Do you realize that the Libertarian Party is absolutely opposed to every policy position you’ve stated? It’s bizarre that you want a Libertarian president when according to what they say they would veto your healthcare, UBI, and disease containment proposals. Voting for people who absolutely oppose things you think are very important as a matter of principle might not rise to the level of ‘bat shit crazy’, but it is a few steps down that ladder.
I don’t understand who or what you are pitting; libertarians in general, libertarians who like Somalia, Somalia itself, or the virus that has caused all of this mess.
Also, I don’t understand what you mean when you say our government is “being drowned in the bathtub”.
Sure, but I oppose most gun laws, wealth taxes, most of the environmental policies of the democratic party. I also oppose all of the social regulations of the Republicans. I disagree agree with 50% of the platforms of every party. Overall I think the libertarian’s getting their way will do more good then either the Dems or the Repubs but I think the best policy would be a triangulation between the three.
Grover Norquist famously said he wanted government to be small enough that he could “drown it in the bathtub”. Libertarians and their influence in the Republican party have led to yet another failure of our government to manage a public emergency (see also: AIDS epidemic, Hurricane Katrina)
I wanted to mock Libertarians and use bad words, so I put it in the Pit. But then Oredigger77 had to come in and be all reasonable (albeit wrong 
)
OK, so it sounds like what you want in practice is pretty much the Republican platform but with a fig leaf of decency- you get to claim to support ‘decent human’ stuff like UHC and UBI, but any of that that made it to the president’s desk would conveniently be vetoed before it comes to pass. And your president will gladly sign anything getting rid of healthcare regulations, and anything killing support for the poor, but you can wash your hands of it by saying ‘well, I support a theoretical solution’. Yay for child labor to pay off ‘school lunch debt’!
Also, if you’re philosophically libertarian, why do you oppose pollution controls? Dumping poison into the environment would certainly seem to constitute initiation of force against everyone exposed to it after it’s dumped, which libertarians claim to be against. But I’m sure you’ve got some line of argument that poisoning people doesn’t count as initiating force as long as you get multiple people to dump poison at once so that no one can prove conclusively that one particular one of of them was responsible for sickness or death. Funny how that ‘we are opposed to the initiation of force’ bit just vanishes into thin (or more accurately, ‘thickly polluted’) air as soon as rich people can score more profits at the expense of innocent bystanders.
Actually, I’m in favor of a carbon tax to control for the externality but banning fracking is stupid and wrong. I don’t have the time to go point by point through each environmental law I think is dumb though.
I’m ok with kids picking up garbage after school to pay for their lunches but with ubi they shouldn’t have to and if mom and dad are blowing their ubi rather than buying the kid lunch I’m ok with taking the kids away too. Of course, all of you’re worst case scenarios would have to pass a democratic house in my perfect world so you be be just as much to blame.
Libertarians can be opposed to pollution but not want any regulations against it because they believe that the market will fix it. They are, on one hand, incapable of admitting that markets can fail for predictable game-theoretic reasons and insist that ownership rights will ensure things are kept clean and, on the other hand, are compelled to insist that regulation must fall victim to regulatory capture, that the failure of a regulatory system is not only likely but so inevitable we cannot prevent it.
Reality completely refutes them, but Libertarians, the Marxists of the Right, have no truck with any reality which fails to comport with the One True Scientific System.
I don’t describe myself as a libertarian, but I do agree with these tenets.
~Max
Those tenets are why Oredigger77 isn’t a “Libertarian” as we define the term here: Not in a “no true Scotsman” sense but in a “words have fixed meanings” sense, or at least technical terms in an academic field do. They don’t define the role of government as being circumscribed by the Non-Aggression Principle, so he’s no more a Libertarian than someone who believes in a free market is a Socialist or someone who supports the existence of a police force is an Anarchist.
Oredigger77 is a Liberal with a few odd ideas, no more, no less.
Maybe they actually believe in Free Press.
That’s absolutely Scotsmanism. You’ve built a cartoon. And used the royal we. You define it that way, not we.
The only way to avoid everyone talking past each other in technical discussions like these is to have a few words we all agree on to serve as a basis for conversation. And the definitions should come from the people who hold the positions, to reduce strawmanning, which is why this article from Walter Block, a senior fellow at the Mises Institute, is particularly enlightening:
If you don’t know why the Mises Institute is relevant, you don’t have the knowledge to participate in this discussion.
I guess I’m a liberal according to your definition but both the political compass, my voting record and my membership in the Libertarian party disagree with you.
I agree with the non-aggression axiom, at least in general. The only thing I disagree with is that that requires no government regulation of the economy. For instance people should be able to manufacture whatever they want but they should be required to accurately describe what they are selling so that people can contract meaningfully. This can range from the health department inspection to requiring accurate financial disclosures in order to publically offer stock. Where I would probably disagree with the people on this board is that I don’t want the health department to close down filthy restaurants if they put their F card in the window I should still be able to eat there because they have the best tacos in state. They should be able to sell rat meat tacos they just shouldn’t be able to say they’re beef.
This is what I mean when I say the government has a role in leveling the playing field. It is possible to contract with hundreds of companies to check the validity of every company that I do business with including the companies checking the companies checking the companies. I find that to be a very inefficient idea and that the government could step in, at the lowest levels possible, and fill that role more efficiently. But this is a disagreement about how to make the axiom function in the real world not a disagreement with the core idea that you can do what you want as long as you don’t hurt any one.
This is inaccurate. The ‘No true scotsman’ fallacy arises when you define membership in a group in such a way that any criticism of the group can be deflected by saying ‘well, he’s not a real member of the group’ - especially if the definition is such that it defines the group as all good (“Scotsmen robbed the convenience store!” “They’re not true Scotsmen if they commit a crime”).
Defining ‘libertarian’ as ‘believes that the non-aggression principle is a core principle of government’ is more like defining ‘christian’ as ‘believes in the Holy Trinity and the Bible including the new testament’. It may not be suitable for a particular discussion - for example, some people will argue that Mormons are not Christians for adding a book to what they regard as the Bible, or that Jehova’s Witnesses are not because they don’t believe in the trinity. But it’s not engaging in ‘no true Scotsman’ fallacy to use a concrete definition that some people fit and others don’t.
Yup. Voted Libertarian in 2012 and 2016 and intend to do so again in 2020.
Yup. Libertarians, both big- and small-l, generally expect that big government with lots of bureaucracy and pointless regulation tends to be bad government, leading to stupidity , incompetence, and harm. The response of our big, bureaucratic government to the current crisis is unfolding exactly as would be expected for anyone who believes that. Many regulations imposed by the government have harmed Americans and prevented private enterprise from responding effectively. One can see that simply by noting how both federal and state government have rushed to remove pointless regulations so that private enterprise can better serve people’s needs. If libertarians had been in charge, those pointless regulations wouldn’t have existed in the first place.
You seem to believe that libertarians are in charge, which is incorrect. Supporters of big government, who are the opposite of libertarians, are in charge. If you dislike anything about the federal government’s response to the Coronavirus crisis, direct your complaints to them.
The people in charge at the federal level have done pretty much jack squat, leaving the response to states and the private sector. The CDC hasn’t done much since the pandemic prep office was gutted; the Trump admin actively ignored the problem for the first two months; and until yesterday (I think) there wasn’t a disaster declaration. Seems to me that feds have pretty much let things play out.
OK, leaving the supplies of toilet paper to the private sector is probably good. But things like coordinating the response effort across states, providing data to responders, providing money and assistance to states, ensuring adequate supplies of tests… the feds have done none of that. The feds haven’t been in anyone’s way.
How’s that been working out for us?
Again, I’m not sure what your point is. Trump and his administration are not libertarians. They may have passed a tax cut, but other than that their aim is solely to expand the government’s size and power. Every major Trump initiative is a government increase that reduces individual freedom: tariffs, border wall, travel restrictions, “tough” foreign policy, etc… So Trump is almost entirely the opposite of a libertarian.
You seem to think it’s very clever to point at Trump and then ask libertarians “How’s that been working out”. Since he’s not a libertarian, we’re not responsible for how his administration works out.
That said, the problems at the CDC long predate his administration. Read this Congressional report from 2007, which notes some of the ways the CDC has spent its money:
Since 1996 the CDC had a visitor center which drew 15,000 visitors a year. … Yet the CDC spent $106 million of taxpayers’ dollars to build a lavish new visitor center, which includes a 70-foot-wide by 25-foot-tall video wall of rear-projection and plasma television screens inside its new communications center. … In 2005, the U.S. Senate voted to name the building after Senator Tom Harkin, a Democrat from Iowa, who at the time was the ranking member on the appropriations committee which funds the CDC.
The CDC spent $109.8 million to build the new 325,000 square foot Arlen Specter Headquarters and Emergency Operations Center in Atlanta, Georgia. In 2005, the U.S. Senate voted to name the building after Senator Arlen Specter, a Republican from Pennsylvania, who at the time was the chairman of the appropriations committee which funds the CDC. … furniture in the Operations Center cost $9.8 million. According to one CDC source, this amounts to over $12,000 per person working in the building.
In April 2003, the CDC-funded Stop AIDS Project of San Francisco hosted a four-part “erotic writing workshop” where participants were to “Start by exploring your fantasies and get support for you [sic] creative writing process.
On May 12, 2001, the Mr./Ms. UTOPIA pageant entitled “Jewel of the Pacific” was held at the Southeast Community College Auditorium. U.T.O.P.I.A is The United Territories of Polynesian Islanders’ Alliance, a 501(c)(3) located in San Francisco, California. The organization was formed “to provide support to the Polynesian Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender community.”26 A flyer for the event notes “funding by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention”
CDC gave the Washington-based National Latina/o Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Organization (LLEGO) federal funds for HIV/AIDS education, including $1.15 million in 2004, for the first year of a five-year grant. But in August 2004, five months after it received its federal grant, LLEGO closed its doors and filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy after drawing down $989,255 of the CDC grant. The HHS IG determined LLEGO had incurred $703,181 in “unallowable costs”.
etc… etc… etc…
So just imagine if the taxpayer money allocated to the Centers for Disease Control had actually been spent on controlling diseases, rather than on artwork, hundred-million-dollar buildings named after Senators, erotic writing workshops, drag shows, and the like. Wouldn’t that have been nice?
But since libertarians actually pay attention to what the government does, we know this is a familiar story. The CDC was initially created to deal with malaria, but the years went by and somehow a sizable part of its budget became a slush fund for all kinds of for-profit and non-profit groups, and it totally lost its focus on preventing the spread of infectious disease. The same has happened to countless other government agencies. That’s why we don’t like government so much.
Pure L. Neil Smith-style libertarianism usually depicts aggrieved parties challenging the miscreants to duels, which kinda’ changes the equation.
My chief objection to libertarianism/anarchy is that no one has figured out how to resist an army willing to commit genocide without forming an army of their own, including conscription, ordinances and taxes a.k.a. a government.
This is incorrect and actually is going into No True Scotsman territory. Trump has been implementing multiple pieces of the Libertarian platform all over domestic institutions - gutting the power of the EPA to regulate pollution*, gutting the power of the SEC to regulate financial markets, having the Department of Education cut services and programs, fighting against any kind of UHC, and removing and weakening anti-discrimination protections for minorities. I do not believe that someone who is engaged in their best effort to implement libertarian policies on five issues major enough to make it onto their official platform can be called ‘entirely the opposite of a libertarian’. This is especially true when one considers that the areas in which is most libertarian are domestic policy issues that directly affect Americans, and not things like border controls or foreign policy that, while important, have little direct impact on anyone. A number of major pieces of Trump’s domestic policy are exactly what one could expect to experience should a miracle happen and Libertarians end up in a position to implement their platform.
*Philosophically Libertarians should favor absurdly strict pollution controls, as poisoning people is clearly initiation of force, but in practice they favor no practical pollution controls.
Here are the quotes of pieces of the LP platform that Trump has implemented:
This is my chief objection to all anarchist systems as well, and the chief defense of anarchism seems to be a massive tu quoque, listing all the times states didn’t do good things. The fact this is in no way an answer to the objection is to be ignored entirely, of course; you are to become enraged that your preferred state is being insulted and derail the conversation. Doing anything else is contrary to Bakunin, or Proudhon, I forget.
However, in the interest of making largely irrelevant distinctions: A Libertarian Party-style Libertarian government would be able to stop a genocide, because it would have a military and a police force and, generally, no philosophical problem with using violence to stop people from committing murder. The fact it has insurmountable philosophical problems with stopping people from killing even more via pollution is a better gauge of their philosophical worth: The Libertarians have an overly-simplistic notion of rights, where you have the right to do anything as long as it doesn’t involve initiating force or fraud on someone else without their consent. Since pollution is neither, their ideal government can’t prevent it, and they insist that markets will solve it, even though no market ever has, at least on a large scale.