Libertarian Party Of Second Life Formed

I have formed a group called the Libertarian Party of Second Life.

The charter of the group reads:




Here is the



We, the members of the Libertarian Party of Second Life, deny the authority of the state and defend the rights of the individual.

We hold that all individuals have the right to exercise sole dominion over their own lives, and have the right to live in whatever manner they choose, so long as they do not forcibly interfere with the equal right of others to live in whatever manner they choose.

Governments throughout history have regularly operated on the opposite principle, that the State has the right to dispose of the lives of individuals and the fruits of their labor. Political parties other than our own grant to government the right to regulate the lives of individuals and seize the fruits of their labor without their consent.

We, on the contrary, deny the right of any government to do these things, and hold that where governments exist, they must not violate the rights of any individual: namely, (1) the right to life -- accordingly we support the prohibition of the initiation of physical force against others; (2) the right to liberty of speech and action -- accordingly we oppose all attempts by government to abridge the freedom of speech and press, as well as government censorship in any form; and (3) the right to property -- accordingly we oppose all government interference with private property, such as confiscation, nationalization, and eminent domain, and support the prohibition of robbery, trespass, fraud, and misrepresentation.

Since governments, when instituted, must not violate individual rights, we oppose all interference by government in the areas of voluntary and contractual relations among individuals. People should not be forced to sacrifice their lives and property for the benefit of others. They should be left free by government to deal with one another as free traders; and the resultant economic system, the only one compatible with the protection of individual rights, is the free market.

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Dues paying?

I sense a moneymaking scheme. You really work in a sweatshop don't you? Well, I won't buy into your sweatshop fund just so you can sell underaged girls into overseas sex trade!

There is a saying about how people get into the sort of libertarianism that has been a significant part of my life, and that saying is "It usually starts with Ayn Rand." Please note, unless I say otherwise, when I refer to Ayn Rand I mean Ayn Rand the author, not the Second Life avatar who has the name. In the event that the Ayn Rand avatar's agent would like to consider selling the identity, please let me know.

Now it is certainly not true that libertarian thought began with Ayn Rand, and Ayn Rand did not support the Libertarian Party when it was formed. Ayn produced a number of highly successul books, and my high school senior English teacher had the class read The Fountainhead. The book produced in me the effect of a dramatic religious conversion or some sort of drug trip. This was in 1971, I suppose. I lived outside of Washington D.C. in suburban Virginia, right next to the heart of the beast. I hadn't realized it was the heart of the beast or even that there was something terribly wrong with the world but the ongoing conflict in Vietnam was on the news all the time and the Washington Post and the Evening Star were covering both the war and struck me as a monstrous crime. I was no student of history or military science, knew nothing of the cultures in that region, but in my gut I knew something and I still know it today, that people should not be organizing to kill each other, that people should not be forced to go and follow orders to kill others, and that people should not be forced to pay for the killing of other people. Rand's book filled me with a sense of knowing what the problem was , and with a hope that there was somethng to be done about it.

The problem was a lack of respect for individuals and the sacrifice of individual rights to the claims of collectives. The solution was simple: convince people of the error of their ways and the problem would be solved.

Like I said, I was not a student of history or social sciences in the least until I read Ayn Rand .

Boy, after all the pot I smoked at various libertarian groups I would have thought you could at least offered me one toke.

I remember at a LP convention in Denver , I think it was in the lobby of the Hilton, fifteen or twenty years ago. I know the founding convention of the LP was in Denver, so I may have been at the first one. We sat in the lobby of the Hilton, sitting and kneeling on the floor, passing joints around between the hippy lstyle ibs and suit and tie libs.

Sure that wasn't held in the People's Republic of Boulder?

HIT THAT SHIT SUE! ONE LOVE!

I paid the $25 real dollars for me, under my avatars name, to join the Libertarian Party.

I am not asking for money to join the LPOSL. It is open invitation. I do request that you do not join unless you are a real libertarian, which most importantly means you do not support the initiation of force to achieve social or political goals.

This is not a joke organization, the governments referred to in the statement of principles are not SL groups or Linden Lab. The governments I am expressing opposition to are the real governments of of the real world. The taxation I oppose is the real money removed from my paycheck, the nation states I want to abolish so that humans don't kill each other based on the nation states they are born subject to are the the real nations that divide people into separate groups when we should be one group of 6 billion sovereign indivduals.

Beyond writing stuff in the forums and maybe building a libertarian display of sorts, video streams on my land, I don't plan to have any annoying virtual political demonstrations or things of that nature.

The only libertarian take on the SL world would be honor your contracts, which would mean pay your bills to Linden Lab, abide by the TOS, CS, forum guidelines, PG and M standards, and other rules estabished by Linden Lab, be honest in all your inworld business dealings with other Second Life participants, and respect the rights of your fellow participants.

And no, I don't work in a sweatshop, I design and cut vinyl letters and graphics that are applied to signs. The air-conditioning is quite adequate for the time being.

Great paragraph.

With SL being a virtual world and all, I sort of hoped that the internal politics would be more like... I dunno, the Furries versus the Smurfs or something...

Wow. This guy's almost as bad as that kook that started the Social Democratic Faction.

~Ulrika~

There's plenty of make believe politics around, just look in the groups menu .

(You edited your post, but here was my response to it.)

Well, individualism is like that. When you're fiercely individualistic, you tend to distrust group mentality. A group cannot take responsibility because it can always blame someone else, an individual can only blame himself and learn from mistakes.

A group of individuals is still a group and it's loathsome for me to imagine a group of people coming together to congratulate themselves for their collective individuality.

I'm not trying to make a comment about you, I don't know you; I'm just giving a reason why few intelligent people who might agree with aspects of Libertarianism might avoid a Libertarian group.

Based on the convention schedule from the LP website, www.lp.org, I would have attended at least the following conventions:

1976: Washington D.C., Roger MacBride and David Bergland were running for president and vice president . I lived in Fairfax, VA so that was an easy drive. During that campaign I got to fly in Roger MacBride's "Gooney Bird" plane to one or other of the Carolina's to collect ballot petition signatures. Within minutes of getting in his private plane I spilled an entire 12 oz. can of Pepsi on the carpet before the plane even moved. I did not tell any one.

1979: Los Angeles, California, they nominated Ed Clark and David Koch as candidates.
I was on an LA local bus and found a mysterious 200 dollars in a brown paper bag. I kept the money, and used it to have room service bring coffee and donuts to the convention floor for my state's delegation and folks surrounding us. Room service at a convention is amazingly expensive, but with the high percentage of staying up all night consuming various substances people needed a pickup. Our delegation had some of the radical libs in it, and we got votes on platform issues for the price of coffee and donuts. People werent paying any attention to what was being talked about, and the more submissive people would look to their leaders - sometimes just a more energetic and better organized person, other times the leaders were folks who used the "bribe in advance" technique of manipulating others, in the case many times supplying joints with some frequency or other items to someone who didn't have his act together enough to pay, then when the giver out of free items needs something done, like delivering a package in the middle of the night, or always voting based on the lead man's vote, well, what is the guy gonna do, cut off his supply? It was an education in real world politics.

That convention was actually held on that boat, the Queen Mary.

1981: Denver, Colorado - that would have been the year of the pot smoking in a hotel lobby in Denver. I don't seem to recall much about that one, it must have been really good. That was the second convention in Denver , the first was also. Dave Koch was part of some super rich family, might be worth looking up for fun, might have been a Charles Koch involved too. The radical libs agravated him, I think on purpose, and cut off access to a vast potential funding source. That struck me as bad politics.

In the airport in Nevada on on the flight there I placed one nickel in a slot machine. In the airport. That was the only real world "gambling" I have ever done.

I am a member of the LP. I have been for years. OK I am no longer a Card Caring member. I dropped it over the Harry Browne thing. Long story. I am still working to get the R&D out and the LP in. Here is a link of LP members in office now http://www.lp.org/organization/officials.php

I for one am not all that great with words. So I will let others do the speaking for me.

"I'm a hardcore libertarian. I want everything legal." -- Penn Jillette in an interview on FilmForce.IGN.com (October 13, 2003)

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"I am Libertarian. Democrats and Republicans, well, it's kind of like a 'magicians choice' -- two identical incumbent organizations pretending to be different so that we will vote the same old mob back into power." -- Teller in an online chat on WashingtonPost.com (December 29, 2000)

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"The less [government] the better. As far as your personal goals are and what you actually want to do with your life, it should never have to do with the government. You should never depend on the government for your retirement, your financial security, for anything. If you do, you're screwed... That's all the government should be: Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines (laughs)."
"I think a lot of people are afraid of freedom. They want their lives to be controlled, to be put into a box... Why should someone put a limit on how much fun I can have, how much I can accomplish?" -- Drew Carey interview in Reason magazine.

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"I'm a refugee from the left and I'm always surprised that more artists aren't Libertarians. We are, ultimately, an idealistic group and the often misguided support of the Democrats or, worse, the Greens is what some might call idiotic. I would never say idiotic, though I guess it's the most accurate term, isn't it?"

"I've seen Mister [Harry] Browne speak several times and read all of his books on Libertarian thought. I love my Advocates [Liberator Online]." Dean Cameron

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"I'm a libertarian, too." -- Dixie Carter on Politically Incorrect, February 8, 2000

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Playboy: "How would you characterize yourself politically?"
Clint Eastwood: "Libertarian... Everyone leaves everyone else alone." -- Playboy Interview (March 1997)

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Q: Do you have strong political views? A: "I'm a Libertarian." Q: If you were president of the United States, what would be your first action? A: "I would try to convince the U.S. Congress to repeal about ninety percent of the idiotic legislation they've enacted." -- Don Galloway on an Ironside fan website

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On government-run health care: "The answer is not having the government run anything to do with medicine. Because if you think the HMOs are bad, have the federal government take over; it's going to be HMO to the tenth power." -- Leah Lail on Politically Incorrect (May 29, 2002)
"I'm not a conservative, and I'm not a liberal," he said, describing his political bent as libertarian. -- Sam Longoria - The Everett (WA) Herald

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"Freedom is for everyone, whatever lifestyle they choose, as long as it's peaceful and honest -- from high-tech entrepreneur to hippie in a commune and everyone in between..."
"American Indians are caught in the same dilemma as libertarians. We're neither left nor right. We're just for freedom. The Left only came around when they needed martyrs. When we wouldn't be martyrs, they abandoned us.
"I'm for a free market. I only oppose the misuse of technology. A libertarian society would not allow anyone to injure others by pollution because it insists on individual responsibility. That's part of the beauty of libertarianism."
-- Russell Means in an interview in Libertarian Party News, July 1987

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"Wrestling that [liberal] chokehold off of my bleeding heart was hard. Becoming a libertarian was a long, rough, bumpy, sometimes confusing road. But I made it! I am now home. I am a libertarian." -- Sean Morley a.k.a. Val Venis (WWE) in LP News (September 2001)

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"When I'm talking to my friends, and I say I'm a libertarian...90% have no idea [what it means]. [But] even my Democratic left-wing friends, when I tell them what libertarianism is all about, they go, 'Well, that makes sense.' " -- David Ruprecht, quoted in the Hollywood Investigator (December 30, 2002)

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"My principles are freedom for all people... I'm trying to wake up Hollywood. It's been a bastion of freedom but they're being deceived, suckered into this indoctrination of the federal government which is leading toward a totalitarian country. They've lost sight of individual liberty." -- quoted in Daily Variety on his campaign for governor of Nevada.

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"I'm a libertarian. I think a lot of people are libertarians and are afraid to admit it -- or don't know." -- Kurt Russell, quoted in the Washington Post (May 2, 1997)

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"I'm a registered independent with a lot of libertarian leanings." -- Tom Selleck on National Review Online (May 29, 2004)

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"I'm for personal freedom. I'm for freedom of the marketplace..." Howard Stern quoted in Libertarian Party News, May 1994.

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"And if Donald Trump delivered the mail, you could send letters for 12 cents, and also gamble with the stamps." -- Howard Stern calling for privatization of all government services, as reported in Libertarian Party News, May 1994.

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"I am a libertarian in that I believe in limited government and as much individual freedom as possible." -- John Stossel on WashingtonPost.com (April 9, 2004)

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"For [politicians], the question is always, 'What kind of government intervention should we impose on the world?' They never think that maybe we shouldn't." -- Dave Barry, Reason, December 1994

SuezanneC Baskerville can I ask why you put this in "Second Life Forums > Discussion Forums > Off-Topic" when you should have put it in "Second Life Forums > Discussion Forums > SL Polysci"? Maybe there we would have people really talking about the LP.

Hi Lupo - don't forget to join, it takes three people to make a group last, and I haven't had a single person join.

The SL Polysci forum is a forum for discussion of "Virtual Governments", not real politics and governments, and discussion of real world politcs therein is clearly forbidden in the forum description posted by Jeska Linden: " [The SL Polysci forum] is not a place to discuss RL politics". There is no ambiguity in that statement. I like it when rules are nice and clear.

The Libertarian Party Of Second Life group is for people who are real world libertarians, interpreted broadly, who support the non-aggression principal as a fundamental moral tenet both for one's personal life and for the members of governments. From a political viewpoint, the group would be appropriate for those with a consistent support for indivual liberty, private property rights , a free market economy, and non-interventionist foreign policies.

The Libertarian Party of Second Life is concerned with nothing but real world politics, real word philosophy, real world economics, real world ethical and moral exposition.

It is totally inappropriate and a clear and deliberate violation of forum guidelines for anyone to discuss libertarian or any other form of real world politics in the SL Polysci forum. Doing so is a violation of contract and immoral. Please do not do so. I take the rules laid out by Linden Lab quite seriously. People who don't take the contract to abide by forum guidelines should read the Discipline section of the Forum Guidelines.

There are many people who might feel that they are libertarian and who would not want to be a member of the any Libertarian Party official political organization.

A common example would be many folks who find the idea of an official political party trying to battle the state to be a contradiction in logic. They would support only educational organizations or other means of promoting liberty that avoid any possibility of becoming part of the state apparatus. These people would be more than welcome in LP of SL .

Wikipedia has a nice introduction to libertarianism.


If I can get 15 members to join then I can have a forum made which I will take the time to moderate to best of my ability.

I don't know if Tommy Chong was at the convention or not.

The smoke was really hard to see through.

I should try to find lists of speakers and such and perhaps it would jog my memory of those old times .

I really let my libertarianism lapse into inactivity for a long time. I would probably have been better off to pursue it more vigorously than do the lazybones job I did of it. I haven't had a real successful life, I have my emotional problems and what not , and most of the time when I look back I wish I had never been compelled by The State to read The Fountainhead during my senior high school English class.

It seems a bit perverse to be brainwashed into anti-government extremism by an arm of The State. Typical government inefficiency, I suppose. My teacher said she knew that The Fountainhead would alway produce at least one like me.

But given that I did become an anarcho-capitalist , I would have done better to be a good one, and pursued more economic and moral theory.

I wonder what would have happened if some soul catching book espousing socialist ideology and collectivist morals had been presented instead? I think there is a fair chance I might have ended up an old Green Party member instead. Thank God that didn't happened.

I mentioned that I have my share of emotional problems. I was a patient of libertarian psychiatrist Peter Breggin for a few visits. It didn't work out too well. He had a very simple view, that I had free will and should straighten out my behavior and psyche myself. That trick didn't work in my case.

I recall reading books on psychology by libertarian psychiatrist Thomas Szasz and radical psychiatrist Ronald Lang back when I was in college. Trying to figure out how the mind and spirit work, part of the task of figuring out why the heck people act the way they do.

Enough rambling.

I wish I could change the group name from Libertarian Party to Libertarian Partyers as in folks who are libertarian and who sometime like to party. That would be a lot more fun sounding, wouldn't it?

The charter of the Libertarian Party of Second Life is now changed. The new charter reads as:

I question the validity of the so-called "contract" inherent in ToS, seeing as how this sort of thing does not carry any legal precedent or weight.

If you all more closely abided by Millian principles of classical Liberalism rather than concocting this preposterous insinuation that law and contract are God-sanctioned, I'd be more inclined to join you. If you condemned Linden Labs and the reactionary idiots who got Katja Eisenberg's Auschwitz replica deleted, I would fight alongside you.

Moreover, if you had some perspective as to the current flaws of the neoliberal "free market" system, such as the atrocious economic exploitation of overseas workers and children (who often work completely in lieu of going to school, more often than not coercedly), the privatization of basic social services such as water, education (causing most children to not be able to afford to go to school), and health by IMF structural adjustment programs in debtor nations, the continuous treadmill of World Bank/IMF third-world debt, with countries victimized by neverending interest payments despite these miserable "structural adjustments" which kill the quality of life of their citizens,&c &c &c

I really find it absurd that you people dwell on "morality", but would give multinationals free reign to fuck over the rest of the world even moreso than right now just for your own quality of life. Would your "no government in business" plan get rid of crop subsidies and othersuch anticompetitive practices? Or, more likely, would you simply maintain the current economic status quo, with the rest of the world held in a developmental chokehold by American and European monopoly? Freedom of self-determination, right?

If you're going to found this organization in SL, that's another thing. You should abandon your trite and slavish adherence to every law or contract of man and have the balls to challenge some of the bullshit that's in the ToS currently. You should take up the cause of John Stuart Mill, like I have been trying to, and speak out against social injustices such as the Eisenberg deletion and all the namby-pamby overbroad "behavioral" regulations. You should campaign to have the ToS replaced with a streamlined version of "On Liberty" instead of ten thousand prohibitions and condemnations.

Disputes concerning your refusal to abide to abide by the TOS can be addressed to [email]philip@lindenlab.com[/email]

I would no more claim my ideas God-sanctioned than I would Batman-sanctioned. Given that choice, I would pick Batman as my supporter because Batman's cool utility belt can take God's omnipotence anytime.

I don't have a bit of problem with Linden Labs right to control it's property. In fact I would go further - the have an obligation to control their property.
As to the specific matter you mention, I am not familiar with it. But one thing is certain, it is none of my business.


You statement appear to blame problems on Libertarians as if Libertarians have been in power and have created the current state of the world. If you look a bit more closely I believe you will see that there are actually powerful governments all over the world, stealing massive amounts of hard earned money from taxpayers, colluding with the business elite to stifle competition and prevent the formation of new wealth, placing barriers on free trade and travel that engender intercultural strife and prevent the movement of both capital investments and laborers to the places of greatest mutual benefit. And of course engendering nationalism in compulsory education systems so that the student can be sent to kill others on the basis of what flag they have been forced to salute to, a process which requires massive military spending, spent on massive numbers of military forces and weapons of vast destructiveness , diverting the money that would otherwise have remained in the hands of those who earned it and who would have spent it either on consumer goods, medical care, education, investments, and all the other sensible and moral things that are chosen by those who are spending money they have to earn , which would have been a lot more moral and productive use than letting governments have it to oppress the people inside their borders and kill the ones outside.



I support the abolition of all governments in every place at every level. I support the abolition of city governents, county governments, state governments, national governments, and international governing bodies. I am an anarcho-capitalist. If individuals from differing geographical areas choose to pool their funds for their common goals who am I to object? It is a positive good for those not involve when people in different locations find ways to work together for mutual benefit. Of course the view of anyone even close to being a libertarian, whether the views of an anarcho-capitalist like me, or the less consistent views of the U.S. Libertarian party would end all subsidies of any sort to any business.
From the U.S. LP's national platform:




I think you need to read the Guidelines. Your language is not in compliance with the rules govening forum posts. I would pay special attention to the Discipline section.

My little group called Libertarian Party is not trying to bring about any change in the virtual world of Second Life, so if you have some complaint to put forth about some perceived injustice that has occured here in SL it would be most courteous and more effective of you to start your own thread on the subject and try to calm down and say what you mean clearly without so much bitterness in your heart. People will be be more likely to take your side if you do that. Also if you want people to understand the problem occuring in SL you would probably do best to leave John Stuart Mill out of the matter altogether, the presence of an impossibe midde name might confuse some avatars who have never seen one before.

Second Life can be used as a communications tool between the real people behind the avatars , and that is what I am hoping to do wiith my group and my post.

And I haven't read any John Stuart Mill for over 30 years, without looking, I want to say that one of his books was called "On Liberty ", but I will take a look at the wikipedia article. John Stuart Mill was part of the classical liberal body of thought upon which portions of libertarian thought was formed. Come to think of it, that is why I read it back in 1972.

Why are you so concerned with rules and status quos if you're trying to bring about a broad-based change, at least in the real world? The Lindens have themselves claimed they are trying to build a "world", not a game, yet they do not respect the civil liberties of unpopular minorities, and judiciate from on high like any other game moderator would. As a libertarian it occurred to me you might have some sympathy for the positions of unpopular minorities, but apparently you're more of the "self-centered introvert" type.

To be quite frank, I am wholly unconcerned with conforming to a set of rules I do not believe in. We call this "civil disobedience", and en masse people using peaceful but unlawful tactics have gotten such unjust laws changed.

Further, this world should not be the 'property' of LL in the first place. Property is a keyring or a cellphone or any other artificially apportioned commodity; your equating the entire world of SL as LL's property deflates the rights of every other individual that participates in SL. LL should be deistic with SL if it is attempting to form a virtual community with any sort of legitimacy, not enforce some tired PC-based "tolerance" credo from on high as though they were gods. They should allow the community to work out its own disputes instead of pathetically overmoderating and attempting to micromanage every aspect of individual existence.

LL is no more the "owner" of Second Life as the US Government is of the USA.

LL has based its approach around loathsome social Conservative ideology: Abstract organizations such as "the community" and its canonized, unquestionable mores take precedence over the rights of individuals, and if these so-called morals are not maintained as absolute, people will fall into decadence. LL's intolerance of anything controversial is in lockstep with this ideological tyranny, and it galls me to no end, being a member of an unpopular minority myself in W-Hat.

I fail to see the point of your lolbertarian society group as a SL entity if you are going to abstract an entire world to the point of being some benefactor organization's "property". This is ridiculously hypocritical concerning your ideology's call for a more hands-off government. LL is NOT the "owner" of SL, it is its governing body, and should be treated as such. No matter what the ToS says, I am the owner of what I create, regardless of whether or not I use someone else's tools to do so. And if you still press the issue that LL owns everything, does Craftsman, along with every two-bit parts manufacturer, own every car and motorcycle greasemonkeys use their tools to build or repair, then? Under the legalese of the ToS, if applied to a similar situation, they would.

One cannot say a virtual world is all the host's property, regardless of whatever quantities of legal fiction one has to concoct to cover one's ass, such as in the (precedent-free, unenforceable) ToS. The first step in reversing LL's governance from on high of SL, and one which you SHOULD be concerned with enacting if you're any sort of libertarian at all, is Mill's harm principle, long used as the standard in Supreme Court speech cases, barring categories such as fighting words (but not "intolerance".

Addendum: If I do indeed make a thread about the subject, I refuse to dumb the subject matter down. That's a trend that's been occuring in American politics and education for decades, and I refuse to give it any credence.