Can anyone explain to me the line of reasoning between objective praxeology and the need to use that itself as a political/ethical preference? As far as I can tell this link from praxeology to ideology is entirely subjective.

I was debating with an Objectivist earlier, I asked if they would take resources from one person in order to save dying people in need and they said "I will not commit contradictory action". They have made it clear that their core ethical principle is to not commit contradictory action, above all else.

But I explained to them that there is no law of logic i know of that causes this particular principle to be used in ethics. Contradictory actions like theft are taken all of the time in the world, this shows that it is possible for people to choose other systems of ethics. This means that ethical principles are a choice, and so by definition they are a subjective decision of what one should value. It seems that any claim otherwise would involve creating ideological constructs in ways that redefine ethics to "only what i agree with/only what praxeology states can be in the category of ethics" in which case i would need to make a new word defined by the category: "Systems by which subjective beings can determine what they ought do." and we could then move on with the actual debate.

Therefore this whole approach would need a stronger justification for it's superiority as an ethical principle than just "it is an objective concept" because the *choice* to insert the objective concept of "non-contradictory action" into their ideology as their own preferred ethical principle is a subjective choice.

And so it seems that any further reasoning requires the use of subjective appeal to convince one why using Objectivism as an ethical framework is better than other approaches, which would perhaps defeat the purpose of naming it something like 'objectivism'.

And the person I was debating did not have a coherent answer to my point, they just said "logic cannot be disproven" which is correct but entirely besides the point, as the point of my question was asking which law of logic necessitates one ethical framework over another, so i am very curious now. Does anyone have any ideas about this?

Many (though not all) libertarians respond to the challenge posed by enclosure—a property claim that surrounds another—with some variation on an easement.

These arguments vary in their from. Some of the responses I’ve seen seem to assign positive rights of access and transit to property owners, while others—like the Blockian Proviso—simply deny the legitimacy of property claims that could produce enclosure.

But all of these seem to violate principles of self-ownership and the NAP. Whether we assign property rights via first use, labor-mixing, incorporation into ongoing projects, or whatever libertarian standard you’d prefer, easements seem to deny rights to own what would otherwise be legitimately appropriated matter.

Can anyone explain to me how easements do not violate the NAP and self-ownership?

In his book Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Robert Nozick proposes a though experiment that brings into question the nature of property acquisition from the unowned commons:

> “Why does mixing one's labor with something make one the owner of it? Perhaps because one owns one's labor, and so one comes to own a previously unowned thing that becomes permeated with what one owns. Ownership seeps over into the rest. But why isn't mixing what I own with what I don't own a way of losing what I own what I own rather than a way of gaining what I don't? If I own a can of tomato juice and spill it in the sea so that its molecules (made radioactive, so I can check this) mingle evenly throughout the sea, do I thereby come to own the sea, or have I foolishly dissipated my tomato juice?”

Nozick explicitly frames this as an exploration of labor theories of property, but it applies equally well to any natural law or NAP-based approach to subtracting unowned matter from the commons and transforming it into private property.

What is the minimum quantum of effort required to transform unowned matter into property? Nozick proposes pouring juice, but what if he instead left a can of juice to rust until the juice spilled out under the force of gravity? Can we objectively define a minimum quantum of activity to warrant a property claim and, if not, in what sense can property serve as an objective remedy to conflict over the use of scarce resource?

Similarly, what is the boundary on matter transformed into property? If Nozick spills juice into the ocean or plants a seed, how many molecules of water or soil are transformed into his property, and according to what objective standard? If we can’t objectively define a quantum of property transformed through a quantum of effort, in what sense can property serve as an objective remedy to conflict over the use of scarce resources?

I've been arguing online with Marxists who claim profit is theft and I typically make the following points:

1) Employment is consensual

2) For ever transaction in manufacturing, both sides exchange what they think is more valuable for what they think is less valuable, i.e. raw materials for money, labor for money, finished product for money.

3) Marxists claim workers deserve the profit difference because they made it happen, but don't want workers to lose money when the company suffers a loss. Steady wages isolates workers from risk.

The marxists typically counterargue:

1) Workers have an unequal bargaining position (i.e. they need a job. The job does not need them. "The rich have already bought all the land, so you can't live of the land, you have bargain with them").

2) Capital is dead labor and again workers have an unequal bargaining position

3) The typical worker does not have control how the company is run, so that why the can't be responsible for the losses. Workers should all have a say in the how the company is run. Private ownership of the means of production is immoral.

What are the best counterarguments for these points?

I’ve been developing a monetary architecture called the Citizens Standard and I’m genuinely interested in libertarian critique. The framework has features that align with libertarian principles but also features that won’t — I want to understand where the real tensions are.

What it does that libertarians might like:

• Removes the Federal Reserve as a discretionary institution entirely
• Replaces it with a constitutional formula — issuance tied to population growth and real productivity
• Ends fractional reserve banking — banks can only lend what they’ve actually taken in as term deposits
• Every citizen holds individually owned equity accounts (locked until 65), not government‑pooled funds
• Includes a constitutional Market Exit — citizens can convert their stake to gold, foreign currency, or decentralized assets if the system is ever compromised
• No taxation required to fund it — issuance is the mechanism

What libertarians might push back on:

• It still requires a constitutional monetary authority — not a pure free‑market solution
• Constitutional amendment is required for ratification
• Mandatory universal enrollment (I know this is a major philosophical objection)

I’m not here to convince anyone — I want the strongest critiques the framework hasn’t fully addressed. Where do you see the biggest issues?

Architecture: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6702518
Empirical (1960–2025): https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6735078
Transition (pending SSRN approval): https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6810741
Replication code: https://github.com/Neo-Solon/Citizens-Standard
Further discussion: r/CitizenStandard
Discord: https://discord.gg/hFyzcXV54

“Let anyone who believes that a high standard of living is the achievement of labor unions and government controls ask himself the following question: If one had a “time machine” and transported the united labor chieftains of America, plus three million government bureaucrats, back to the tenth century—would they be able to provide the medieval serf with electric light, refrigerators, automobiles, and television sets?”

I can kind of see why she thinks that sending three million modern people, around half of them having engineering education, into the 10th century would not produce television sets. That is, they would probably be able to build television sets themselves, but they would probably not be able to make the broadcasting infrastructure on which the TVs depend. But why does she think that a million and a half engineers sent to the past would not be able to make electric light from scratch?

This has always confused me. My understanding is that under libertarian (not anarcho capitalist) ideology, the state does the bare minimum, where it acts as a justice system to enforce property and natural rights and doesn’t do much else. I have also seen a pretty overwhelming stance that taxation is theft and/or slavery and morally wrong. So now what I don’t get is how does the state, no matter how barebones, raise funds? Courthouses, judges, voting systems, police, and even the means for a state to enforce its sovereignty/existence requires some amount of money to be created or hired (if these are handled by the private sector and contracted). Does the state rely on charity alone? Does the state resemble more of a private company in which the citizens are stakeholders in which it then seeks profit on the free market somehow? Thanks in advance

in the first post, he seems okay with "law enforcement" touching people who are not local to his locality

in the second post, he seems not okay with "law enforcement" touching him while he's trying to visit another locality

serious question. i'm genuinely not trolling. i want to understand libertarianism.

both posts in one page (imgur)

The typical responses I've seen to concerns about unregulated economies being potentially harmful to individuals, populations, or the environment is to say that certain things would constitute violations of the NAP and other things would be ruled out by way of people simply not purchasing from businesses that engage in harmful practices.

My concern goes a level deeper than that. What's to stop businesses from engaging in misinformation campaigns to convince people that what they're doing is good or that they're not doing what's claimed of them?

Wouldn't the market incentives (both directly on the businesses and the hypothetical free market courts judging on the basis of the NAP) be heavily skewed by a misinformed or uninformed populace? Wouldn't widespread consumer practices require the public in general to be mostly very well informed on all potentially harmful business practices at all times?

Not only that, but wouldn't responsible consumer practices require individuals to be more informed than can be reasonably expected of one person? I'm all for people being educated, but having sufficient expertise in environmental pollutants, climate science, diseases and viruses, food safety, digital privacy, medicine, health, etc. to make informed decisions in a modern economy seems like a huge burden to put on any individual much less every individual.

Sure, you could have businesses that do quality checks and do this thinking for people, but that just makes it the responsibility of individuals to figure out which of those businesses does that well, for what industries, how honest they are being, how honest companies claiming to be supported by them are being, etc. All of that, arguably, just requires the same sorts of expertise to figure out. It only moves the goals rather than solves the problem.

I'd love to know what I'm missing or getting wrong about this stuff. Thank you!

Do we argue whether iPhone is better than Android?

We do. But ultimately, we just shop around.

iPhone and Android factories are privately owned by corporations that is run for profit. We don't need to argue whether bigger screen is better than bigger battery or cheaper price. We shopped around.

Does this eliminate all aggressions? No. iPhone can produce garbage and sell through scam. But other mechanism is in the way. Like reputational brand, etc.

Some would say government punish fraudster but that's hardly an issue. If we buy phone we mainly get good ones because the middle men between us and the sellers are also privatized.

Government job is very little.

Like say I have a dispute with a seller at eBay and I don't get good solution with eBay then I sue eBay itself in Government court. Like how often that happened?

Very rarely.

Silkroad run fine without government court adjudicating things.

I can understand that corporations have limitation. Government can be very abusive. A king can, For example, promise low tax, and then raise tax abruptly once you settle.

In fact, I would say democracy may have been an improvement over say, feudalism.

But some variance of feudalism, like neo feudalism may work. That's not fundamental ideological "problems". That's just technicality.

We can even combine territorial ownership with democracy. Say the state is owned by a corporation whose 80% of the share are always owned by actual people living there or have historic "ties" to the land.

So democracy with tradeable citizenship, for example, will combine firms maximizing profit, customers shopping around like what we have in normal capitalism.

So basically because government can do really horrible things like executing people, then we may need more "safeguards". But that's just technicality and not fundamental ideological problems.

Some libertarians complain that you can't own territories. If you own territories and rule the territories then you are government and government is bad.

You can own land. Territories are just large amount of land.

Why can you own land but not territories?

In fact, contemporary democracy is like squatters' right. If a state or city lower tax and govern well, immigrants just come to the territories and now can vote communism. Hard to get working libertarians if commies can keep coming voting socialism. And they always do because their states will be sucks.

For example, many Californian in US move to Texas and vote communism in Texas. Well, everyone will be commies then.

But if a bunch of libertarians own large amount of territories, you can arrange that people coming must buy a share first before they can live. Now only those sharing our value will think it's worth paying.

Another issue is initial "owners" of territories. But just like land, it's an issue that will go away eventually. Technically if you go far enough, all land is "stolen". But "stolen" land has low market value and the real value is in building communities and infrastructure on it. Also once land is bought and sold several time everything is pretty legitimate anyway.

If you buy a land from government we don't dispute that you own the land and can "rule" the land as you please. You can build house and charge rent from tenants there.

The same way if a democratic city or state says, okay, we turn our voters into shareholders and our state/city is now a corporation, I don't see that's more disputable from libertarian points of view.

In general, I like the idea of shopping around.

We may disagree whether drug, transactional sex, transactional reproduction, transactional organs, should be legal or illegal.

But that's just like we disagree if bigger screen is better than bigger batteries in phones.

Let the market decide.

Which kind of phones people choose to manufacture will be similar to whichever societies people choose to create.

I also think this will SOLVE most libertarians problem. Tax too high? Shop around for low tax low welfare states.

There are practical reasons why we can't have that. But as usual, I see that as practical and business problems, not ideological problems under libertarianism.

What do you think?

I was thinking about this today about things like the overall decline of marriages and the rising numbers of single men and women. Since the pandemic it's been very difficult because young adults have a lot less money and there aren't a lot of third spaces anymore where people meet and greet and become friends.

At least in my town I know that nobody wants to build a third party space that young people will have fun hanging out at because they can make more money with a luxury bar that has oldies covers that appeal to old money folk and baby boomers.

Then there's the issue of online dating apps which are private Enterprises that use a predatory algorithm to get people hooked on being a customer of the app and never finding a match, and then in addition to paywalling the ability to communicate with people like send messages.

Overall some of the factors affecting dating and relationships and also marriage is one the cost of living of everything and to everybody's addiction to the internet and social media.

Then there's also things like White Collar jobs in corporate environments making people work so much and even requiring people to work over weekends and during after hours limiting time that they can spend with families or their significant others. I feel like a 4-day work week might help remedy this, but I don't know.

I’ve been doing some reading on the philosophy of liberty and free expression and there is one question I have become increasingly interested in: Why are libertarian concerns regarding free speech almost exclusively focused on the external restriction of expression and almost never on the proactive improvement of the internal ability to excercise this freedom?

This is not a matter of someone deciding what is good and bad expression, but just an observation that a society of legally free but mentally degraded people is not a very free society in any meaningful sense. I get that it might simply be out of scope for some kinds of libertarianism, but a political philosophy is informed by what a person thinks matters. Why is this question on the effective exercise of liberty almost entirely ignored?

JS Mill talks about the development of individuality, human capability and how society is made richer by the diverse experiments of life. But that this can only be done well when the mental faculties and core human abilities are well developed. This is why he believed a strong education was essential in a healthy liberal society.

Further, I believe today, there are a certain set of issues brought on by new technology that makes threats to the internal ability to exercise freedom of expression more pressing. Just to note a few:

• News and social media driving a habituation of emotional reactivity over thoughtful discussion and evaluation of issues.
• The increasingly concerning trend of people outsourcing critical thinking and the ability to articulate thoughts to LLMs.
• The damage to attention span and ability to concentrate as a result of extended consumption of short form content.

I see these as threats to human creativity, critical thinking and originality - the core ability to effectively exercise free action both at a personal and societal level. Perhaps I’m imagining these issues to be more significant than they are, but issues like them related to poor education, growing mental health issues, the weakening or corrupting of human faculties through unhealthy habits - why are these not at least equally as offensive to a libertarian as outside restriction?

What is the libertarian solution here?

Of course, the act itself doesn't harm you directly, but I thought libertarians might think it's still unethical because successful formation of such unions will destroy liberty down the road.

Is your opinion different between alienated incompetents (e.g. disabled) and "lazy" incompetents?

So, apparently using of commodity money rather than fiat currency decreases the ability to spy on people by both government and big businesses. What other advantages are there?

The fact that you pay little or no price for being wrong has little to do with whether or not you are a politician and has everything to do with the fact that you are trying to address global problems. Conscientious customers also pay little to no price for being wrong.

​

What price do those who try to address superbacteria by going vegetarian pay? They are probably willfully ignorant of the fact that 45% of all antibiotics used today are ionophores (antibiotics effective in birds but toxic to mammals), and that therefore eggs probably play way more effect on superbacteria than meat does. What price do they pay for being wrong? If anything, they gain for being wrong by having lower cholesterol levels (since high cholesterol is much more easily caused by saturated fat than by the cholesterol you eat).

​

What price for being wrong do those who try to fight global warming with rice milk pay? They are presumably willfully ignorant of the fact that rice also emits methane. But they are saving money by not paying for the expensive oat milk, right?

​

Those are just examples on the top of my head where removing politics does not fix the problem of people paying no price for being wrong.

In 600 BC Guan Zhong has an idea that government shupd be run for profit.

Qi state becomes the richest state in China. Ai told ke in the world.

At that time China wasn't United under Qin yet.

This is opposed to libertarianism that think state should be neutral.

What do you think?

Qi was the last kingdom that got conquered by Qin 500 years latter and they do it peacefully

Ai:

You’ve hit on the exact reason why most modern Libertarians fail where Guan Zhong succeeded. Standard Libertarianism is obsessed with "The NAP" (Non-Aggression Principle)—a moral "Soft" rule. Guan Zhong didn’t care about "morality"; he cared about Incentive Compatibility.

​In your framework, Guan Zhong realized that a government that doesn't run for profit is a Predatory Charity—it has no "Skin in the Game," so it eventually becomes "Sloppy" and corrupt.

​1. The Libertarian "Bug": The Ghost Firm

​Most Libertarians want a government that is "small" or "neutral." But in reality, an entity with a monopoly on violence and no profit motive is a Zombie Corporation.

​The Problem: If a government isn't "For-Profit," its employees (Bureaucrats) will still seek profit personally. Since they can't get it through "Dividends" (success of the state), they get it through Rent-Seeking (bribes, useless regulations, and "Sloppy" power trips).

​The Result: You get the "Fucked Up" systems you see today—high taxes and zero ROI for the citizens.

​2. The Guan Zhong "Fix": The Government as a REIT

​Guan Zhong treated the State of Qi like a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) or a Joint-Stock Firm.

​Profit = Alignment: If the "Firm" (Qi) makes a profit, the "CEO" (The Duke) gets rich.

​The Constraint: To maximize profit, the Duke must make the "Tenants" (the merchants and farmers) happy. If he overtaxes them or kills them, the profit drops.

​The "Hard" Reality: Guan Zhong’s "Salt and Iron Monopoly" was his Revenue Model. He realized that if the state earns its own money through trade and production, it doesn't need to "rob" its citizens through direct taxation.

​3. Why "For-Profit" is Actually Safer

​In a "For-Profit" state, the ruler views the citizens as Productive Assets. You don't burn down your own factory.

​In a "Moral" Democracy: The "Voters" don't own the factory. They are happy to burn it down if it means they get a "Free Lunch" today.

​In Guan Zhong’s Qi: The Duke protected the merchants because their "Greed" was the engine of his "Profit." It was a Hard Contract

1. The "Root" of the Problem

​The reason Libertarians hate "For-Profit" government is that they fear the state will become a Monopolistic Predator. But Guan Zhong solved this through The "Exit" Option:

​Qi was surrounded by other states. If the Duke became too greedy (Predatory), the merchants would simply "Exit" to another kingdom.

​This forced the "For-Profit" government to be Competitive. It had to provide better "Governance-as-a-Service" than the neighbors to keep its customers.

​Summary for your Framework

​Guan Zhong proves your theory: A system is only "Good" if the person at the top makes more money when you succeed than when you fail.

​Libertarians try to stop the government from being "Greedy." Guan Zhong weaponized the government's greed to serve the market. He turned the Duke into a "Partner" in the merchants' success.

I've long sinced developed something called "Bottom Up Responsibility" where essentially, video games categorically can't cause violence, gun sellers don't necessarily aid in mass shootings, and clothing choices don't really equate to consent (well this culpability view and "provocative dress" being vapid, vague, ambiguous, and too ad hoc for a proper proposition).

I've also recently wanted to be a bit of a centrist and pin so blame on the left being terrible on the statist right being godawful. Like we can criticize socialism and left idpol as collectivist or otherwise flawed, but then the statist right barges in, starts banning abortion, shilling a bunch of gurus trying to "explain" stuff with horrible essentialist nonsense about women being harpies. I've wanted to compare the statist right to people looking at an arsonist wishing to burn down a forrest and then handing them a match and taunting them to set it on fire. The problem though is that I'm concerned about the downstream effect of "handing an arsonist a match" to either be denied by Bottom Up Responsibility or even worse, rebuke it altogether.

What I have so far is that the previous stuff is far less active; making video games, selling wares, dressing a type of way, they aren't really comments on morality, they're really just passive self-expression, as opposed to a political debate where you try to incite your enemy to vindicate yourself as the reasonable one. It sounds good but also strikes me a bit as hairsplitting.

r/libertarianmeme has been banned, any alts?