do you consider yourself a libertarian?

!!!!!!!!

Dan, you didn't go to Auckland University by any chance? I was there in '99 [an election year] and it was Attack of the slightly-retarded-looking-and-grossly-retarded-thinking Libertarianz KLONEZ! *shudder*

"well, we should be allowed to buy whatever good is demanded... except weed, those filthy hippies don't need that drug of satan."

and vice-versa, where the oppposite argument comes off as equally retarded.
carry on.

Libertarianism can be very attractive its so damn sensible.It is easy to be attracted by the coherent, logical and rational approach to life, but life isnt quite so sterile or predictable. Ultimately its greed, its selfishness, its shallowness became to much for me.

If you were to question a Ayn Rand devotee, we would find they accepts all sorts of things they cannot rationally explain, regarding emotions, concepts, etc. What is time? What is location? Why should a father give his life for his family? What is reason itself? Why follow it? They cannot explain all sorts of things. Catholicism (or any religion) is simply more honest about the presence of mysteries than they are.

Rather, it is to say that we, as Catholics, have a rational basis for believing certain things which are unexplainable! Ha I can see myself coming in for a bit of abuse I better be careful.

Anyway a libertarian will still try and explain such mysteries- "time is just a CONCEPT"...

You can see what my next argument will be....

Whatever definitions he gives me, we can easily just break down again into constituent concepts and aske him to define them, too, and then keep going through this process until his definitions are either (a) circular, or (b) non-existent. At that point we again show that he accepts things that he cannot rationally explain.

Anyway all I wanted to say was libertarianism=rub, very rub.

So you wouldn't say that, for a sizable chunk of the world, unregulated capitalism is responsible for restricting the freedoms of millions of individuals?

yeah, but many libertarians advocate free movement of labour as well as of goods and capital.

while I don't agree with a lot of libertarianism, I do think i) their views are a lot better thought out than most non-libertarians and ii) libertarianism is overly criticised.

after all, why did you only pick him/her up on the economic issue? you could just as well have said, "well absolute social liberty means that mass child rape is OK, and isn't that a restriction on the liberty of many?" (only if you raise both spectres simultaneously, then webber/mrs shipley's point is confirmed, that there's no concrete difference, eg that they're both similarly meaningless rhetorical constructs, not actual political positions/programmes)

The best arguments against it, though, aren't arguments against the principle, but rather arguments that it wouldn't even achieve its own ends. I am unconvinced that a libertarian nation would really benefit even those who support it and think they'd profit from it, because the end situation it sort of points at is a world in which a portion of the nation trudges successfull, capitalistically along, but an entire remaining underclass is left to fester and rot. I'm simply not convinced that the libertarian ethic of not being obligated to serve or improve that underclass would sit so comfortably in action, if it really meant constant deaths and human misery and horrifying crimes or in an exaggerated case food riots. And I don't think those libertarians whose goal is partly a monetary one -- "why does the government take my money to give it to other people" -- realize how likely it is that pulling that net of services out would contribute to either (a) brutal near-anarchy, or (b) the erection of a massive police state designed to subdue and imprison the no-longer-served. Those really are the options, in a sense: a bureaucratic state of "palliative" services, or an honest-to-God discipline-and-punish police state. It's a sort of childish feat of imagination for libertarians to imagine we have neither, and it's one that proceeds from head-in-sand childish thinking: "it's not my responsibility."

haha oh dearie me no. Do you really believe this, even a bit?

we don't agree on grammar and vocabulary within a linguistic community because it's mandated from on high, we do it because we more or less agree the benefits when it comes to communication: we're all free, actually, to use any sound to mean anything we want, but we don't

Anyway so "if the community really wants to provide services to the disadvantages" -- hasn't the community already decided that they do want to, and thus repeatedly elected officials who preserve those programs? What metaphysical distinction is made by reducing government -- organ of the people -- to a simple policing force, and then shunting everything else it was meant to do to some other, unelected, less accountable entity? Just decentralization, which doesn't requite libertarianism to argue for it? Or is it that there's a small minority who don't want to provide those services, and resent that the government doesn't allow them to opt out of putting taxes toward them? Doesn't that sort of come down to a semi-childish complaint that they pay taxes to government but boo-hoo don't always get their own way in how its run, and thus fear it and want to dismantle it so it can't, in their opinion, "mismanage" itself anymore?

Mainly I find it ironic that in the US, at least, the bulk of visible libertarians are those on whom the power of the state is exercised the absolute least. (Apart from paying taxes, which is their real complaint.) Those who have steady contact with the state and those who have steady contact with problems the state's in a position to solve tend to want the state to get to it.

NB I realize arguments can be made about representative democracy as an exact expression of the public's desires BUT it's no less exact as an expression than the market capitalism libertarians prefer; the primary difference is that it's weighted by person and not by wealth, which is exactly where the Darwinism comes in. Allowing the state's previous role to become private and optional is really the exact same principle as saying we should have an interventionist state, except people's votes should be weighted to correspond to their assets.

No, I don't think this is what would actually happen, at least not in my lifetime - the invisible hand has slapped me in the face a couple of times too many. It'd require a change from a culture of individualism to a culture of personal responibility. But I do get peeved when libertarianism gets no respect in academic circles, whereas Communism (or whatever the euphemism is at the moment) is taken straight, even though it relies on as large a simplification of human nature (OK, message board evangelists do ask for it, but most of the ones I know are reasonable people). I do believe that NZ's taxes are too high, and govt spending is badly misguided. I still voted Labour.

Aside: You don't think people's votes are weighted to correspond to their assets now?

This is a very familiar complaint about Libertarians, and I have a suspicion that it comes from the European lack of understanding of individual rights which exist from the start, rather than 'rights' which are gifts from the state (i. e. the politicians who run the U. K. on behalf of the Queen, who has a lifetime lease from God). As we see in this thread, there are legitimate holes in the Libertarian position without making up exagerated and silly ones.

NB no offense but this is precisely the sort of stupid, childish, head-in-sand rhetorical posturing that I'm saying annoys me so much. You live in a one-person/one-vote democracy and it's fucking ridiculous to pretend otherwise; if you want to talk about the influence of economic clout and campaign contributions on election results, then talk about it, but it's so fucking pointless to do the 13-year-old's cynical eye-covering "ner-ner-ner the system's fucked anyway so who cares" thing. I mean, look at that statement, it's my exact problem: people make these claims that are provably untrue except as vague metaphors for rhetorical effect, and then they present them as actual supports for arguments about real government?

But how can you count on the privatizers to provide these services so that all can benefit, including those who most need them?

I realize I'm totally speaking in self-interest here, and from an American perspective -- I'm working without insurance right now, because I simply can't afford to pay the premiums and my rent. And I'm not exactly earning Wal-Mart wages.

I guess it's that Darwinist aspect of libertarianism is, to me, really disconcerting. Many who identify themselves as Libertarians to me are already in an economic position where they can say "Well, I can manage, I'm okay." It seems short-sighted and really damaging to the culture as a whole -- any social contract that might have existed before is absolutely shredded by these philosophies.

New Zealand is something of a testbed for bonkers libertarianism, as they've been deregulating everything that moves and cutting away all government intervention in the economy and social welfare provision.

amusingly the process has seen New Zealand slide inexorably down the league tables of national wealth per capita.

Collectivism is falling to pieces - in NZ, anyway, it happened when compulsory unionism got thrown out, and the current leftish govt is doing much for it.

how about "the current leftish govt isn't helping to stop the slide"

"Aside: You don't think people's votes are weighted to correspond to their assets now?"

NB no offense but this is precisely the sort of stupid, childish, head-in-sand rhetorical posturing that I'm saying annoys me so much.

Point taken - in this context it's a useless statement.

New Zealand is something of a testbed for bonkers libertarianism, as they've been deregulating everything that moves and cutting away all government intervention in the economy and social welfare provision.

Its true that New Zealand economy post 1984 and the Second labour government has been viewed as a test bed for deregulation of the economy. However something had to be done , we were in a real mess in 83 though clearly you dont remember those days?We had "petrol free" days, (you could only purchase fuel on certain days), crippling state debt and inflation and interest rates out of control.

What is in question is the "rate" and "order" of change that occured, not whether such change was necessary. Its true that few other countries have gone such a rapid transformation of their economy, still compare our current welfare, health and education provisions to the USA and Id say we have got the balance about right(except student loans).

amusingly the process has seen New Zealand slide inexorably down the league tables of national wealth per capita.

I dont find it all that funny. Economists of all persuasions agree that the NZ economoy under Muldoon needed drastic attention. To argue that increased govt spending and state asset provsion would have helped us is absurd. The loss of the access to the British market after EEC in 73 and reducded world demand for commodity prices, an aging unskilled poulation, increasing public debt to sustain an out of control welfare state etc etc has been whats crippled us. Our company tax structure, geographic isolation and small skilled labour and capital base are also going to make it difficult for us to compete in the future.

But hey blame de-regulation if you like. ps I voted labour too

clue: what does the word "absolute" mean to you?

If the principle is conceded that it is legitimate for the state to curtail certain individual freedoms for the public good, then "Libertarianism" must be argued as a relative, not an absolute position.

This may seem so obvious as not to be important; not so, because the continual, often deliberate and manipulative, confusion of abolute and relative is a ongoing part of the modus operandi. As previously said, much Libertarian rhetoric is based on the assumption that abstract principles like "freedom" and "individual liberty" are self-evidently and purely good things, that we can't have too much of them. If the "real" argument is something along the lines of, "well we accept that there has to be a trade-off between individual liberty and public good, but we think the line has been drawn in the wrong place", then that is the argument that libertarians are required to make. Not the simplistic and quasi-mystical invocation to pure principle that some use cynically and others, more worringly, actually seem to believe.

ArfArf is (korrektly) pointing out that libertarians also often play such games with definition, so the unfairness is not that unfair after all.

So it's not entirely just a caricature of their absolutism: they've actively assembled themselves as such and are happy to sink further into it. This is true of really any fringe party in the U.S. -- the only way to work the fringe is with some clever easily-digested panacea like "yes we are the flat-tax party," which occasionally makes them good launching pads for issues but rarely makes for a widely coherent platform.

Of course, the other side of the statement you put in as a 'position paper' (i. e. you don't believe it or claim anyone else does but it's there to make a point) is that in a Libertarian 'society' each child would have the absolute social liberty not to be killed by serial child killers. Or, as I sometimes put it, negative rights supersede positive rights. This is just a different side of the coin from Ayn Rand's 'mutual uncoerced consent.'

Hmmm. Does 'absolute social liberty' have any meaning 1 to a Libertarian 2 at all?

Following are two quotes from http://www.self-gov.org/libfaq.html

Drugs:
All of the hard drugs were legal before 1914, and there were few addicts. Studies show that even addicts can be productive, and also that they do not engage in crime when they can get their drugs inexpensively.

"We have addicts today despite drug criminalization. We also have the violence that is caused by drugs being illegal. Let's decriminalize drugs so we stop the violence and get help to those who need it."

I subcribe to this point of view, all drugs should be made legal. I want total souvereignity over my own body.

Guns:
"Libertarians,, like other Americans, want to be able to walk city streets safely and be secure in their homes. We also want our Constitutional rights protected, to guard against the erosion of civil liberties. In particular, Libertarians want to see all people treated equally under the law, as our Constitution requires. America's millions of gun owners are people too. "

I do not subscribe to the typically American point of view to gun ownership. Cfr Bowling for Columbine http://www.bowlingforcolumbine.com/flash-01.php

Take the skinheads bowling! --Camper Van Beethoven

fuck libertarians, fuck them all three holes.

blimey get me on this thread

The dude I was talking about in the batshit facebook thread considers himself a libertarian..

guess what's in my other window: facebook libertarians.

Groups
30 of 67 groups.See All

Libertarian Conservatives ▪ I ♥ Brisbane ▪ Have you ever disgraced yourself at a Law related function? ▪ SYDNEY IS BETTER THAN MELBOURNE! ▪ Mr Gormsby's Class 5F ▪ Ludwig Von Mises Appreciation Society(1881-1973) ▪ Global Warming is a Hoax ▪ I proudly support the State of Israel & I don't care that it's not trendy! ▪ Right-wingers have more fun ▪ Pro Tobacco ▪ ANTI-united nations, anti-EU ▪ In Support of the Death Penalty ▪ Capitalist Student Network ▪ Sydney University Liberal Club ▪ Abolish Welfare! ▪ The Justice J. D. Heydon Appreciation Society ▪ WorkChoices sucks - the labour market is STILL overregulated ▪ Australians for a Constitutional Monarchy ▪ The movement to legalise duelling ▪ I oppose WorkChoices on federalist grounds ▪ I always wear sun glasses because the sun never sets on the British Empire ▪ Young Liberal Movement ▪ Richard Dawkins Created the Meme ▪ The Will Ferrell is GOD Collective ▪ Chief Justice Harry Gibbs Appreciation Society ▪ Proud WASPs ▪ Justice Callinan Fan Club ▪ Flat Rate Tax ▪ The Anglo Saxon Group ▪ I support John Howard

hahaha i support palestine (like a football club) only because it's trendy.

lol richard dawkins, NO SURPRISE THERE.

proud member since oct 06

libertarianism in america = fundamentally a misreading of jefferson, who wanted a republic of local township-republics, who would vote on everything to do with themselves, athens-style, and leave only the major stuff (defense, welfare, etc) to the feds.

libertarians read this as getting RID of government, when it's really just a radical redistribution of it. their "ideal" country would provide no means of breaking up monopolies or even overthrowing a tyrant because libertarians fundamentally deny what hannah arendt took to be the most important thing in politics - the right of citizens to come together to make something happen, which they dismiss as "collectivism." (reducing all human experience to "collectivism" and "individualism," as libertarians inevitably do, is also pretty dumb: one could fairly argue that both existed in nazi germany.) an actual libertarian state would be impossible for the simple fact that libertarians wouldn't admit any laws to check the power of ANYONE "outside the state," so there'd be no way to prevent any ambitious and talented businessman from essentially running the country.

libertarians also assume that economics ALWAYS precedes politics, which is why their screeds (when they're not entertainingly arguing that blackmail should be legalized) are so unreadable.

Libertarians are cute, like handicapped puppies. They're special.

libertarians also assume that economics ALWAYS precedes politics, which is why their screeds (when they're not entertainingly arguing that blackmail should be legalized) are so unreadable.

more's the shame, then, that ofttimes (with some notable exceptions) their grasp of economics is pretty shitty. (i.e., there's a reason why the Austrian School isn't exactly in the mainstream among academic economists and it isn't b/c academic economists are closet "collectivists"/Commies.)

Given that no-one is self-identifying as libertarian, isn't this a strawman thread? I would at least start to defend *aspects* of libertarianism, but the thread is already marred by unhelpful simplifications.

Less strawman than gangbang, I'd say.

Milo OTM.

anyone who wants to defend libertarianism or refute any of my points is entirely welcome.

an actual libertarian state would be impossible for the simple fact that libertarians wouldn't admit any laws to check the power of ANYONE "outside the state," so there'd be no way to prevent any ambitious and talented businessman from essentially running the country.

my understanding of libertarianism is that they believe that government exists to prevent people from violating the rights of others. if government couldn't pass laws to check the power of private citizens, wouldn't that just be anarchy?

also i don't think that libertarians deny citizens a right to do things together. maybe you meant they don't want government to make citizens do things together?

i'm not a libertarian but this is some stupid straw-man bullshit, like saying that republicans are gonna steal the 2008 general election.

Ahh well, I guess at least we've learnt that Will Ferrell is acceptable to libertarians.

my understanding of libertarianism is that they believe that government exists to prevent people from violating the rights of others. if government couldn't pass laws to check the power of private citizens, wouldn't that just be anarchy?

since libertarians inevitably oppose any effort to interfere with businesses' right to do whatever they want (rarely bothering to distinguish between, say, enron and the mom and pop store down the street), it's hard to see how their high and mighty john stuart mill principles really translate into anything, in practical terms, except "every dog for himself." as for anarchy, plenty of the best-known libertarian thinkers basically were anarchists - murray rothbard, for one.

also i don't think that libertarians deny citizens a right to do things together. maybe you meant they don't want government to make citizens do things together?

government "making people do things together" is mainly an issue in the kind of society libertarians claim they want - a society where the citizens ask nothing and get nothing from their government. a country where people are actually involved in their government, on a community by community level, isn't likely to give way to tyranny (and the fact that the united states, despite the fact that the vast majority of cities don't measure up to jefferson's ideal of the township-community, has never fallen under a dictatorship is some testament to the effectiveness of this system).

by contrast, all libertarians can offer is some dickensian ideal state where every businessman is a benevolent ebenezer scrooge (post-conversion) who takes care of any problems we might have (and hey, if you're not satisfied, you could always just become rich yourself!) libertarians are right about a lot of the problems in america, but they're clueless when it comes to what to do about them.

Given that no-one is self-identifying as libertarian, isn't this a strawman thread? I would at least start to defend *aspects* of libertarianism, but the thread is already marred by unhelpful simplifications.

-- paulhw, Tuesday, 14 August 2007 00:15 (6 hours ago) Link

i guess you must be a libertarian.

louis, i'm toying with that. c-word though.

I think it was Boyd Rice, of all people, who said something along the lines of "Libertarians are just anarchists without the leather jackets."

That said, as far as pure logic goes, taking the study of rhetoric into account and all that, it's one of the more attractive political philosophies, wouldn't you agree?

Most of the anarchists I know (and most of the anarchists throughout history, I think) are left-leaning, so they do believe in collectivism and collective action, just not authority. I guess libertarianism is close to right-wing anarchism, but that has always been a weaker strand in the history of anarchism.

I guess anarchism and libertarianism have a similar philosophical idea in their core, but the conclusions and political actions they've reached from from that have been quite different.

those conclusions and political actions again:
"let's sit this one out (feat.self-regarding commentary)"

i think only quite young and able-bodied people can really sign up for libertarianism.

young, able-bodied and COMIC BOOK GUY

i think only quite young and able-bodied

and rich and privately educated and fucking superior. it's a fucking SCOURGE at cambridge.

that group has quite an amusing wall-posting:

As a true Tory I have little time for Libertarians. Why take something as wonderfully sensible and straightforward as conservatism and make an ideology out of it? The strength of Tories is that we don't need to waste our time with committees and mission statements and all that nonsense. All the same, I still think that as a mostly leftist gathering, someone really ought to tell you all to go to hell.

Go to hell.

You think he's joking?

since libertarians inevitably oppose any effort to interfere with businesses' right to do whatever they want (rarely bothering to distinguish between, say, enron and the mom and pop store down the street), it's hard to see how their high and mighty john stuart mill principles really translate into anything, in practical terms, except "every dog for himself."

libertarians only appose govt. regulation. that doesn't mean individuals or groups cannot interfere, protest, boycott, and expose big business anyway. also why do you mention John Stuart Mill? (or did you mean utilitarianism?). i don't know that libertarianism advocates "every dog for himself" although coming from the right collective action is often demphasized. libertarianism is part of the US social fabric and if you accept that there are libertarians on the left too then the wobblies and people who lived in communes and hunter s thompson and dorothy day are libertarians too.

also i don't think that libertarians deny citizens a right to do things together. maybe you meant they don't want government to make citizens do things together?

by contrast, all libertarians can offer is some dickensian ideal state where every businessman is a benevolent ebenezer scrooge (post-conversion) who takes care of any problems we might have (and hey, if you're not satisfied, you could always just become rich yourself!) libertarians are right about a lot of the problems in america, but they're clueless when it comes to what to do about them.

this is just silly.

i get the sense that a lot of people are taking libertarianism as something like the social darwinist or randian 'survival of the fittest' and assuming that naturally follows from reducing the size of the state.

i like the mark s comment about linguistic communities and message boards. libertarians and anarchists aren't against order as such just power with the former focusing on the state and the latter on capitalism.

well gosh darn if the libertarians haven't gone all out to correct that impression.

xpost

I think Wobblies were more anarchosyndicalists than "libertarians on the left", whatever that means. Like I said, the core philosophy in these two is quite similar, so we have to take practice into account, and in practice anarchists have leaned on the left and libertarians on the right. Also, it seems quite true that libertarians have focused more on opposing the state and defending free enterprise, whereas anarchists on opposing capitalism and defending workers's issues. Have there ever been any self-proclaimed working-class libertarians?

it's a difficult question because the word has been comprehensively taken by the right. its meaning has shifted so far (as with 'conservative' i guess) that using the word just confuses things.

i was thinking though, that it seems to have spread among basically apolitical young people far more than the anti-globalization movement c. 2001 did.

probably because libertarianism is the most anti-political ideology i can imagine.

ooh, interesting footnote from george woodcock's anarchism:

"Sébastien Faure, who founded Le Libertaire in 1895, is often credited with having invented the word libertarian as a convenient synonym for anarchist. However <Joseph> Déjacque's use of the word as early as 1858 suggests it may have had a long currency before Faure adopted it." (p263, Pelican edn, 1963)

Déjacque also ran a magazine called Le Libertaire, in New York (1858-61): he was an upholsterer.

(haha he also FORESAW ILX: "In Déjacque's world of the future, the great metropolises of the 19th century will disappear, and on their sites will rise enormous monumental; meeting halls, called cyclideons, each capable of holding a million people, and conceieved by Déjacque as 'altars of the social cult, anarchic churches of Utopian humanity'. There, in the total liberty of discussion, 'the free and great voice of the public' will be heard...", ibid., p264)

"we have to take practice into account, and in practice anarchists have leaned on the left and libertarians on the right"

anarchists:
http://www.wolfstone.com/images/20010222Twins.jpg

libertarian:
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/27/45017300_07a6caaa47.jpg

i do think people attracted to the libertarian movement are linear thinkers. whereas i am all over the place. ts: hedgehog or fox?

Have there ever been any self-proclaimed working-class libertarians?

Karl Hess, Barry Goldwater's speech writer became a welder after his political fallout w/the Republicans.

From Wikipedia:

The first known use of a term that has been translated as "libertarian," in a political sense, was by anarcho-communist Joseph Déjacque[16] who used the French term "libertaire" in a letter to Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in 1857.[17] The word stems from the French word libertaire (synonymous to "anarchist"), and was used in order to evade the French ban on anarchist publications. Many anarchists still use the term (e.g., terms translatable as "libertarian" are used as a synonym for anarchism in many non-English languages, like French, Italian and so on), and in the English language socialist anarchism and communist anarchism are often referred to as Libertarian socialism or Libertarian communism respectively to distinguish it from authoritarian Marxist varieties of socialism and communism. In the United States, however, Libertarian refers to members of the American Libertarian party, whose politics might be described as classical liberalism. Those who support similar policies but are not members of the Libertarian party are known as libertarians in the United States and much of the English speaking world.

I think the American meaning of libertarianism as an ideology separate from anarchism has become more and more prominent, and hence "libertarian" as a synonym to "anarchist" is losing it's value. At least the Finnish anarchists I know consider "libertarian" more of a swear word than something they'd call themselves.

the key diff between these 19th-century libertaires and the present-day ones seems to be the issue of property

(haha i so don't have time to be looking this up at the moment)

also:
http://images.jupiterimages.com/common/detail/79/83/22668379.jpg

Also, I think these days many non-authoritarian communists call themselves "autonomists" rather than libertarian communists. What's the difference between that and left-wing anarchism, heaven only knows.

yeah i'd never call myself a libertarian either, but people's own labels aren't always very trustworhty.!

the key diff between these 19th-century libertaires and the present-day ones seems to be the issue of property

And this is probably still one of the key differences between anarchists and libertarians today. I know few anarchists who wouldn't find the idea of private property and money problematic.

lots of key diff between european anarchists and USian ones

"Have there ever been any self-proclaimed working-class libertarians?"

Karl Hess, Barry Goldwater's speech writer became a welder after his political fallout w/the Republicans.

-- artdamages, Tuesday, August 14, 2007 1:51 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Link

i dunno if this is an actual joke, ie made up, but it's killing me with rofls.

mark has hit the nail on the head. there's this crazy right-wing nz philosopher (ie lecturer in philosophy) who writes for 'the times', and he's all blah blah legalize kiddie porn blah blah no government is best government, but the notion that private property is anything less than divinely ordained never arises. it's like the one single thing in the world that doesn't melt into air.

re Hess: Nope, it's legit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Hess

From a cursory read, Karl Hess sounds like he would have been fun to party with.

I don't think people consider themselves 'Libertarians' because whatever aspects of the core ideology they agree with, very few people can get on board with the purest form of the ideology. The purest form, we all agree, is kind of nuts, but where are these pure Libertarians, and why do people find such joy in railing against them? Aren't there larger groups of idiots that deserve more attention?

not by that logic, no

Well, the core ideal is Libertarianism - anything less is minarchism.

You really think 'purist' Libertarians are few and far between, humansuit? Especially on the Internets?!?

where are these pure Libertarians

my university

why do people find such joy in railing against them?

because i am surrounded by them

Aren't there larger groups of idiots that deserve more attention?

our evangelical fundamentalist christian union is a traditional target

Being a Britishes, you don't know shit about life among the evangelicals, brother.

you wanna bet? these guys are CRAZY, and, worse, they're mostly scientists!

Yes OK I think you have me there Milo. At the same time, I don't think I've ever met a pure Libertarian in my everyday life. I mean, I know of that blue dude, so I know they're out there, but how many I don't know.

As far as Uni Libertarians, yes, I agree. But in my experience that is often due to taking Econ 101, meeting the linear demand and supply curves, and embracing the simplicity. Doesn't that usually dissipate by the second semester?

no, it doesn't, and i'm not just talking economics students here.

That's mighty strange then. Are you in the US or UK? I encountered some free econ types in Scotland, but the overwhelming majority of things I got dragged to were 'Socialist' rallies, and I have to say that I'd identify myself as Libertarian over that if I was forced to.

i'm in the uk
baitin ur libertarianz

but the notion that private property is anything less than divinely ordained never arises. it's like the one single thing in the world that doesn't melt into air.

it's funny, isn't it? it's not really about a radically different kind of non-government so much as shrinking the borders of the monopoly-of-force state down to, like, your yard.

libertarianism is eternally fascinating to me, it never stops pissing me off in one way or another, where tradition bible, blood n soil conservatism, while a much bigger electoral threat, just looks so pathetic and wrong on its face i don't give it much mind.

this is probably still one of the key differences between anarchists and libertarians today. I know few anarchists who wouldn't find the idea of private property and money problematic.

I need to read more of this thread and I can't right now, but I just wanted to note (as a lifelong 40 year old anarchist who has read more theory than is good for me) that I find this to be true for me. And my only really major issue with libertarians (besides their "fuck the common good" privatization bullshit) is what I call the "bootstrap" mentality, a willful disregarding of race/class/gender privilege and advantage.

I do have some common ground w/these folks, especially the Oregon/Pacific NW style... distrust of gov't gun regulation, distrust of newer supposedly "good" laws like hate crime legislation, emphasis on self-sufficiency, quasi-vigilante neighborhood action groups, tolerance for separatists of all stripes, etc.

Plus they are usually fun to party with, like the few Commies I know.

So now is everyone going to rail at Sleeve, or is anarchism somehow less 'kooky' than Libertarianism? Is it because one is 'on the right' and the other 'on the left'?

thanks to your handy "there is no such thing as idiocy" argument, we don't have to -- it will save time

Marky Mark and the Snarky bunch!

For libertarian fun, go dig up Roger Adultery/Manalishi's posts

I'm not sure how much fun that would be.

i think my dad is a libertarian. not in a mean way, exactly, more in a "oh i can't be bothered with politics" throwing hands up at the world thing.

For a good example of modern libertarians out there in american politics, listen to the first hour of Thom Hartmann's radio show. He has a habit of having libertarians/rightwing conservatives on his show daily, and actually trying to debate them on their points.

<i>Have there ever been any self-proclaimed working-class libertarians?</i>

I knew quite a few who posted at the boards at Reason.com, insofar as they were equally concerned with concentrations of corporate power as they were with state power. The bloggers who write as Mona and thoreau, at High Clearing, are sorta kinda close to that. And they're certainly far from anything you'd consider "right-wing."

I suspect that more than a few conservatives gravitate towards libertarianism given the Republican Party's trend towards imperialism and disregard for anything resembling "limited government." So while there aren't that many card-carrying Libertarians, some of its tenets hold appeal to disillusioned conservatives in America and maybe even a few liberals.

I completely agree with that. Indeed, there was some NPR clip I caught in which a guy was discussing his (?) article / book about being a Liberal Libertarian. I can get with that. I don't know what his point was, exactly, but I think if one were to believe that social equality was important but that limited control by government was an avenue towards that, one might call themselves a Liberal Libertarian. Wow, I'm muddled here, but anyway I've heard someone reference something similar to what you're saying.

The purest form, we all agree, is kind of nuts, but where are these pure Libertarians, and why do people find such joy in railing against them?

I know who they are!

http://img179.imageshack.us/img179/3827/scarecrowvp0.jpg

I don't know if I'd classify myself as libertarian and subscribe to all of their beliefs (this is the old "You can't pigeon-hole MY IDEAS, no, I'm too much of a wild card to be labeled" speech) but I certainly many of them to be wiser than most general right-wing ones, never mind the delusions of the left.

The first book to really make me look at libertarian ideas for the first time and think about them were Sowell's "Knowledge and Decisions." The book doesn't even mention the ideology explicitly but only later did I realize that's what they were. It's hard to still believe in many leftist assumptions after reading that book.

is anarchism somehow less 'kooky' than Libertarianism? Is it because one is 'on the right' and the other 'on the left'?

In its purest form, I think left anarchism is utterly insane. However, I think that ideas (such as fair trade or microcredit or even just things like greater support for community broadcasting) which relate in a mild way to its central tenets of decentralization of power and small-scale co-operative ownership are valuable and possibly essential in terms of moving towards a sustainable and more just society. (I think these things should be supported by bureaucratic state funding, not being much of an anarchist.) AFAICT the self-styled left-anarchists I've known have mostly just been occupied with these sorts of things or with environmental and human rights activism (and in Canada, just voted Liberal or NDP anyway.) I don't think even a mild form of right-libertarianism has anything positive to offer, except maybe re some social issues like legalizing soft drugs, which aren't particular to right-wing libertarianism. (I don't think the problem with most of the world is that it's not capitalist enough.) If, in defiance of logistics and common sense, the world actually were organized into some nightmarish network of little provincial communes, maybe I could see more value in a more pro-capitalist movement. Also, AFAICT, at least in the US, right-libertarianism seems like much more of a prominent political threat. (I sometimes felt surrounded by Communists at York and was similarly reactionary towards them.)

i thought up a devastating take-down of libertarianism while i wz swimming this mornin but i have since forgotten it

all i can remember is it took out nudism also!

adios!

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/02/libertarian-expat-communities-chile

LPD is on the case

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/shouts/2014/03/libertarian-police-department.html

http://www.clickhole.com/blogpost/it-only-took-half-wikipedia-entry-libertarianism-c-695

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2014/10/rand-paul-education-government-in-the-way

If Kentucky Senator and Republican presidential hopeful Rand Paul has his way, classroom sizes will someday rise well beyond their existing ratios of 15-to-1 or 30-to-1.

“I think we should go to a million to one,” Paul said at Vanity Fair’s New Establishment Summit on Wednesday, during a panel conversation with Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt, super-investor John Doerr, and reporter and author Bob Woodward.

Expressing disbelief that class sizes impact test scores, Paul urged educators to take advantage of new technologies that allow massive groups to learn from a single teacher. “I think extraordinary things can happen,” Paul said. "I think the government’s gotten in the way.”

how is that libertarian??!

Expressing disbelief that class sizes impact test scores

Any libertarian worth his or her salt must upon principle desire a free and open marketplace for the delivery of education to our children. Something tells me that this free and open marketplace for would always have a certain number of schools that maintained a 15-1 ratio of students to teachers. They will be private schools for the children of the very wealthy, who don't give a flying fuck about their kids' test scores; they just care about their kids' education.

such schools not only already exist, aimless, but the ratio isn't 15-1, it is often 3-1 or even 1-1

obviously, the government hasn't gotten in their way

http://www.freeexistence.org/freedom.shtml

Apparently I should live in the Netherlands, Germany, Finland or Sweden.

a) i got really annoyed at a bunch of 'yeah, and cut government funding for the libraries -- i never use 'em because i can just buy books!' types on another board

i use and love libraries and want them to be funded by the government BUT one of my best friends exclusively reads books from the library, never buys, even used from a yardsale--and idk why but it actually bothers me. i think i'm projecting a supercilious intent into his obdurate anti-consumerism that may or may not be there

don't worry, some of us buy too many books to make up for it

the freest countries according to freeexistence.org

Rank Nation            Overall    Property   Taxes      Speech     Ltd Govt   Guns       Drugs      Corruption Inflation  Business   
1    Switzerland       76         90         71         94         66         60         45         86         88         82         
2    Chile             73         85         75         100        83         47         45         70         83         72         
3    Estonia           72         90         82         100        55         48         40         70         82         79         
4    Australia         71         90         63         100        62         20         55         79         85         89         
5    Canada            71         90         80         100        50         30         50         83         77         82

From Tim Bateman, far upthread:

as my Head of History at School once put it: 'The only good laws are the ones that create more freedom than they destroy.'

This assertion postulates that "freedom" is the highest possible good. This is not a self-evident proposition. Why should we take this on faith? Why must we promote freedom above "justice" or "happiness" or "community", or a score of other social ideals?

Next, it is entirely unclear to me how any law's amount of created or destroyed freedom would be quantified. If, for example, legally relegating a class of humans to slavery were to allow greatly expanded "freedom" for a somewhat larger class of slave owners, wouldn't that meet this teacher's criteria for a "good law"?

During the Enlightenment this sort of saying used to be scorned as 'cant'.

xp. ah, chile, were abortion is illegal in all cases, so free, just the best freedom.

Libertarians smell like wee.

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Monday, August 26, 2002 7:24 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I wonder if Tim Bateman was related to Jay Bateman?

as my Head of History at School once put it: 'The only good laws are the ones that create more freedom than they destroy.'

the problem that most libertarians can't get their heads around is that there are many forms of "freedom" (or liberty) and that they often conflict with one another. so "maximizing freedom" is not really an achievable goal because one freedom may get in the way of another.

sorry for that freshman poli-sci stuff but i have a few libertarians in my FB feed and it drives me nuts when they treat 'freedom' like it's this singular transparent thing.

the problem that most <people> can't get their heads around is that there are many forms of <political idea> and that they often conflict with one another. so <political idea> is not really an achievable goal because one <political idea> may get in the way of another.

― wizzz! (amateurist), Thursday, August 18, 2016 4:11 AM (15 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ftfy

how is this not a Tim and Eric skit pic.twitter.com/Pv6knmMdqt

— go birds 🦅 (@LarryWebsite) February 8, 2018

hahahahahaha

i am a little concerned by that guy's indignation about needing a license to make toast and i kinda want him to have to pass a test before he can operate any technology with a heat source

No way

they're doing a bit

Toasterman is insane looking though

guys you really need to watch more video clips from the libertarian convention

^^ this is also what I say to anyone who says I don't understand the libertarian party

there was also a moment where a nude fat man bounded across the stage and everyone loved it

omg that twitter thread has more clips

these are all... something

I take it back, it was a underwear-clad near-nude man, and he appears in that twitter thread :)

https://youtu.be/RqZVVvp95nc
best of toasterman

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EmKViuyUcAA1CCg?format=jpg&name=small

Hell yeah baby! We stan our queen

Nice!

so she’s clearly gotta be “Deep State” now on the Q, right??

no

Legalize child labor.

Children will learn more on a job site than in public school.

— Libertarian Party NH (@LPNH) June 7, 2021

Yes. Children should especially learn how to pick our crops. Since they are already low to the ground they are ideal for picking lettuce, strawberries, cucumbers and similar edibles. Their job site would be open air, they'll get lots of exercise, and they'll learn every day what it feels like to be devalued, exploited and abused. Invaluable lessons to carry them through their miserable lives.

counterthought - children will learn more watching Libertarians being set ablaze and screaming for their lives

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/237/129/e97.jpg