That’s what capitalism does, huh? How’s that been working lately?
The United States of America is not a capitalist nation except in the broadest sense of the word.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
ETA: But still, pretty amazingly great compared to every nation that isn’t capitalist in *any *sense of the word.
So your concept of capitalism is not any more grounded in reality than your concept of libertarianism, huh?
That’s a useful admission, at least.
I’m not a libertarian.
Heck, if socialism and its economic agenda can supply me with pretty naked virgins every day then I’ll be the chimpanzee-poster-boy-champion of the socialist movement. I’m human and I’m impressionable to government freebies just like anyone else.
Believe it or not there are also a lot of people who want the government to help people besides themselves.
I am not poor enough to be receiving government aid. Nevertheless, I am in favor of government programs that provide aid for the poor, because I believe we as a society should be helping the poor to at least maintain a certain minimum standard of living, both for moral and practical reasons. (Note that I’m not saying “Everyone should be the same,” just “we should strive to keep everyone above a certain minimum level”.)
Now, if I understand correctly (not being an expert on Libertarianism), the strictly Libertarian approach would be to let people who want to donate to the poor do so, but not to force anyone to fund these services by means of their tax dollars. To me, that is as ridiculous as saying “You shouldn’t have to pay taxes that fund road repair unless you want too.” If we as a society democratically decide that certain projects are worth funding, whether fixing roads or helping poor people buy food and clothes for their familes, then we all have an obligation to contribute our fair share to the funding of these initiatives. (Obviously, you can debate what your “fair share” of the tax burden is, but that’s another question.) The alternative is to basically say, “Greedy people can pay for nothing, while their social obligations are met by those more generous than them.” That’s a lousy way to run a society.
Now, maybe Libertarianism isn’t what I think it is, or maybe no Libertarian takes it to the extreme of this example. I’m not trying to set up a strawman here – if I’m wrong, it’s genuine ignorance. So enlighten me. But as I’ve always heard it summarized, the Libertarian philosophy is “Keep the government out of my business.” I’m all for a government that respects personal liberty and privacy, but not to the point where you don’t have to pay your fair share to fund our democratically agreed upon priorities, whether those are providing social services for the poor or anything else.
Enough to show that the basic premise of libertarianism is hopelessly flawed. Free markets without regulation got us to where we are now. Corporations were deciding who to go to war with, scientific standards, and an economic depression. We need to regulate people because people are greedy and stupid. Libertarianism is based upon the concept that greed and stupidity are both good, essentially.
I pretty much agree with the situation in your example. But there wouldn’t be, for example, an expected obligation to pay for the roads—they would be privatized. And I don’t think it’s right to use arms to force people to do any of those other things, whether it’s agreed-upon democratically or not. No one’s saying there can’t be large national organizations dedicated to helping people or doing whatever, but they would just be private non-profits.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
ETA: Dammit, Dan Norder, Bush is not a Libertarian. Bush is a social conservative, which is antithetical to both personal liberty and economic liberty. I am so tired of that argument.
I agree with you. And, generally, people will reject a return to those days. There isn’t anything appealing about them to many (most?) of us.
I get that the point of Libertarianism isn’t “Don’t fix roads” or “don’t help the poor.” (I do think some people place too little value on social services to help the poor, but that isn’t specifically a Libertarian thing.)
But what I’m saying is: If the majority feels that, say, keeping the roads in good repair is an important priority, why shouldn’t we all be required to contribute our fair share? In other words, if this sort of thing is all funded by private donation, then you’re basically saying “Greedy people don’t have to pay their fair share, while the more generous pick up the slack.” How is that fair?
I think it’s much more fair to have a system where we democratically decide what to spend money on, and then everyone is obligated to chip in a certain amount (i.e., taxes) to pay for it. Of course, you can always donate more money to help the poor or whatever it is you think is important, but no one can say “Screw you guys I’m not going to chip in.”
Those are all wildly different things.
True, if you are willing to lie. Calling libertarianism the ideology of the selfish, spoiled and predatory isn’t a lie however.
Because it would be destroyed with everything else when society collapsed.
I wouldn’t. I probably wouldn’t buy any drugs at all or go to doctors in your hellhole-society. We’d be back to the old days where doing so gave you even odds of the “treatment” being more likely to kill you than the disease.
it wouldn’t have the power. With no restraints from that evil, evil government the corporations would go back to the good old days of blacklists and monopolies and company towns. You’d work for what they offered under the conditions they demanded, or starve. Contract or not; ask the government to enforce a contract and you and possibly your whole family would be blacklisted and unemployable anywhere. Assuming that you weren’t already blacklisted for being black or gay or non-Christian, say.
And that’s the optimistic scenario. The more likely one is collapse into a failed state.
Garbage. It creates massive boom-and-bust cycles, scams, and neglects anything that isn’t short term profitable. The free market isn’t any more of a universal solution than the government or anything else is.
Tell it to the slaves. Who were freed by the GOVERNMENT, not your precious free market.
It does risk people being killed by the flying blades from a poorly made lawnmower. But hey, who cares if some kid gets decapitated ? Certainly not libertarians.
It’s standard. It’s like defenders of Communism; all the flaws of Communism in the real world are handwaved away because they aren’t “real” Communists. All the flaws of free markets in the real world are handwaved away because they aren’t “real” free markets.
It amounts to the same thing, since in practical terms libertarianism translates to “all power to the rich, all responsibility to everyone else”. And libertarianism don’t really believe in “liberty”; they believe in the law of the jungle, which isn’t the same thing at all.
from Vox
See, this is what I mean. You have to learn a whole new vocabulary to debate a libertarian. The rest of the world knows what modern capitalism is. The USA has it. But because it does not jive with the libertarian definition of what they want capitalism to be - its NOT capitalism.
Recently I got in a discussion with another Mr. Libertarian who claimed that everybody who talks about deregulation over the past three decades is a liar because there was NO deregulation of the economy.
Of course, what he means is that his version - the libertarian version - of what deregulation means did not happen - so in his world - there was no deregulation.
I am just so sick and tired of being sick and tired of trying to understand the libertarian double talk. I have no respect for it at all.
What if you’re never even given a choice/chance to “reject” it?
If the government is short-sighted enough to create expensive programs that can’t fund itself, your distrust of the gov’ts broken promises and the need to survive will put you into “libertarian” (self-reliance) mode.
If libertarians are greatly outnumbered by everyone the democracy, then how can their ideology ever possibly take hold? One way is that the government runs out of money. Insolvency trumps democratic voting and also trumps the rhetoric about this debate.
Yeah, it was only the period during which the U.S. economy exploded in growth under libertarianism and became a world power. I sure would like to go back to those days in terms of our economic system (of course, people wouldn’t be as poor as they were then, since there is now much more wealth in the world due to this explosion in production). Since then, the U.S. economy has mostly drifted along, ahead of others mostly because the rest of the world was raped by colonial empires or WWII. Computers were a great bonus, of course, but that kind of thing can’t be anticipated.
Der Trihs, you simply have no grasp on reality. The hilarious part is that most the things you listed, like freeing slaves, enforcing contract law, and preventing the use of force on employees, is stuff the government would be doing anyway under such a system. The rest of your examples are just alarmist BS. Of course, those ebil, ebil CORPORATIONS (shock horror) would step in with their big bad piles of bribes and ruin everything.:rolleyes: What exactly makes you think the police would go away in a Libertarian society?
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
ETA: haymarketmartyr, I don’t want “modern” capitalism. Modern “capitalism” is a mixed economy, which is completely antithetical to Libertarianism.
And Der Trihs, Communism isn’t even good in theory. I would much rather live in a society worked based on assuming the principles of Libertarianism that one that even managed to function based on those of Communism.
If the majority elects people who run the government into the ground, then I guess we’re screwed. But it’s not like we can preemptively not vote for the people we think would do a good job, on the theory that our judgment is unreliable.
A claim that the collapse of our financial markets is the result of too *much *regulation of them is not worthy of a response other than laughter.
And a hellhole for the common people.
No, they wouldn’t; they wouldn’t have the power.
Hardly. I’m just assuming they’d do what they always do when they can. What they DID do when they could get away with it.
For one thing, as libertarian police they’d be inclined to react to a plea for help from a commoner by beating him up. Hatred and contempt for the general populace is one of the central features of libertarianism. For another, if they did anything their families would be blacklisted. And as well, under a libertarian system, much of their job would consist of beating down the common people, since you’d see much more violence from the millions of people who no longer have legal recourse to the misdeeds of the powerful, and from the millions of people who are desperate for one reason for another.
Because you assume you’d be one of the people on the top, not a serf.
Der Trihs, if these people are so completely horrible as to be ungovernable, why hasn’t this happened already? Or are you saying that it’s just Libertarians that are horrible people (and presumably need to be shot or whatever, but I digress)? I realize it’s useless to debate you on this, but I’ll try.
ElvisL1ves, too much of some kinds and too little of others. In short, privatizing success and subsidizing failure, so you end up with zombie corporations that have no business operating, but are “rescued” by the government, creating an economic system where the surest way to success is to ask your buddies in Congress for some extra cash. (This was also a big part of how the real “robber barons” clung to their wealth. Many of the bad parts of the 19th century came from the fact that it was not *completely *libertarian.)
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
So your own answer to the OP question would also be “No”, I take it?
Who said anything about “ungovernable” ? The whole point of my side is that people can, and are governed and that that’s not a bad thing.
And yes, I’d consider libertarians to be “horrible” people, because it’s a horrible ideology. Ruthless, amoral, selfish, and ultimately the suicide of any society that actually tried to implement it.
How predictable. You sound exactly like the people who try to give Christianity credit for all the achievements of the past, but at the same time handwave away all of the evils committed in Christianity’s name because they weren’t “real Christians”.
So people *can *be governed, and it works in our society, but a Libertarian society would not be able to have police because? And not only would the government be ineffective, but the police would run to the aid of murderers and thieves as kindred spirits? Do you even realize how ridiculous you sound?
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris