The Different Kinds of Libertarians
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OK, I'll bite. I honestly am not sure what you are trying to say here and the native American reference was completely lost on me as it relates to butchering libertarians. Look, there is no libertarian party for all practical purposes. Libertanism is a set of ideals, not a party. They exist on both the right and the left and most Americans have some libertarian qualities in them. You can't kill or "butcher" libertarians any more then you can kill classic rock music. There is nothing to kill.
The paradox of libertarianism is that it exists in both parties as the inverse of the other. For example, the left champions several causes of libertarians such as anti-war, civil liberties, drug legalization, separation of church and state. These are things on the right that get ignored. But the right leaning libertarians champion economic liberty, property rights, limited government and state's rights. These are things the left seems to ignore.
You can't kill libertarians because they live inside both the democratic and republican parties. They have no other home. Trying to classify them into categories is kind of silly just as it's silly to classify all the different types of conservatives and liberals.
Look, people are complicated. What's annoying about this country is that we want to box, package and label everyone into one of two groups regardless of how complex your political beliefs are. In Europe for example, most countries have 6 to 8 different parties. And these parties actually have to form coalitions to get elected and retain power. Here it's either black or white.
Again, there is no libertarian party in true form. Sure they have an organization just as the united states socialist party has one, but true libertarianism already exists in both parties and exists in each and every one of us and it cannot be killed or butchered as it is the true essence of what this country is and what this country was built on. What we have evolved into is a more complex society from the integration of thousands of cultures around the world that have come to call the US their home and our system of government is now a potpourri of all the things we have collected from those various cultures.
So to kill libertarianism, or butcher it as you said, you would have to destroy the entire country.
I sincerely doubt a genuine "libertarian" would want to be bound by some word, party, ideology, etc.
What has struck me as odd, especially with traders, is why they seek to remain in conventional society, when telecommunications would allow them do work from anywhere these days...and yet they rail against society while remaining within it.
They are free to go somewhere else, yet they rebel like infants in a crib...
What has struck me as odd, especially with traders, is why they seek to remain in conventional society, when telecommunications would allow them do work from anywhere these days...and yet they rail against society while remaining within it.
They are free to go somewhere else, yet they rebel like infants in a crib...
Hey Mav that was thoughtful and i agree with most of it. Can't kill ideals and that's a good thing. Back then, my point about the indians roughly was that they got slaughtered, even the libertarians amongst them, and their land stolen, and it didn't seem to me that slaughtering natives and stealing their land was in line with libertarian ideals, or sthg one can / should gloss over... clearly the country wasn't built on libertarian ideals alone... that said, libertarianism by nature is simplistic, offers a simplistic worldview, in some respects a fairy tale that requires participants from refraining to use violence etc, and that's alright but when elected reps eg Ron Paul, the "austrian" buffoons (eg Mises institute) and the likes make a lot of noise about stuff they don't understand well (eg money) and try to rally people under the banner of libertarianism / the libertarian party then i think it's an unnecessary distraction from the very serious problems at hand... going back to some form of country / ranch type lifestyle and economy while healthy is unlikely to be "the" solution... anyway... there is more worrying than Ron Paul and co now... imagine the US governed from Alaska... an alaskan birdbrain...
Wow, you suffer from a severe ignorance of what Libertarianism consists of. Libertarianism is not "anti society" or "anti technology". It simply holds the overwhelming majority of the physical, technological, and social constructs known as "society" should exist on a voluntary basis. Libertarians don't "rail against society", they rail against government and inappropriate, unconstitutional regulation. "Railing" against government is not "railing against" society. It is in fact, railing for society....
OK, I'm going to have probe further here. I'm not sure I agree with the idea that libertarianism is simplistic. It can be as complicated or as simple as one makes it. And I also disagree that people rally around libertarianism. Look, 98% of the people in this country, including those who own copies of "Atlas Shrugged" and swear by Ron Paul would actually probably not support libertarianism. It's called hypocrisy and we are all guilty of it. The fact is most people want handouts and most people want welfare in some form, even those screaming at Ron Paul rallies. I find this terribly disappointing but it's the nature of who we are.
Having said that, libertarianism is not a Utopian solution to anything, it's simply a way of viewing the world. I think it can be summed up by saying that libertarians are by nature individualists, not collectivists. They believe in empowering the individual, not the government. Yes, there are real problems in the world and I assure you two cents, the government offers no solutions. Governments by nature offers solutions to symptoms, not the source problem. I have a big problem with this. Because as you know, treating the symptom has never cured a disease. It only makes the disease bearable until it kills you. This wouldn't bother me all that much if it was funded privately. But when you take my tax dollars to treat symptoms and not the real problem, then that's not acceptable.
So what are you proposing as the alternative. Do you want to support corrupt governments? Do you want to start wars to jump start domestic economies? Do you want to take away people's rights and civil liberties in the name of defense? Do you want to devalue your nations currency so you never have to raise their taxes to support large government programs that will never work?
What exactly is the "solution?" Higher taxes? More regulation? More laws? Less freedom? More prisons? At what point does a civil war enter the conversation? At what point does Eugenics enter the conversation? At what point does a theocracy enter the conversation?
I'm all ears to hear the alternatives...
Mav i believe in empowering the individual, low taxes, small government etc. It works for me. Now i also believe universal health care should be the norm in developed countries. Make it work. Get the insurance companies to sue Big Food for making half of America obese in less than one generation... cause leaving it to the poorly educated and gullible individuals to make their own nutritional choices against mean profit-driven machines hasn't worked too well there... matter of fact those things never work too well in a predatory world and that's the only world there is.... in the same vein, don't break the Fed, they haven't created the crisis, make it better (much better plse while you're at it)....
rotflmao
small govt low taxes = free health careTwo cents, that's simply not possible. We have to find a way to make healthcare cheaper and there are many ways to do it. Putting the burden on the state only shifts the burden to the taxpayer. Look, I've said this many times before, I actually like the European model for health care. But what Michael Moore never mentions in his documentary "Sicko" is that in Europe "EVERYBODY" pays. If you make 15k euros a year, you pay a lot in taxes. Their tax system is not nearly as progressive as ours is. In this country, if you make 50k or less per year, you pay NO federal income taxes. That's a majority of people in this country.
What that means is that you want to give healthcare to people who don't pay for it. In Europe, everyone pays for it! Why is this important? It's important because the system is self sustaining. They have far less abuse. If they abuse the system everyone's taxes go up, not just the rich. You can't have a country where you let the majority of people have unlimited access to something in which the cost is shifted somewhere else. Everyone has to have skin in the game.
There are many ways we can make our healthcare more affordable. We can subsidize community clinics at the state and city level. But destroying the very principle of property rights for the sake of a bigger government bureaucracy so the politicians can continue to play class warfare to get elected is not the kind of country I want to live in.
So to sum up, you can't have small and limited government and at the same time have a single payer system. Although I admit single payer is much better then what Obama just passed as healthcare reform. Now if you want to make the case for bigger government and more programs then single payer makes sense. But then we need to move to a European model where every pays into the state system, not just a few.
Everyone must pay, agreed, even $1. The spirit is to be inclusive, not exclusive, in that area at least. Not sure where we don't agree. No doubt it is possible to create a federal healthcare tax but you guys have the benefit of living in a federation of 50+ independent states with a common language, currency, military... perhaps it's just as well to experiment at state level first, then upgrade if need be? Re property rights even China is taking measures to actually enforce them more strictly across the land, am not sure what your point was there to be honest, it is one of the pillars of modern society. Re government bureaucracy and the political class i think they are 2 separate problems. I tend to look at bureaucrats in the same way as i look at admin staff in the businesses i am involved in. Of course one of the missions of a government is to keep people employed, but not at all costs obviously, a balance must be found, and i think generally the balance is there, with a few costly exceptions... same as for universal healthcare, were there are abuses, eg wanton bureaucratic job creation, they must be denounced, brought back in line... in a complex world some measure of policing is required, that's a collective responsibility, and everyone must pay for it too... as for the politicians i understand the distaste... but to wrap up i'd say (universal) healthcare is an area where you guys should bite the bullet and just make it work, the libertarian ethos cannot provide any useful guidance there... now do you want to discuss pensions? personally from a state-guarantee standpoint i'd want to see them limited to people who've held real hardship postings, worked in coal mines etc or put themselves in harm's way eg in the military... the rest should be renegotiable / adjustable year on year...