Libertarianism, Wiccans and the freeish market

[Ares Johnson]

I'd put those who opposed the 1833 factory act as Libertarian. After all restricting ten year olds from working more than nine hours a day is goverment interference right?

If you'r against child labour then your for goverment regulation in at least some form right?

First off, let me stress that I don't think libertarianism is a magic fix-all that would work in all times and places. In the past, society has operated in ways that make it very obvious a hands-off approach would not work...not then. Conditions today are not what they were back then and are only improving. People are much more educated, more informed and generally better off than they used to be. People today would not tolerate many of the things that used to be commonplace, even without laws to back them up. I shudder to imagine to public outcry (and possible violent vigilantism) that would occur if a company abused children now the way 19th century factories did. Just look at what tends to happen to pedophiles in prison...even the other criminals don't just let that slide.

That said, I think when most people hear the phrase "child labor", they think of such abuses. Does anybody bat an eye at assigning their children household chores, or even mowing the lawn, provided of course, no harm comes to them? Is that child labor? And what about kids who want to do some work? Around here, kids must be 16 to hold an actual job, not just oddjobs for a neighbor. What if some 14 year old actually wants to be responsible and start saving up some money for a car or college, or buy his own video games, or pay for dates? What if his family is poor and he wants to help out? Shouldn't he be allowed to get a job, should someone be willing to hire him and he wants to have one?

Better for whom? Why wouldn't a free market system cause unintened consquences?

Free markets don't have intentions, so it's all unintended, that's the point. Modern societies and economies are enormously complex and I have serious doubts anybody short of a real-life transapient could possibly hope to understand them completely and therefore make informed decisions that don't just blow up in their face. Setting policies, regulations and taxes in the hopes of forcing a fix in one place just creates another problem elsewhere, which demands another policy, regulation or tax to fix that, etc, etc and that's how you get legal codes so complex that large companies create entire legal and compliance departments just to keep up with it all. I hear people complain about Big vs Small Businesses, that government favors the Big. Well, guess who has access to more man-hours to tread all the rules and regs?

No one (reasonable) is saying that Free Markets are quick, easy and always clean. They're simply less cluttered.

The minimum wage doesn't have to be provided by a business. Ration systems, goverment monthly income etc could also allow this.

Shifting it to government doesn't remove the financial problems, it simply changes where and how they appear. Money has to come from somewhere and with government, that somewhere is usually taxpayer wallets.

Presumbaly then you'd be OK with a large number of immigrants entering the country(wouldn't want to interfere with the fre emovement of people in the market, would we?)

Freedom of Movement is important, yes. I've lately started pondering about Korea's DMZ in conjunction with this issue. Yeah, it keeps North Korea's military out of South Korea, but it does pretty much keep North Koreans stuck there, doesn't it? Might be more of them would get the hell out of dodge if they didn't have to worry about landmines.

Your company could then hire them at $1 a day( don't want to interfere with their minimum wage) You'd be ok to take that pay or job with similar wage?)

Dude, think about this one for a minute. Connecticut Minimum Wage is $8.70/hr. My position start at $14.50/hr, and we get annual performance-based raises and a benefits package. Ask yourself, why are they paying me some 70% more, and some of my more senior co-workers, double what they're legally required to? Why does any job you care to mention that pays more than minimum wage do so?

The answer is because the jobs are worth more than that to them. They need to offer that much because that's what it takes to bring people in. Why do high-skilled jobs that require lots of training, like Doctors, pay a lot? Because that's what it takes to encourage people to go through all of that crap. Would you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and a decade in college and grad school if your reward was a job paying 30,000 US dollars a year? Hell no.

The only jobs that will pay so poorly are jobs that can be filled that cheaply. And really, any job worth so little money will probably just be given to a machine. Already some fast-food places in the US are started to look into tablet-based devices to replace cashiers, especially in places with high minimum wages. See again point of unintended consequences.

It's a nice idea, but of course this gets thorny. Define Harm. Is turning me down for a bank loan harming me? Different groups will come out on different sides of the equation.

Harm is too broad a term, too fuzzy. I go with Aggression as it's generally understood in The Non-Aggression Principle (NAP).

...any unsolicited actions of others that physically affect an individual’s property or person, no matter if the result of those actions is damaging, beneficial, or neutral to the owner, are considered violent or aggressive when they are against the owner's free will and interfere with his right to self-determination and the principle of self-ownership

In other words, any action taken against you or your stuff without your permission is Aggression and is thus wrong. You can do whatever you want with yourself and your stuff, provided you don't break this rule.

So, according to this, your example of the refused bank loan is a very clear No. That lender has a right to use their money as they see fit, it is their property. They can choose to lend, or not lend, to whoever they wish. Given that they make money off interest, they will in all likelihood only refuse loans to those they don't believe will be good for it. Should they have shadier reasons for not doing so (maybe they're racist or something), surely some other lender will not and will give the you loan if you're good for it. Your rights are not violated if they turn you down, though.

On the flip side, should anyone compel a lender to make a loan they have not in some way consented to, their rights are violated.

The NAP also provides a means against things like pollution, seeing as pollution will somewhere, somehow, damage somebody's person or property. Granted this would not necessarily be neat or easy to figure out in some cases. However, given the increasingly widespread sentiments for being green, energy efficient and so on, it's not like companies don't have an incentive to clean up. Plus simple technological advance helps. Already industrialized countries are polluting less per capita, it's the poorer countries, with less efficient and advanced tech that are the biggest polluters now, and they'll improve with time as well.