Are there any libetarians here? I want to join but don't understand what it is.

[Denter]

Maybe a libertarian is more qualified to speak, but it looks like you think that small government = weak government

Aside from some Murray Rothbard crackpot who advocates anarchy, it’s obvious that you need a strong government to enforce contracts and laws.

Who are these people that advocate from weak government? Small does not equal weak.

The amount of tax dollars, courts, police and soldiers that is needed to enforce contracts and laws depends mightily on metapolitical conditions that are really upstream of all government. In a state with strong asabiyyah, you probably don't need much at all, but that's because social forces are the de facto government. When you are in an atomized, mass society, it's impossible to implement and you require a huge and strong government to even maintain basic social order.

 

[Denter]

So "the state" in complex society really is just a law of power preservation. In early America, there were no police, yet anti-social forces were met with quasi-state violence all the time. We shouldn't get too hung up on formal versus informal government; in modern societies, someone will be doing the governing. It's not avoidable.

 

[Jack V Savage]

Maybe a libertarian is more qualified to speak, but it looks like you think that small government = weak government

Aside from some Murray Rothbard crackpot who advocates anarchy, it’s obvious that you need a strong government to enforce contracts and laws.

Who are these people that advocate from weak government? Small does not equal weak.

The concept of gov't "size" doesn't really make sense, though.

 

[Joe_Armstrong]

Free markets with no regulations is such a bad idea.
If too many investment instruments are linked to each other
in combination with high frequency trading the whole system
could come down in minutes.

There was a 'Flash Crash' in 2010
If this happens again it could be a problem

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_flash_crash

 

[djacobox372]

America prior to the 30s could be said to be something close to a Libertarian system and 19th century Britain as well.

It’s not a case of “it can’t happen” but just that it isn’t that popular and is easily eroded in a democracy.

Once people start legislating morals and start passing regulations on business (usually started by business to keep competitors out) it falls apart by definition.

It pretty much is impossible to do in a democracy but obviously it wouldn’t be “freedom” under a dictatorship either

Oh the joys of pre 1930's libertarianism. Libertarianism works pretty well until there is any sort of conflict or disaster--the sheer selfishness of the philosophy causes to fail in hard times.

 

[superpunch]

Libertarianism is almost entirely based on lies. If you're reading through libertarian stuff, go actually look all the quotes from famous people they claim to support them. They're almost all fake lol.

 

[Yehudim]

Oh the joys of pre 1930's libertarianism. Libertarianism works pretty well until there is any sort of conflict or disaster--the sheer selfishness of the philosophy causes to fail in hard times.

I said pre-1930s, FDR and Hoover preceding him was the antithesis of it.

 

[grimballer]

It’s basically true liberals (classical) + free market economics.

You want the government to be small and it’s only job is protecting the country from outside threat and protecting citizens and their property within.

Everything else is privately owned and ran

 

[forum poster]

But what if the child consents though? - Right-wing Libertarians describing the NAP.


I'm somewhat of a libertarian socialist. Which American libertarians with no knowledge of political history tell me is an oxymoron.

 

[jeremyemilio]

I’m not a libertarian but I do speak for them. Here is a video of libertarians summarized.

Funny.

(But to be fair, just because a lot of people who call themselves libertarians happen to be dumb, doesn't make it a broken philosophy. There's a pretty good case to be made that requiring a drivers license would fall under the libertarian principal of it being okay to put limits on people to prevent them from hurting others.)

 

[UFCUCF]

The fault lines are taxes and government regulation which I refer to as “government in your wallet” and personal freedom/choice which is “government in your bedroom.”

Republican = government in your bedroom but not in your wallet
Democrat = government in your wallet but not in bedroom.
Libertarian = government out of your wallet and bedroom.
Populist = government in your wallet and bedroom.

Yes, not every issue or person fits into this box but this should get you started.

 

[mmafan2000]

I'd say the same thing about social-contract theory and people who idealize the "state of nature" like Rousseau did. We now know just how violent hunter-gatherer society is (20% of men die by violence), and how tyrannical it was (most men did not pass on their genes). It was a decent hypothesis in the 18th century, but we simply know too much now. Heck, we now know quite a lot about pre-contact Australian aboriginal life, and have testimonies of white men who were marooned or otherwise lived with those people, and to call it violent is an understatement. I think anyone now who doesn't reckon with Hobbes is doomed to fantasy; life without the state is irrefutably nasty, brutal, vicious and short.

Alright, so most criticism here stems from the concept of minimal state hence the incapability of true libertarianism. Correct?

 

[mmafan2000]

Dave Smith has a podcast called Part of the Problem where he breaks down libertarianism pretty well.

Not perfectly, but pretty well.

Very good summary and explanation. I understand now. Thanks! People here need to watch it.

 

[mmafan2000]

The concept of gov't "size" doesn't really make sense, though.

Why not? Look at the huge government in Canada for example. Huge taxes, government branch for nearly everything, in Quebec they have a government language and covid police. Red tape for everything. Clearly their absurdly huge government can be contrasted with other nations.

 

[mmafan2000]

Sounds like someone didn't pay their Private PMC their compound security fee this month, sorry about the marauders.

I don't really understand what you mean. To make a long story short I hope you don't want open borders and the pouring in of illegals. I spoke to a crazy woman once who wanted something like that. I asked her what was the point of having a country then. She growled and walked a way. Some people are mentally insane.

 

[Denter]

I don't really understand what you mean. To make a long story short I hope you don't want open borders and the pouring in of illegals. I spoke to a crazy woman once who wanted something like that. I asked her what was the point of having a country then. She growled and walked a way. Some people are mentally insane.

It's an anarcho-capitalist joke

 

[Denter]

Alright, so most criticism here stems from the concept of minimal state hence the incapability of true libertarianism. Correct?

The more complex the society, the more government it requires, whether it is formal or not. I like civilization, so the question becomes how to organize said government. Libertarians like the idea of that government being largely informal, but seem to be blind as to how we got to the point that informal social governance stopped working.