Let me guess: Engineering? Computer science? (Libertarians appear to be overrepresented, for some reason, in fields technical but not scientific.)
But many countries are democratic republics where the “people in charge” are very-distantly-ultimately the voters. Why has not libertarianism caught on as a political movement in any of them even to the degree it has in the U.S.?
Oh, it’s all right, you were. Here. [hands Werekoala a handkerchief]
My WAG is that libertarianism is mostly a U.S. issue because Big “L” libertarianism (as in a political movement) kinda started here. I think before that it was much more of an individual matter/philosophy, but someone took the effort to actually make a political party out of it, which gave it more publicity. Before that it was mostly an academic exercise, but now you’ve got people trying to make it an actual governing movement. I think in the process they’ve perverted some of the ideas of “small l” libertarianism, and most “big L” types are really, REALLY bad at defending the viewpoints of the Movement. Most “little l” types probably don’t bother (like me) because hey man, whatever floats your boat, just leave me alone. 
Plus it appeals to the “rugged individualism” that has permeated American culture for centuries, moreso than in other nations with a longer history of strong central government control/authority, so it’s an alien concept (as is much of U.S. thought) to most of the rest of the world.
IMO, YMMV, WTFBBQ, etc.
Solely because a couple of hundred million American voters have no motivation to care about that. If the voters cared, Congress would. The voters may say, in opinion polls, MJ should be decriminalized. But they don’t say so at the voting booth.
You imply a catastrophic disconnect between the voters and their representatives. I disagree; that disconnect may exist, but is not as broad as you characterize it.
We’ve had plenty of thread here where people who either are Libertarians or who understand that philosophy have given plenty of straight answers to a straight question. In fact, I did that just yesterday.
It sure would help, though, if there weren’t untold, vocal critics of Libertarianism who can’t tell the difference between it and Anarchy, shouting SOMALIA! every time the topic of Libertarianism comes up.
What country’s name would you use instead?
Given that there are some very wealthy Libertarians why hasn’t someone bought some land/island owned by a country with a relatively weak government that they can bribe to grant them independence and set of their own Libertarian commune? Basically why hasn’t someone set up their own Galt’s Gulch somewhere in Africa. It might take a bit to get started and you would probably have to hire your own mercenary military to prevent the regional government or others from asserting control, but that is allowed under Libertarian Philosophy. Once it gets established it should thrive.
I do see that someone is trying something like this in Chile but it sounds like they will still be under the Chilean government so it won’t be a true Libritopia.
Such ideas are being kicked about: Floating Cities? Bon Voyage, Rich Libertarians.
ETA: Actually as I investigate it the Galt’s Gulch in Chili is starting to look like a scam aimed at gullible Libertarians rather than a serious attempt.
[QUOTE= Galts Gulch website]
One very unique and appealing aspect of The Founders Club, is that all Founders Club members in our second round release will enjoy a full return of their purchase price over 36 months from the date of their lot purchase, equating to a 33% annual return on initial investment. On top of this tremendous return, you can also realize very healthy returns in the form of passive income, by utilizing the services our professional organic farming team to design, implement and manage your own non-GMO organic working farm on your Founders lot. You will enjoy 70% of the net profits, without doing any of the work.
[/QUOTE]
Anything that guarantees 33% returns has to be at best a pyramid scheme.
I often wonder why so many people go out of their way to slam what is after all still a fringe notion (based on numbers), i.e. libertarianism.
I understand Amateur Barbarian’s frustration to some degree. The major political parties have platforms (which are not universally agreed-on in the party but they have the advantage of being official). There are well-understood basic principles for other less-major political positions such as socialism, communism, fascism, and so on, but those are also not universally agreed on.
I think there are these problems getting a handle on what libertarianism means:
Some people call themselves libertarians (or other people call them that) who are not. Anyone who supposes that a government ought to enforce religious or other ideas about personal matters is not in any sense a libertarian, no matter how much his economic policies seem to follow that philosophy.
Outside the Libertarian Party (which has some useful materials available to make the philosophy more clear) there is no recognized leader or spokesperson. There are people who consider themselves to be libertarians who don’t really understand what it means, they may be following one of those people described in the previous paragraph so they think they are in that group.
Then there are the straw man arguments (there are a couple running right now) where people who don’t understand very much about libertarianism tell us all how stupid it is, for various specious reasons.
I applaud Shagnasty’s summary, but in my mind the discussion about libertarian political philosophy should focus on what are the proper functions of a government. I think most libertarians would agree that the government should be responsible for national defense, courts at all levels for adjudication of civil disputes as well as criminal offenses; police forces at the local, state and federal level to support the courts; and not much else, and such taxation as is needed to support those functions. There would be strong support in the courts for contract law, as that would be the basis of even more transactions than it is now. Social welfare, education, road building, etc. don’t have to be handled by governments* and are probably better handled in other ways.
And because no political philosophy stands alone, the discussion should also include something about what the philosophical underpinnings are - what is the view of human beings and their relationships with each other that lead one to be a libertarian or to oppose that philosophy?
*At this point the discussion always gets into “but how would that work?” arguments, which involve a lot of detail and a lot of thinking outside the box, and which some people are happy to dismiss out of hand. These kinds of discussions should probably be the last thing discussed, once basic principles are agreed on.
Anyway, I return to my original question of wondering why someone like LInd bothers to take the time to have this kind of dispute if he holds the whole philosophy in such contempt. It’s not as if there is a wave of real libertarianism about to take over the country. At most, some of the tea party-type advocates pretend to be libertarians on the economic side as long as it suits their immediate interests. My impression is that few or none of them actually have any philosophical underpinnings for their views.
Roddy
If we’re going to talk about moderate Libertarianism which embraces the sort of things ITR Champion suggests such as eliminating agricultural tariffs/subsidies or relaxing drug laws, that already exists in the form of European liberalism as exemplified by the German Free Democratic Party or the Dutch VVD and these parties have been in government.
However, the main problem with American libertarianism is that most of its notable advocates incredibly unpopular policies such as neo-isolationism in foreign policy or eliminating modern entitlement programs. In contrast, the European liberal parties accept the welfare state existing in their countries and prefer to work in that framework to achieve greater savings and efficiency.
IMHO, the biggest problem with a libertarian country is external: how to defend itself against invasion and conquest by an authoritarian power. Organized armies have worked since 3500 B.C. Against the military power of a state, the only counters I’ve seen proposed are volunteer armies, guerrilla resistance and a combination of civil disobedience and sabotage. When faced with a conqueror willing to commit genocide, this does not seem very reassuring. The problem seems to reduce to “find a way to make an armed mob superior to an organized army”. Unless there’s a convincing answer to this problem, all questions about a libertarian society’s internal organization are moot.
Minarchist Libertarians support maintaining a standing army. Some libertarians (especially Randians) have even advocated waging nuclear warfare against Islamist states in the Middle East.
Fine, so don’t use the libertarian terms; you must be able to express the same concepts in terms familiar to non-libertarians.
Yes, and, in fact, Lind concludes his third article in the series with:
However, N.B. and caveat:
Because, like a lot of things, it is overrepresented on the Internet. And, for another, the movement does have some actual influence of a kind. At any rate, the various libertarian foundations and think-tanks like Cato are often quoted and taken seriously by the MSM, which probably they shouldn’t be.
N.B.: In the 2011 version of the Pew Political Typology (which the Pew Research Center has been periodically updating and revising since 1987), “Libertarians” form a separate typology-category for the first time:
But don’t get too excited, LiberDopians. I think you’ll find most of these “Libertarians” either reject Austrian-school economics or, more likely, never have heard of it, and would never think of joining or supporting the Libertarian Party if they got one look at its platform, and would roll their eyes at the prospect of ending the Fed, or Social Security or Medicare (those don’t count as “welfare,” you know). That is because moderate libertarianism and radical libertarianism are very different things, and differ in kind as well as degree. Lind’s articles, and this thread, are not concerned with moderate libertarianism. Radical libertarians are a small subset of the group described above, the way actual socialists are a small subset of the “Solid Liberal” typology-category from the same study.
But, as Lind notes in his second article:
The LW never has had any monopoly or corner on Useful idiots.
You finally presented something that is both correct and fair. That is a fairly good description of the typical libertarian and it seems perfectly reasonable to me but of course it would because I am a moderate libertarian as are most of the others here. I am not sure if we even have any true Radical Libertarians on this boards.
If you or Lind or anyone else are really just talking about Radical Libertarians, it would be helpful to make that point clear up front. It is no more fair to compare all libertarians to the worst ones you see in the news than it is to call all Muslims terrorists or judge all animal rights activists by the actions of PETA. You could probably even get some of us moderate libertarians to agree with you on some points.
We do; jayarod7, WillFarnaby, and I think IdahoMoleMan (sp?). Probably a few others.