Now that we’re seeing the government being drowned in the bathtub, I wanted to check in. What do y’all think of this coronavirus stuff? Is the response going about how you expected? Everything is going pretty peachy, wouldn’t you agree?
We have one–he is pining for Somolia.
In the past I’ve been quick to sneer “Somalia!” at Libertarians. They’ve always said that Somalia is a bad example, that they’re not advocating the total removal of all central government.
OK, so here we are, a rich first-world nation with a functioning policing and legal system ready to protect people’s life and property rights. And the federal government is taking little action, while the heavy lifting is being done by local governments and the private sector.
So, then. How’s this working out for us?
I peeked in on Grover Norquist’s Twitter feed. Predictably, he’s seizing on any bit of good news from the private sector and telling the government to get out of their way and ('natch) lower their taxes.
Do the board’s resident Libertarians agree? Do we need even less government now?
My mistake–he’s pining for Somoliland, which is somehow better, I guess?
I think it’s safe to say that no parent has to worry about their college kid coming home this summer as a true believer libertarian.
No, they are advocating to turn this country into Somalia. They’re just not intelligent to realize that’s the result of what they’re calling for.
Libertarians believe you can have a society that has no government three hundred and sixty-four days of the year. But on the one day you need the government to solve some problem, you can just snap your fingers and the exact amount of government you need will appear - without needing any financing or recruitment or training - will solve the problem in a way that everyone agrees with, and then vanishes once again until the next time it’s needed. Sort of like Batman.
And Libertarians don’t understand that most of what a government does is spend its days preventing problems. Governments work better when they quietly provide vaccination programs year after year rather than waiting until everyone has the disease. But libertarians don’t understand this; they think if they’re not seeing the crisis, the government must not be needed.
Well, Somaliland has a functioning government with elections, a currency, and a military. It does lack international recognition though, for a variety of reasons
Really interesting article, about things I was unaware of:
The self-professed libertarians I’ve heard seem to fall into a few groups. Yes there may be some overlap, but here they are:
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Conservative republicans who want to distance themselves ( or at least give the appearance thereof ) from the hard socio-religous right.
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The “I’m an island” off-the-grid types ‘Little Nemo’ describes above in his second paragraph. Except when they need the grid.
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Authoritarians who use libertarian-ism as a placeholder of sorts to link themselves to the “freedom” angle that the term “libertarian” may imply in most people’s minds, while they are free to exploit others lower on the food chain. They don’t believe in the philosophy of a ruling class…unless they rule. I’ve always liked the description given them “Rich anarchists that want police protection from their slaves”.
I’ve yet to meet one that, when the reason trotted out is basically “Free to do what ever they want, as long as it doesn’t harm anybody else” that really believes it, much less walk the walk.
I used to be a libertarian a couple of decades ago, but I got better. The thing is that libertarianism is really attractive at a quick look, because it sounds really good and you have a lot of simple statements that hold together logically that you can trot out in an argument. The problem is that it just doesn’t work when you look deeper than the surface, and a lot of the ‘freedom’ is ‘freedom to drop dead since someone else hoarded the resource you need first’. It’s telling that ‘world’s smallest political quiz’ don’t even try to address major issues at all (healthcare, education, travel for example) is pretty telling.
The fact that libertarians refer to the 1900s as an era of extreme liberty should tell you a lot. That’s the century where the US engaged in aggressive expansionist warfare and then mass internments and relocations of the populations that lost those wars, plus held black Americans as outright slaves in the first half, and engaged in extreme systemic racism in the second half. Also when lots of people died from easily preventable industrial accidents because workplace safety laws were not in effect, while most of the ‘titans of industry’ were getting rich from large government handouts and by using government force to prevent labor movements from organizing.
Your last paragraph strikes me as more a description of the 1800s.
I was one of those college libertarians (hey, back in the cannabis haze that was my dorm room it made perfect sense). This board helped me realize how inconsistent my stands on the issues were.
Libertarianism is a great mind game, but not practical…when faced with a health crisis, for instance.
Yep that’s what it is, my brain did not properly turn ‘19th century’ into 1800s.
I’m a registered librarian and not an anarchist. I believe that the government has an essential role in ensuring there is a level playing field and solving tragedy of the commons problems. There is also a good argument for providing essential public services where profit works as a disincentive.
Health care falls into the last category and I’m actually in favor of a single payer system that would work to minimize government intervention in our lives and I believe will work to help level out some of the externally imposed power imbalances.
There are examples in this crisis of situations where the government has been the enemy of the people as well as a benefit. The FDA only allowing private hospitals to test for the virus in the last couple of days if obviously stupid government over reach as is making the US develop its own test instead of using the WHO test. On the other hand enforcing social distancing is the only way to blunt the number of deaths and the government intervening to prevent the recession caused by the large numbers of deaths and the shut down of whole sectors of the economy.
Do you work in a PUBLIC library? If so, I fail to see how it’s relevant to the thread.
Except that I have the impression that probably most librarians aren’t big advocates of anarchy.
I was a card carrying Libertaran that met Harry Brown (weird dude) and voted for him twice.
2008 economic collapse was an eye opener. It was proof that without government interference, many businesses and the financial markets just can’t help themselves to cook the books.
I also grew up and started realizing it’s immoral to allow people to stay sick, starve or live in abject poverty because “they made poor choices.”
We have had a fairly regulated capitalist system in our country with a safety net for the weak for decades. It was only until the modern conservative movements pushed for “libertarian” deregulation that shit hit the fan IMO.
Libertarianism like Communism is a simple and beautiful concept but both leave out one problem: humans are not rational creatures.
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There’s also the white nationalists. Libertarianism and white nationalism are strongly connected in the US.
Thanks for your post. I put this in the Pit so I could blow off steam, but I appreciate you making a thoughtful post and not taking the bait.
I do have to say, though: respectfully, you don’t sound like a lot of Libertarians I’ve encountered. You sound like a sort of centrist. I’d probably mistake you for a moderate Republican if not for your support of single-payer health. Do you usually find yourself voting for Libertarian party candidates?
There are a few capital L cartoon Libertarians, often found on college campuses IME, and then there are people who are generally fiscally conservative who also want the government to keep it’s hands off their marriage, speech, trade, etc. While I have some tendencies in this direction, my incessant “tax me more” as part of antipoverty policy probably excludes me from the club.
Oh, there are a ton of bad shit crazy libertarians. The gold bug part is what bothers me the most about the national party. But yes, I’ve voted L for president in every election since 2004. I think the overall best outcome for the country would be an L president with a split R and D congress.
I just did that political compass quiz recently and I put me almost dead center between left and right but I’m pretty far down on the libertarian side of the libertarian/fascist scale. I guess another example of this is I’m a fan of UBI but I would remove all other social safety net programs.
This time around I’ll be voting D for the first time for president and I’m thankful it’ll be Biden. Bernie would have given me a lot of problems even vs trump and I would have had to vote for Gardner to try and keep the senate R even though I really hate that guy. I will also say that I think Gary Johnson has smoked himself retarded and Bill Weld should have been at the top of the L ticket instead of trying to primary Trump but that would have also caused me problems since I prefer him to everyone else running right now.
Our local far-left ultra-progressive “Free Press” rag features a regular op-ed by a libertarian.
It’s a mystery why this paper would provide a forum for someone who’s diametrically opposed to all the programs it demands.
I figure it’s because the guy is highly critical of the Trump administration, and any enemy of our enemy is our friend or some such cockamamie justification.
I’ve never been fond of the “I don’t wanna and you can’t make me” philosophy, which is what libertarianism boils down to.