Libertarian dilemma

S

spamandham

Registered Senior Member
The hope for the following excercise is to begin with the given assumptions and derive a conclusion for the posed dilemma. I'm hoping it doesn't just turn into an opinion poll.

Assume a libertarian position of the following aspects:
1. People have a right to do anything they want as long as an unwilling participant is not affected against their interests.

2. Private property is absolute.

3. Your body and all it poduces are your private property, as is anything you make a fair trade for.

4. People are to be held responsible only for their own behavior, not the behavior of others.

Now assume the following scenario:

A strip club opens next to your house. The exterior of the club is tastefull. There is nothing directly offensive about the club. They have adequate parking, subdued lighting, it is not noisy, in fact you wouldn't even know it was a strip club if not for the patrons. The owner refuses to relocate, shut down, or in any other way change his business. The patrons often have sex in their cars on the street and throw used condoms, beer bottles, etc into your yard. They often yell obscentities at your family members, and are just all around nasty. Most of the time you are not home when these things are happening, so you don't know who did them. Also, your property value just dropped in half as a result.

Is the club owner somehow liable for the behavior of the patrons, or is it up to you to guard your property constantly and prosecute each individual disorderly patron? Is the club owner somehow liable for your reduced property value? Is there a solution to this problem that fits within the assumed libertarian guidelines?

Thanks!
 
Step 1 here is to vote the government emergency powers. They can then form a secretive Ministry of "getting those suckers" who is not hamstrung by overly restrictive criminal rights policies. They can then make your problem dissapear for you, and in return you through your full support behind them, spout the party line, and not make a ruckus when those emergency powers you gave them to get rid of the strip club are never repealed.
 
You guys ever hear about ZONING regulations????

R=Residential
C=Commercial
I=Industrial
M=Mixed Use
A=Agriculture
Ect...Ect.....

Strip house should never be located next to Joe smith house...It's a zoning violation....nothing to do with liberterian agenda. The project to built a strip club in a residential zone should have been killed at planning phase and booed in the first public hearing.
 
well, that’s how zoning works in OUR society Flores, but in a truly libertarian society... who knows? I figure anyone would be able to build anything they like on land that belongs to them, without the government pushing them around and saying no.
 
SpyMoose said:
well, that’s how zoning works in OUR society Flores, but in a truly libertarian society... who knows? I figure anyone would be able to build anything they like on land that belongs to them, without the government pushing them around and saying no.
Click to expand...

Right. This is a theoretical discussion (I hope) and not merely arguments about existing or proposed legislation within any existing state.
 
Well, knowing libertarians, I'm sure none of them would have a problem if you (the owner of the house getting littered on) were to hide in your own bushes with your own precision rifle, and pop the heads of those offending persons like big brain filled grapefruits. Oh sure maybe the law would intervene, even in a libertarian society, but you just say that you were defending your property and you are off the hook. After all, ownership of property is absolute in a libertarian society. Those people need to suck it up and take responcibility for thier actions, right?
 
this scenario is an example of the consequences of freedom. The more freedom a society has the more bullshit any given individual has to tolerate. Thus, in a libertarian society i would prepose harsh penalities for breaking the few laws that exist. It the above situation i think the home owner should be able to file a complaint in court against the patrons that would start a process...

1st the court should ASK the strip club owner to ask his patrons to be more considerate (if this does not work see 2)

2nd court issues an order outlining strict penalites including fines and jail time for any patrons yelling obscencites at the homeowner, leaving condoms on public property (the street) or the home owners property etc. (If this fails....3)

3rd the court provides aggressive security with the express intention of catching violators, meaning the the law enforcement would set up survilence cameras, take license plate numbers, provide standing guards etc. The aggressive security would eventually catch a violater and quickly make an example of him. This would hopefuly dissaude the offensive behavior. (if this fails see 4)


4 Alas, if continue security and prosecution fails... then the homeowner must simply understand the he is a victim of other people's freedom.
 
License plate numbers?! In a libertarian society?! Come on people, get into the mood of the topic of the thread. Why would these people have license plates on their cars? What business does the government have keeping tabs on who owns what car? I suppose you couldn’t drive your car if the government decided to withhold the plate? I suppose you would have to tell the government if you wanted to sell YOUR car so they could make sure they know what plate belongs to who? What a nightmare! License plates may be a good idea for, I don’t know... Nazi Germany, but remember, we are talking about a libertarian system here.
 
Under a truly libertarian society, what exactly is to stop me from forming an armed biker gang, riding into a small town, and taking it as my own? It's probably true that most of the residents of the town would be armed, but they've got a lot more to lose than my posy would, even if they had better numbers, don't you think they might surrender if I torched a few homes and threatened that if they tried to kick me out I'd torch a few more before they got me? I guess that there's a fine line between a completely free society and total anarchy.
 
In a truly libertarian society, what prevents people from forming protection groups or from purchasing professional protection services to ensure your gang doesn't bother with that town?
 
"You guys ever hear about ZONING regulations????"

Exactly. In this case the local council would be responsible for lowering the value of residential properties in the area - & would have to face the wrath of the community at the next council elections.
 
Mystech said:
Under a truly libertarian society, what exactly is to stop me from forming an armed biker gang, riding into a small town, and taking it as my own? It's probably true that most of the residents of the town would be armed, but they've got a lot more to lose than my posy would, even if they had better numbers, don't you think they might surrender if I torched a few homes and threatened that if they tried to kick me out I'd torch a few more before they got me? I guess that there's a fine line between a completely free society and total anarchy.
Click to expand...
Libertarianism isn't anarchy. The idea behind libertarianism is that the government exists to preserve the rights and freedoms of everyone. Taking over a town with an armed biker gang would probably constitute an infringement upon the rights and freedoms of the townspeople, so the police would certainly be justified in stopping you.

In the case of the strip club, it would be the responsibility of the police to enforce the home owner's rights. Any club patron who was caught littering or harassing the home owner would be punished somehow. Of course as a practical matter it would be problematic for the police to spend all day sitting around outside the club in order to guard a house, but no one ever claimed that libertarianism makes life easy for law enforcement.
 
Bubblecar said:
"You guys ever hear about ZONING regulations????"

Exactly. In this case the local council would be responsible for lowering the value of residential properties in the area - & would have to face the wrath of the community at the next council elections.
Click to expand...

Wrath dosn't make people into better zoners, Bubble. You need competent people in these positions, and if you your liberty demands that local people fill these zoning positions you are probably going to run a high risk of boneheads deciding what gets built where.

Even so, I still don't think that zoning regulations of any sort really jive with a truly libertarian world view. If its your property.... man build what the heck you like on it!
 
Here's a thought on this. The concept is that once trespass has taken place, any perpetrator may be held responsible for their own act, weighted by the probability of getting caught. In other words, if you catch someone, they could be held liable for the acts of numerous others as well, as compensation for their trespass. (joint and several liability).
 
(Topic Post) said:
Is the club owner somehow liable for the behavior of the patrons, or is it up to you to guard your property constantly and prosecute each individual disorderly patron?
Click to expand...
Turning back to the topic post:

Naturally, the answer isn't a simple yes or no.

Club owners and management are responsible for the conduct of the patrons while on club property.

Club owners and management are responsible for compliance with alcohol-service regulations.

Once a patron leaves the property, barring an alcohol-service issue, it's out of the club owner's hands.

The alcohol-service issue is generally applied in DWI cases. It has been undermined by a recent attempt to prosecute a man who delivered another man to his car, but that's a stupid mess in and of itself. (Really, it's ludicrous; there's a topic buried around here somewhere, and I can always dig the news story up if it's important.)

Alcohol-service issues are rarely raised outside DWI cases. This is easily explained, I think, by starting with the idea of a strip club. In any given community with T&A enterprises, there is always someone or a group of people who want that enterprise shut down. Generally, they are willing to use any means short of outright terrorism. (In Oregon, one person even tried extortion, and sought to discourage the dancers from working by playing a Scarlet Letter game, the primary effect of which was to make it dangerous for some of the dancers to leave their apartment without armed protection.)

The business community, however, is not willing to use any means to get rid of an undesirable establishment. Even if every tavern and martini bar in town is envious of the strip club, they're not about to invoke alcohol-service issues in order to break the strip club. Because alcohol-service issues can be invoked against pretty much any tavern or bar in town on any given night. If you get the authority scrutinizing that closely, the entire nightlife in a city can be disrupted, creating a rather impressive economic ripple effect.

Also, by the time cities get around to forcing the clubs to close or move on behalf of residents in general, you probably wouldn't want to be in the neighborhood anymore, anyway. The neighborhood has too much revenue potential, and you might be in the only "house" left on the street, with your view stolen away by condos, your flowers dead from the additional pollution, your cats run over in the street by drunk people coming home from other clubs, and litter, litter, litter.

However ... above all else, I must acknowledge both the phrase, "a strip club opens next to your house," and the discussion of zoning laws. The last time I watched closely a municipal fight between nightclubs and complainers, I had to ask myself the question, "Well, why did you open a 'family restaurant' next to a well-known exotic club?" I mean, seriously, the bar was easy to find; it stood in the middle of a blank area on a major thoroughfare. Somebody bought the property for either location or price without considering the implications. Yes, it's a good spot on the primary north-south thoroughfare, but nobody noticed that the nearest building was across the street and buffered by a large commercial parking lot. Before it was a strip club it was a rock room. There are reasons nobody built next to it.

But ... yeah ... if the club is opening near houses, there's a zoning question.

In a purely libertarian consideration, the resident just has to shut up and live with it. (Nothing says the resident can't find some means of taking it up with the individual offenders. It's just a matter of whether it's worth the effort.)
 
Last edited:
I think the only purely libertarian answer to this question is "If you don’t like it, move!" or some sort of extraordinary effort on the behalf of the police force, which in a libertarian society would no doubt be too taxed to take up a complaint of littering. The "alcohol issue" could not be raised because in a libertarian society, establishments serving alcohol would not be licensed or answerable to the government, its our choice what we sell to who and who gets drunk on it.
 
The libertarian movement has gotten so caught up in the (utterly futile) quest of trying to change the government, that we often lose track of the ramifications of our philosophy in a non-governmental context.

Ayn Rand's extremist fiction -- in which individuals assiduously pay 25 cents to borrow each other's car -- notwithstanding, the libertarian code is actually one that operates at the constitutional level. The government has no right to control the behavior of its constituents so long as they don't violate the basic libertarian code. Just as our constitution does not say much about the rights that individuals have to control each other's behavior, neither does the libertarian code.

To organize a society on libertarian principles, and have it actually function and survive, requires that the price we pay for freedom from the stifling, poorly crafted, inflexible order of a powerful government is tolerance of a certain disorder at the individual level. We presume that the flaws, errors, and sorrows inherent in this disorder will, on the average, be lesser in number and degree than those of government-imposed order. Those of us who discover we don't really feel this way are absolutely free to leave, as one of our most sacred but seldom stated axioms is: "Peaceful people have the right to immigrate and emigrate freely."

People who give up the predictable environment provided by zoning laws are going to have to put up with neighbors they don't like and sudden fluctuations in property values. Judging from a random sample of text in any libertarian magazine, one would assume that most libertarians are male, curmudgeonly, and don't get out much. We probably don't water our own lawns so we don't care much about property values, and we probably don't get up from our word processors often enough to notice the traffic.

If a group of us who have been living together congenially in a community don't like some interlopers who suddenly appear nearby, we might go out and tell them so. If they choose not to cooperate because there is no zoning law to force them to, we will remind them that this is a libertarian society and that is a private road, and that we who own the road have not given them permission to disport themselves on it inside parked cars. One party in each car is undoubtedly a paid participant hired from the strip club, who has a strong incentive to continue plying their trade in this location without having their customers turned off by homeowners throwing rocks at trespassers on their private road.

Eventually an uneasy but durable truce will prevail. The strip club will build little rooms upstairs or in the back where the patrons can engage the employees in comfort and without any danger of being hit by rocks. The homeowners will hire tough-looking guys to sit quietly on the berm between the houses and the private road (libertarians probably won't bother building sidewalks), discouraging people from doing anything there except driving. These extra services will enrich the club, its employees, and the tough looking guys, boosting the economy and making everybody happy.

You have to think way outside the box to successfully imagine a libertarian society. We're so used to things like public roads that we forget they won't exist. People will be free to form homeowners associations and maintain and patrol their own roads.

I maintain that they must even be free to form larger communities, the size of towns, and run them any way they like. If people want to experiment with socialism or hippie communes or ashrams or Ayn Rand-style pay-as-you-go relationships, that's their right. This gets into some thorny issues as the towns get larger and their inhabitants find their freedom limited by circumstance, but that's a subject for another post.

The disparaging remarks about libertarian males like myself are not entirely snide and not entirely my own. My wife, who votes libertarian because somebody has to, assures me that she will never live in an actual libertarian community unless there are plenty of other women there. Frankly I don't think I would either!
 
<I>The government has no right to control the behavior of its constituents so long as they don't violate the basic libertarian code.</I>

I would go further & say that libertarians have no right to force their rather selfish code on others. Hopefully, societies of the future will allow libertariarians to form their own little semi-autonomous groups, & more caring people to form theirs. The day of vast, overbearing societies of any kind will likely one day evolve into a greater tolerance for socio-cultural diversity.
 
Bubblecar said:
I would go further & say that libertarians have no right to force their rather selfish code on others. Hopefully, societies of the future will allow libertariarians to form their own little semi-autonomous groups, & more caring people to form theirs. The day of vast, overbearing societies of any kind will likely one day evolve into a greater tolerance for socio-cultural diversity.
Click to expand...

You have it backwards. An authoritarian society will not allow a semi-autonomous libertarian society, but a libertarian society does not preclude a fully autonomous socialist or authoritarian sub-society. The distinction is that the members of these sub cultures would remain in them at least somewhat voluntarily. If someone managed to escape the boundaries of the subculture, the surrounding libertarian culture would not be sympathetic to the subculture and would likely not return the escaped members back unless they made a nuisance of themselves.
 
A large libertarian socioty would be composed of a lot of little social experements, here in the real world with our authoritarian government, we only get what they perscribe. Its not very scientific, but then again you are mostly spaired the hazzards of being experemented on.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top