The fact that it’s full of libertarians, who hold the weaker and less fortunate in utter contempt. I wouldn’t expect a libertarian to adopt a child unless they thought they could exploit it in some way.
So why not just admit that upfront? You hold libertarians in contempt, and as such your opinions are thinly veiled attempts to discredit people that are different than you. What does that say about you?
There’s no such thing as “libertarianism in economics.” You might have economists who are libertarians, but you also have biologists who are libertarians, which doesn’t mean there’s libertarian biology.
Yes. And that’s why you have a government. And police. And armies.
Libertarians are not Anarchists. Minimal government =/= no government.
Not at all. The task is to limit the amount of power any person can have over another, so as to minimize the amount of damage that will inevitably be done when the greedy or domineering assholes get power – which they inevitably will, as all power structures inevitably attract power seekers, some of which will use that power nobly, but many of whom won’t.
To cite Friedman, the classical liberal “regards the problem of social organization to be as much a negative problem of preventing ‘bad’ people from doing harm as of enabling ‘good’ people to do good.”
In short, we tend to assume that sooner or later the government will be run by assholes, and seek to minimize the damage they can cause.
Only if by “boils down to” you mean twist into something that it isn’t. But let’s just chalk this up to you being very educated about certain things and not well educated about others.
Yeah, that’s a big part about why those systems don’t work. I wouldn’t say so much that they rely on people being perfect, but rather on people not wanting what those systems are designed to give. Libertarianism gives you perfect freedom, but no security (other than what you earn). Communism gives you perfect security but little or no freedom. Most people want a certain mixture of both.
That they would be taken care of by relatives or public charities. IOW, if people really think widows and orphans need care, they will give them that care voluntarily. If you have to force people to give them that care, then they really don’t believe it’s needed.
It says that I recognize that a philosophy of ruthless selfishness, practiced by people who are ruthlessly selfish, will result in ruthless selfishness. Instead of pretending that people who claim they don’t owe anyone anything will suddenly get all kind and generous once the Evil Government gets out of the way.
Libertarianism doesn’t give you “perfect freedom”, unless you are one of the wealthy and powerful. That idea is based on the false premise that government is the only possible source of oppression. You might as well claim that feudalism gives you immense freedom - sure it does, if you are a lord.
To agree with you one would need to have a very narrow definition of libertarianism. During the nineteenth century laissez faire was practiced, and Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations was the economic guide book.
Even on social issues, prostitution and professional gambling was generally legal, as were most drugs that are currently illegal.
Is that another thing that you “heard” from somebody? You sure are a person with a lot of incited anecdotal data that supports your positions. You should write a book!
Crony capitalism would be a better descriptor. Not to mention the whole slavery thing. The railroads were a good example. The well connected got the right-of-way and all the goodies that went along with it. Unions were routinely busted by the local cops or by the bosses who could count on the police to look the other way.
Depends; there isn’t any one answer (any more than all Progressives or Conservatives would all give the same answer).
Certainly, the preference among all of them would be for private charity to take precedence, and IME, most libertarians are as personally charitable as the average person. Some on the extreme would insist that it stop there, but most acknowledge that there has to be some provision made for people who would otherwise starve in the street, and have proposed various possibilities.
Many are on board with the Negative Income Tax minimum income guarantee that Milton Friedman advocated (see http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/23/business/23scene.html?_r=2, and http://www.city-journal.org/2011/21_1_income-tax.html). Note that the Fair Tax system that some libertarians endorse also includes a guaranteed minimum income.
It should also be noted that a libertarian state wouldn’t allow slavery, since that is the exact opposite of freedom. It’s through a big government, that a few white men are able to wield such power over many more women and blacks, and suppress their rights. Smaller government and individual freedom let’s blacks and women own property and have a say in said government.
Bad emacknight. In addition to ignoring the first rule of Der Trihs (which is “just ignore Der Trihs”), you are also forgetting that a “slave” to Der Trihs is “anyone with a job.” The act of hiring someone to perform services is itself exploitative to Der Trihs.
Again, it is simply YOUR opinion that libertarian == ruthlessly selfishness.
No question there are libertarians that are ruthlessly selfish. As there are plenty in the ranks of all other forms of economic and political systems. Socialism equally fails to address the issue of the ruthlessly selfish. And as a result socialism fails because there aren’t enough people willing to work for free.
In socialism those same selfish individuals exist and use the government to their own means. They hide behind good acts like an orphanage as a way to get rich from the government teat. They go after bloated government contracts, and push to avoid bidding, and block outside competition. They get public works contracts and and have no reason not to waste it all. Overruns get rewarded with more money. And afterwards that’s the only company with any experience building a massive series of tunnels under a city.
Slavery was over during the period we are discussing.
As for railroads, they’d be impractical if companies had to buy right of way from every person, since they could be held up by hundreds of landowners. Eminent domain is the only way to go. Given that, corruption is inevitable, unless your libertarian society is composed of saints both in business and government.
Do you think that in a libertarian society cops (or rather, the politicians who run the police) are going to choose the powerless over the powerful? That business interests won’t make the argument that unions are trying to extort them out of their rightful profits by threatening a strike?
As for orphans, your solution sure didn’t work in mid-19th century London, did it? Your average person is likely to find better uses for his money than orphans. Rich people might be more generous, but even so, if there are few taxes and no charitable deduction fewer rich people will donate. Those who do might tend to the spectacular - like college buildings, not the quiet, like support of the poor. Mr. Dooley noted that Andrew Carnegie kept his charitable contributions as quiet as a waiter with a fully loaded tray falling down a flight of stairs.
And I’m not saying that all the rich in a libertarian society will be greedy and evil. Just that there won’t be enough charity to fill the need. You really think that Medicaid and Welfare will be fully funded from private donations?
You’ve heard the solution. Rely on private charity. And if that isn’t enough, if people are starving - I guess the answer is tough luck.
Behavior economics has indicated that just thinking about capitalism reduces a persons generosity. This is from lab tests, and it doesn’t really test for long term effects, but in general, immediately after considering a market issue, people are less generous.
I do not speak for Der Trihs, but I believe the contention is that without government protection, workers can end up virtual slaves. Look at incidents from the 19th and early 20th century. Get hired as coal miner and start out in debt to the company for your gear, be required to buy everything from the company store, and find out the more you work the more you owe.
Or look at Singapore. The last company I worked for outsourced their training center to Singapore. The trainers that came over to learn told us that there it is a common practice to charge for on the job training. If you try and leave before a certain date you have to pay off the company for all the training they gave you. These are not chattel slavery, but there are restrictions of freedom.
You are making the mistake of defining a problem in terms of a government solution. That is, if you can think of a government program to do something (here, take care of orphans), then you classify “the lack of a system to take care of orphans” as a problem (and, of course, a government program is the solution).
The better way to think about it is that you are perfectly free to do whatever you want with your money. If you want to give it to orphans, then fine. If you want to start a charity and request donations to help orphans, even better. But just because there isn’t a government program to help orphans doesn’t mean that there’s a vacuum that must be filled with a government program to help orphans.
Also, when you point to points in history where there were governments that didn’t take care of orphans, you aren’t really supporting your case that government action is necessary to take care of orphans. The government didn’t help them until they did–how’s that a point for government action and against libertarianism?
That happens right now in the US with pilots. And I don’t see how it’s a restriction on freedom–the person agreed to receive free training in exchange for providing services. (Enter stage left–“but but but what if that’s the only job the person could find!!!”)
Problem: Children are born and then their parents die, removing all sources of support for them.
Solution: ???
The Libertarian answer posited was charity, and yet there are historical examples in which, in the absence of government support for orphans, charity was manifestly insufficient. So, if charity is insufficient, and government support is morally wrong (because it forces you, the taxpayer, to support orphans), then what is to be done with the parent-less children?
The only solution that has been proven effective is to mandate a certain level of care for orphans, to be funded by all citizens, and provided by the government (or, at the least, funded by the government).
Absolutely true on both counts. And a clear example of why both ideologies, at their purest forms, are Utopian. And why the only workable solution, at least given present-day realities, is a mixed economy with a social safety net, free enterprise with robust regulation, and government-enforced equality of opportunity.