Hyper-Libertarians Say the Darndest Things

My intent here is not to Pit, but to show appreciation for hyper-libertarians. I do enjoy Stephen Colbert’s brand of right-wing thought and I’ll bet many of the hyper-libertarians at SDMB are whooshing deliberately, hoping eventually to audition for Comedy Network. (I post in BBQ Pit just so any Dopers who think Farnaby etc. are sincere can feel free to comment on their intelligence.)

The remainder of this post isn’t my thinking – it’s a paraphrasing of hyper-libertarian thought.

Example 1) WillFarnaby: Smallpox is better than fiber optic cables.
In the 1990’s, the Federal Reserve Bank put its printing presses into overdrive, forcing money down the throats of businessmen who had no real use for it, so spent it building telecommunications infrastructure nobody really needed. This misallocation was a disaster comparable to a major war, certainly far worse than any smallpox epidemic.

Yes, yes, some of that Internet infrastructure got used eventually (and more new fiber optics were manufactured in 2012 than in 2000!) but that was through the Power of the Market. Between Al Gore bragging about inventing the Internet and the FRB forcing hyper-inflated money down the throats of entrepreneurs, they ended up employing Americans who should have been out of work. And by out of work, I’m not talking about suckling at the Socialist trough; I’m talking [del]Constructive Starvation[/del] Creative Destruction.

Mandatory Vaccines are an intrusion on liberty. How do you know the Democrats won’t use them to sterilize people who don’t share their confused Marxist ideals? Yes, yes, I’ve heard – vaguely – that smallpox was eradicated. So what? Wouldn’t a world with smallpox still rampant, but without those excess fibers from the 1990’s be a better place? Hunh?

And by the way, I do vaccinate my kids. Fuck yours if you don’t.

Example 2) IdahoMauleMan’s views on flood control
The whole thread discussing Libertarian’s views on rice farming and flood control is amusing, but the brilliance prize goes to IdahoMauleMan. He [ul][li] questions why rice farmers build their farms in fertile areas;[/li][li] wonders why they don’t call up Chicago commodity brokers to discuss hedging strategies if worried about rainfall;[/li][li] thinks individual farmers building levees here and there would have saved the country from the horrific floods of 2011.[/li][/ul]

(In that thread, many libertarians literally didn’t seem to understand that averting a disaster altogether is better than compensation via insurance. Trying to educate such people reminds one of a calculus teacher who finds he has to start with reviews of “2+2=? 2+3=?”)

Example 3) jayarod7’s Conflict Resolution Agencies
I’m sorry jayarod7 got banned. I was hoping for an explanation of his privatised Conflict Resolution. Since he’s not here, I’ll try to fill in for him:

The two-years old flood control thread might be worth review as a refutation of hyper-libertarianism. I’ll close this OP with my closing remark from that thread.

I neglected to provide proper links in OP. Idaho’s views on flood control are in the thread I linked to; Jayarod7’s thread on private Conflict Resolution agencies has disappeared. :eek:
Following is the post where Farnaby laments “malinvestment” caused by FRB while calling the goodness of mandatory vaccination “irrelevant”:

BTW, I agree with Farnaby that the “casino-ization” of the stock market has little public value, but am surprised he sees it that way. Many libertarians, whether they give a hoot for public value or not, think that “casino-ization” is the best thing since buttered bread!

Wait, Libertarians are completely divorced from reality?

Shocker.

Never saw it coming.

Next you’ll tell me Communism is unrealistic or Capitalism is corrupt.

No. Only “Hyper-Libertarians”. Unlike “Hyper-Other-Types-of-People” who have both feet firmly planted on the ground.

Personally I liked jayarod7’s assertion that monarchy is superior to democracy in libertarian terms.

Sorry if the term “Hyper-Libertarian” causes confusion. Only one of my three examples seemed actually “hyper” in the ordinary sense of “needs his dosages adjusted.” Anyway, a better taxonomy is needed for the various strains of libertarian. Farnaby certainly seems extreme (see note 1), but by failing to embrace Wall St’s “casino-ization” (by which I think he means excessive derivative trading, etc.) I think many relatively moderate Libertarians would want to kick him out of their Party.

One longs for the good old days before YouTube made every High School Sophomore an economics expert. In those days “I am a libertarian” just meant “I like to smoke dope and I don’t like taxes.”

Note 1. If you draw a line connecting the trough of the Bush-41 recession to the trough of the Bush-43 recession, you’ll find the Clinton boom was huge even with the bust in the early Bush-43 years factored in. Or, to paraphrase Alan Greenspan, “It is better to have boomed and busted than never to have boomed at all.” For this reason, I think Farnaby’s contention that the slight over-investment in 1999 is reason to abolish the FRB and let money creation and bank regulation be completely privatised while condemning the practice of mandatory vaccinations which give only trivial “irrelevant” benefits like the eradication of smallpox certainly qualifies Farnaby as Hyper-Something, even if the Pro-Casino Libertarians disown him.

The various strains of libertarianism: gun-toting, tax-dodging, and dope-smoking.

All on the moderate end of the scale (for the US), surely?

Why? Because one guy can’t get around to doing as much?

Oh, more than that!