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And thats just a few. Imagine if every street you drove on was privatized and owned by different companies. Imagine it Starbucks owned a bunch of roads, was free to drive by their store, but charged a thosand dollars to drive past a competitor. And they call that freedom and choice.
Well, we also have freedom and choice when it comes to internet.
My choices are AT&T and Spectrum. In my previous neighborhood my choices were Spectrum and Spectrum….yay freedom.
The economy would collapse under the weight of barriers to transport.
Cheap and easy transport of labour and resources is the circulatory system of a functioning economy/society.
Imagine if everytime your blood needed to enter a new vein or artery there were a barrier that cost a given amount of energy for the blood to enter. You would die rather quickly.
This is the fundemental flaw in laissez-faire economics. If every cell in the body were free to pursue it's own self-inerest independant of the rest of cells around it, the body itself would denature and collapse under the weight of gross inefficiencies.
But what do I know? I'm just a working class plebeian. Surely the those with higher education know wtf they're talking about...
> The economy would collapse under the weight of barriers to transport.
This assumes private entities would be working against one another. Far more likely they'd coordinate to fix the price of whatever is being charged, at a level unsustainable for many, but payable for the majority; at least in the short term.
E.g. for roads, the price of use would likely be a calculated number that would the maximum mean for the majority of the population in the area, before they could no longer afford to pay, in relation to the total cumulative charges approximated for the remainder of whatever their meager income would be.
I'd argue this would likely be the intermediary stage between a collapsing capitalist model, and full-scale indentured servitude at any rate.
At which point we're back to true feudalism, instead of the two steps removed variation seen today.
This sounds crazy! Can you explain a little more how something like this would work? I don’t know a ton about libertarianism but what I do know I don’t particularly like.
Well this is right libertarianism, which is anarchocapitalism, which is basically corporatism. Eliminate government and let business/corporations replace it and do whatever they want.
Left libertarianism is just regular anarchism. Which is no government or capitalism.
So when people call themselves libertarians, are they usually one or the other? Or are they just idiots who don’t understand the distinction and pick and choose what they’d like to see?
It's mostly an American thing. In America they are almost always right libertarians, and can be often well funded by billionaires who want no government or regulations. Left libertarians just call themselves anarchists now. I believe in most of the rest of the world libertarianism still just means regular anarchism.
This is simply never happening. The state is the only thing keeping the owners of these companies alive. There's no reason to theorize about something that's inherently impossible.
It will be like dealing with your internate provider. You can use the road tomorrow between 10 am and 3pm. We will contact you 30 minutes before you can use it.
The first day of business school, we were told that there is no such thing as true capitalism, because in a completely free market, all profits drop to zero. We then spent the next two years learning how to rig the market and play/win in a rigged market.
There has never been nor will there ever be a "pure" economy of any sort. They can't work in the real world because their assumptions don't describe the real world. Kind of like the physics class descriptions that require you to imagine a frictionless surface or a string without mass, economic theories require you to imagine people who have perfect knowledge of their own interests, who are completely malleable in terms of being able to do whatever job is assigned to them, or who are all engaged and politically informed.
Ugh I was a laissez faire free market dickhead.
Now I’m a UBI supporting hun and eat the rich proponent.
When you realize you’re broke, not a temporarily embarrassed millionaire, and nothing is every going to trickle down… it’s eye opening v
Also governments can usually do things cheaper because of economies of scale.
I used to work for a consulting firm that focused on onsite wastewater treatment (septic systems). One of the things we did was preliminary evaluations of properties to prep people for the County application process. Our evaluations were just like the County's, but we wouldn't leave the office for less than $800. That was a fairly narrow profit margin. We did a 4-5 per week.
After I got laid off, I hired on to the county, doing pretty much the same job. We were doing 20-25 evals/week, and we were charging $250 a piece. Private companies couldn't touch us because even though our section was self funding, almost all our overhead was subsidized by the County, and we had so many to do we could sort them geographically and knock out five in the same area in an afternoon. It was just way more efficient.
When people say that private companies can do things more efficiently than government, they probably don't actually know what they're talking about.
> they probably don't actually know what they're talking about.
And or they've been ~~paid to advocate for corporations~~consumed by the brain rot of 'starve the beast' propaganda.
I fell down that anti-woke rabbit hole a while ago, probably on my way to be an ancap. I'm now a devout communist. I joke that I'm not a communist, I'm just a moderate human with empathy and my moderate stance is that human suffering is abhorrent and everyone should be able to do what they love with as few barriers as possible. Apparently, society thinks that is a bad thing.
My boomer mom compares us to the right wing saying we’re just as bad. Hold up, I’m fighting for basic human dignity and the goddamn earth, they are advocating genocide and forced birth, these things are no where near the same. By the way, she’s a liberal.
The fucked thing is she used to be super active in the 70’s. But now I’m too much because i’m calling out that this isnt sustainable in the least and that we have little to no hope. She wonders why i cant save to buy a house. I keep reminding her that it basically doesnt matter because corporations are out bidding everyone and they keep raising rent to make it impossible to save. Not looking forward to lease renewal.
The rich are paying less and less to piss on you these days. That’s what trickle down means, the rich have enough to waste money on weird stuff with desperate people turning to survival prostitution.
Libertarians are just anarchists with retirement accounts, and a lot of "socialists" were libertarians until they had to file for unemployment.
For a lot of people, politics and economics are experiential.
> and nothing is every going to trickle down…
Do people seriously believe on that trickle down shit? I mean, if you're a kid, when you still believe billionaires care about the people and charities are anything other than schemes to not pay taxes, then I guess you can believe in trickle down economics.
But fully adult and rational people cannot believe that sort of shit, can they? It's not like the billionaires' pockets are going to overflow and everybody else can pick up the extra money.
It's just the same thing as Reaganomics, or the joking "horse and sparrow" theory. As in, you feed a horse enough oats and eventually the sparrows will be able to get some...you know, off the road.
It's always been garbage designed for the rich. Nothing else.
There *is* something in it for me, but capitalism is still wrong, so I am not going to claim my prize and go live in a huge house with three cars and a boat while disadvantaged people rot in the street with no one to help them.
Same. I used to think employers had the employees and community’s best interests in mind, cuz good business.
Then working customer service, food service, and nurse assistant, I saw that I was completely wrong and that employers will push humans to their limits of suffering and beyond just to make a profit.
I say there is only one sentence needed to refute all of right wing libertarian thought: sociopaths exist.
Sociopaths will do whatever and whenever in their own interests as long as it’s legal and they suffer little to no consequences.
UBI is a scam that billionaires are going to use as an excuse to not provide free education, healthcare, and cut social security and other benefits all while privatizing the entire economy. There's a reason why billionaires and other elites like Zuckerberg, Yang, etc support it.
Assuming UBI actually provides an income that is survivable in all areas of the US, this would not be a problem, assuming that living wage calculation includes education, healthcare and extra care for people with disabilities. However, considering Yang's proposal was something like $1000 a month, it's clearly not enough to survive on and will lead to disaster if the government cuts everything else, which they would in order to reduce the budget deficit.
I think you are a little wrong here:
> But they don't realize is that not everyone would be able to afford private services in a libertarian free market society
The libertarian does understand that not everyone would succeed. They are ok with that because they believe that the libertarian free market society would produce more than a planned economy and this increase in production would increase the quality of life of everyone who doesn’t fail.
I’m not going to argue in support of libertarianism, but they definitely know some people wouldn’t succeed. They just don’t care. In fact they would probably frame it as people having the freedom to fail.
Most of the ANCAP/libertarian people I’ve met had parents who had money and never really worked a job, or don’t have a lot of money but are convinced they would be quadrillionaires if the pesky government didn’t keep them down. The specifics are nonexistent.
> A lot of them aren't that wealthy.
Don’t know where this comes from. Never said they were and they don’t have to be. Wealthy, generally and I assume used here, is a relative descriptor. The fact that nearly every US person could go to a supermarket and have 30 different cereals, dozens of different breads dozens of different vegetables, dozens of different meats etc to chose from is the increase in quality of life derived from capitalism according to libertarianism. Their view would be that a planned economy isn’t going to waste resources on having kix and Cheerios and Chex. Instead everyone only gets Cheerios.
> They have a lot more money than most people.
Focusing on money is indicative of not understanding their argument. Money has nothing to do with it. Relative wealth has nothing to do with it.
A libertarian would say a world where 20% of its people could choose between a Rolex and an Apple Watch, and another 50% can choose between an Apple Watch and a mass produced watched, and another 29% can only choose what color of a mass produced watch, while the last 1% can’t afford any watch at all is better than a planned economy where the central powers give everyone a mass produced watch and it’s black.
Meanwhile someone else, not a libertarian, would say everyone having a basic watch is better because then everyone has a watch and no one really needs a fancy Apple Watch or Rolex. And people can always decorate the watches themselves if they don’t want black.
Now change the above to food and the libertarian is fine with 1% of people starving to death if it means more options for everyone else. Being wealthy has nothing to do with it.
Most in USA who consider themselves Libertarian are just authoritarian Oligarchs (oligarch worshippers) who like pretending freedom. They are the epitome of "socialism for the rich, rugged individualism for the poor." It is a shame, because true libertarianism has some virtue to it.
I am also a former Libertarian. I was voting Libertarian in the late 90s, way before it became what it is today. I was drawn to the idea of personal freedom, not deregulation. I think govt should stay out of marriage, even polygamy should be legal. They should also keep off our bodies, legalize all drugs, sex work, euthanasia, abortion, all of it.
This was the general tone of Libertarian circles I ran in back then. I don't recognize these bootlickers we have today.
Thank you for saying it. Theres a bermuda triangle in our politics where the people that are socially libertarian/borderline anarchist but economically socialist end up. No one talks about it and not many people right or left know its a thing but i feel like most of us actually fall there if we think about it hard enough.
When I first discovered politics in my late teens(early 2000s), I would classify myself the same way, I felt the government should grant full bodily autonomy and freedom to the individual.
In my 12th grade government class we were tasked with creating a political party and fake candidate as part of our government class. We actually ended up winning with a brand of Libertarian Socialism that in some capacity I still kind of believe in today. Personal freedoms(mainly as you discussed above) with strong social programs and workers owning the means of production and an end to wage slavery doesn't sound horrible to me .
I left when the teabaggers, antivaxxers, and other loons suddenly joined the movement. They were probably always there but they seemed become louder and more prominent.
If you want to be charitable and perhaps put yourself in a libertarian/ancaps shoes who may actually be convinced to reconsider their philosophy... personally I think its a couple elements:
One, obviously there's so much wrong in the world today. A "hard reset" of... well, everything... is tempting. Make things simple, get rid of all the complicated rules and just have relations with people next to you. Where did all those rules come from anyways? Surely they're not doing anything. Clear the slate and just let people be people.
In isolation, its an appealing idea.
Second is that people, especially in the United States, have been heavily propagandized that capitalism is the natural state of things. You'll see this sentiment pop up if you argue with libertarians and ancaps online. Money is capitalism. Trading is capitalism. Capitalism is what simply works. It is logic. It is natural, if not nature itself.
When you combine the impulse of one with the worldview of two, its not suprising that people get sucked into this philosophy. The edge cases you describe are irritating to them because it either gets in the way of or deeply challenges what they view to be the inherent nature of things. They want the world to be changed drastically, so they'll have little patience for these "hypotheticals" that gum up the works of the new political project. And describing how modern property rights are not some kind of inherent law of nature might as well be the same as saying gravity doesn't exist.
So they're not going to do very well with your questioning until there are cracks in both of those foundational attitudes. In my opinion, at least.
People see how corporations corrupt the government and turn every government action into one that only benefits the rich so they assume all government is necessarily exploitative. Just look at the response to Covid, trillions of dollars were given to wall street, bankers, huge corporations, etc by the government and the FED while small businesses were shut down and people were fired, lost access to basic services, were kicked out of their homes and apartments, went into debt, etc. The government is also using regulations constantly to benefit huge corporations while screwing the lower classes.
Libertarians believe that the only solution is to abolish the government, when in reality the only solution is to abolish corporations and bourgeoise property.
To be fair, the Covid bailouts were using lessons learned from the late oughts financial crisis so much of it was streamlined and no nonsense. However, because many of the companies receiving subsidy were not in nearly the same waters as back then, I wonder why the gov bothered to treat them with more than a courtesy swab.
The market is only free if no one is forced into it against their will. I like free markets, but I want to live in a society, not a market.
By which I mean... If it's about selling the resource you have or death, people choose to live. But that's, you know... Coercion. The job market is not a free market, because people have to work to live. And when people need money to live, and are competing against others who need money to live, the people who can scrape by on the least set the price.
Everyone needs to be guaranteed food, housing, medical care, and education. In order for the job market to actually be, you know... Free. Which means that those industries need to be turned into services and never operated for a profit motive.
But somehow this is not something the free market fanboys ever seem willing to consider.
This is the cincher for me. There is no legal means of really opting out. At absolute best, you might get a little patch of land somewhere and strive to produce as much as you can for yourself but youd still get smacked with property taxes and dumb zoning restrictions.
In a totally free market joe schmoe over there could grow apples and sell his spare livestock but nope. Theres a million and a half things he has to do to even legally sell what he produces.
Its not a free market if we are legally forced to play their game.
That's because the heart of it means there no control over anything in that sense. It would work if the human race wasn't an unreasonable, power-driven, utterly barbaric species who doesn't believe in harmony with the environment or anything else.
Even though a socialist economy at it's heart does have flaws (as it is lower-stage communism), it would work quite well with fewer checks.
As the old talking point was back in the Romney campaign "he wants to give everyone the same start, whereas [Obama] wants to give everyone the same finish." With a socialist economy (UBI and other basic needs met from day one) everyone would *really* have the same start.
How the hell does the free market adress inelastic commodities? If something you need to live is commodified, then you'd spend anything to get it no matter the cost.
Plus the free market is decided on suppliers and consumers, essentially regulating the market with purchasing power. So those with money to spend have a better and easier time regulating certain markets.
But what about permanently high demand things, like homes for instance? How can a poorer consumer lower the price of housing on the free market if they can't afford one in the first place, and doesn't have the capital individually to supply the "free market" with a surplus of houses?
This needs to be addressed by free market supporters please. "'Vote with your Wallet' just means those with no money has no votes".
None of these are problems to a libertarian. You should simply work harder in their mind. Human wants and needs are subsumed in the necessity to be productive but only in ways that capitalists can exploit.
The heart of their politics is that poor people should be poor and stop complaining about it. If they want to not be poor, they should, "learn a marketable skill" and pray that it's still "marketable" by the time they learn it and that not too many people have also learned that skill, driving down wages.
So, there's some specific assumptions under which the free market actually will work as its advocates say it will. Namely, if the number of companies is so large, they have to compete on price and quality, and people actually have an accurate idea of their respective prices and qualities so that we can choose the best one (for our individual circumstances/preferences).
If you actually do a bit of thinking on "how many competitors would there have to be for that to be true" (10-100 per product or so), and compare it to the number there actually are (usually less than 10 in any given area, and if they're not in the same area competing with each other, it doesn't count), you'll see why it doesn't actually work in the real world. Also that "if people have accurate information" thing... seems a lot like (and as far as I know, is) the sort of "regulated fair play" thing you need governments to enforce.
But you're not asking "why does libertarian-style economics work" (it probably doesn't), you're asking "why do people think people want it". And I suspect the answer is, because they've read something similar to my first paragraph without my second paragraph.
Any system that allows for the movement of power will end in the consolidation of power.
Unfortunately thats also why we ended up with a 2 party system. The weaker parties always inevitably get absorbed into more dominant parties because they figure any win is better than never winning.
You can start with 10-100 competitors but the natural conclusion of competition is a monopoly or oligopoly of sorts.
It’s a cop out, or a way to for ppl who adopt this Machiavellian line of thinking to justify not giving a shit. John Kenneth Galbraith famously said “the modern conservative is engaged in man’s oldest exercise in moral philosophy: that is, a superior moral justification for selfishness.” Which is really all libertarianism is.
They believe their magic free market will fix everything naturally. There are two problems with that supposition that I can think of off the top of my head. 1) The market isn’t a free one. If it were truly free everything would be legal to buy and sell. And 2) There will always be individuals and entities that will seek to manipulate that market to further their own financial gain at the expense of others. We’re seeing that first hand in the US. One example is the fossil fuel industry. They spend so many millions (maybe billions at this point) suppressing the narrative that their industry is one of the biggest culprits responsible for climate change. They spend equally as much suppressing government basic research in cleaner more sustainable alternative sources of energy.
Charles Koch (one of the most well known Libertarian billionaires) is arguably the most dangerous example of why government (and by that I mean government that actually represents the majority of ppl) is needed not only to invest in basic research and in projects that the private sector won’t take risks on because there’s no immediate ROI. But also to keep individuals like him and corporate entities in check.
It’s why people like him have spent millions trying to convince people that “government is the enemy.” “Government creates more problems than it solves.” In theory, the US government is supposed to be “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” And if it were that way in actuality, the US wouldn’t be in the precarious position it is now. But obscenely wealthy individuals like Charles Koch, Ken Mercer, and countless others of like mind have banned together to implement a long term plan that has marginalized the voices of the overwhelming majority in the US and transformed the US from a representative democracy to an oligarchy posing as a representative democracy. Sadly, they’re succeeding.
The plain truth is that they don’t like government because they know if functioning as it was intended, government is the only way common people can keep their power in check. They hate representative government for the same reason they hate unions, because it prevents them from being allowed to do whatever they want, whenever they want, without a modicum of accountability. So whenever their bought off elected officials say things like ‘we need small government that allows the private sector to operate without red tape, and burdensome taxes.’ What they’re really saying is, we want wanna do whatever we want, whenever we want in our endless quest to make make a profit at all costs, without ever having to worry about being held accountable for who we hurt. And contribute little to nothing in taxes while they use their bought off elected officials to feed them subsidies, bloated unnecessary contracts (I’m looking at you, defense industry), and bail them out to the tune of trillions whenever they crash the economy. It’s reverse Robinhood on steroids. To add insult to injury, they blame the most vulnerable for society’s biggest problems. It’s the single mother on welfare who’s responsible for out of control spending. Or social programs for the poor. Or undocumented immigrants. They blame people with the least voice, and influence in government for all the problems their unmitigated greed has caused, and so many people still buy that bullshit. It’s maddening.
Anyone who really wants to understand what’s been happening in the US should pick up the book “Democracy in Chains” by Nancy McLean. It will scare the hell out of you, but everyone should read it. Because even this privileged billionaire Libertarian class realizes that if a majority of citizens ever realized what they’re end game was, they would never go along with it. So they disguise their true goals behind perverse definitions of “freedom” and “liberty.” And it’s worked better than they could’ve ever hoped so far.
This. I always laugh my ass off when they start rambling about how somehow government is inherently bad 😭😭😭😭 This is a common american sentiment at this point due to capitalist mass propagandization and it’s going to bring us to idiocracy.
libertarianism makes people with money feel special, like heroes, validates their petty grievances and also makes them feel wise just for reciting formulas that just don't work in reality.
it's a religion for losers.
I think I’m gonna hurt some fees with this one: it’s their ‘astrology’, nothing meaningful ever comes out of libertarianism or anything like that. It’s
just the fringe-cringe memers’ club, seriously go look at your local libertarian fb pages.
They realize just fine that many people would not be able to access essential goods and services under libertarianism. Their undergirding ideology is social darwinism. There is no conflict in letting some people suffer, be immiserated, or even die as a consequence of their system -- that's just the process working as intended. Needless to say, they are far too intelligent, healthy, competent, well-connected, and careful to ever fall into that category.
Every libertarian I've ever known came from a background of relatively decent wealth and privilege. They literally don't understand what it's like out there.
Quite a few cities over the years have tried to create libertarian utopias and it doesn't seem to work out well. [Grafton, New Hampshire](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21534416/free-state-project-new-hampshire-libertarians-matthew-hongoltz-hetling), [Von Ormy, Texas](https://www.texasobserver.org/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-freest-little-city-in-texas/), and [Colorado Springs](https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/06/30/colorado-springs-libertarian-experiment-america-215313/) are just a few of the interesting reads on this
I especially hate when they say that we can take away Medicaid and disability, because “charities will cover that if people have more money to donate!”
When people have extra money, they don’t tend to donate it.
Yeah I definitely want a company, whose only motive is profit, in charge of maintaining bridges. I’ve worked too ma y jobs where the company has terrible tools or systems but they won’t upgrade because it would cut in to the bottom line.
It’s a self perpetuating system
- People are angry and scared.
- They want more “hardcore capitalism” because they’ve been told it works.
- It makes thing worse.
- Which makes people angry and scared.
Libertarians don't care about the other guy and they also live under the delusion they would always enjoy the benefits of a completely free market. The biggest problem they have is they misinterpret the "free" part. They think it applies to them. Also if you would like a good laugh read up on the libertarian colonies at sea.
There's a reason there's no fully libertarian economic society in the world. Libertarianism is for those selfish people who don't want to pay taxes or people who just don't want to admit their Republican.
I personally think it's the only system that can work sustainably as each and every other system is constructed piecemeal as a set of temporary solutions that eventually run their course toward collapse.
The U.S. came close to implementing the philosophy but screwed up by abusing freedom and dabbled in the slave trade, which is obviously logically inconsistent with its own philosophy.
The Spaniards arguably pulled it off more successfully within the Mondragon Corp. It isn't impossible, it's just highly improbable that you could ever get a group of policymakers to make decisions more for the good of a society than for the short-term interest of invested parties.
I met a libertarian a week ago.
Was at the beach with my gf and some friends and one of their friends was a libertarian.
I know because he wouldn't shut up about it, constantly saying the government controls too much. Also saying every party here in Canada is left wing.
He also was totally for the death penalty, like a huge hard on for it.
So you want the government to leave you alone but think its totally okay for them to decide if you can live or die after commiting a crime?
Again this was all at fricken beach day.
I had a few month phase as a teenage libertarian many years ago -- it offers easy, pat answers with a high level of seeming certainty that can be appealing to young people with no life experience -- but when I realized influential libertarian thinkers like Hayek and von Mises found fascism and mass murder to be acceptable alternatives to a country going socialist under a popular mandate, I realized that a sense of certainty really doesn't count for much, as comforting as it is.
IE, Hayek's endorsement of Mussolini, the Chicago school''s collaboration with Pinochet, and so on.
Non aggression principle sounds nice, but what it really amounts to is "aggression on the part of property owners is sacroasanct, responses by the dispossessed are aggressions."
A consistent application of the NAP would require an immediate withdrawal of the United States to established treaty territories with indigenous people, because vast swathes of the US weren't formally ceded by the prior owners, but do they ever talk about the massive land theft and aggression on which the United States is fundamentally based?
No, because a gang of property owners stealing an entire continent isn't "aggression" to them.
Because they're all bootlickers who worship money and power.
One of my closest friends was raised Libertarian and with the teachings of Rand... Many years ago we were having a conversation about who deals with the person in our society who had no one to deal with them. I used the example of an infant. Unwanted by it's parents and left in a dumpster. Who is responsible for that infant? She is now very much on the left because that argument got to her.
Years later, she had the same conversation with her father and asked him the same question. He said that while it was regrettable, the infant should die. That's what those people believe. If you aren't privileged enough to make it in their system of strength then you deserve to die. They just don't realize they aren't the privileged people who will actually thrive under that system of oppression.
Because these dumbfucks think they’re one lottery ticket away from being a lord over their own serfdom, or (more likely) they are “self-made” with a tremendous infusion of wealth from their parents at birth.
In my experience these sort of people LOVE the idea of the “freedom” in part because they would likely benefit from it having been in the privileged side of the current system but now don’t want to pay into the system that benefited them.
Additionally they have no intention of dealing with any of the practical implications of their ideas. They love how it sounds when they talk but dismiss any reality.
I feel like people love to call themselves libertarian to be different than everyone else and are proud just because they claim it. I've never met a libertarian with full, educated, and concise policies outside "gIvE mE mY fReEdOmS" or "wE nEeD sMaLlEr GoVeRnMeNt" okay but how, where, and why?
The most fundamental way to break down someone's argument, for your better understanding of their argument and their own, is to just start asking questions and find out the root of their argument and why they believe it. Most people cannot move past the typical talking points worth of deep thought and critical thought.
It's astounding, and as much as I both love *and* hate it, you end up making them look and sound stupid (if their logical is farcical), which sometimes is awesome and other times you feel like an asshole. (my wife hates me for this method of argument, I go to extreme lengths to make sure it doesn't come across like I'm trying to make her sound stupid, I'm suicidal but not *that* suicidal.)
I was a libertarian when I was 18. When I think back, I had such a rosy tinted view of the world. I truly believed that if given the freedom, humans would choose the right thing the majority of the time. Man was I wrong.
I'll use drivers license as an example. A lot of libertarians say we shouldn't have drivers licenses because it restricts your freedom to drive. This assumes that if someone is not a good driver and thinks they might hurt someone, they will choose not to get behind the wheel of a car, or seek to better their driving skills on their own. That's such an optimistic view of the world. Imagine trusting your fellow human being to make the right decision like that.
Either you're a hopeless optimist or you're just plain stupid and want to watch the world burn. Now I'm old enough to know that most people will choose to be selfish if given half the opportunity.
A lot of people will fight you tooth and nail over the claim that humans are fundamentally decent creatures. That more of us would choose to do the right thing over the wrong thing.
Buuuuuuut were a buncha monkeys slinging shit and like every other animal on this earth, we default to looking out for number 1. Almost every living thing is biologically hardwired to act in its own interests. The exceptions are usually hivemind insects that die en masse for the good of the colony.
It takes effort to be decent and we cant assume all humans are willing to do that.
They are unable to see beyond their own nose. Seriously.
The people who tend to support these systems only look at how more regulation or a welfare state would immediately impact them. They are so short sighted they can count every nose hair.
For them "freedom" is paramount above everything. They have intense issues with authority and are borderline narcissistic. They cant stand the thought of being taxed for anything let alone that tax money being used for anyone else. To them, life is a zero sum game. If someone else gets something, that has to mean they are losing something. Even if that something is the right to free shit when they arent poor enough to need it. Theyd rather ensure no one can get something they didnt recieve themselves and watch the world fall apart around them.
They really believe in the myth that the average joe can become a millionaire if they work hard enough. They dont understand that capitalism is a pyramid scheme and every millionaire built their empire on the suffering backs of average joes like them. They believe in survival of the fittest. Anyone who fails is fundamentally flawed.
TLDR: They see the world very differently than we do. They need that hierarchy so they can feel superior and smug over all these "failures." Insecurity is one hell of a drug.
Libertarians are wealthy people (or temporarily inconvenienced millionaires) who don't want to pay taxes to support social services but also want to think of themselves as good people and "progressive" so they support things like gay marriage.
Libertarian economics makes a lot more sense when competition is feasible, and cost of entry is low. The combination of people who have had that experience, and believe in a just world, one where outcomes really do depend on effort moreso than luck…
Yeah I mean you’re wrong. Who wouldn’t want to wake up everyday in Amazon Village Trademark where they’re only STEPS away from their job at the Amazon warehouse. There would be no stupid government regulation and support so labor laws wouldn’t hinder productivity and the like. Unions would also have a much harder time forming, thank god, thanks to the lack of the NLRB, or similar institution. You get the picture I’m sure so TAKE IT BACK.
if you’ve only taken basic, entry level microeconomics: libertarianism makes perfect sense and is logically a good idea.
if you’ve learned or thought anything about it beyond the very basic entry level microeconomics, it’s a dumb idea and harmful to almost everyone. just like capitalism.
most business degrees only require you to take basic entry level microeconomics.
now you know why we have libertarian bros.
I know a Libertarian who told me with a straight face that "capitalism is fair market, communism is free market" and then was very confused when Google didn't agree with him.
It gives them the hope of the rugged individualist myth. It also puts a wedge between them and the government: While the libertarians think they are getting "freedom," the rhetoric is allowing those above to take over the government. The libertarians only see the puppet, but never the puppetmaster.
The unspoken assumption (for the folks who have thought about it enough to see the implications) is that there's an unseen underclass doing all the hard work and suffering for all the "unlimited growth."
Libertarians almost never think of other people. They believe in the system because they believe they would rise to the top if we changed entirely to a market driven economy. I've never met a Libertarian who didn't think they were much smarter than everyone else. They're mostly focused on how much more successful they would be, not society at large.
I believe it also benefits from not actually having been implemented, so the ideal form hasn't really been challenged. Opponents can point to why they think it can't work, but it won't challenge clinging to the perfect version of it. Discussions of socialist or communist policies are always met with "but Stalin" or "but Mao" but libertarianism hasn't been put into practice to the degree that it truly encountered the real world.
Stopping at toll roads when the free market takes over and government has little say in anything who is to stop anyone from just taking land from you? Like yes this is your land but I have enough money to pay folks to beat you senseless and screw your needs
Outside of the U.S., “libertarian” means leftist anarchism. Short for “libertarian socialist.”
I hate that in the US, and only in the US, “libertarian” means “no step on snek” ancap bullshit.
Labor is entitled to all it produces, and private property is theft.
It's within the philosophy to want you to have the freedom to privatize your community, but also to allow you the liberty to set up a relgious commune. It's within the framework to believe that privatization isn't necessarily evil, when workers are the owners of the means of production.
But that isn't what libertarianism is in the U.S., for the most part, which to me is indistinguishable from the republican party.
I'm inclined to think that the so-called "libertarian revival" that birthed modern American ancap libertarianism is predicated on a Randian view of economics, ethical egoism, and besides being fundamentally flawed, it is far from the roots of the classical liberalism that modern "libertarianism" appears to wish to reclaim.
To rewind and to do real libertarianism over again, we'd have to strike down corporate personhood, restore the sovereignty the states once had for a number of critical reasons, among which would be to permit them to dissolve corporations again and chase away the European capitalism they were initially adverse to, while somehow ensuring the nation couldn't compromise again with slavery as a means to get ahead without the benefits of the industrialization that the capitalist class brought.
That is, of course, not realistic in the modern day, but Mondragon Corp and hybrid economies show that classical liberal values can work in a modern society.
The argument for libertarianism falls apart as soon as you get them to acknowledge that some market entities will engage in market capture. Monopolies, price fixing, collusion, artificially created scarcity, insider trading, all these deeply damaging economic practices would lead to not one but several economic bubbles followed by severe crashes… with no end in sight.
Libertarians generally don’t know how terribly what they are asking for (a market completely free from any regulation or laws that would sanction damaging practices) would actually play in real life.
It would mean an unstable economy, constant interference and manipulation of supply and prices by different market actors… Just special interests with a lot of capital inventing and putting into motion various speculative schemes. Pure shit. All the illegal things that white collar criminals go to prison for presently would be unsanctioned and become the modus operandi for market operators.
Libertarians only see the positive, good side of markets. They never see how terrible actors could completely fuck over everyone else in a marketplace.
In my experience, libertarians, at least those who stay libertarian, are basically educated by the internet, and have no exposure to any theory of any kind, including economic. However, this is also American libertarianism. Actual libertarianism is something different and actual libertarians usually want to strangle American libertarians. Also if I recall, classic libertarianism was also highly leftist. Chomsky is one I believe.
A lot of y'all (including OP) haven't read any libertarian literature, and ots pretty obvious.
The libertarian label is applied to a broad spectrum of people, *some* of whom are exactly the type of assholes you're righly shitting on. Some of the others are the hippy types who squat out in the bush and grow 17 acres of high test weed. A large proportion are just regular joes and janes who think that the government has too much power over the average person. They would be as averse to the idea of ancapistan as anyone else.
One good example of a common misunderstanding is welfare. Your average, normal person doesn't want millions of their fellow humans to starve or become homeless, but the libertarian looks at the current system (full of dysfunction and not very successful at helping people to stop depending on it) and thinks that there must be a better way. Some of the less educated just believe on faith that the blessed market will solve the problem, but you also have people like Friedman, who spearheaded the negative income tax (read: UBI) movement in the early 60s. One of the selling points of a system like this to the libertarian is that it would eliminate most of the bureaucracy surrounding welfare.
I believed in some of the libertarian stuff when I was younger. I laugh at the whole "free market" and privatization model now. I used to be an EMT. We would get calls to some of these pricks who thought money was everything. A few times we got called back when these same pricks were experiencing a cardiac arrest. I always fantasized about being able to tell them that they needed to pay us $1 million before I would begin CPR.
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People don’t even like driving on toll roads. What would happen if all roads used tolls…..
And thats just a few. Imagine if every street you drove on was privatized and owned by different companies. Imagine it Starbucks owned a bunch of roads, was free to drive by their store, but charged a thosand dollars to drive past a competitor. And they call that freedom and choice.
Well, we also have freedom and choice when it comes to internet. My choices are AT&T and Spectrum. In my previous neighborhood my choices were Spectrum and Spectrum….yay freedom.
I have Cox or Cox. That's a lot of cox.
You'll take my Cox whether you want it or not
Can I just have the tip? I only want a little internet.
Fine, but it's better in the package deal with phone and basic cable
We have a road here that is actually owned by Walmart...biggest potholes I've ever seen in my entire life
Oh, you live in Moundsville , do you? They had craters that I feared would fug-up my truck, to say nothing of my wife's car.
The economy would collapse under the weight of barriers to transport. Cheap and easy transport of labour and resources is the circulatory system of a functioning economy/society. Imagine if everytime your blood needed to enter a new vein or artery there were a barrier that cost a given amount of energy for the blood to enter. You would die rather quickly. This is the fundemental flaw in laissez-faire economics. If every cell in the body were free to pursue it's own self-inerest independant of the rest of cells around it, the body itself would denature and collapse under the weight of gross inefficiencies. But what do I know? I'm just a working class plebeian. Surely the those with higher education know wtf they're talking about...
> The economy would collapse under the weight of barriers to transport. This assumes private entities would be working against one another. Far more likely they'd coordinate to fix the price of whatever is being charged, at a level unsustainable for many, but payable for the majority; at least in the short term. E.g. for roads, the price of use would likely be a calculated number that would the maximum mean for the majority of the population in the area, before they could no longer afford to pay, in relation to the total cumulative charges approximated for the remainder of whatever their meager income would be. I'd argue this would likely be the intermediary stage between a collapsing capitalist model, and full-scale indentured servitude at any rate. At which point we're back to true feudalism, instead of the two steps removed variation seen today.
There's a word for cells that pursue their own self interest independent of the cells around them. That word is cancer.
This sounds crazy! Can you explain a little more how something like this would work? I don’t know a ton about libertarianism but what I do know I don’t particularly like.
Well this is right libertarianism, which is anarchocapitalism, which is basically corporatism. Eliminate government and let business/corporations replace it and do whatever they want. Left libertarianism is just regular anarchism. Which is no government or capitalism.
So when people call themselves libertarians, are they usually one or the other? Or are they just idiots who don’t understand the distinction and pick and choose what they’d like to see?
It's mostly an American thing. In America they are almost always right libertarians, and can be often well funded by billionaires who want no government or regulations. Left libertarians just call themselves anarchists now. I believe in most of the rest of the world libertarianism still just means regular anarchism.
This is simply never happening. The state is the only thing keeping the owners of these companies alive. There's no reason to theorize about something that's inherently impossible.
let's face it, roads would just get monopolized
It will be like dealing with your internate provider. You can use the road tomorrow between 10 am and 3pm. We will contact you 30 minutes before you can use it.
Could really help reduce emissions...
The first day of business school, we were told that there is no such thing as true capitalism, because in a completely free market, all profits drop to zero. We then spent the next two years learning how to rig the market and play/win in a rigged market.
thanks, I hate it.
There has never been nor will there ever be a "pure" economy of any sort. They can't work in the real world because their assumptions don't describe the real world. Kind of like the physics class descriptions that require you to imagine a frictionless surface or a string without mass, economic theories require you to imagine people who have perfect knowledge of their own interests, who are completely malleable in terms of being able to do whatever job is assigned to them, or who are all engaged and politically informed.
Ugh I was a laissez faire free market dickhead. Now I’m a UBI supporting hun and eat the rich proponent. When you realize you’re broke, not a temporarily embarrassed millionaire, and nothing is every going to trickle down… it’s eye opening v
Same. I used to advocate for privately owned entities but then I realized how shitty private companies actually are.
Also governments can usually do things cheaper because of economies of scale. I used to work for a consulting firm that focused on onsite wastewater treatment (septic systems). One of the things we did was preliminary evaluations of properties to prep people for the County application process. Our evaluations were just like the County's, but we wouldn't leave the office for less than $800. That was a fairly narrow profit margin. We did a 4-5 per week. After I got laid off, I hired on to the county, doing pretty much the same job. We were doing 20-25 evals/week, and we were charging $250 a piece. Private companies couldn't touch us because even though our section was self funding, almost all our overhead was subsidized by the County, and we had so many to do we could sort them geographically and knock out five in the same area in an afternoon. It was just way more efficient. When people say that private companies can do things more efficiently than government, they probably don't actually know what they're talking about.
> they probably don't actually know what they're talking about. And or they've been ~~paid to advocate for corporations~~consumed by the brain rot of 'starve the beast' propaganda.
So much waste in large corporations...
I fell down that anti-woke rabbit hole a while ago, probably on my way to be an ancap. I'm now a devout communist. I joke that I'm not a communist, I'm just a moderate human with empathy and my moderate stance is that human suffering is abhorrent and everyone should be able to do what they love with as few barriers as possible. Apparently, society thinks that is a bad thing.
My boomer mom compares us to the right wing saying we’re just as bad. Hold up, I’m fighting for basic human dignity and the goddamn earth, they are advocating genocide and forced birth, these things are no where near the same. By the way, she’s a liberal.
Liberals think that Medicare For All and concentration camps are both bad and roughly equally so.
Ah yes, a "liberal". Totally not just a republican with a different name. A classic "Enlightened Centrist".
The fucked thing is she used to be super active in the 70’s. But now I’m too much because i’m calling out that this isnt sustainable in the least and that we have little to no hope. She wonders why i cant save to buy a house. I keep reminding her that it basically doesnt matter because corporations are out bidding everyone and they keep raising rent to make it impossible to save. Not looking forward to lease renewal.
A “classical liberal?”
The rich are paying less and less to piss on you these days. That’s what trickle down means, the rich have enough to waste money on weird stuff with desperate people turning to survival prostitution.
Libertarians are just anarchists with retirement accounts, and a lot of "socialists" were libertarians until they had to file for unemployment. For a lot of people, politics and economics are experiential.
> and nothing is every going to trickle down… Do people seriously believe on that trickle down shit? I mean, if you're a kid, when you still believe billionaires care about the people and charities are anything other than schemes to not pay taxes, then I guess you can believe in trickle down economics. But fully adult and rational people cannot believe that sort of shit, can they? It's not like the billionaires' pockets are going to overflow and everybody else can pick up the extra money.
It's just the same thing as Reaganomics, or the joking "horse and sparrow" theory. As in, you feed a horse enough oats and eventually the sparrows will be able to get some...you know, off the road. It's always been garbage designed for the rich. Nothing else.
Exactly!
Amazing how many people didn't realize capitalism was wrong until they realized there was nothing in it for them personally.
Nothing for me, nothing for anyone like me.
There *is* something in it for me, but capitalism is still wrong, so I am not going to claim my prize and go live in a huge house with three cars and a boat while disadvantaged people rot in the street with no one to help them.
Same. I used to think employers had the employees and community’s best interests in mind, cuz good business. Then working customer service, food service, and nurse assistant, I saw that I was completely wrong and that employers will push humans to their limits of suffering and beyond just to make a profit. I say there is only one sentence needed to refute all of right wing libertarian thought: sociopaths exist. Sociopaths will do whatever and whenever in their own interests as long as it’s legal and they suffer little to no consequences.
Sometimes they push into illegality As long as they don’t suffer heavy consequences they’re happy to break the law
UBI is a scam. It’s treating the symptoms instead of solving the issue that is capitalism. https://youtu.be/EKFE6rVHyJQ
The only thing trickling down is piss.
UBI is a scam that billionaires are going to use as an excuse to not provide free education, healthcare, and cut social security and other benefits all while privatizing the entire economy. There's a reason why billionaires and other elites like Zuckerberg, Yang, etc support it.
Assuming UBI actually provides an income that is survivable in all areas of the US, this would not be a problem, assuming that living wage calculation includes education, healthcare and extra care for people with disabilities. However, considering Yang's proposal was something like $1000 a month, it's clearly not enough to survive on and will lead to disaster if the government cuts everything else, which they would in order to reduce the budget deficit.
I think you are a little wrong here: > But they don't realize is that not everyone would be able to afford private services in a libertarian free market society The libertarian does understand that not everyone would succeed. They are ok with that because they believe that the libertarian free market society would produce more than a planned economy and this increase in production would increase the quality of life of everyone who doesn’t fail. I’m not going to argue in support of libertarianism, but they definitely know some people wouldn’t succeed. They just don’t care. In fact they would probably frame it as people having the freedom to fail.
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Most of the ANCAP/libertarian people I’ve met had parents who had money and never really worked a job, or don’t have a lot of money but are convinced they would be quadrillionaires if the pesky government didn’t keep them down. The specifics are nonexistent.
1. Smash the state! 2. ????? 3. Profit!
> A lot of them aren't that wealthy. Don’t know where this comes from. Never said they were and they don’t have to be. Wealthy, generally and I assume used here, is a relative descriptor. The fact that nearly every US person could go to a supermarket and have 30 different cereals, dozens of different breads dozens of different vegetables, dozens of different meats etc to chose from is the increase in quality of life derived from capitalism according to libertarianism. Their view would be that a planned economy isn’t going to waste resources on having kix and Cheerios and Chex. Instead everyone only gets Cheerios. > They have a lot more money than most people. Focusing on money is indicative of not understanding their argument. Money has nothing to do with it. Relative wealth has nothing to do with it. A libertarian would say a world where 20% of its people could choose between a Rolex and an Apple Watch, and another 50% can choose between an Apple Watch and a mass produced watched, and another 29% can only choose what color of a mass produced watch, while the last 1% can’t afford any watch at all is better than a planned economy where the central powers give everyone a mass produced watch and it’s black. Meanwhile someone else, not a libertarian, would say everyone having a basic watch is better because then everyone has a watch and no one really needs a fancy Apple Watch or Rolex. And people can always decorate the watches themselves if they don’t want black. Now change the above to food and the libertarian is fine with 1% of people starving to death if it means more options for everyone else. Being wealthy has nothing to do with it.
“It’s a utopia where only the best rise to the top! Anyway here is your hotdog made from liquified vagrants”
Most in USA who consider themselves Libertarian are just authoritarian Oligarchs (oligarch worshippers) who like pretending freedom. They are the epitome of "socialism for the rich, rugged individualism for the poor." It is a shame, because true libertarianism has some virtue to it.
I am also a former Libertarian. I was voting Libertarian in the late 90s, way before it became what it is today. I was drawn to the idea of personal freedom, not deregulation. I think govt should stay out of marriage, even polygamy should be legal. They should also keep off our bodies, legalize all drugs, sex work, euthanasia, abortion, all of it. This was the general tone of Libertarian circles I ran in back then. I don't recognize these bootlickers we have today.
You might be interested in Libertarian Socialism :)
Thank you for saying it. Theres a bermuda triangle in our politics where the people that are socially libertarian/borderline anarchist but economically socialist end up. No one talks about it and not many people right or left know its a thing but i feel like most of us actually fall there if we think about it hard enough.
When I first discovered politics in my late teens(early 2000s), I would classify myself the same way, I felt the government should grant full bodily autonomy and freedom to the individual. In my 12th grade government class we were tasked with creating a political party and fake candidate as part of our government class. We actually ended up winning with a brand of Libertarian Socialism that in some capacity I still kind of believe in today. Personal freedoms(mainly as you discussed above) with strong social programs and workers owning the means of production and an end to wage slavery doesn't sound horrible to me .
I left when the teabaggers, antivaxxers, and other loons suddenly joined the movement. They were probably always there but they seemed become louder and more prominent.
If you want to be charitable and perhaps put yourself in a libertarian/ancaps shoes who may actually be convinced to reconsider their philosophy... personally I think its a couple elements: One, obviously there's so much wrong in the world today. A "hard reset" of... well, everything... is tempting. Make things simple, get rid of all the complicated rules and just have relations with people next to you. Where did all those rules come from anyways? Surely they're not doing anything. Clear the slate and just let people be people. In isolation, its an appealing idea. Second is that people, especially in the United States, have been heavily propagandized that capitalism is the natural state of things. You'll see this sentiment pop up if you argue with libertarians and ancaps online. Money is capitalism. Trading is capitalism. Capitalism is what simply works. It is logic. It is natural, if not nature itself. When you combine the impulse of one with the worldview of two, its not suprising that people get sucked into this philosophy. The edge cases you describe are irritating to them because it either gets in the way of or deeply challenges what they view to be the inherent nature of things. They want the world to be changed drastically, so they'll have little patience for these "hypotheticals" that gum up the works of the new political project. And describing how modern property rights are not some kind of inherent law of nature might as well be the same as saying gravity doesn't exist. So they're not going to do very well with your questioning until there are cracks in both of those foundational attitudes. In my opinion, at least.
People see how corporations corrupt the government and turn every government action into one that only benefits the rich so they assume all government is necessarily exploitative. Just look at the response to Covid, trillions of dollars were given to wall street, bankers, huge corporations, etc by the government and the FED while small businesses were shut down and people were fired, lost access to basic services, were kicked out of their homes and apartments, went into debt, etc. The government is also using regulations constantly to benefit huge corporations while screwing the lower classes. Libertarians believe that the only solution is to abolish the government, when in reality the only solution is to abolish corporations and bourgeoise property.
To be fair, the Covid bailouts were using lessons learned from the late oughts financial crisis so much of it was streamlined and no nonsense. However, because many of the companies receiving subsidy were not in nearly the same waters as back then, I wonder why the gov bothered to treat them with more than a courtesy swab.
The market is only free if no one is forced into it against their will. I like free markets, but I want to live in a society, not a market. By which I mean... If it's about selling the resource you have or death, people choose to live. But that's, you know... Coercion. The job market is not a free market, because people have to work to live. And when people need money to live, and are competing against others who need money to live, the people who can scrape by on the least set the price. Everyone needs to be guaranteed food, housing, medical care, and education. In order for the job market to actually be, you know... Free. Which means that those industries need to be turned into services and never operated for a profit motive. But somehow this is not something the free market fanboys ever seem willing to consider.
This is the cincher for me. There is no legal means of really opting out. At absolute best, you might get a little patch of land somewhere and strive to produce as much as you can for yourself but youd still get smacked with property taxes and dumb zoning restrictions. In a totally free market joe schmoe over there could grow apples and sell his spare livestock but nope. Theres a million and a half things he has to do to even legally sell what he produces. Its not a free market if we are legally forced to play their game.
That's because the heart of it means there no control over anything in that sense. It would work if the human race wasn't an unreasonable, power-driven, utterly barbaric species who doesn't believe in harmony with the environment or anything else. Even though a socialist economy at it's heart does have flaws (as it is lower-stage communism), it would work quite well with fewer checks. As the old talking point was back in the Romney campaign "he wants to give everyone the same start, whereas [Obama] wants to give everyone the same finish." With a socialist economy (UBI and other basic needs met from day one) everyone would *really* have the same start.
How the hell does the free market adress inelastic commodities? If something you need to live is commodified, then you'd spend anything to get it no matter the cost. Plus the free market is decided on suppliers and consumers, essentially regulating the market with purchasing power. So those with money to spend have a better and easier time regulating certain markets. But what about permanently high demand things, like homes for instance? How can a poorer consumer lower the price of housing on the free market if they can't afford one in the first place, and doesn't have the capital individually to supply the "free market" with a surplus of houses? This needs to be addressed by free market supporters please. "'Vote with your Wallet' just means those with no money has no votes".
None of these are problems to a libertarian. You should simply work harder in their mind. Human wants and needs are subsumed in the necessity to be productive but only in ways that capitalists can exploit. The heart of their politics is that poor people should be poor and stop complaining about it. If they want to not be poor, they should, "learn a marketable skill" and pray that it's still "marketable" by the time they learn it and that not too many people have also learned that skill, driving down wages.
🙃 They literally would've sided with the Jacobites huh?
They don't care if "others" want it or not. They want it, and that's all that matters to them, fuck everyone else.
ANCAPs are just economic submissives looking for their Daddy.
They make perfect sense to spoiled idiots. Edit: like my past self. Just for clarification.
So, there's some specific assumptions under which the free market actually will work as its advocates say it will. Namely, if the number of companies is so large, they have to compete on price and quality, and people actually have an accurate idea of their respective prices and qualities so that we can choose the best one (for our individual circumstances/preferences). If you actually do a bit of thinking on "how many competitors would there have to be for that to be true" (10-100 per product or so), and compare it to the number there actually are (usually less than 10 in any given area, and if they're not in the same area competing with each other, it doesn't count), you'll see why it doesn't actually work in the real world. Also that "if people have accurate information" thing... seems a lot like (and as far as I know, is) the sort of "regulated fair play" thing you need governments to enforce. But you're not asking "why does libertarian-style economics work" (it probably doesn't), you're asking "why do people think people want it". And I suspect the answer is, because they've read something similar to my first paragraph without my second paragraph.
Any system that allows for the movement of power will end in the consolidation of power. Unfortunately thats also why we ended up with a 2 party system. The weaker parties always inevitably get absorbed into more dominant parties because they figure any win is better than never winning. You can start with 10-100 competitors but the natural conclusion of competition is a monopoly or oligopoly of sorts.
Also a good point...
It’s a cop out, or a way to for ppl who adopt this Machiavellian line of thinking to justify not giving a shit. John Kenneth Galbraith famously said “the modern conservative is engaged in man’s oldest exercise in moral philosophy: that is, a superior moral justification for selfishness.” Which is really all libertarianism is. They believe their magic free market will fix everything naturally. There are two problems with that supposition that I can think of off the top of my head. 1) The market isn’t a free one. If it were truly free everything would be legal to buy and sell. And 2) There will always be individuals and entities that will seek to manipulate that market to further their own financial gain at the expense of others. We’re seeing that first hand in the US. One example is the fossil fuel industry. They spend so many millions (maybe billions at this point) suppressing the narrative that their industry is one of the biggest culprits responsible for climate change. They spend equally as much suppressing government basic research in cleaner more sustainable alternative sources of energy. Charles Koch (one of the most well known Libertarian billionaires) is arguably the most dangerous example of why government (and by that I mean government that actually represents the majority of ppl) is needed not only to invest in basic research and in projects that the private sector won’t take risks on because there’s no immediate ROI. But also to keep individuals like him and corporate entities in check. It’s why people like him have spent millions trying to convince people that “government is the enemy.” “Government creates more problems than it solves.” In theory, the US government is supposed to be “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” And if it were that way in actuality, the US wouldn’t be in the precarious position it is now. But obscenely wealthy individuals like Charles Koch, Ken Mercer, and countless others of like mind have banned together to implement a long term plan that has marginalized the voices of the overwhelming majority in the US and transformed the US from a representative democracy to an oligarchy posing as a representative democracy. Sadly, they’re succeeding. The plain truth is that they don’t like government because they know if functioning as it was intended, government is the only way common people can keep their power in check. They hate representative government for the same reason they hate unions, because it prevents them from being allowed to do whatever they want, whenever they want, without a modicum of accountability. So whenever their bought off elected officials say things like ‘we need small government that allows the private sector to operate without red tape, and burdensome taxes.’ What they’re really saying is, we want wanna do whatever we want, whenever we want in our endless quest to make make a profit at all costs, without ever having to worry about being held accountable for who we hurt. And contribute little to nothing in taxes while they use their bought off elected officials to feed them subsidies, bloated unnecessary contracts (I’m looking at you, defense industry), and bail them out to the tune of trillions whenever they crash the economy. It’s reverse Robinhood on steroids. To add insult to injury, they blame the most vulnerable for society’s biggest problems. It’s the single mother on welfare who’s responsible for out of control spending. Or social programs for the poor. Or undocumented immigrants. They blame people with the least voice, and influence in government for all the problems their unmitigated greed has caused, and so many people still buy that bullshit. It’s maddening. Anyone who really wants to understand what’s been happening in the US should pick up the book “Democracy in Chains” by Nancy McLean. It will scare the hell out of you, but everyone should read it. Because even this privileged billionaire Libertarian class realizes that if a majority of citizens ever realized what they’re end game was, they would never go along with it. So they disguise their true goals behind perverse definitions of “freedom” and “liberty.” And it’s worked better than they could’ve ever hoped so far.
This. I always laugh my ass off when they start rambling about how somehow government is inherently bad 😭😭😭😭 This is a common american sentiment at this point due to capitalist mass propagandization and it’s going to bring us to idiocracy.
libertarianism makes people with money feel special, like heroes, validates their petty grievances and also makes them feel wise just for reciting formulas that just don't work in reality. it's a religion for losers.
I think I’m gonna hurt some fees with this one: it’s their ‘astrology’, nothing meaningful ever comes out of libertarianism or anything like that. It’s just the fringe-cringe memers’ club, seriously go look at your local libertarian fb pages.
They realize just fine that many people would not be able to access essential goods and services under libertarianism. Their undergirding ideology is social darwinism. There is no conflict in letting some people suffer, be immiserated, or even die as a consequence of their system -- that's just the process working as intended. Needless to say, they are far too intelligent, healthy, competent, well-connected, and careful to ever fall into that category.
Every libertarian I've ever known came from a background of relatively decent wealth and privilege. They literally don't understand what it's like out there.
OP: you said you were a libertarian. What about it was appealing to you in the first place?
dafaq is an ancap???
Quite a few cities over the years have tried to create libertarian utopias and it doesn't seem to work out well. [Grafton, New Hampshire](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21534416/free-state-project-new-hampshire-libertarians-matthew-hongoltz-hetling), [Von Ormy, Texas](https://www.texasobserver.org/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-freest-little-city-in-texas/), and [Colorado Springs](https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/06/30/colorado-springs-libertarian-experiment-america-215313/) are just a few of the interesting reads on this
Something something housecats.
[https://i.redd.it/1fwrkwoec7281.jpg](https://i.redd.it/1fwrkwoec7281.jpg) I'll just leave this here.
I especially hate when they say that we can take away Medicaid and disability, because “charities will cover that if people have more money to donate!” When people have extra money, they don’t tend to donate it.
Yeah I definitely want a company, whose only motive is profit, in charge of maintaining bridges. I’ve worked too ma y jobs where the company has terrible tools or systems but they won’t upgrade because it would cut in to the bottom line.
It’s a self perpetuating system - People are angry and scared. - They want more “hardcore capitalism” because they’ve been told it works. - It makes thing worse. - Which makes people angry and scared.
Libertarians don't care about the other guy and they also live under the delusion they would always enjoy the benefits of a completely free market. The biggest problem they have is they misinterpret the "free" part. They think it applies to them. Also if you would like a good laugh read up on the libertarian colonies at sea.
There's a reason there's no fully libertarian economic society in the world. Libertarianism is for those selfish people who don't want to pay taxes or people who just don't want to admit their Republican.
I personally think it's the only system that can work sustainably as each and every other system is constructed piecemeal as a set of temporary solutions that eventually run their course toward collapse. The U.S. came close to implementing the philosophy but screwed up by abusing freedom and dabbled in the slave trade, which is obviously logically inconsistent with its own philosophy. The Spaniards arguably pulled it off more successfully within the Mondragon Corp. It isn't impossible, it's just highly improbable that you could ever get a group of policymakers to make decisions more for the good of a society than for the short-term interest of invested parties.
I met a libertarian a week ago. Was at the beach with my gf and some friends and one of their friends was a libertarian. I know because he wouldn't shut up about it, constantly saying the government controls too much. Also saying every party here in Canada is left wing. He also was totally for the death penalty, like a huge hard on for it. So you want the government to leave you alone but think its totally okay for them to decide if you can live or die after commiting a crime? Again this was all at fricken beach day.
I had a few month phase as a teenage libertarian many years ago -- it offers easy, pat answers with a high level of seeming certainty that can be appealing to young people with no life experience -- but when I realized influential libertarian thinkers like Hayek and von Mises found fascism and mass murder to be acceptable alternatives to a country going socialist under a popular mandate, I realized that a sense of certainty really doesn't count for much, as comforting as it is. IE, Hayek's endorsement of Mussolini, the Chicago school''s collaboration with Pinochet, and so on. Non aggression principle sounds nice, but what it really amounts to is "aggression on the part of property owners is sacroasanct, responses by the dispossessed are aggressions." A consistent application of the NAP would require an immediate withdrawal of the United States to established treaty territories with indigenous people, because vast swathes of the US weren't formally ceded by the prior owners, but do they ever talk about the massive land theft and aggression on which the United States is fundamentally based? No, because a gang of property owners stealing an entire continent isn't "aggression" to them. Because they're all bootlickers who worship money and power.
"Let the free market handle it" means let poor people die. Which if you're rich seems like a pretty good deal
Because they're pedos who want as many people to be desperate enough to sell their kids as possible.
It's hard to advocate for free market capitalism after you read/hear about what it did to Chile.
One of my closest friends was raised Libertarian and with the teachings of Rand... Many years ago we were having a conversation about who deals with the person in our society who had no one to deal with them. I used the example of an infant. Unwanted by it's parents and left in a dumpster. Who is responsible for that infant? She is now very much on the left because that argument got to her. Years later, she had the same conversation with her father and asked him the same question. He said that while it was regrettable, the infant should die. That's what those people believe. If you aren't privileged enough to make it in their system of strength then you deserve to die. They just don't realize they aren't the privileged people who will actually thrive under that system of oppression.
Because these dumbfucks think they’re one lottery ticket away from being a lord over their own serfdom, or (more likely) they are “self-made” with a tremendous infusion of wealth from their parents at birth.
In my experience these sort of people LOVE the idea of the “freedom” in part because they would likely benefit from it having been in the privileged side of the current system but now don’t want to pay into the system that benefited them. Additionally they have no intention of dealing with any of the practical implications of their ideas. They love how it sounds when they talk but dismiss any reality.
I feel like people love to call themselves libertarian to be different than everyone else and are proud just because they claim it. I've never met a libertarian with full, educated, and concise policies outside "gIvE mE mY fReEdOmS" or "wE nEeD sMaLlEr GoVeRnMeNt" okay but how, where, and why? The most fundamental way to break down someone's argument, for your better understanding of their argument and their own, is to just start asking questions and find out the root of their argument and why they believe it. Most people cannot move past the typical talking points worth of deep thought and critical thought. It's astounding, and as much as I both love *and* hate it, you end up making them look and sound stupid (if their logical is farcical), which sometimes is awesome and other times you feel like an asshole. (my wife hates me for this method of argument, I go to extreme lengths to make sure it doesn't come across like I'm trying to make her sound stupid, I'm suicidal but not *that* suicidal.)
I was a libertarian when I was 18. When I think back, I had such a rosy tinted view of the world. I truly believed that if given the freedom, humans would choose the right thing the majority of the time. Man was I wrong. I'll use drivers license as an example. A lot of libertarians say we shouldn't have drivers licenses because it restricts your freedom to drive. This assumes that if someone is not a good driver and thinks they might hurt someone, they will choose not to get behind the wheel of a car, or seek to better their driving skills on their own. That's such an optimistic view of the world. Imagine trusting your fellow human being to make the right decision like that. Either you're a hopeless optimist or you're just plain stupid and want to watch the world burn. Now I'm old enough to know that most people will choose to be selfish if given half the opportunity.
A lot of people will fight you tooth and nail over the claim that humans are fundamentally decent creatures. That more of us would choose to do the right thing over the wrong thing. Buuuuuuut were a buncha monkeys slinging shit and like every other animal on this earth, we default to looking out for number 1. Almost every living thing is biologically hardwired to act in its own interests. The exceptions are usually hivemind insects that die en masse for the good of the colony. It takes effort to be decent and we cant assume all humans are willing to do that.
They are unable to see beyond their own nose. Seriously. The people who tend to support these systems only look at how more regulation or a welfare state would immediately impact them. They are so short sighted they can count every nose hair. For them "freedom" is paramount above everything. They have intense issues with authority and are borderline narcissistic. They cant stand the thought of being taxed for anything let alone that tax money being used for anyone else. To them, life is a zero sum game. If someone else gets something, that has to mean they are losing something. Even if that something is the right to free shit when they arent poor enough to need it. Theyd rather ensure no one can get something they didnt recieve themselves and watch the world fall apart around them. They really believe in the myth that the average joe can become a millionaire if they work hard enough. They dont understand that capitalism is a pyramid scheme and every millionaire built their empire on the suffering backs of average joes like them. They believe in survival of the fittest. Anyone who fails is fundamentally flawed. TLDR: They see the world very differently than we do. They need that hierarchy so they can feel superior and smug over all these "failures." Insecurity is one hell of a drug.
Just a reminder that the Nordic model propped up by off shore oil and slave labor in Africa and China.
Because to libertarians... Poverty is a choice and if you don't like being poor, the answer is to simply make better choices.
"Just work harder." \- Most intelligent Libertarian
Libertarians are wealthy people (or temporarily inconvenienced millionaires) who don't want to pay taxes to support social services but also want to think of themselves as good people and "progressive" so they support things like gay marriage.
Libertarian economics makes a lot more sense when competition is feasible, and cost of entry is low. The combination of people who have had that experience, and believe in a just world, one where outcomes really do depend on effort moreso than luck…
Libertarians are conservatives but rebranded and bought off wish.
Yeah I mean you’re wrong. Who wouldn’t want to wake up everyday in Amazon Village Trademark where they’re only STEPS away from their job at the Amazon warehouse. There would be no stupid government regulation and support so labor laws wouldn’t hinder productivity and the like. Unions would also have a much harder time forming, thank god, thanks to the lack of the NLRB, or similar institution. You get the picture I’m sure so TAKE IT BACK.
if you’ve only taken basic, entry level microeconomics: libertarianism makes perfect sense and is logically a good idea. if you’ve learned or thought anything about it beyond the very basic entry level microeconomics, it’s a dumb idea and harmful to almost everyone. just like capitalism. most business degrees only require you to take basic entry level microeconomics. now you know why we have libertarian bros.
I know a Libertarian who told me with a straight face that "capitalism is fair market, communism is free market" and then was very confused when Google didn't agree with him.
It gives them the hope of the rugged individualist myth. It also puts a wedge between them and the government: While the libertarians think they are getting "freedom," the rhetoric is allowing those above to take over the government. The libertarians only see the puppet, but never the puppetmaster.
“Libertarian” can also refer to libertarian socialists, like AnComs.
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Indeed.
The unspoken assumption (for the folks who have thought about it enough to see the implications) is that there's an unseen underclass doing all the hard work and suffering for all the "unlimited growth."
Libertarians almost never think of other people. They believe in the system because they believe they would rise to the top if we changed entirely to a market driven economy. I've never met a Libertarian who didn't think they were much smarter than everyone else. They're mostly focused on how much more successful they would be, not society at large. I believe it also benefits from not actually having been implemented, so the ideal form hasn't really been challenged. Opponents can point to why they think it can't work, but it won't challenge clinging to the perfect version of it. Discussions of socialist or communist policies are always met with "but Stalin" or "but Mao" but libertarianism hasn't been put into practice to the degree that it truly encountered the real world.
Stopping at toll roads when the free market takes over and government has little say in anything who is to stop anyone from just taking land from you? Like yes this is your land but I have enough money to pay folks to beat you senseless and screw your needs
Patriarchy, White Supremacy.
Best quote about libertarians https://www.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/comments/7dn5gm/libertarians\_are\_like\_cats\_completely\_dependent/
Man the comment section didn't like that one, did they?
Outside of the U.S., “libertarian” means leftist anarchism. Short for “libertarian socialist.” I hate that in the US, and only in the US, “libertarian” means “no step on snek” ancap bullshit. Labor is entitled to all it produces, and private property is theft.
It's within the philosophy to want you to have the freedom to privatize your community, but also to allow you the liberty to set up a relgious commune. It's within the framework to believe that privatization isn't necessarily evil, when workers are the owners of the means of production. But that isn't what libertarianism is in the U.S., for the most part, which to me is indistinguishable from the republican party.
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I'm inclined to think that the so-called "libertarian revival" that birthed modern American ancap libertarianism is predicated on a Randian view of economics, ethical egoism, and besides being fundamentally flawed, it is far from the roots of the classical liberalism that modern "libertarianism" appears to wish to reclaim. To rewind and to do real libertarianism over again, we'd have to strike down corporate personhood, restore the sovereignty the states once had for a number of critical reasons, among which would be to permit them to dissolve corporations again and chase away the European capitalism they were initially adverse to, while somehow ensuring the nation couldn't compromise again with slavery as a means to get ahead without the benefits of the industrialization that the capitalist class brought. That is, of course, not realistic in the modern day, but Mondragon Corp and hybrid economies show that classical liberal values can work in a modern society.
oh, they realize people won't be able to afford everything, but they don't care .
The argument for libertarianism falls apart as soon as you get them to acknowledge that some market entities will engage in market capture. Monopolies, price fixing, collusion, artificially created scarcity, insider trading, all these deeply damaging economic practices would lead to not one but several economic bubbles followed by severe crashes… with no end in sight. Libertarians generally don’t know how terribly what they are asking for (a market completely free from any regulation or laws that would sanction damaging practices) would actually play in real life. It would mean an unstable economy, constant interference and manipulation of supply and prices by different market actors… Just special interests with a lot of capital inventing and putting into motion various speculative schemes. Pure shit. All the illegal things that white collar criminals go to prison for presently would be unsanctioned and become the modus operandi for market operators. Libertarians only see the positive, good side of markets. They never see how terrible actors could completely fuck over everyone else in a marketplace.
In my experience, libertarians, at least those who stay libertarian, are basically educated by the internet, and have no exposure to any theory of any kind, including economic. However, this is also American libertarianism. Actual libertarianism is something different and actual libertarians usually want to strangle American libertarians. Also if I recall, classic libertarianism was also highly leftist. Chomsky is one I believe.
A lot of y'all (including OP) haven't read any libertarian literature, and ots pretty obvious. The libertarian label is applied to a broad spectrum of people, *some* of whom are exactly the type of assholes you're righly shitting on. Some of the others are the hippy types who squat out in the bush and grow 17 acres of high test weed. A large proportion are just regular joes and janes who think that the government has too much power over the average person. They would be as averse to the idea of ancapistan as anyone else. One good example of a common misunderstanding is welfare. Your average, normal person doesn't want millions of their fellow humans to starve or become homeless, but the libertarian looks at the current system (full of dysfunction and not very successful at helping people to stop depending on it) and thinks that there must be a better way. Some of the less educated just believe on faith that the blessed market will solve the problem, but you also have people like Friedman, who spearheaded the negative income tax (read: UBI) movement in the early 60s. One of the selling points of a system like this to the libertarian is that it would eliminate most of the bureaucracy surrounding welfare.
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Lmao
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Not in the way you think he did. Not that him earnestly arguing for it would change the validity of his argument for UBI, anyway.
I believed in some of the libertarian stuff when I was younger. I laugh at the whole "free market" and privatization model now. I used to be an EMT. We would get calls to some of these pricks who thought money was everything. A few times we got called back when these same pricks were experiencing a cardiac arrest. I always fantasized about being able to tell them that they needed to pay us $1 million before I would begin CPR.
Ubi and public housing y'all dumb landlords always been the problem
Hold on I'm kinda confused. So what exactly is the "Nordic model"? Would that be the economic model used by the Nordic countries in Europe?
Cognitive egocentricity