Bernardi: Greens want world government

G'day Tinos.

I'm wondering, how exactly are you defining "peace"?

"Also, it's incompatible with the current dominant philosophy of political centralisation."

How is it incompatible? I would have thought that a world government is the epitome of political centralisation. Also would you be for a one world government Tinos, as opposed to just a world government? 

"there's no reason why a libertarian should be opposed to world gov't."

I disagree. There are many reasons a libertarian should oppose world government. As outlined by Lew Rockwell, in What We Mean By Decentralization, there are at least five:

"First, under decentralization, jurisdictions must compete for residents and capital, which provides some incentive for greater degrees of freedom, if only because local despotism is neither popular nor productive. If despots insist on ruling anyway, people and capital will find a way to leave. If there is only one will and one actor, you cannot escape.

Second, localism internalizes corruption so that it can be more easily spotted and uprooted. Along the same lines, local government corruption can be rather benign by comparison; it is easier, on a middle-class budget, to pay off the zoning board than to bribe the State Department.

Third, tyranny on the local level minimizes damage to the same extent that macro-tyranny maximizes it. If Hitler had ruled only Berlin, Stalin only Moscow, and FDR only Washington, the effects of their demented policies might have been contained. This is not only a utilitarian consideration. It means that evil people are prevented from violating the rights of people outside their jurisdiction.

Fourth, no government can be trusted to use the power to intervene wisely. With such power, central governments will always invoke good motives even when they are a mere mask for power grabs (as when the US invaded Iraq, for example). The typical path goes this way. An intervention takes place that might be celebrated by good liberals, such as the Lochner decision (1905) by the Supreme Court that invalidated New York's labor regulations. But once that power is gained, it is used to put a legal imprimatur on central planning and prevent local governments from finding an escape (the central planning of World War I was Lochner's daughter).

Fifth, a plurality of governmental forms—a "vertical separation of powers," to use Stephan Kinsella's phrase prevents the central government from accumulating power. Lower governments are rightly jealous of their jurisdiction, and resist. This is to the good. In fact, the whole history of liberty is bound up with the glorious results of competing institutional structures, no one of which can be trusted with complete control.

To be sure, this does not mean that libertarians must be agnostic on the question of what government should look like. Law should protect person and property against invasive force. This principle applies in all times and in all places. But that does not mean that there must be a single law giver and enforcer. To maximize the chance that good law will prevail over bad, over the long haul, and prevent power grabs from the top, we need a multiplicity of legal forms.

Murray N. Rothbard had a nice phrase that he used to summarize this position: universal rights, locally enforced. Those two principles are frequently in tension. But if you give up one of the two principles you risk giving up liberty. Both are important. Neither should prevail over the other. A local government that violates rights is intolerable. A central government that rules in the name of universal rights is similarly intolerable. Heaven on earth is universal rights, locally enforced. No, it's not here yet. That's why libertarians exist, to work for the ideal."

Tinos,

I am very puzzled, Perhaps you could help me here.

The bare essentials of libertarianism are freedom of personal choice and freedom of economic choice.

Initiaton of force is antithetical with freedom, since initiative force prevents others from excercising their own proper freedoms.

Now, I have seen you in various libertarian discussions this week, but after reading your comments I am beginning to wonder where you stand with these bare essentials of libertarian politics.

For example, in this discussion it seems that you think global authoritarianism is a proper road to peace.

From the libertarian point of view peace is good since it permits trade, lowers costs, raises standards of living, and allows greater freedoms both socially and economically.  Libertarian states have no interest in warfare, since both parties always lose.

Therefore, libertarianism values and aligns with peace, but not peace at the expense of freedom.

It is easy to observe, however, that authoritarian states tend to have a great interest in being involved in warfare.

The idea then of what you propose, while perhaps well-meaning, appears to be the opposite of freedom, and more importantly, in opposition to your aparrent interest in peace.

Please, for my own understanding, what is it that you agree with about libertarianism?