So, what do you think of the way they found to deal with it?
Because the solution is a libertarian philosophy. The government realized it’s better to get out of the way and let people decide for themselves. If you want to eat raw fish you can, if you don’t want to eat raw fish, you don’t have to. Imagine that, letting people decide for themselves. If you want your steak rare or your yolk runny, it’s your choice.
Where is this proof? I have yet to see a country that relies only on a progressive income tax system without a hole host of other taxes in combination. I also see dozens of countries each with a different form of progressive income taxation, some higher some lower, some more or less progressive. Almost as if there is no one right answer. I happily await your proof.
So are you now claiming that Republican == libertarian?
No, they are both the same thing: the government getting our of people’s lives, and allowing they to make their own decisions. If you want to have sex with a dude, that’s up to you. If you want to help feed the hungry, so be it. If you want to eat raw fish, be my guest.
Laws don’t cost anything just to exist. It’s enforcement that costs money. So when libertarians say they want to shrink the government, they’re saying they want to shrink enforcement.
[QUOTE=Little Nemo]
Laws don’t cost anything just to exist. It’s enforcement that costs money. So when libertarians say they want to shrink the government, they’re saying they want to shrink enforcement.
[/QUOTE]
I disagree that when libertarians say they want to shrink the government (and not all libertarians DO say that btw) that means they want to shrink enforcement. Having a more complex law system, IMHO (IANAL so grain of salt) DOES cost society more, and makes enforcement much more difficult and costly. What we get is a system that’s so complex that it takes vertically skilled specialists (not even lawyers or law firms but specialty lawyers and law firms to handle specific problems and issues) to represent, understand and interpret the law and regulations and the various interests and a much more complex enforcement challenge…which means that we get a much watered down enforcement (and this leaves aside the fact that such a powerful top down government can be much more heavily influenced by large interests, such as large corporations).
I know you don’t see it that way, and that’s fine…but understand that I don’t see libertarianism as a weakening of the government or it’s ability to enforce laws and regulations. I don’t see libertarianism as tantamount to anarchy either. Just the opposite in both cases…I see the weakness and dissipation coming from our current large and top heavy system. I’m ok with that system, unlike some of my more fervent libertarian brethren (and I’m not a REAL libertarian in any case), but I think that our current system could be tweaked to incorporate more libertarian ideas while keeping much of the structure that the US currently has. YMMV.
If I’m getting you correctly, you’re suggesting a government that’s as strong as what we have now but which applies that strength to fewer areas. I could go along with that in principle. There’s plenty of areas I think we should be repealing laws (although I might have a different list than yours).
But I think that idea’s outside of the mainstream of libertarian thought. Grover Norquist, for example, isn’t looking for a strong government when he talks about drowning it in the bathtub. Ron Paul is looking for a strong government when he calls it a disease. Thomas DiLorenzo isn’t looking for a strong government when he denounces the “Lincoln cult” and calls for secession. Our own Liberal wasn’t looking for a strong government when he was calling for a government based on non-coercion.
Of course I have. You have to enter into a contract of adhesion of your own free will.
Of course I have heard of monopolies. You might want to take a minute and think about how the “monopoly” come into existence, in the first place. Please cite some examples that did not involve the use of government control and force.
You also forgot
People who are just chomping at the bit to burn their grandmother at the stake or enslave their children, or
Lawnmower company executives who are just drooling in the boardroom at the prospect of loosening their blades and killing their customers.
As well as
The guy who would be terrified to scan a magazine rack and purchase a product that could have potentially empty pages, if it wasn’t for the benevolent forces of government ensuring that all magazine companies put real content into magazines.
And
The mortgage buyer who is so terrified of his own ability to read and understand a contract for the most significant purchase of his life, that the only reason he does it is because he trusts the government laws that are in place to ensure fair lending.
Alongside
The person who only feels comfortable eating out in restaurants in the USA because the FDA is there to inspect the joint and look out for us…but is at a loss to explain why she also feels fairly comfortable dining out in Mexico, Brazil or Italy when the FDA doesn’t apply there.
And don’t forget
The guy who only thinks stores, manufacturers and marketplaces can flourish if the FTC and CPSC certify that they are “good” and “safe”, but cannot explain why EBay conducts $10s of billions of commerce selling expensive electronics, cars and even airplanes online between nameless and faceless avatars, and the goods cannot even be touched or inspected.
All of those examples and much, much more have been cited in past threads about libertarianism.
This is why libertarian arguments on this board quickly degenerate into nonsense, and why well-reasoned posters like Sam Stone have given up. The ridiculous strawmen used by statists to justify their arguments is cartoonish.
Grover Norquist is not a libertarian. I have no idea what Ron Paul quote your referencing – I suspect it was about the tendency for Government to metastasize. And Thomas DiLorenzo fits much more in the “extremist” camp than the mainstream.
Mainstream libertarian thought would be much more along the lines of the Cato Institute:
What’s the context? Was he talking about having the government set how much water our toilets can expel in one flush, who gets a subsidy because he is investing in the “right” technology, or was he talking about the government prohibiting murder and theft?
I would really like to see a quote from a libertarian who says that he doesn’t want the government to enforce laws that he believes should be on the books.
We’re still waiting for you to back up this claim you made. It should be easy, just link to the the libertarian that claimed everything. Or if you were just making shit up admit it and apologize so we can move forward.
What I provided was an historical docudrama showing a reenactment from libertarian England, what have you provided other than unsubstantiated claims? Here’s another look at what happens when libertarians get their way and we’re all oppressed by a watery tart giving out swords:
Are you under the impression that local government is LESS corrupt than federal government. Over the course of our history as the first western democracy, have we seen more injustice, violation of rights and abuse of power from local government or from federal government?
I was wondering about the context myself. I was unable to find a longer passage of the speech.
But it’s pretty hard to see that line as anything other than anti-government.
I don’t think any libertarian doesn’t want the government to enforce the laws he personally believes in. Even Paul, for example, has said he supports laws that would ban abortions and I presume he’d want those laws enforced.
That however was not my point. My point was that most libertarians openly call for a reduction of the government. And while they may not admit it, any call for a reduction in government is a de facto call for a reduction in legal enforcement.
It can end up being legislating through the back door. If, for example, you can’t muster up the votes to repeal environmental regulations, you can achieve the same result by cutting funding for the EPA so it doesn’t have the ability to enforce those regulations.
Monopolies occur naturally in free markets. They can be created too but without government we would have a lot more monopolies than we have now.
You seem to want to make a point but for the life of me I can’t see the link between what I said and what you are saying. I am willing to eat in Italy because they have their own version of the FDA. I am not as sanguine about eating in Somalia.
I feel most people in this thread are raising valid points that deserve a reasonable answer so I put some effort into giving them a response in which I address the points they made and explain my positions. A few people however post things which cause me to believe reason and intelligence would be wasted on them so they get flippant answers I post to amuse myself at their expense.
Not at all. For one thing, I didn’t start the discussion of the topic and joined the thread after it was already in progress. And I’d be much happier if everyone was making high quality posts and I could respond to everyone at that level. But I take the world as it is and respond to people at the level they post at.
There, that is libertarianism, that’s all there is to it. The simple recognition that you don’t want government to control every facet of your life, but allow for reality that it needs to control some.
So you were willing to let people eat raw fish, but that decision means some will “fall through the cracks.” Some poor schmuck is going to get a bad piece of fish, and you seem to be okay with that. That is libertarianism. As long as he wasn’t lied to, as long as their wasn’t fraud, he was a big boy and he made his decision.
It’s not simply about “getting rid of them.” The FDA started out as a means to deal with fraud in both food, drugs, and cosmetics. Food that contained non-labeled additives, drugs that didn’t work as promised, and cosmetics loaded with toxins. And some how we went from there to deciding if we should allow people to eat raw fish.
The SEC is the same story; the stock market was a mess due to insider trading and fraud. But once it got involved it couldn’t stop. He kept trying to stop people from falling through the cracks. But as mentioned up thread a bit, all the regulations in the world don’t help if you haven’t got the ability to enforce them. And after a while, the bigger guys realized they could use the cover of “regulation” to their advantage. They already had teams of lawyers, might as well put them to good use, knowing the little guys couldn’t keep up.
Social security is only needed because people paid in and now expect it. In Canada it’s actually causing a lot of problems with people not putting into a proper retirement plan. When you consider that it’s taking out of your paycheck, it’s really just a forced retirement plan, but if you let me invest it I could get company matching. The presence of the system has reenforced a need for the system.
To answer your question with a question: The Canada Health Act explicitly forbids the buying and selling of for profit medical care. Canadians are not allowed to use their own money to see a doctor for treatment provided by the government. The Canadian system is the exact opposite of libertarian, since it restricts freedom while attempting to keep people from falling through the cracks. So to your question, if we have public education, should we allow private? Should I be allowed to send my kid to private school?
To do so would mean a libertarian system, it would mean I am free to educate my child the way I see fit. Where as the next step away would mean forbidding private education the way Canada forbids private health care. The last step would be to forcibly remove all children at age 4 and send them to government run boarding schools until 18.
So when you’re talking about libertarian philosophy, that’s the spectrum involved. It’s not enough to say yes or no to public education, when the term is so overly broad as to be meaningless. Do we need exactly what we have now? Is there no alternative? What if we did away with grade 12? Or added grade 13. Quebec as a CEJEP system that I think is way better than the US system.
We’ve all been down this debate a few times. But the bottom line is that there are a number of ways to pay for public education, and there are a number of ways to administer public education. You are assuming the way the US does it is the only one and true way, but obviously it’s not, since it’s not even producing the best. Lots of kids falling through the cracks.
We can all recognize that having an educated population is in everyone’s best interest. Therefor it is everyone’s responsibility to pay for it. But is “public school” the only way to achieve that?
No, that’s ridiculous. But we do have gas tax, corporate taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, luxury taxes, estate taxes, as well as a number of user fees.
Yes, some so now it’s a matter of figuring out the details. The term progressive can refer to anything along a scale of 0 to 100. It can start at people making more than $40k or people making more than $400k. Lots of room to wiggle, no one right answer.
And as I pointed out, that really just covers the economic side of the equation since many self described liberals also way SSM and decriminalized marijuana.
No, that’s simply how you view it. You need to call it greed to help making it easier to demonize, and thus feel better about taking their things. A typical pattern when you want to infringe on someone’s rights and freedoms.
And you said it best yourself:
Quote:
Originally Posted by randomface View Post
I don’t trust the government, at least no more than I trust people I don’t know. Do you trust the government?
Do you trust them to tell you the truth?
[QUOTE=Damuri Ajashi]
Are you under the impression that local government is LESS corrupt than federal government. Over the course of our history as the first western democracy, have we seen more injustice, violation of rights and abuse of power from local government or from federal government?
[/quote]
There is simply too much potential corruption inherent in the system. The FDA, SEC, federak reserve, public schools, etc are all subject to corruption.