If it never happens again, it never happened at all. De nada.
Which people would that be?
Sorry, I cannot tell if that’s a genuine puzzlement, a rhetorical question, or a sarcasm. Advise.
Collective bargaining is not a problem for small-l libertarianism. The ability to freely enter economic contracts, including forming partnerships, corporations, unions, etc, is essential.
Hmm. Maybe it’s that I’ve let the crypto-plutocrat right wing define libertarianism for me all this time. I expect that’s tragically common.
Oh, I came back into this thread to apologize for calling all libertarian-wing GOP “stinking madmen.” That was rash & unfair. Of course they’re not all mad, & I was being extremely hyperbolic.
It seems to me that there are some otherwise apparently sane people who do have some serious blind spots &/or really annoying prejudices when it comes to economics–I used to be one of them & arguably still am–but I think it’s more to do with corruption or ignorance, depending on the individual, than madness as such.
Libertarianism sounds good when you just hear their side. Like Goldwater Republicans. You find the spokesman seems sincere and you want to believe him. But when you see all the fringe voters they attract, the seem ill informed.
Welcome to the SDMB, home to more well informed libertarians than you’ve probably met in your life. Just keep that in mind. 
Hell, all of them.
I’m sure even a few neo-nazis have voted democrat. Don’t judge an entire group solely on their crazies. I think that the Lib crazies are a) more convinced they’re correct and b) louder on average.
There are a lot of us who identify as Republicans based not on national issues but on state and local issues. Now that I live in Maryland, I’ve returned to the GOP because the state’s Democratic Party is promoting incredibly intrusive policies from taxes to smoking to gun control to socialized medicine. The GOP is standing up against these anti-liberty measures and the only way to fight them politically is to join with the GOP. Furthermore, at the local level the GOP is in favor of a property tax cap, restrained government spending, and fewer business regulations. All these make the GOP a good fit for a libertarian in Maryland.
Nationally I’ve pretty much given up on the GOP. I still nominally support it because of lower taxes and gun control, but that’s about it. The Democrats attract me because of their support for privacy rights (although I chalk up their support to the fact that they are the opposition party, not because of any true desire on their part to support privacy. When Clinton was President they certainly had no problem with government intrusion in these areas). On social issues, for the most part, the Democrats don’t really do much. Sure, they are a little better on gay marriage than the GOP, but you aren’t going to find too many prominent Democrats endorsing it. On drug re-legalization, you aren’t going to find any prominenet Democrats paying more than lip service to marijuana legalization (and forget about the legalization of cocaine). So it’s not as if their “liberal” view on social issues really means anything to me.
Ridiculous. If my neighbor came over to my house waving a gun it’s much different than if I went over to his house, asked for food, and was rejected.
What monopolies are you talking about, since there were none during this time?
Monopolies certainly are not the end product of unfettered capitalism. In fact, if history has shown us anything it is that competition usually makes obsolete the company that was once large. Companies seem to grow big, lose the ability to innovate, and then die off as smaller, more innovative companies grow to take their place. Monopolies only happen when companies use the government to step in and artificially restrain the growth of their competitors.
So the governments of the Southern states from, say the 1870s to the 1960s, where they enforced the “people’s will” by keeping the races separate, was fine with you? After all, the majority of the people in those states did not want race mixing, so it’s fine, right?
It’s a genuine puzzlement. Recall the statement you made: “So long as the government is the creature of the people’s will, I don’t care so much how big it gets.”
Well, “the people” has to be some particular subset of the actual people because unanimous consent of all the people is so rare as to be statistically and historicaly negligible. And so I can’t help but wonder what a person means when he talks about things like “the will of the people”.
Take you and me, for instance. Your will and my will, with regards to implimentation of justice for example, are practically as different as night and day. So naturally the question arises whether my will would suit you just as much as yours. I just want you to clarify: maybe you meant “the majority of people” or something like that. But in that case, you would have to be okay with anti-gay marriage statutes. Or maybe you meant “the enlightened people” in which you’d likely include yourself (and therefore not me). Since only you can say what you meant, I’m asking.
But that’s not a function of the government being “big”. Those states no longer keep the races separate, and yet no one would argue that either the state or federal government is smaller than it was in 1960. In fact, one might argue that it was the “bigness” of the federal government that allowed it to finally intervene and prevent the states from acting unjustly. It took a lot more than a simple SCOTUS decision to do that.
True, I was more responding to the notion that elucidator seemed fine with government as long as it is doing the people’s will. What I took him/her to be saying was that he/she is fine with government getting big, as long as it is the will of the people. By that logic, then, elucidator must also be fine with things such as segregation.
My point is that the “people’s will” is sometimes wrong and in order to judge whether a government is just, one must use a different standard. For libertarians, a large government is immoral, just as segregation is immoral. It doesn’t matter if the people want it or not, it’s still wrong.
No, John, he’s got me. Clearly, my* faux* egalitarianism and populism is nothing more than a mask for a seething desire to crush my fellow citizens beneath the jackboots of oppression. Really, I’m so ashamed. I only hope to blink back the tears of humiliation long enough to fill out this Republican Party registration form…
Whatever. If you disagree with my formulation, then tell me how I’m wrong. I’m not saying that you want to oppress people, just that perhaps you haven’t thought through your views on government. Or, if you have, that the way you defend your view on government is unclear. So please point out where I went astray and save your attempts at wit.
No. His point is that bigness is not, per se, bad. Most libertarians think it is. This all started with Sam quoting the famous “that government is best which governs least”.
But the size of the government says nothing about what that government specifically does. You can have a small, evil government. I’ll agree that it’s much *easier *to have an evil government if it’s big, but bigness does not guarantee evil.
Democracy is not the best form of government, not the most efficient, not the most responsive to change. It is simply the most just form of government. Of course, the people can be wrong, and have been. When I accept a commitment to democracy, I accept that my notion of economic justice has equal standing with another man’s insistence that all the Catholics should be neutered, and the only just decision-maker must be the will of the people. If the people are wrong, change the people. It can be a long and bitter road, marked largely by heartbreak and woe, but it can be done, and it has been done.
Is this a faith, unencumbered by abundant evidence that I am an addled fool? Yes. I’ve mine, you find yours, and we’ll argue.
True, I agree with that a small government can be just as evil as big government. But in general government can only expand at the expense of someone’s liberty. So if government is big, it has gotten that way by taking away liberty from someone.
But your quote was that “so long as government is the creature of people’s will, I don’t care much how big it gets.” So would it also be true to say that you agree with this statement, “so long as government is the creature of people’s will, I don’t care if it mandates segregation”?
I’m fully in favor of democracy, too, but I think that certain safeguards need to be put in place. No matter what “the people” want, for instance, I don’t think they should be able to use the government to oppress unpopular groups. Every citizen has basic rights that cannot be abridged. I think you’d agree with that. However, I think it’s just as wrong to take my property to give to someone who refuses to work, even if this is supported by “the people.” Ultimately, “the people’s will” does not make something OK for me. In your statement, though, you seem to be saying that as long as the people want it, you’re OK with it.