[yummyfajitas]

Rights should be based on the veil of ignorance principle - the weak should be protected and the strong should pay for they are one car crash away from welfare.

Your moral values seems to hold that individuals have few rights, and that collectively we should operate from the principle of infinite risk aversion (i.e., the Rawlsian veil of ignorance). Great - we all agree that if these are your values, Libertarianism is not the political philosophy for you.

It's amusing that while mocking Rand, you make the exact same fallacy she makes in Atlas Shrugged: "anyone who disagrees with me must be evil and selfish, with no moral values."

If you don't like it - leave. Somalia is lovely this time of year I hear.

I'm constantly confused when those who oppose libertarianism bring up Somalia. What is the relevance?

[swombat]

Your moral values seems to hold that individuals have few rights, and that collectively we should operate from the principle of infinite risk aversion (i.e., the Rawlsian veil of ignorance). Great - we all agree that if these are your values, Libertarianism is not the political philosophy for you.

Individuals have no rights. Rights only exist within the context of a group. Without a group, you're not talking about rights, you're just talking about ability.

[wapper]

If that is true, then in a multicultural or multi-religion group no rights exist at all after time passes. Because in such a group the only possible rights would be lowest-common-denominator, which would decrease if new groups are added to the whole. The more different or antagonistic the new group, the more it has to decrease individual rights.

[eli_gottlieb]

If that is true, then in a multicultural or multi-religion group no rights exist at all after time passes.

Well... kind of, yeah. In real life, most multicultural regions have codes of "rights and freedoms" designed as workable compromises between the moral philosophies of the various cultures living there. Once such a code exists, it will usually be amended rather than scrapped, and new arrivals made to conform somewhat (because it has become a shared culture), but that is, in fact, how it works.

[jmcqk6]

Somalia is, or at least was, a land without a government. If libertarians or randians are correct, it should be a land flowing with milk and honey. Of course, this is not the case. At least, that is how the argument goes.

I'm a former libertarian of the anarcho-capatilist-rand flavor, and I think there are much better arguments against that stance than somalia.

[endersshadow]

Libertarianism is not anarchism, nor does it ever purport to be. In fact, libertarianism holds that a government should be in place, and that its job is to protect the rights (defined by libertarianism--most often, the Bill of Rights is pointed to) of its citizens.

[jmcqk6]

Libertarians do overlap quite a bit with anarcho-capatilism and randism. You might not define libertarianism that way, but many do. The best you might say is something like, 'libertarianism, as espoused by [X], hold that a government should be in place.' As a counter example, I can easily find self-identified libertarians who are anarchists.

edit: grammar and clarification.

[yummyfajitas]

Somalia was a land without a government for a very brief period. It now (and has, for many years) has several governments in different regions. Some are based on Sharia (or at least purport to be), others on Guurti (traditional clan-based government). None are or claim to be based on libertarian principles.

None of it's governments are recognized by the UN, but as far as I'm aware, no one claims that the mere withdrawal of UN recognition of a government leads to prosperity.

[jmcqk6]

>None are or claim to be based on libertarian principles.

I think part of the argument is that if libertarianism is so good / efficient / other desirable criteria, why don't societies naturally evolve into those societies?

Again, I don't think that this is the entire argument, or even a particular good one (in the case of somalia). I'm just pointing it out.

[gwern]

Libertarians have defended Somalia after people tried to use it as a reductio; quite explicitly, too, consider Leeson's "Better Off Stateless: Somalia Before and After" (http://peterleeson.com/better_off_stateless.pdf) which is pretty much what it sounds like. Hence, bringing up Somalia is perfectly fair.

[pi18n]

I was also told Somalia might be a good choice for me when I was arguing against widespread government surveillance.

It's a strawman used by the intellectually lazy to posit that anyone who disagrees with sprawling government that has its fingers in everything must necessarily prefer anarchy, a form of government of which they have a quantum of anecdotal evidence showing it is not ideal.

I didn't see the original essay as Randian, did you? I thought the argument was that these things aren't ideal and there's no way to opt out; in fact for some people there's no way to opt out of even their native country.

[confluence]

Rights don't exist for individuals period. Groups define rights not individuals. Groups do so in their own self interest which we must temper to protect the weak from the strong - to do otherwise merely leads to revolution or collapse. If you want those - have it at - somewhere else.