I was roaming the mountains, deserts, forests and beaches (specifically, the beaches of Alibag) in search of the Truth. I was looking at the Murud Janjira fort, built by an Abyssinian pirate named Siddhi Johar and reflecting on what lured pirates to travel thousands of miles an build forts in the middle of the sea, when He came and told me, “Libertarians are fighting”

“But You don’t exist” I said.

“Assume that I do and focus on the content of what I said”

“Assumed. Libertarians are always fighting. They have this illusion that the right way to reach the truth is to argue among themselves. They know not of the Truth that can be obtained from reflection, meditation and…”

“Shut up. The High Council of the Cartel has been attacked by another libertarian for being insufficiently libertarian”

“What is it to me? And please don’t call it the High Council. I am tired of explaining to people that Marijuana consumption before Council meetings is not really mandatory”

“Don’t change the subject. Go back to your calling. You must come to the defence of the Cartel. Use your enormous powers of reasoning, your capacity for razor-sharp analysis and your ability to…”

“Cut it out. I get it. I’ll do it, but I’ll tell everyone that You made me do it”

“That’s okay. I’m always doing these things. Why some time back, I motivated a guy to fight and kill a lot of people even though he didn’t want to”

So that’s my excuse. He made me write what I am going to write after this commercial break

*Commercial Break Starts*

If you’re in Bangalore, please visit Madhu’s new restaurant, Shiok Far-eastern Cuisine that serves good Thai, Malaysian, Indonesian, and Singaporean food. The restaurant is on CMH Road, Indiranagar, Bangalore.

*Commercial Break Ends*

The story so far is that Yazad puts out a policy saying that off-topic comments will be deleted. Nilu responds saying that it looks like censorship, Madman responds saying that only governments can censor, and Nilu responds with a rant which basically says that deleting comments may not be censorship, but it is in a way against the spirit of libertarianism. This is my paraphrase, but this argument has taken place so many times before that I can probably do the paraphrasing in my sleep. But nonetheless, tell me if I’ve got anything wrong. The rest of the post will be devoted to proving that Nilu is wrong and the Councillors, whether high or sober, are right.

Firstly, Nilu says that Yazad should let “Market Forces” take care of the problem. What does he think the Market Force is? Some kind of superorganism that exists in ether and guides Market Participants to take the right decisions? Of course not. Market Forces are the name we give to what we get when we aggregate the individual decisions of a lot of people. A businessman who is thinking of cutting prices is not guided by market forces. He will take a decision based on the business environment, i.e. competitors, customers’ preferences, etc. and the market forces adjust themselves.

Second, Nilu is telling Yazad that it is anti-libertarian to tell his commentors how to behave. But by doing so, he is telling Yazad how to behave isn’t he?

So how do we handle the problem? A philosophy is supposed to tell people how to behave. But how does a philosophy which says that it is wrong to tell others how to behave get to be a philosophy?

The answer is, firstly that libertarianism should be confined to a political philosophy. It is a way to organise society, not your personal life. Second – and this is the answer to those who claim that we libertarians are “too dogmatic” – we are dogmatic about some important things, precisely because it enables us to be liberal in many others.

Let’s say that Hindus are offended because some company has started selling bikinis with pictures of Krishna and Radha on them. What answer can we libertarians give Hindus who demand that the bikinis be banned? We can tell them: “Look the government cannot ban the bikinis or penalise the company because they have they have the right to do what they wish on their property. This is a rule we enforce without exception. But you have the right to protest by boycotting them, persuading others to boycott them and boycotting any shop that carries their goods”

Note that it is precisely because we are able to say the bit that I’ve bolded, that libertarianism has any chance of working. By dogmatically insisting on certain things, (property rights, freedom of speech, rule of law) we are able to establish a common minimum set of norms that everyone can abide by. If we start being making exceptions for some things, people will invariably insist on making more exceptions for themselves. (Of course, in real life, not everything can be so cut and dried, but even while making the occasional exception, the same principles should be followed. They should be narrowly defined, they should be clear and stated beforehand and they should be as far as possible not subject to multiple interpretations or ambiguity.)

It is perfectly consistent with libertarianism to say that prostitution ought to be legal and then vote to ban the use of flats at your co-operative housing society for prostitution (Co-operative housing societies, at least in Maharashtra, are to a large extent like a joint stock company. When you “buy a flat”, in reality, you are buying a share in the housing society which entitles you to live in the flat. Don’t get into a discussion with me on whether you actually “own” the flat or not. What is important is that you know clearly, at the time of making the purchase, what rights you have and what you do not.)
We cannot have one freedom and not the other. It wouldn’t be practicable.

So being libertarian doesn’t mean that we should (even if you claim that the “should” imposes an ethical and not a legal responsibility) be tolerant on our property. In fact, if anything, removal of government restrictions gives us a greater responsibility to “police” things we find offensive, because we cannot rely on the government to do it for us. If you find porn offensive, you should try to bring shame on the channel that shows porn. If you are against cigarettes, you should carry on a campaign trying to bring awareness about its dangers, boycott those channels that show cigarette advertisements and persuade others to do the same, try to persuade sports bodies not to accept sponsorship from tobacco companies, etc.

Now of course, it is possible to take these things too far. It is certainly possible that society, through the activism of its members, becomes a difficult place to live in. I wouldn’t want to live in such a society, but I wouldn’t call it anti-libertarian or anything like that. If anything, having different cities with differing social norms is a good thing, because it offers people a choice of where they want to live, and where they want to raise their children.

There is nothing “anti-libertarian” about banning comments, or prescribing a certain comments policy. It is simply the pragmatic question of how you want the discussion to shape up.

If you’ve ever conducted a discussion, you’ll probably have noticed that it is best to keep the arguments freewheeling when you want to generate ideas. But once you have come up with an idea, then it is perfectly legitimate for you to say that from then on you will only discuss implementation of the idea, and not accept criticism of the idea. There is nothing “anti-libertarian” about such a thing. Likewise, if the topic of the discussion is “Does God want us to follow the path of action or the path of renunciation? Discuss based on the Bhagvad Geetha”, it is perfectly legitimate to keep out atheists from asking even legitimate questions about whether God exists or not.

In short, Nilu is wrong.