There are no libertarian societies it has never worked

[Danke]

I get that other forums, what is the best way to respond?

 

[Origanalist]

I get that other forums, what is the best way to respond?

Where was it tried?

 

[Danke]

Where was it tried?

That is kind of the question that it's hard to answer I would say before the federal reserve, we were fairly libertarian here

 

[nickpruitt]

Swiss are pretty much libertarian. You can argue early US till Civil war era was very libertarian. Rothbard talked about some in many of his writings as I recall. Can't remember all he cited. Seems like he cited early Rome in many ways, Ancient China or somewhere in Asia. I know there were a few others.

 

[Danke]

Swiss are pretty much libertarian. You can argue early US till Civil war era was very libertarian. Rothbard talked about some in many of his writings as I recall. Can't remember all he cited. Seems like he cited early Rome in many ways, Ancient China or somewhere in Asia. I know there were a few others.

Thanks any links?

 

[nickpruitt]

I'm not sure you can entirely use modern concepts with ancient ones and work em well. Except maybe Rome because you can probably put them as the first modern society really. So a lot of Rothbard's look at ancient societies is probably more propaganda than anything. But here's some links I found

https://mises.org/library/libertarianism-ancient-china
https://lilarajiva.wordpress.com/2007/07/18/murray-rothbard-a-libertarian-society/

Here's the only thing I could find right now from Rothbard but I'm sure I've read more from him somewhere
https://mises.org/library/roman-law-laissez-faire-statism

I know he cited others.

 

[nickpruitt]

Also we need to realize the idea of countries is young. Really only a few hundred years old at most. Even if you say 500-600 years old it's really not that old.

 

[NorthCarolinaLiberty]

Simple societies "rule" by informal norms and mores. A transgressor of some norm will simply be shunned, either by consensus or by advocacy of the elders. There really are not formal mechanisms in these societies. They exist in various places, most notably in the Amazon, Africa, and Asia.

Government is, most generally, a mechanism to define law, even if it's only natural law. Government can simply be the elders of a society who establish orderly patterns of existence.

I also think liberty/libertarianism is on the permanent wheel in the cycle of history. Colonial America was very liberty minded in various places and times. It transformed into larger and larger government. There were a lot of people who took a system that worked and made it nonworkable.

Does this larger government "work" today? Or does it simply exist? Do these people on your other forums actually define the difference between something working and something existing? Are they the petty people who throw a wrench in the works to keep it from working?

Either way, I think history is cyclical this way. Liberty works until it is swallowed up. Formal government eventually collapses and liberty is restored.

You know the famous quote from Jefferson: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." So, just like every living thing returns to the dust from which it came only to sprout anew--the same happens with liberty. Society becomes warped and decrepit, just like the young person eventually succumbs.

 

[luctor-et-emergo]

Swiss are pretty much libertarian. You can argue early US till Civil war era was very libertarian. Rothbard talked about some in many of his writings as I recall. Can't remember all he cited. Seems like he cited early Rome in many ways, Ancient China or somewhere in Asia. I know there were a few others.

No they are not. They're pretty socially conservative. They love regulations, they hate cars, and you'd hate driving in Switzerland.. They have a high value added tax. Pretty substantial welfare state. Very nice country, not libertarian.

 

[NorthCarolinaLiberty]

Ask them where democracy has ever worked or worked out. Look at the U.S. Early growth was based on a mob mentality of slaughtering a bunch of Indians and enslaving an entire race of people. Who did that lack of libertarianism "work" for?

 

[dannno]

Dating is libertarian in relatively free societies, people date whoever they want as long as they want to date them too and they don't date people they don't want to.

Friendships are libertarian.

We get to choose what kind of clothes we want to wear (although we do have to wear clothes..)

We get to choose what food we want to eat for the most part. The food industry isn't entirely libertarian, but ultimately we have a variety of food we can choose from.

A lot of life is libertarian and it works great and people are pretty happy with it. The question is why don't we make more life libertarian. Corruption in politics is mostly what takes away the other libertarian elements in life, such as earning money.

 

[Ronin Truth]

Where has 'statism' ever 'worked'?

Looks, to me, like 6,000 years on the road to nowhere?

Everywhere we see men setting up governments, submitting to them, growing tired of the mounting oppression, and finally throwing off that yoke, only to acquire another. And each successive yoke represented an effort to do away with the evils of the prior form by establishing a better form.

We can think of no better statement covering this phenomenon than that written by Rose Wilder Lane in her great book, Discovery of Freedom . Here is what she says:

They replace the priest by a king, the king by an oligarchy, the oligarchy by a despot, the despot by an aristocracy, the aristocrats by a majority, the majority by a tyrant, the tyrant by oligarchs, the oligarchs by aristocrats, the aristocrats by a king, the king by a parliament, the parliament by a dictator, the dictator by a king, the king by…. there's six thousand years of it, in every language.

Every imaginable kind of living Authority has been tried, and is still being tried somewhere on earth now.

All these kinds have been tried, too, in every possible combination; the priest and the king, the king who is God, the king and a senate, the king and the senate and a majority, the senate and a tyrant, the tyrant and the aristocrats, a king and a parliament…. Try to think of a combination; somewhere it has been tried.

How many chances to succeed do you reasonably give to failed concepts?

 

[acptulsa]

The U.S. until the 1960s, particularly in the 1920s, excepting the war years (both world wars), Prohibition notwithstanding, because a society doesn't have to be 100% purely libertarian to prove the advantages of it. Each little facet of libertarianism can convey big advantages.

The Federal Reserve may have existed since 1913, but shrinking money does not automatically make the entire society completely un-libertarian, and the Fed was prevented from destroying our standard of living completely and suddenly until the Bretton Woods agreement of 1971 completely decoupled us from gold.

I know of no better contrast and basis of comparison than the U.S. under Wilson and Harding. There was quite a lot of socialism under Wilson. For example, the railroads were nationalized during World War I. This stuff continued for a couple of years after the war, leading to one of the most severe postwar depressions the U.S. ever had. Harding ended that, privatized a lot of things including the railroads, and the result was the Roaring Twenties.

Our enemies continue to use our purism against us, in an effort to make us our own worst enemies. They even want to use our purist tendencies to get our help in rewriting history, so they can claim that the greatest periods in this nation's history were that despite Americans not being free, when the truth is this nation flourished precisely because Americans were orders of magnitude more free than we are today.

We'd do well to call out that b.s. instead of being stupid enough to agree with the lies.

 

[oyarde]

I get that other forums, what is the best way to respond?

Still works on my lands. The old Chinese guy you might like is Lao Tzu , he was a Libertarian Taoist I think.

 

[RDM]

Where was it tried?

Estonia
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?256141-Estonia-the-most-libertarain-country

 

[CaptUSA]

I get that other forums, what is the best way to respond?

"Well, then you can't blame libertarianism for the problems of the world - it hasn't really been tried."

 

[DamianTV]

True freedom is rare throughout history.

Rome succeeded until it destroyed its system with moral busy bodies and politicians ans social services.

USA also did this until we went the way of Rome...

 

[TheTexan]

Why are there are no roads named after elected libertarians?

Trick question there are no elected libertarians

 

[Ronin Truth]

Why are there are no roads named after elected libertarians?

Trick question there are no elected libertarians

(SHH, libertarians don't run for public offices. That's the statists jobs. )

 

[BV2]

Also we need to realize the idea of countries is young. Really only a few hundred years old at most. Even if you say 500-600 years old it's really not that old.

what? nominal difference at most