I thought **Mace **was speaking wryly.
Now you’re talking sense. You should probably stop it, immediately…before you’re shouted down and off the board.
In all seriousness, I don’t think libertarianism works as a majority party. I think a bigger role for them on the national stage would create welcome compromises, but it’s hard to say that you want to minimize the power of a government when it’s you. After all, they take over the federal government – who’s to say that individual states are going to uphold libertarian ideals on their level? And if they don’t, and people clamor for change, what’s the role of a libertarian Federal government then?
If by some happenstance that the OP did actually occur, it would be a mess. There are lots of things that aren’t going to work in a libertarian world but that prop up our economy. Just removing the tax incentives for home ownership alone could collapse the whole economy. Farm subsidies, the same thing. Any sudden and massive shift to a libertarian government is going to shake confidence so badly in our markets as to put us in an absolute economical standstill. Sure, corporations would love it if we stopped asking them to please not fuck everything up from our environment to our financial sector, but take away their tax breaks and sweetheart deals and the shit will absolutely hit the fan.
I mean, how do you work from where we have now to a pure Libertarian federal government? How do you drop social security when so many have invested in it, and we can’t pay them all back? How do you get rid of Medicare or Medicaid, realistically? Our whole government and economy is an elaborately checked system of balances that doesn’t jibe at all with libertarian ideals.
All of this also presumes that libertarians actually agree with one another. While I think there is a certain libertarian bent to a lot of American voters, so many libertarians want freedom from government except, well, all the stuff that they like. Sure, let people live free or die, but them gays don’t need to be marryin’!
Here’s the actual Libertarian Party platform. These are the people who would presumedly have been elected.
So the actual laws I’d see being passed would be:
*No minimum wage.
*No regulation on financial matters. Let the parties involve manage themselves.
*No government funding for any businesses.
*No environmental regulation. Environment issues would be be at the property owner’s discretion and overseen by social pressure.
*Decriminalize all drugs, porn, gambling, etc.
*No restrictions on gun ownership.
*No pro-life laws.
*No restrictions on gay marriage.
*Abolish income tax. Not sure what source they plan on for government revenue.
*No deficit spending.
*No social security. No public health care. No welfare.
*No foreign aid.
*Military is for defense of United States only. No sending troops to other countries. I think they also include no treaty obligations like NATO.
*Appear to favor open immigration. But there’s some wiggle room there.
I think infrastructure would suffer badly. Yes, states could maintain their own chunks of the Interstate Highway system, but what about things that cover multiple states, like large dams and power grids? The environment is would take a beating, as people would only pay for the things that affected them immediately and locally, so we can pretty much kiss clean air and water goodbye. Likewise our forests, since logging and building would be unregulated. Cancer rates would soar as unregulated businesses dumped carcinogens pretty much anywhere, because it takes research to determine which chemicals are carcinogenic, and likely no one would be willing to pay for that research. Injuries on the job would probably increase without OSHA.
I think people will like it until the moment they realize that they will have to either pay for these things at some level, whether it be national, state, or local, or do without the services. As far as I’ve been able to tell, in the real world, self-described libertarians value reduction of taxes more than any other of the planks in the Libertarian Party platform as related above by Little Nemo (with the possible exception of “no restrictions on gun ownership,” which seems to be an almost religious thing with a segment of the population).
I’m not sure how they plan to eliminate Social Security. What about the fact that most working people have paid in for a number of years? Do we get that money back? How about interest? The fact is, as noted above, Social Security has spent years subsidizing the government, not the other way around.
Also, there’s a large national debt, and that money would have to be repaid to the individuals (many of whom are American citizens holding US Savings Bonds or T-Bills) and nations that have lent it to us. Where’s the money going to come from? Will selling off the national assets be enough? Buh-bye, Yellowstone. You’ll make a great housing development. I’m sure the oil companies will be delighted to buy Denali, and Yosemite looks like a perfect place for the Saudi royal family to have a vacation spot. We didn’t really need all those nuclear submarines anyway; I’m sure they’ll be much more useful to Iran or North Korea.
In response to the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
I see some conflicts between what the Libertarian platform promises as principles and what policies it would enact if it was elected into power.
Some have already mentioned Social Security. It’s clear Libertarians think that was a bad idea. Okay, fine, but good or bad it’s existed for over seventy years. What do you do about it now? Abolish it on Day One? What do you do about the people who are currently retired and planned on having Social Security? It’s a little late to tell them they should have been saving up more money (and they could argue they would have saved more money if they hadn’t been paying Social Security taxes all those years). Announce that you’ll continue paying to people who are retired now but not pay it in the future? That’ll be kind of annoying to the 64 year olds who’ve been paying in but haven’t started collected yet. And if you stop the program, you’ll presumedly stop collecting Social Security taxes. And if you do that, how are you going to make those payments?
Which moves us into the national debt and taxes. The Libertarians say no deficit spending - again that horse has left the barn. We already have a huge national debt. Not increasing it is a fine idea but what are Libertarians going to do about decreasing it? Repudiate it and cause a global financial collapse? Probably not a good plan. Pay if off? Okay, but you can’t do that and lower taxes. In fact, you’re going to need to increase taxes to have any realistic chance of eliminating the national debt.
And what is the Libertarian tax plan? They don’t say. All they say is that they would abolish income tax. We can lump social security taxes in with that and I think we can safely rule out corporate taxes as well. Look at the nice chart on this page - the Libertarians plan on eliminating 93% of federal revenue. Even with government reduction, Libertarians appear to want some level of government to exist (and don’t forget that deficit reduction) so I assume they would collect some taxes. But what taxes would replace the ones they eliminated? Sales tax? Property tax? Head tax? Estate tax? Tariff? They definitely need to break their silence on this issue.
A more interesting question would be, what would happen if the Libertarians did not come to power all at once, but got their foot in the door? Suppose we adopted proportional representation across the board, so that minor parties could win seats, in proportion to their support among the voters, in every elected multimember policymaking body from Congress to town councils. Suppose Libertarians won some seats on every one. Then they would be in a position, occasionally, to logroll and quidproquo, to support a bill not entirely anathema to them in exchange for some Libertarian-oriented reform being approved. More importantly, they would have some seats on some legislative committees, always at every point pushing to abolish this tax, relax that regulation, simplify this procedure, decriminalize that “victimless crime,” cut this item out of the budget, privatize that government service, and strenuously demanding justification of each and every expenditure. In that role, they might actually prove useful, by grasping the nettles from which the mainstream parties start in fear. Could they, by playing this role, make themselve credible and serious enough in the public’s eyes to at least put them on their way to being a major party?
That’s assuming, of course, that the Libertarians are willing to settle for half a loaf most of the time, to act like grownup, deal-making, compromising polticians.
Or would the Libertarians, even in office, adhere so rigorously and uncompromisingly to their ideology as to prevent them from playing anything more than an obstructionist role?
I run into a great many Libertarians and their kin, “the strict Constitutionalists,” at gun discussion boards. The description of their preferring to be right over being elected is spot on. Being seen as the most ideologically pure is more important than coming up with real-world solutions or actually persuading any outsiders. A good place to observe them in the wild is thehighroad.us. The “Ethics of Liberty” forum provides the best, and most entertaining, examples but will require registration.
Libertarians as a group will never move out of being anything more than a (lunatic) fringe until, among other things, they get past the heavy use of words like “sheeple” and a propensity to label anyone who disagrees (at all) with them as enemies of freedom. The fact they are entirely self-marginalizing makes the emotional intensity of their “debates” about abolishing various government functions and how to disenfranchise various groups truly hilarious.
See, here in the United States of America, we have democracy.
So if you want to postulate the Libertarians taking over the United States, you have to postulate some sort of scenario where a large plurality of voters have for some reason become libertarians. There won’t be panic and chaos because people will broadly agree with the proposed changes.
Even if we elect 219 Libertarian Representatives, 51 Libertarian Senators, and a Libertarian president, that still doesn’t mean America changes overnight, because we are a nation of laws.
And I’m still not clear why anyone thinks that Libertarianism neccesarily means no environmental protection. Yeah, you’ve got property rights. Except when you produce a cloud of smoke that drifts from your property onto mine, you’ve violated my property rights. When your oil well dumps crude oil into my water supply, you’ve violated my property rights. You might have the right to own a gun and shoot it whenever you like, but you don’t have the right to shoot bullets into my house.
There were no concepts of property rights for air and water back in the 1800s because people hadn’t thought it through–air and water seemed like an inexhaustable commons. Of course the economics of the Tragedy of the Commons are well known, so if there’s no cost to dumping trash into the common air or common water, guess what happens?
As for environmental regulations being unsupported by the Constitution, well, what’s wrong with a Constitutional Amendment granting that power, if we decide that the commerce clause can’t be stretched that far? It turns out that people are in favor of clean air and clean water, so it shouldn’t be hard–if we somehow got large numbers of libertarian voters from some alternate dimension or something.
As others have mentioned, I think the OP goes to far. If we think of politics like war, the OP asks us to imagine that the Libertarians have won the war and have complete control - but no one ever does except in dictatorships. What is more interesting is - if libertarians were to win a sizable minority or a majority, what battles would they fight? What might be politically reasonable to expect through an active and strong libertarian party? Some of the following might be proposed, though this is in no way an exhaustive list, but simply some of the first that come to mind:
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A return of PAYGO to limit the federal government budget.
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A cap on growth of the federal budget - that could be worked around for political emergencies, so the government isn’t completely hamstrung - capped a few percentages points under average GDP growth, so that deficits are gradually paid for over time.*
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A return of troops from Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the closure of a significant portion of military bases abroad. Also a corresponding reduction in defense spending.
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A simplified tax code.
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Legalization of many activities by consenting adults, including marijuana and prostitution.
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Strengthened eminent domain laws and property rights.
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Expanded voucher programs for private education.
Maybe I’m too idealistic, but I imagine some of these could pass, particularly as some members of both dominant parties would be interested in some of these proposals. The Dems might be interested in #1, 3, and 5, and the Pubs in 6 and 7.
*I shamelessly stole this from Sam Stone, as he has mentioned this very proposal’s success in Canada in a number of threads.
since you use the big-L term ‘libertarian’, i assume you refer to the types who believe in their own liberty without regard to others, and a generally anarchistic attitude towards government. the problem i see with the political party using that term is the inevitability of political parties moving to the extreme (in this country anyway, i don’t have much background on political parties in other countries). i think extremism abounds in the libertarian party, and as a result most of it’s adherents are just extremists who use ‘libertarian’ principles as a cover. note rand paul, described as a very princpled man, who was against civil rights before he was for them (or is he still against them?). since these people speak as if they don’t comprehend how our government works (its about compromise, you don’t have to study much history to understand that), i think that libertarian party dominance in our elected positions would add to the mess created by the other ideologues we already have, and have had.
if you are referring to small-l libertarians, who view liberty as an overriding virtue, we might see the elimination of many special interests laws, regulations, and influence. we might also see idiotic (or ideological) decisions that protect a small subset of liberties in while destroying a larger subset.
to sum up, as long as ideologues and/or corrupt officials have so much power, everything will get worse. when i have more than a few minutes at a time, i’ll start a thread on a possible, but improbable way to improve the situation. it seems like many poster on SD threads have not been captured by ideologies, but discussions like this tend to get people siding with a particular ideology when they disagree with another. and most ideologues believe everybody is one, so if you criticize their ideology, they assume you belong to an opposing one.
Their platform (from the link I posted above) says this:
That does seem to be saying that their position is that government regulation has no role in enforcing environmental standards. Admittedly, there’s nothing that explicitly states they wouldn’t enforce environmental regulation due to the spillover effects you mentioned. But there’s certainly nothing in this statement that says or even hints they would. And given that the main theme of this statement is outlining why the government shouldn’t get involved, if they feel there is a good counter-reason in favor of government involvement I think they would have mentioned it.