Revisiting "Why Libertarianism is Nonsense"

[trenton]

When these videos first came out a few years ago, I didn't watch them all the way through. Many objected at the time, arguing that it was a strawman argument. The two videos I am discussing are "Why Libertarianism is Nonsense" and the one about Conspiracy Theories.

The reason I revisited these videos is because I have been working on Project Steelman. What I found is that the people who most consistently disagree with me are Libertarians. Therefore, my political philosophy would require some kind of rebuttal against this other political philosophy. I ended up watching the video all the way through and it wasn't as bad as I remembered. In fact, I had already learned about some of the problems with Libertarianism in my own research that Leo didn't mention. This included things like the arbitrary line drawn for the point at which the State is responsible for harm and the strange distinction of weighting harm caused by the State as more than harm caused by individuals even if individuals collectively harm more than the State.

The video was previously criticized for being a strawman, but this was by Libertarians who skipped around and didn't watch the full video. I don't think Leo was making a strawman when he said that Libertarians want to abolish Social Security even though it would raise the homeless population from 400,000 to 11 million. This talking point repeatedly came up from this side of the isle. This isn't a strawman, but rather a reductio ad absurdum. I also noticed that Libertarians must be morally absolutistic, although Leo didn't really explain why. He argued that morality is relative, but I can explain why the Libertarian must be a moral absolutist.

What it basically boils down to is that if a Libertarian is not morally absolutistic, then they lose the ability to justify having a government at all. They must say property rights and individual rights are absolute, but if they do they must then compromise these rights with a broader society. This is the logical trap the philosophy runs into because it is too rigid in its absolutism. Absolutism typically falls into logical traps because it cannot bend, it can only break when there are competing values. Relativistic philosophies can more easily bend to different contexts by comparison, thus helping to avoid many of these logical traps. Meanwhile, the Libertarian must argue in favor of moral absolutism in order to justify infringing on individual rights at all in any context.

For now I will keep the focus of this thread on Libertarianism. It would be too much to talk about both videos at once.

[trenton]

For Project Steelman I am also reading about anti-suffragist arguments prior to the passage of the 19th Amendment. Why should women have the right to vote? I don't really find the arguments against women voting particularly persuasive, but there is this pattern of appealing to natural law, complimentary roles, and appealing to laws backed by force. If men are drafted into the military, then why should women be allowed to vote if they don't have to apply for a draft? If women did have to apply for a draft, then who would take care of children by that point? Does this mean we should get rid of the draft for men even if Germany starts a war in the coming decades? (This was prior to WWII).

It looks like the 19th Amendment passed because WWI proved that women were necessary to win the war. They had to help build machines or be nurses for wounded men. This in turn proved the capabilities of women such that their roles were more flexible than previously assumed. This again corresponds with the historical narrative of technology dramatically changing the field such that women would have more grounds for claiming equality. Another example would be the invention of baby formula which made child care more efficient. In order for women's rights to sound silly, I would probably have to go back a few hundred years at least when men would agree that women voting would be outrageous and insane.

This again cuts into the idea of rights being absolute. I don't have the right to vote unless our society collectively imagines that I do.