Why would conservative and libertarian be considered the same thing?

[Mr Khan]

insomniac17 said:

richardhutnik said:

I was agree to some degree with the original video.  Libertarians believe there is a need for at least SOME government, while anarchists want none.  Because of this, the nature of the debate is different and focus.  A major reason for this, is to try to debate whether or not there is a need for any government gets to be pretty lengthy and has more fundamental issues.  And here, it doesn't relate to whether or not Libertarians and Conservatives are the same thing.  That is why I had been trying to position away.  I would say, it is worth discussing, but please start it in another thread.  I definitely would like to see a Libertarian debate an Anarchist, which would put the Libertarian in the big government role in comparison.

The point of my original post was to higlight that libertarians come in many flavors, both minarchist and anarchist. In fact, I would argue that there are more kinds of anarchist libertarianism than minarchist. The original use of libertarianism was associated with anarchy, and the current use of the term to favor minarchy (in the US) has been a very recent development. So the first video was ignoring a large portion of libertarianism, and focusing on the majority of LP libertarians.

Mr Khan said:

The key breach seems to be property. Libertarians believe in private property (whereby any person can own as much property as they can legally obtain), while anarchists believe only in personal property (what you need for your daily life is yours and no more). Anarchists absolutely reject the concept of rents, while libertarians think that rent can be a thing. However, there needs to be a state aparatus to enforce private property contracts, whereas we can see in medieval anarcho-syndicalism that a state apparatus is not needed in, say, a small farmer community where the farmers have their land, their crops, and their tools, and deal them directly to the tradesmen who may make or maintain tools, etc. In a world where you use only what you need, there's no need to have an aparatus to "enforce" the system, only to stop outright theft, which could be enforced through individual and communal action, whereas how could a landlord enforce the rent in an apartment complex without, ultimately, the police to be able to come by and chuck out deadbeat tenants at the end of the day?

Yes. The difference between virtually any political system can be reduced to arguments over property rights. Not just what you should be able to own, but what you can actually own. This is something that, in an anarchist world, could vary from region to region.

However, your explanation is not entirely correct. Again; anarchists are libertarian. Semantics aside, it is very possible for an anarcho-capitalist society to be imagined in a plausible way. David Friedman has done just that in The Machinery of Freedom. There is a key difference between state enforcement and "private enforcement." The difference being that one has a monopoly on justice and force, and the other does not. Now if you're concerned that a "DRO" would evolve into a state... that's possible, but not very likely. For explanations, I'll turn you to The Machinery of Freedom, Part III, Police, Courts, and Laws - on the Market (to avoid derailing the thread further).

A problem with your example of anarcho-syndicalism is something common to literally every possible option for societal organization. You must use force in order to enforce whatever you want. Even the most extreme form of anarchy does not argue against a need for "personal property," and as such, theft of such property would be wrong. If it is not wrong to own "private property," then theft of such property must also be wrong. Saying that the only force used would be to stop theft is somehow different than enforcing some system of rules and laws is fallacious. It is the exact same. An anarcho-capitalist would say that they do the same thing; they only advocate for using force in order to stop outright theft. Now you have to address the property problem; how much property can be legitimately owned, and why is that answer objectively correct?

The difference, i would suspect, is that disputes over personal property tend to directly involve the owner, and so can be hashed out in small-scale arbitration on an individual level, e.g. "my neighbor's new pool runs 20 feet onto my property." As opposed to private property disputes which cannot possibly involve the owner "Dan Jones in Anytown, Maryland pirated Generic Hollywood Blockbuster." How could we guarantee that complex private property issues are being dealt with fairly without a state aparatus to oversee them? Clearly, for instance, we cannot trust the big banks to foreclose on the right home (mistakes have been made), but do you think the wronged homeowner is really going to be able to individually deal with the bank in any enforceable way?