Explain libertarianism and why so many people dislike it

[Lamar_Mundane]

@Gamaliel

I suspect that many people dislike libertarianism because so many libertarians are so goddamn obnoxious. They act like born-again Christians with their received truth and treat their half-baked ideas (like taxation is “violence”) as obvious facts in discussions, dripping with contempt for those who won’t accept these “truths”.

Of course there are obnoxious people, myself included, of every political stripe, but in my experience the proportions are quite higher with libertarians.

I agree completely. Every political quiz I take pegs me as a libertatrian, but I’ll be damned if I ever call myself one. I agree with the values of economic and social freedom but I’d never align myself with a group of people that seem to be so personally abraisive.

[Little_Nemo]

I suspect that many people dislike libertarianism because so many libertarians are so goddamn obnoxious. They act like born-again Christians with their received truth and treat their half-baked ideas (like taxation is “violence”) as obvious facts in discussions, dripping with contempt for those who won’t accept these “truths”.

The problem is so many Libertarians (and other third party proponents) have a “kibbitzer” mentality. They don’t want to actually sit down and play the game as it exists but they want to lean over your shoulder while you’re playing and offer advice on how you should play.

[Siege]

I’ve got to admit, Gamaliel has a point. Two very dear, real-life friends of mine are hard-core Libertarians. They got talking about Libertarianism at an afternoon get-together once, and their wives looked at each other and agreed that they’d probably lost them for the next several hours, so they may as well get dinner. :rolleyes: While that wasn’t the case, I, myself, have been involved in rather prolonged discussions with them about the subject.

Now, you’ve got to understand, when I say “hard-core Libertarians”, I mean these two are opposed to government involvement in anything, including public education and maintaining roads. I like the idea of Libertarianism in theory and to an extent. Like Communism, it’s a beautiful theory which falls apart in practice. You see, there are parents who simply won’t care enough to send their kids to school if it isn’t mandatory and government funded. As for leaving it up to business to maintain roads, I’ve worked for some very venal and cheap employers. Now, I admit my state has done a lousy job maintaining the roads at times. When I was a child, the state-maintained road which ran up to my neighborhood got so bad you couldn’t miss the potholes and patches on a bicycle and school bus drivers were threatening to petition not to have to drive up and down it. On the other hand, if maintaining roads were in the hands of business, I can see things getting far worse.

As I said, it’s a lovely theory, but in practice, it breaks down, at least in my view.

CJ

[BoringDad]

@Argent Towers

My basic questions are as follows:
Why are many people opposed to it? It sounds, on the surface, like a good idea to me. Let the government stay out of the peoples’ lives and let everyone have civil liberties. What’s wrong with that? There must be some deeper problem with it that I don’t understand.

No comment as to whether Liberatians are objectively crazy or not, but I think that there is an easy answer to this part of the OP:

Conservatives do not like the personal freedom that libertarians espouse.

Liberals do not like the new age of robber barons and environmental devastation that they feel libertarianism would bring about.

And that takes care of why a good percentage of the population doesn’t like libertarian ideas.