Comment by CryptoPunk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by CryptoPunk | Hacker News Reader

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You have the same belief that you are now lampooning libertarians over. That is what your initial comment implied:

>>Don’t wear seatbelts either huh?

The implication here is that someone who on principle, opposes mandated health care, may as well oppose seatbelt laws.

In fact I saw many proponents of mandates prohibiting private citizens from providing a wide range of services to unvaccinated people, cite society's acceptance of restaurant sanitary permits, to justify these mandates. So this belief - that there is no principled difference between any restriction on private interaction - appears to be widely held among anti-libertarians.

>>That is why there isn’t much anti-libertarian ideology

Anti-libertarian ideology is the belief that we as a society have a right to impose our will on peaceful people, and in doing so deny them the right to their person, property and liberty, for the greater good.

To give a mundane example, it means restaurants having to meet mandatory minimum health standards, even if there are patrons who are willing to dine at restaurants which don't meet those standards.

Once that principle is accepted, then anything can be accepted, even locking 150,000 elderly people in their room for over a year, for their own safety:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/long-term-care-covid-...

Or taxing people of 50 percent of their income.

Health insurance and seatbelts are comparable concepts, that is what the seat belt comment was about.

Seat belts and 3 months of Shanghai style quarantines are way different.

The other points raised are like asking someone if they like hot sauce and when they say yes, spraying bear spray in their eyes and their kids eyes and their dogs eyes because “it’s the same conceptually” in an absurdist way since both are spicy. Hence back to the earlier point, people aren’t anti-libertarian but rather find much of what is espoused in the name of libertarianism is too absurd to take seriously.

>>Health insurance and seatbelts are comparable concepts, that is what the seat belt comment was about.

A mandate to have health insurance is orders of magnitude more impactful on the unwilling than a mandate to wear a seatbelt. But because of some commonality in the principle behind both mandates, you believe a person must accept the latter if they accept the former, to be morally consistent.

>>Hence back to the earlier point, people aren’t anti-libertarian but rather find much of what is espoused in the name of libertarianism is too absurd to take seriously.

What I encountered when denouncing mandates that turned unvaccinated people into second class citizens is people using our society's acceptance of sanitary permits for restaurants as justification for such mandates. It is a rejection, on principle, of the right to one's own person, property and liberty. For that reason, I conclude anti-libertarianism animates laws that violate the right to private property, bodily autonomy, and personal freedom, whether that be mandatory minimum restaurant safety standards, the Income Tax Act, vaccine mandates or lockdowns.

>>Seat belts and 3 months of Shanghai style quarantines are way different.

Of course they're way different. But the former opens the door to the latter, because there is no hard principle to prevent the latter when you accept the principle that justifies the former. That is how Canada ended up confining 150,000 elderly people in their room for over a year. There was no principled reason not to confine innocent people for the greater good, so once the cost-benefit analysis determined it was the correct policy, the restriction was imposed.

You only oppose "3 months of Shanghai style quarantines" because you view the restrictions as being disproportionate to the public benefit they produce. Not because you oppose restrictions limiting personal autonomy on principle.

> there is no hard principle to prevent the latter when you accept the principle that justifies the former.

Relying on the classic joke “you said you’d sleep with them for $x million, so we’ve established what you are in principle and now we’re just bargaining over price” as the the arguments for libertarian views is not going to persuade anyone but the choir. Especially when the $x million that gets the first “sure” is not just a larger amount of the same thing, but different like as an extreme example: “would your do xyx if it stopped earth being destroyed by an asteroid, yes? Then we established you’re for xyz in principle”

Once again, back to my repeated observation about why libertarian arguments are not taken seriously, they literally are the form of a classic joke. It would be easy to make the same flawed arguments against anything, including libertarian views but I’m not going to make flawed arguments like that because they always backfire. For example in this comment chain, that reasoning has made libertarianism look like its build on a bad logic and rotten foundations

>>as the the arguments for libertarian views is not going to persuade anyone but the choir

Once again, you miss my point, that you yourself have subscribed to this line of argument, where you argue one must accept the greater application of a principle if they accept the lesser application, when you made your snide remark that the original commenter must also reject seatbelt laws. You're also completely ignoring my claim that I've repeatedly witnessed many other anti-libertarians doing the same in relation to COVID restrictions.

Anti-libertarianism is a cause, movement and ideology, and it enables any level of rights violation, subject to the conditions that society finds itself in, because as an ideology, it rationalizes away the principle that we do not have a right to violate human rights. Libertarianism is the absence of this ideology that attempts to rationalize undermining human rights, leaving only the principle that it is morally inexcusable to violate human rights.

Imagine A libertarian exercised his freedom by not masking on the subway and due to that gave Covid to an older passenger who later died, depriving him of right to life.

How could we ever have seen that different individuals’ rights can conflict?! Impossible! Couldn’t be imagined! it’s morally inexcusable. How impolite of peoples rights to not all be compatible 100% of the time. Life shouldn’t be nuanced like that! It’s inexcusable. Wait that’s awkward, apparently that’s one of the core tenets of libertarianism alongside the core logic that giving an inch is the same as giving a light year in terms of principles.

I don’t take libertarianism seriously because of blatant things like that usually being core to proponents. I struggle to even believe they believe there arguments.

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