Libertarinism Ideology

[shagg]

do you feel that all restrictions on liberty are bad?

Of course.

First, shagg, you must understand that "liberty" has some interesting definitions amongst the righties :lol:

Libertarianism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


This has lead me to make this thread (rather than continue to derail an existing one). I didn't realize there were so many different flavors of Libertarianism, and that they were so different than each other. Libertarians, from what I've seen anyway, get lumped into a misshapen ball of "government bad".

What is your personal view on Libertarianism?

Do you prescribe to a certain branch, which, and why?

Do you believe there should be any government at all?

What do you feel the government should be limited to as far as intervening in the lives of people?

 

[Artevelde]

First off, I wouldn't classify myself as a Libertarian although I might - to a certain extent - share some of their views.

In my view Libertarianism implies favourng an extremely limited form of government, with virtually no interference in people's welfare, personal life, morals, the economy, etc. Libertarianism does not imply anarchism, however, and thus does allow for a minimal state (i.e. the state helps protect you against violence from others and provides legal dispute settlement).

 

[YoungConserv]

I view myself as a constitutional conservative with a libertarian lean meaning I basically believe in federalism and local government is the best.

 

[Ikari]

Libertarianism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


This has lead me to make this thread (rather than continue to derail an existing one). I didn't realize there were so many different flavors of Libertarianism, and that they were so different than each other. Libertarians, from what I've seen anyway, get lumped into a misshapen ball of "government bad".

What is your personal view on Libertarianism?

Do you prescribe to a certain branch, which, and why?

Do you believe there should be any government at all?

What do you feel the government should be limited to as far as intervening in the lives of people?

Libertarians tend not to be anarchists. They exist as a subgroup, the anarcho-captialists but most of us understand the necessity of some amount of government. Government, however, should be limited to the necessary functions. Secure our rights and liberties, provide for our national defense (not offense), and general welfare.

 

[Spriggs05]

Libertarianism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


This has lead me to make this thread (rather than continue to derail an existing one). I didn't realize there were so many different flavors of Libertarianism, and that they were so different than each other. Libertarians, from what I've seen anyway, get lumped into a misshapen ball of "government bad".

What is your personal view on Libertarianism?

Do you prescribe to a certain branch, which, and why?

Do you believe there should be any government at all?

What do you feel the government should be limited to as far as intervening in the lives of people?

Libertarians tend not to be anarchists. They exist as a subgroup, the anarcho-captialists but most of us understand the necessity of some amount of government. Government, however, should be limited to the necessary functions. Secure our rights and liberties, provide for our national defense (not offense), and general welfare.

What he said.

 

[shagg]

Libertarians tend not to be anarchists. They exist as a subgroup, the anarcho-captialists but most of us understand the necessity of some amount of government. Government, however, should be limited to the necessary functions. Secure our rights and liberties, provide for our national defense (not offense), and general welfare.

Rights, liberties, and national defense are relatively straight forward and expected, i didn't expect general welfare though, as many see this as an area where the government exists in excess. How far into general welfare should the government go or not go? How far back from our present situation would you have to pull the government to reach the ideal?

 

[Ikari]

Rights, liberties, and national defense are relatively straight forward and expected, i didn't expect general welfare though, as many see this as an area where the government exists in excess. How far into general welfare should the government go or not go? How far back from our present situation would you have to pull the government to reach the ideal?

There you will see a lot of variability within libertarian philosophy, from the strict "nothing" of the anarcho-capitalists to the welfare, unemployment, national healthcare, etc. of the libertarian-socialists.

From present course, how much change? Extreme. The government is broken, it has set rules against political competition, it has cemented corporate capitalism, it has its hands in everything from the rights of the People to funding revolution in other countries. The government is super out of control, and if you snapped your fingers and put libertarians in charge, the results would be drastic and extreme. A lot of those results would necessarily increase probabilities of danger and harm, but that cannot be addressed in government's current bloated form. You'd have to reset the system essentially and start again from the properly constrained government basis.

 

[lizzie]

I am pretty much a minarchist, in that I favor a strong system of enforced laws, which are present only to prevent us from encroaching on the rights of each other, and an atmosphere of liberty in which the individual is able to express his/her individuality within that legal frame. Unfortunately, it seems that many people can't live happy lives in this type of atmosphere, because they need a strong authoritarian hand in order to behave themselves.

 

[CalGun]

Really? Online so many libertarians are complete anarchist. Illustrated routinely around here even by evidence in the OP. libertarians are 1% of the national vote. Glad I'm part of the 99% in that regards.

Those who want libertarianism to be accepted need to shun the extreme anarchist that rule their presence online.

Libertarians tend not to be anarchists. They exist as a subgroup, the anarcho-captialists but most of us understand the necessity of some amount of government. Government, however, should be limited to the necessary functions. Secure our rights and liberties, provide for our national defense (not offense), and general welfare.

 

[Ikari]

Really? Online so many libertarians are complete anarchist. Illustrated routinely around here even by evidence in the OP. libertarians are 1% of the national vote. Glad I'm part of the 99% in that regards.

Those who want libertarianism to be accepted need to shun the extreme anarchist that rule their presence online.

The anarchism side is but a small subgroup. Everyone has the right to run their mouths.

 

[CalGun]

If its so small you'd be wise to call it out, note it as fringe and unacceptable. It does not appear small online. I see it far too often, and many of them are down right scary.

The anarchism side is but a small subgroup. Everyone has the right to run their mouths.

 

[Ikari]

If its so small you'd be wise to call it out, note it as fringe and unacceptable. It does not appear small online. I see it far too often, and many of them are down right scary.

Meh, it's a free country. I think anyone paying attention could notice that the vast majority of libertarians do not call for anarchism, not even on this site. Every group has fringe elements, product of nature and natural distributions of populations. This is nothing surprising, just statistics.

 

[trfjr]

Im a right leaning libertarian
my belief is government is a necessary evil and the less you have of it the better off you are.
there is limited roles for the government and they need to stick to those limited roles and be carefully watched and monitored so not to get out of hand

 

[Gipper]

Only the intellectually compromised are the ones who think that libertarianism is synonymous with anarchism. In the Basement, I can point out some names if you'd like.

Using fringe to describe mainstream would be like me saying all conservatives are like tigger or that all liberals are like disneydude, haymarket, pbrauer, head of joaquin, PeteEU...what was I saying?

Nevermind.

 

[trfjr]

Rights, liberties, and national defense are relatively straight forward and expected, i didn't expect general welfare though, as many see this as an area where the government exists in excess. How far into general welfare should the government go or not go? How far back from our present situation would you have to pull the government to reach the ideal?

its up to the individual to help his follow man not be forced by the government to do so
the poor get less individual help from their follow man these days not because mankind has become callous is because they feel they have already done their part by paying high taxes

 

[Mach]

Ikari's first two posts (or first few) largely characterize my sentiment.

What I will chime in with is that in my libertarian-esque ideal, government could in theory be instrumental in providing much of the same services we use government for today, without being so heavily involved in them, with far less corruption, with more transparency, much more closely resembling the private market in terms of best in class solutions, efficiency, lower costs, being allowed to fail but also being successful. Take most of that and return it to the people (private market and private organizations), and diminish the power, cost etc., including drastically reducing the power of the two political parties.

It's not easy, running any large organization is extraordinarily difficult. Extraordinary power as associated with such positions is also highly toxic and can corrupt even some of the most virtuous among our population. Power should be treated as near radioactive. Enormous safeguards that ensure near zero chance of failure should accompany power when we're talking about power on the scale of the national level, that costs us 20-50% of our entire life's income to fund. I think as hard as general welfare may seem, U.S. military and our position in the world militarily is 10x more complicated and scary, and important. Not saying it should be enormously costly, just on an importance scale.

 

[Mach]

If its so small you'd be wise to call it out, note it as fringe and unacceptable. It does not appear small online. I see it far too often, and many of them are down right scary.

Legally entirely acceptable. Reasonably, entirely impractical, extreme, and not worthy of serious discussion. Are you suggesting that anyone, libertarian or otherwise, should stifle freedom of speech on political issues like anarchism? If you are that swayed by a minority, you would appear to be largely a victim of opposition propaganda. (as we all likely are on any number of issues, especially partisan issues!). The amount of money and time spent on political marketing is staggering. Understanding that we're all impacted by it should be routine.

 

[ScePtik]

What is the big difference between the typical Dem and Libertarian (let’s assume we are talking about “Small government, limited taxation” Libertarians and not the “All taxation is theft I’m crazy” kind)?

Libertarians want less government interference in everything.

- Less taxes period.
- Less government spending on quality of life for its citizens.
- Less development of infrastructure
- Less regulation of business
- Less regulation on what goes into the food we eat
- Less regulation on how safe our cars are
- On what kind of weapons we can buy
- On the safely of the medicine we take

I could make this list a thousand bullets long, but I hope you get my point that there are quite a lot of things the government does that is in our best interest. I understand the Libertarian mantra, and for a lot of people it makes all kinds of sense. I grew up in northern Michigan in farm country. The people are for the most part very self sufficient. If something breaks, they fix it. If works need to be done, they do it. They work hard and care for their families.

But that’s not city life. Now I live about 4 miles north of Detroit. The “take care of your own” school of public welfare doesn’t work in the city, and 80% of the population of the US (World) lives in cities. The centralization of human populations creates big problems. We can ignore those problems on principle, or we can accept that big problems require big solutions. I accept we need big solutions to fix our social issues, and I simply don’t see “Do nothing, or do less than we’re doing now” as an acceptable solution.

So who is going to solve all the big problems? Social Security has nearly wiped out homelessness for our elderly (relatively speaking) as well as helping to support the disabled and assist in feeding children. If one doesn’t care about those qualities in our society, then I understand one not having a great like for SS. Or maybe you have a problem with how SS is structured, understandably. But is the solution to get rid of it without replacing it with something better (this question extending to all programs)? I could make a similar argument for just about all the earned benefits that Libertarian’s care about.

This is the question I have to Liberations:

You don’t like Government taxation or regulation, clearly. What would you have us replace it with? Is there a currently government model you would use as an example? Having a small government has never been linked to a strong economy or better quality of life that I know of. Austerity (Debt > 90% GDP = Doom) is as flawed a concept as I’ve seen get the kind of political traction is has. Should we put all our trust in Corporations to do the right thing? They, historically speaking, never ever ever do, so why should we trust them to know?

 

[Carjosse]

Well here the Communist Party is more popular than the Libertarian mainly because Libertarianism in Canada as an ideology is dead. Libertarianism is just incompatible with out system of government.

 

[CalGun]

Nothing of the sort. I merely believe those who want to propel their ideology need to show reasonable disdain of those on the extreme fringe of their platform. I do it often with extreme conservatives. You don't find Christians backing westburo lunatics. Those who beleive in a peaceful and proper libertarian ideology would do well to call out the lunatic fringe anarchist for what they are - extremist.

Legally entirely acceptable. Reasonably, entirely impractical, extreme, and not worthy of serious discussion. Are you suggesting that anyone, libertarian or otherwise, should stifle freedom of speech on political issues like anarchism? If you are that swayed by a minority, you would appear to be largely a victim of opposition propaganda. (as we all likely are on any number of issues, especially partisan issues!). The amount of money and time spent on political marketing is staggering. Understanding that we're all impacted by it should be routine.

 

[Mach]

Nothing of the sort. I merely believe those who want to propel their ideology need to show reasonable disdain of those on the extreme fringe of their platform. I do it often with extreme conservatives. You don't find Christians backing westburo lunatics.

Ah, but you appear to be claiming that minority libertarians should actively show reasonable disdain for the extremist groups.
But that for Christians, just the fact they do not actively back westburo extremists, is sufficient.

I would ask that you extend the same graciousness you do to the Christian majority, to Libertarians. That as long as they aren't backing extremists actively, that it's not something to be concerned about.

Those who beleive in a peaceful and proper libertarian ideology would do well to call out the lunatic fringe anarchist for what they are - extremist.

Labeling and demonization are the tools of propagandists, I don't think they the heart and soul of a reasoned argument. A persuasive one perhaps. Again, if they aren't actively backing them, if you're treating them as you claim to view Christianity, then you shouldn't presume them guilty unless they do back them. Putting the onus on the minority to do more than the majority is a good tactic to keep the status quo in a Machiavellian sort of way, I do not disagree. I just don't think its necessarily appropriate!

 

[Velvet Elvis]

Less taxes period.

Absolutely. But contrary to you baiting post, we should be taxed "enough." Not "more than other people," or "enough to pay for a bloated government."

Less government spending on quality of life for its citizens.

Yes, but what is "quality of life?" Your opinion is much different than ours.

Less development of infrastructure

This is stupid and trollish.

Less regulation of business

Again...yes, less regulation. No one said there should be NO regulation.

Less regulation on what goes into the food we eat

What I said above.

Less regulation on how safe our cars are

What I said above.

On what kind of weapons we can buy

What I said above.

On the safely of the medicine we take

..and again.

See, your trollish extremism has blinded you to what libertarians actually think. Not that you'd have a problem. Liberals enjoy that blind extremism.

there are quite a lot of things the government does that is in our best interest.

Yes, but there are also TOO MANY things government does in THEIR best interest, and against the will of the people.

But that’s not city life. Now I live about 4 miles north of Detroit. The “take care of your own” school of public welfare doesn’t work in the city, and 80% of the population of the US (World) lives in cities. The centralization of human populations creates big problems. We can ignore those problems on principle, or we can accept that big problems require big solutions. I accept we need big solutions to fix our social issues, and I simply don’t see “Do nothing, or do less than we’re doing now” as an acceptable solution.

Gee...I wonder why libertarianism doesn't work in Detroit? Maybe because that useless excuse of a city is overrun with crime and this glorification of "Thug Life?" Detroit is a city full of losers who couldn't fend for themselves with a how-to manual. Come to a decent city where people DO take care of themselves.

You don’t like Government taxation or regulation, clearly. What would you have us replace it with?

Again...this is why you really DON'T get libertarianism. No one said "no taxation." No one said "no regulation." The problem is that we have a fascist president with an oligarchic government hell-bent on creating the biggest, most convoluted bureaucratic nightmare ever. The well being of the citizens is an afterthought. People who really think the government cares about you are suckers.

Is there a currently government model you would use as an example?

Classical Constitutional Government is perfect. The Federal Government should only be interested in protecting the nation against aggressors and maintaining good trade. State Government should be a microcosm of the federal level, but interested in state affairs. Local government an even smaller microcosm. Unfortunately, we've got politicians that want EVERYTHING run by the Feds, with State and Local governments just acting as puppets.

Having a small government has never been linked to a strong economy or better quality of life that I know of.

It worked for the first 200 years of this government.

Should we put all our trust in Corporations to do the right thing? They, historically speaking, never ever ever do, so why should we trust them to know?

Corporations are interested in one thing...profit. It's retarded to think differently. They do not care about their employees. They do not care about the community. But we should not expect anything else. Corporations however, create wealth. Something Government cannot do. This is why they are a necessary evil. The biggest regulator of corporations isn't the government...it's the consumer. Let consumers be the regulators. Let the free market weed out the winners and losers (yes there will be losers, but not everyone can be a winner, regardless of what Lord 0bama says).

 

[CalGun]

I would love to show that graciousness to the mainstream libertarians. If I saw them arguing, countering, disagreeing, showing disdain for - anything - that lunatic fringe that thinks anarchy is the way to go?

Ah, but you appear to be claiming that minority libertarians should actively show reasonable disdain for the extremist groups.
But that for Christians, just the fact they do not actively back westburo extremists, is sufficient.

I would ask that you extend the same graciousness you do to the Christian majority, to Libertarians. That as long as they aren't backing extremists actively, that it's not something to be concerned about.


Labeling and demonization are the tools of propagandists, I don't think they the heart and soul of a reasoned argument. A persuasive one perhaps. Again, if they aren't actively backing them, if you're treating them as you claim to view Christianity, then you shouldn't presume them guilty unless they do back them. Putting the onus on the minority to do more than the majority is a good tactic to keep the status quo in a Machiavellian sort of way, I do not disagree. I just don't think its necessarily appropriate!

 

[head of joaquin]

Libertarianism is philosophically bankrupt because of its unthought and patently false presuppositions. Any social philosophy that is based on false ahistorical narratives should be rejected from the start.

First libertarians assume that "property" is a given, and not socially constructed. There is no evidence of that. In fact, the historical evidence is the opposite, and the concept of property appears to have arisen out of complex institutional development ultimately embodied in jurisprudence. Plenty of nonwestern societies have notions of property that are so different from ours, that to claim that property as defined by advanced capitalism is somehow universal is naive, if not foolish.

Second, underlying libertarianism's notion of freedom is the narrative (historically false) that somehow society is a threat to individualism and that freedom is always in tension with society. In fact, individualism is a later notion, which arose out of certain societies. It isn't a presupposition. The idea that individuals use to walk around the landscape, free and societyless, and then formed societies gingerly modulating the amount of freedom individuals would give up, has no historical foundation. In fact it's nonsense. Humans have always lived in societies. Period. It's what we do. So freedom isn't something society threatens. Freedom arose because of social interactions.

To summarize, libertarianism naively retrojects current concepts, like markets and freedom and individualism, into the past and denotes them as "natural" and then argues we need to return to this falsified past that never existed. This is what Roland Barthes calls the naturalization of history, which is a major rightwing meme.

 

[bonfire]

Corporations are interested in one thing...profit. It's retarded to think differently. They do not care about their employees. They do not care about the community. But we should not expect anything else. Corporations however, create wealth. Something Government cannot do. This is why they are a necessary evil. The biggest regulator of corporations isn't the government...it's the consumer. Let consumers be the regulators. Let the free market weed out the winners and losers (yes there will be losers, but not everyone can be a winner, regardless of what Lord 0bama says).

Corporations aren't so heartless. A corporation who cares not for its employees will lose those employees to competitors. Corporations who show blatant disregard for a community will lose to its competitors. In short, doing bad things is antithetical to running a good business. I do agree that consumers, the free market, are the greatest regulators we have.