Libertarian views Vs. the opposition

[Meowzzle]

I'm not a Libertarian, but I still enjoyed this..

 

[xj0hnx]

I'm not a Libertarian, but I still enjoyed this..

LOL, there's plenty of examples of those exact statements and reactions in this forum.

 

[Texashiker]

I have been voting straight line Libertarian since Clinton and her husband were elected.

When Billy did a flip-flop on NAFTA, that was it, straight line Libertarian from then on.

 

[Vette73]

So WWYBYWB? or is your other account still active?

 

[Phokus]

"Using institutional coercion to force people into collectives is neither moral nor efficient. Humans naturally cooperate voluntarily".

Except when this is false. Example: Car insurance and state mandates that force drivers to have it. When it's in law and strictly enforced, car insurance is cheaper for everyone. When it's up to the driver or isn't enforced strictly, car insurance is more expensive and fewer people have it.

It's funny because i've debated this with libertarians and it turns out they don't actually believe in personal responsibility either. If car insurance is a choice, and you kill/maim people, cause property damage in an accident without insurance and you can't recompense the other party for the damage you've caused, in essence you've forcibly taken something from somebody else without compensation. I love this example because i've yet to see a libertarian not stumble on it (amongst other examples).

 

[sandorski]

Those Libertarian points are mostly Idealistic gobbly beloved patriot. They sound impressive, but have no meaning.

 

[exdeath]

"Using institutional coercion to force people into collectives is neither moral nor efficient. Humans naturally cooperate voluntarily".

Except when this is false. Example: Car insurance and state mandates that force drivers to have it. When it's in law and strictly enforced, car insurance is cheaper for everyone. When it's up to the driver or isn't enforced strictly, car insurance is more expensive and fewer people have it.

It's funny because i've debated this with libertarians and it turns out they don't actually believe in personal responsibility either. If car insurance is a choice, and you kill/maim people, cause property damage in an accident without insurance and you can't recompense the other party for the damage you've caused, in essence you've forcibly taken something from somebody else without compensation. I love this example because i've yet to see a libertarian not stumble on it (amongst other examples).

Easy. You either have insurance to cover your mistakes and compensate victims, or you can get thrown in jail and be sued to cover it personally. Your choice, you may never actually need car insurance in your life. That's a risk decision you are free to make. Take away the state law requiring insurance, and just make it clear that if you cause a loss to someone you will be held responsible. That can mean wages and property taken, and jail time, if you don't have a savings or insurance to take care of it for you. The only reason the state makes it mandatory is so they can fine you for not having insurance and generate revenue, regardless if you ve been involved in an accident. State shouldn't care, it should only matter at the time of an accident, then you get bent over if you have no means of covering your damages.

Also, government's regulatory role exists to regulate interactions between people, and you interact with other 1000s of other people on the highway and need proof of financial responsibility should you cause damage to another. You don't have to have insurance, but most people don't have a savings to cover it themselves so they pay an insurance company to cover that responsibility. This is regulating interactions between individuals in a way that protects others from procuring loss because of your direct involvement.

Note however when someone 1000 miles away from me has too many kids they can't afford and they want free medical care, or a bunch of illegals in a over loaded truck roll over on the highway, and my taxes are used to pay for it, I had no interaction with those people and had nothing to do with their loss. This is incorrect application of government regulation, its just communism.

 

[Phokus]

Easy. You either have insurance to cover your mistakes and compensate victims, or you can get thrown in jail and be sued to cover it personally. Your choice, you may never actually need car insurance in your life. That's a risk decision you are free to make.

Also, government's regulatory role exists to regulate interactions between people, and you interact with other 1000s of other people on the highway and need proof of financial responsibility should you cause damage to another. You don't have to have insurance, but most people don't have a savings to cover it themselves so they pay an insurance company to cover that responsibility. This is regulating interactions between individuals in a way that protects others from procuring loss because of your direct involvement.

Note however when someone 1000 miles away from me has too many kids they can't afford and they want free medical care, or a bunch of illegals in a over loaded truck roll over on the highway, and my taxes are used to pay for it, I had no interaction with those people and had nothing to do with their loss. This is incorrect application of government regulation, its just communism.

1. You did not address the fact that mandatory insurance is more efficient than non-mandatory insurance. Economic studies have shown this.

2. Causing untold amounts of damage/death/dismemberment and not being able to pay for the loss, instead, getting your ass 'thrown in jail' does not make the other party whole again, especially if they can't work anymore.

3. I find it absolute hilarious that you would use 'communism' to describe any of that in a thread about non-libertarians using hyperbole to describe libertarianism.

 

[werepossum]

Excellent and spot-on. Libertarian is my default voting choice, except when one party and/or candidate (nearly always Democrats) scares me enough to vote for the other guy. However, in fairness I have to admit that this is in part due to the fact that the Libertarian candidate has statistically no chance of winning. If the chances of the Libertarian candidate were equal to the big two, then he'd have to go in the pot. I'd have to examine his proposed policies (and even more so, his recorded actions outside of campaign season) rather than his party's general philosophies and then determine which of the three I hated/feared least. And I'm honest enough to admit that would not always be the Libertarian candidate.

 

[Throckmorton]

That chart should be relabeled to "What Libertarians think their ideas mean" and "Reality".

 

[LegendKiller]

That chart should be relabeled to "What Libertarians think their ideas mean" and "Reality".

This. Libertopians are quasi-anarchist jokes who really have no grounding in human behavior.

Even Adam Smith would laugh at their ideas of "free markets".

 

[Moonbeam]

You enjoyed it and I found it moronic. People have different senses of pleasure, I guess. Thanks for the profound insight. I would have never guessed.

 

[zinfamous]

Those Libertarian points are mostly Idealistic gobbly beloved patriot. They sound impressive, but have no meaning.

this. no one misinterprets in those ways, it's just that the rest of us recognize that libertarians offer no solutions to counter their tidy, pseudo-empirical analysis of life; and that in practice, it would all seem to fail miserably.

It's like pure socialism--sure it sounds great, in theory.


Libertarianism is the in situ political philosophy with no in vivo model of success.

 

[daishi5]

this. no one misinterprets in those ways, it's just that the rest of us recognize that libertarians offer no solutions to counter their tidy, pseudo-empirical analysis of life; and that in practice, it would all seem to fail miserably.

It's like pure socialism--sure it sounds great, in theory.


Libertarianism is the in situ political philosophy with no in vivo model of success.

I think the problem is more of your libertarian exposure is to people who are almost strawmen in their failure to understand the concepts they support. Far too many people who are vocal supporters really do sound like the right side of that little chart. The people who keep spewing garbage about how great the austrian economic theory is and everything would be perfect are very visible and stupid. If you really want to consider it seriously, listen to people a lot more like Sowell and Friedman, not Ron Paul. And seriously, if you want to understand a little more about the basis of a free markets efficiencies, read up on Sowell and the role that prices play in the coordination and distribution of resources in an economy. A good understanding of that part of his books makes it very obvious why huge companies are inefficient and harmful to the economy as a whole.

 

[irishScott]

I think the problem is more of your libertarian exposure is to people who are almost strawmen in their failure to understand the concepts they support. Far too many people who are vocal supporters really do sound like the right side of that little chart. The people who keep spewing garbage about how great the austrian economic theory is and everything would be perfect are very visible and stupid. If you really want to consider it seriously, listen to people a lot more like Sowell and Friedman, not Ron Paul. And seriously, if you want to understand a little more about the basis of a free markets efficiencies, read up on Sowell and the role that prices play in the coordination and distribution of resources in an economy. A good understanding of that part of his books makes it very obvious why huge companies are inefficient and harmful to the economy as a whole.

This. Libertarian ideals and policies may be sound, but the people attempting to carry them out are idiots. I recall during the healthcare debate lp.org was bitching about the census on it's front page. Seriously, the census? During a historically serious debate, the Libertarian party is bitching about the census. That's up there with Atheists who ignore debates about economic policy in favor of bitching about how God is printed on our money.

 

[her209]

This. Libertopians are quasi-anarchist jokes who really have no grounding in human behavior.

Even Adam Smith would laugh at their ideas of "free markets".

Repeal the Civil Rights Act and let the free market solve racism and discrimination.

LOL

 

[LegendKiller]

Repeal the Civil Rights Act and let the free market solve racism and discrimination.

LOL

This encapsulates the discussion pretty well, thanks. It's such a ridiculous and impractical idea. This is pretty much every single Libertopian ideal.

 

[khon]

Somewhat amusing, but unfortunately the libertarian side is mostly an expression of what they would like the world to be like, with little regard to reality.

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

 

[daishi5]

Repeal the Civil Rights Act and let the free market solve racism and discrimination.

LOL

Yes, because the civil rights act has done such a good job of fixing the plight of minorities in America. We passed a law, and we meant to do good things, and since it is a law that had good intentions it must have worked.

Or, you know, you could face reality and see that right now a black man with a clean criminal record is less likely to be hired than a white felon, http://www.econ.brown.edu/fac/glenn...g/Ec 137/pager_testers_nyc_discrimination.pdf (source is cited in this paper, not this paper itself)
Blacks use drugs at almost the same rate as whites, but are arrested almost 9 times as often for minor drug crimes. http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/publications/factsht/crime/index.html
And since 1950, we have not only failed to make progress on the disparity between white and black income, it has gotten worse.
http://nces.ed.gov/pubs98/yi/yi16.pdf

But no, we should ignore reality and continue to follow the same policies we have for the past 50 years because we meant well. Screw the actual results, they only hurt brown people who don't matter.


And while I am ranting, I need to remind you that most of what the Civil Rights Act repealed as Government mandated discrimination in the form of Jim Crow laws, voting laws intended to discourage black voters, and segreated school systems. If you are going to criticize the free market for failing to fix racism, you may wish to remember that most of the racism was instituted by government entities, which are not part of a market.

 

[Phokus]

Yes, because the civil rights act has done such a good job of fixing the plight of minorities in America. We passed a law, and we meant to do good things, and since it is a law that had good intentions it must have worked.

Or, you know, you could face reality and see that right now a black man with a clean criminal record is less likely to be hired than a white felon, http://www.econ.brown.edu/fac/glenn...37;20137/pager_testers_nyc_discrimination.pdf (source is cited in this paper, not this paper itself)
Blacks use drugs at almost the same rate as whites, but are arrested almost 9 times as often for minor drug crimes. http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/publications/factsht/crime/index.html
And since 1950, we have not only failed to make progress on the disparity between white and black income, it has gotten worse.
http://nces.ed.gov/pubs98/yi/yi16.pdf

But no, we should ignore reality and continue to follow the same policies we have for the past 50 years because we meant well. Screw the actual results, they only hurt brown people who don't matter.


And while I am ranting, I need to remind you that most of what the Civil Rights Act repealed as Government mandated discrimination in the form of Jim Crow laws, voting laws intended to discourage black voters, and segreated school systems. If you are going to criticize the free market for failing to fix racism, you may wish to remember that most of the racism was instituted by government entities, which are not part of a market.

Psst. Jim Crow laws were a reflection of a particular geographical area of a particular group of people. They were state and local laws and the federal government had nothing to do with that and many conservatives and libertarians are for 'states rights' (which is what jim crow is). Even without Jim Crow laws, there was a market disincentive to serve blacks in those southern states when a) whites were the overwhelming majority and b) Whites had all the money and c) They did not want to associate with blacks.

 

[matt0611]

Psst. Jim Crow laws were a reflection of a particular geographical area of a particular group of people. They were state and local laws and the federal government had nothing to do with that and many conservatives and libertarians are for 'states rights' (which is what jim crow is). Even without Jim Crow laws, there was a market disincentive to serve blacks in those southern states when a) whites were the overwhelming majority and b) Whites had all the money and c) They did not want to associate with blacks.

There were many businesses that DID NOT WANT those laws. It hurt them. Those were laws mandated by government, disrespecting private property rights.

Progressives think there would be chaos and the world would descend into hell without that part of the civil rights act.

And I don't think its true that libertarians want to repeal the act as a whole, I've never heard anyone say that, I think most would support that part that stops government from discriminating, which was definitely the right thing to do.

Disrespecting private property rights to make sure people uphold some moral ideal of yours is wrong. People should have the right to associate with whomever they want.

Most everything government has gotten involved in more in the past 40 years have been failing and getting worse, K-12 education, proverty etc
Even if you think its the right thing to do it has been shown to be a massive failure. The war on poverty is fail, the war on drugs is fail, etc

That cartoon is pretty accurate, you hear the same shit in this forum all the time, just look in this thread for proof.

"

...

It's funny because i've debated this with libertarians and it turns out they don't actually believe in personal responsibility either. If car insurance is a choice, and you kill/maim people, cause property damage in an accident without insurance and you can't recompense the other party for the damage you've caused, in essence you've forcibly taken something from somebody else without compensation. I love this example because i've yet to see a libertarian not stumble on it (amongst other examples).

Maybe I'm not "hardcore" libertarian enough, but I think its fine for states to mandate auto-insurance if people want to drive on the public roads.

 

[Meowzzle]

Repeal the Civil Rights Act and let the free market solve racism and discrimination.

LOL

Yes. Racism was engendered by things like Jim Crow and other government policies that created, and then supported a racist & discriminatory enivornment in this country, and to an extent still does to this day

 

[Meowzzle]

whoops, look like the couple previous posters already said what I was trying to.

 

[Phokus]

There were many businesses that DID NOT WANT those laws. It hurt them. Those were laws mandated by government, disrespecting private property rights.

Progressives think there would be chaos and the world would descend into hell without that part of the civil rights act.

And I don't think its true that libertarians want to repeal the act as a whole, I've never heard anyone say that, I think most would support that part that stops government from discriminating, which was definitely the right thing to do.

Disrespecting private property rights to make sure people uphold some moral ideal of yours is wrong. People should have the right to associate with whomever they want.

Most everything government has gotten involved in more in the past 40 years have been failing and getting worse, K-12 education, proverty etc
Even if you think its the right thing to do it has been shown to be a massive failure. The war on poverty is fail, the war on drugs is fail, etc

That cartoon is pretty accurate, you hear the same shit in this forum all the time, just look in this thread for proof.

Lol, Jim Crow laws were a reflection of those local populations. You'd make a really shitty business owner back then. Even if you weren't a racist business owner, it wouldn't have made sense to drive away all your white customers who had all the money to serve the minorities who had no money.