost/benefit analysis. He also promised not to use the power of the executive action unless there was a national emergency, and would probably undo several executive actions if he became president. His running mate, Bill Weld governed Massachusetts in a similar fashion. Both were Republican governors in heavily blue states, yet they were very popular in their states serving two terms. Why? Because they weren't your typical Republican NeoCons. They were the sort of classically liberal Republicans that you used to see in both parties once upon a time.
Generally, as a libertarian, you try to take more of a hands off approach to the executive office so as not to step on people's rights. When a tragedy happens, you try not to use it to your political advantage to set an agenda. The hope is to reverse the police state. Try to be nicer to each other. Set a tone of peace love and kindness rather than divisiveness and us vs. them approach. Try to defend people's rights rather than restrict them. Try to remove laws rather than add to them. It's actually very easy.
There is no getting "there". It's all a spectrum, sometimes we go too far one way, and have to reverse course. Right now we're too far in the authoritarian / oligarchy / police state direction and need to reverse course. And I acknowledge that once we do reverse course maybe things will go too far in the other direction and we may have to pull the breaks. But the ends don't justify the means. It's all means.