Yebiga
“What if anything do you value?”

I value people’s freedom to live their life as they please without being subjected to force or threats of anyone else.

I value a society of maximum peace and freedom, minimal force and threats, no fraud.

Freedom has its legitimate limits: it doesn’t means freedom to aggress against person or property.

A right means what you are justified in using force to defend. There’s no justification in using force or threats to aggress against the person or property of others.

This means the only justification of force or threats against person or property is to stop people using aggression or fraud to get what they want. That’s why I am not a pacifist.

I don’t care who forcefully stops aggression or fraud, and that’s why I’m not an anarchist.

I recognise that the good things in life and society – friends, family, food, clothing, shelter, the arts, learning, transport, communications, entertainment - come overwhelmingly from people’s voluntary interactions, and not from bashing people, or physically seizing people and locking them in prison, or threatening to.

Government means the group directing the State, and the State is by definition that group in society who claim a legal monopoly of the use of force or threats against person or property.

All the democracies originate from pre-existing monarchies, and all the monarchies originate from pre-existing armed gangs. The State is a coercion-based monopoly of coercion. Once the foundational monopoly is established – force – the State can demand obedience based on threats (“jurisdiction”), extort tribute (“taxation”), take over the commanding heights of society such as roads, rivers, money, schools etc, and hand out favours to its dependants and privileges to its thugs, sycophants and cheerleaders.

Built on the ethical double standard “I can hit you, but you can’t hit me”, the State can openly carry on what itself declares to be criminal behaviour for anyone else. Hence the endless double standards: extortion/”fiscal policy”, counterfeiting/”monetary policy”, murder/”execution”, mass murder/ “defence policy”, child abduction/”assumption of care” and so on.

Being a legal monopoly of aggression and fraud, the State offers the ability to live at others’ expense by force and fraud, *which is illegal in market transactions*. Thus it naturally attracts parasitic and predatory behaviour. (And thus Squeers has it back-the-front in accusing libertarianism of “predation”. Aggression is what libertarianism opposes by definition, it’s what Squeers is arguing in favour of, and notice he gave no reason for his dishonest allegation?)

In the final analysis, all that government has on offer is the use or threat of force. That’s it. Government does not add any knowledge or resources or selflessness or capacity that are not already available in society, and obtainable by consensual transactions if people really want either to have or to provide them.

The claims of the statists to justify aggression over and above what is necessary to defend liberty and property are ethically and economically FALSE. The use of force or fraud does not make society
a) fairer, or
b) more productive,
and ALL the arguments of the statists to that effect are wrong.

This is not some kind of strange coincidence. The State has a permanent need for legitimation, because of its double standard that extortion and fraud are serious crimes for everyone else, but supposedly create public welfare when done by the State.

The State forms a natural symbiosis with the intellectuals, because the market rate for their services is low, precisely because few people would *voluntarily* pay much for the services of, say, a professor of Marxism or postmodern deconstructionism. The intellectual class prostitute themselves by providing justification for the State. For example “economists” teach that the economic disorder spread by the State’s skimming manipulation of the supply of money and credit is caused by ‘unregulated capitalism’, even though the supply of money, the price of credit, and the licensing of banking activities, are all government monopolies. “Educators” indoctrinate children with assumptions that the State is a kind of economic selfless Santa Claus. And so on.

The intelligentsia function to promote economic ignorance, such as Squeers latest offering: that freedom from aggression against person and property is “predation” and “anti-human”.

It’s true that the state provides benefits, but so does burning your furniture. Above the level of repelling aggression, the belief that the State provides *net* benefits always falls back to mere economic illiteracy. All arguments for the state above the minimum necessary to defend person and property, without exception, consist of the simple illogic of valuing a quantity on one side of an equation, and not accounting for it on the other: an irrational, superstitious, mid-brain, belief that the State magically creates benefits out of nothing.

That’s all you’re doing.

That’s why, as we have seen, all your arguments rely on the bald assumption that the State provides net benefits, and when challenged, merely endlessly repeating the assumption, and so on, larding your fallacy with insults, misrepresentations of anarchism and nihilism, and how-dare-you-question-authority type argument. That’s it. That’s all you’ve got.

In all our arguments, you’re arguing for socialism – on the basis of the nation-state, in other words, national socialism. When asked what are the legitimate limits of government, you have no answer, because you don’t believe in them or can’t identify them. Self-identifying “progressives” and “centre-left” are just, economically speaking, totalitarian fascists properly so-called.

That’s why, when I advocate abolishing GOVERNMENT FUNDING OF the humanities, you automatically think that means abolishing THE HUMANITIES.

That’s because like Mussolini, you believe:
“…[The] only liberty which can a real thing [is] the liberty of the State and of the individual within the State. Therefore, for the Fascist, everything is the State, and nothing human or spiritual exists, much less has value outside the State.”

That’s why, when someone mentions the value of freedom, your eyes glaze over, your head spins on its axis, smoke comes out your ears, and you squark “masturbation!” “ideology!” “predation!” “narrative!” “postmodernism!” “adolescent triumphalism!”

But human freedom remains morally and pragmatically superior to coercive central planning every time, which is why, unlike you, I openly invite disproofs and get nothing but endless fallacies, lies and abuse in return.

Squeers
You are lying. You have been repeatedly asked to make specific alternative government or policy proposals, and you have ONLY EVER indulged the kindergarten-level tactics I have just described.

All
What better argument for the abolition of state funding of the humanities could you want than the display of abusive intellectual and moral infantilism put on by its advocates here?

Translated into real policy, these legions of moronic marxoids destroy Australian industry, promote every kind of corruption and predation on the productive classes, and kill huge numbers of people in the world ever year – the opposite of the values of a liberal democracy.

Jardine
After reading your latest posts, I will concede your sincerity and respond accordingly.

A few years ago, after following the US presidential elections I became Interested in the Ron Paul campaign, which naturally led me to read quite a bit about libertarianism: Hayek, Mises, etc. Let me say, as far as your intent is concerned I am not going to argue.

As for my personal value system, it is entirely informed by a faith in the enlightenment values which under pin the best of what is our constitution and is probably best epitomised by the US constitution: freedom of speech, protection of individual rights, separation of powers, individual liberty, freedom of religion, etc. Although,, as good and powerful as that constitution may, the US has increasingly betrayed it.

I also believe, fundamentally, that for the enlightenment t to occur and thus for these constitutions to occur, it was essential that the body of literature from Ancient Greece to the present day is not only be preserved but is studied and added to.. This literature which details the best of human achievement is the humanities.

But no matter how much I came to agree with libertarianism, I could not escape certain nagging doubts about whether it was past its use by date? Permit me to reiterate, Libertarianism to me, is the free interchange of dynamic forces, it is the pure honest foundation which has empowered anything of any value in every country. Even within a communist country / empire like the USSR, to function and meet the essential needs of its citizenry some level of the libertarian idea needed to exist - for central planning simply can't do the job.

But the times they are a changing. We discussed something like this previously on another thread. Your looking for the enemy of libertarianism in the wrong place. The over educated post modernist long ago gave up any agency. The true enemy to libertarianism and even capitalism is neither the government, Marx, the humanities nor postmodernists - the enemy is the mega oligopoly. Your angst is directed at symptoms not causes.

Jardine, not that I care that you lump me as a socialist, and defender of the state, but

I do not hold the belief that the humanities must be funded by govt; I merely point out it is and probably will be for a long time. Hence, this article was about the bias now.

I have long urged a humanities field that includes non-govt sources. In fact, I am working on an academic article now to show why the centre-right think-tanks are important, especially because of the bias. I would actually like such think-tanks to provide academic articles to improve the standard.

In an ideal world, I also have much more faith in the non-govt sector and the role of the individual and community.

But, I, myself, cannot describe politics as a libertarian (albeit this as also a broad church), always bagging the state as the culprit.

Change comes slowly, and that is why I recognise the strengths and weaknesses of both sides of politics, and various theoretical positions, but describe policy change through the interaction between with key players.

The fact that I now support the coalition at the federal level(since 2010), and realise the flaws of statism, proves that I do try to think about the issues. As I said, i take most comments from OLO on board, even your insults.

But, say with my writing of a book on the Abbott govt's first term, I go into the task with an open mind. I hope it succeeds, but can only describe the journey and wait for the results that results from societal interaction. In other words, I try to take my own views and values out of it