Are people who down Libertarianism just simply scared of it?

Libertarianism exposes the Republican party as one that is devoid of consistency in leaving people to live the way they want to live.

Libertarianism exposes the Democratic party as one of dangerous economic policies with a following of naive people who push causes simply based on emotion.

 

I'm 'scared' of Libertarianism because I know America's history of worker exploitation by the powerful in a time of lawlessness. Eight year-old children working in meat packing plants is not something we should ever aspire to return to, nor are 16 hour days for just enough money to scrape by on (many have already returned to this thanks to the minimum wage not being pegged to productivity and inflation and thanks to sweatshop goods from other countries destroying American jobs). Nor should we want to return to dirtier food, more dangerous working conditions, and no control over pollution.

I also consider Libertarianism itself devoid of consistency. If no laws should exist to protect workers from unsafe working conditions, consumers from food poisoning, and neighbors of industry from pollution, why bother with laws to protect employers from the workers burning down their factories? Why have laws at all, if not to create a better society for all?

 

I agree. But regarding the conditions of the workers, have you heard about tripartite corporatism, aka the swedish model? No need to set a minimum wage or even care much about safety regulations: The unions can take care of that.

 

I have heard of it, yes. But I don't know that much, just the basics. Seems like yet another good way to share power in society by sharing power in the workplace instead of allowing a few to decide everything in their own interests and in the interests of their own social and economic class.

 

Yes indeed, it's wonderful. As I said, it's called tripartite corporatism. As the name might tell you, it's based around organising the economy around the three big groups of labour, state and capital, and having those three sit down and work together so that all benefit and so that no one squeezes the other dry. There must be a balance between them. The key word is co-operation and compromise, for the good of all.

 

I agree that Libertarianism goes a bit too far and that there is some need for workers rights and the social safety net (or alternative ways of accomplishing these goals), however the general live and let live philosophy is a good idea. The goal of being socially liberal yet fiscally sound is a worthy goal. I don't really feel like writing multiple paragraphs but I think we have learned that things like hiring corporations to do the governments job is a bad idea as it simply opens the public purse strings, allowing for massive waste (look at any government project or military contractors). Another issue is forcing people to use corporations like Obama care does and car insurance (why not simply have people pay to insure their own vehicles if they wish and have government healthcare paid for by taxes with private healthcare being an option for anyone who wants it?). Yet another is what we declare to be infrastructure and what we don't, because I believe that taking care of infrastructure is a government job (examples are healthcare, internet access, schooling). Then there are the social issues like drugs (taxes and treatment rather than black market and jail?) which include some not all libertarians agree on (abortion).

I think that with things as they stand Libertarianism is the correct direction to go; but I do think there is a very important place for government. In general government should be there to provide the infrastructure necessary for anyone to move forward with their dreams. To me this includes roads, police, defense, fire, health, education, information, and I'm sure others I can't think of off the top of my head; basically everything we need that we can not be reasonably expected to pay for ourselves (we all need food, water, and shelter but anyone can reasonably afford these items and those who can't have welfare, though that program needs massive reforms). It also needs to leave people alone in general and not give a (*)(*)(*)(*) how they run their lives and property until it becomes a direct harm (keep people from murdering or turning their home into a public sewer). The government also needs to stay away from regulating everything it sees. It ends up creating regulations that prevent competition and lock people out of markets. We had an issue here where the city was about to shut down every food cart because they only had one sink (all restaurants need two). Then the city nearly had a conniption when it was discovered that food carts could provide alcohol (this was discovered around the time that it was, again, discovered, that transporting home brew was a crime because it was untaxed alcohol).

I guess what I'm saying is that there is room for regulation, and there is a need since we clearly can't depend on companies treating people well. While you can vote with your feet it's hard to do so when every job out there wants you to do the same dangerous tasks. That said allowing for regulation also makes it easy for a company like, say, Comcast, to float a state bill saying that cities may not create their own internet infrastructure in order to ensure they don't need to compete with anyone else. Unfortunately so long as there are politicians there will be corruption, but I will say we are long overdue for a reset. Next thing you know it will be illegal to use canned corn as fishing bait (it actually is illegal here in Oregon).

EDIT: Looks like I wrote multiple paragraphs.

 

Or it could go:

Libertarianism exposes the Democratic Party as one that is devoid of consistency in leaving people to live the way they want to live.

Libertarianism exposes the Republican Party as one of dangerous economic policies with a following of naive people who push causes simply based on emotion.​

Makes the same amount of sense.

In my experience Libertarians aren't very constant. For example, you'd think that Libertarians might support abortion rights, but it's hard to find one who does. Same with drug legalization. One bright spot is their fierce defense of personal rights vis-a-vis government surveillance, but that is a relatively new phenomena. After all, when all the NSA spying was first instituted via the Patriot Act, Libertarians were largely mute. It wasn't until Obama got elected that suddenly boatloads of Libertarians were outraged.

Truthfully, while I welcome their outrage, the Patriot Act has got to die, I don't find Libertarians to be trustworthy. Their sudden outrage seems largely manufactured.

 

people in power tend to deride groups whose principles are against too much power

 

Those things only happen when the alternative is worse. When you make them illegal, you force people to suffer the worse alternative.

Libertarian policies would not result in dirtier food or more dangerous working conditions. I agree that most libertarians have a (*)(*)(*)(*)-poor approach to pollution, but there's a variation called Geolibertarianism that doesn't suffer this issue.

Laws against pollution and toxic food would still exist in a geolibertarian society.

Burning down someone's factory is a violation of their rights. Offering someone a place to work that meets his or her own personal safety standards, but not yours, is a violation of nobody's rights. That's why we should have laws against one but not the other.

 

I agree, but we could never have a pure Libertarian form of government. The American people are not responsible enough, moral enough, productive enough or honest enough to handle total self-government. We are too spoiled, and not a cohesive unit anymore with a binding social contract. We are a big brother dependent group of bickering, competing ethnic groups with nothing in common. Because of that the people have no power anymore, while the government has seized more.

 

Define "abortion rights?" Abortion in the 1st trimester or abortion a month before the due date? Libertarians support laws against murder. Even France has strict conditions on the killing of an unborn child. Libertarians simply don't think everything from jaywalking to whether or not one can be forced to make a floral arrangement for a gay couple should be legislated.

 

Planned economies are failed economies

 

Libertarianism is okay in moderation, just as most other political philosophies are... but the extreme version is something to stay away from, as with other versions of political extremism.

 

http://www.issues2000.org/celeb/Libertarian_Party_Abortion.htm
http://pro-choicelibertarians.net

http://www.ontheissues.org/celeb/Libertarian_Party_Drugs.htm
http://reason.com/tags/drug-war
http://www.cato.org/research/drug-war

*sigh*

[video]http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y7qvpS5zbqA[/video]

 

Libertarianism is a make believe joke. Has never and would never work in the real world. It's for philosophers and dreamers with too much time on their hands.

 

Agreed its one of those ideologies that look good on paper but reality says otherwise. The idea that big business can simply regulate itself is laughable at best. The idea that worker protection laws are "oppression" is just pathetic. Yes libertarianism is for dreamers indeed.

 

It's ridiculous. Their ideas are even worse than the Tea Party. They should just admit it's the survival of the fittest approach. Like being retarded animals. What separates us as humans is our ability to organize and protect those that are being abused by others. Like when they were clapping when Ron Paul said it's tough luck that the guy would die because he didn't have health insurance. That's a really sick ideology, lol.

 

Actually the tea party is pretty much libertarian melded with religious extremism.

 

As a Libertarian you've got to remember that when it comes down to it, it's all just a war of values and ambitions. None are better than any other, it's all subjective. Liberty is merely the value I hold. Others have different concepts of liberty, others reject liberty entirely and opt to use coercion to their advantage. There is nothing objectively wrong with this. There is no right answer to the question "what should I do?".

Us Libertarians too often make the mistake of thinking that our values are embedded in the structure of objective reality. Hence natural rights libertarianism.

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Also, don't overstate politics. Politics is just bad ethics - it's how we decide what we should do as a society rather than as individuals. Most people quite rightly could not care less about politics. Some don't vote, but the majority stick to their inherited party affiliations with no interest in the issues. That's fine. Libertarianism is much better ethics than it is politics anyway - and ethics is an area nobody can ignore, not even the politically apathetic.

 

I disagree to an extent, the Tea Party has social beliefs that are very different than libertarians. They also can bend to some economic principles that the libertarians refuse to. Like going back to the gold standard or having competing currencies. I just think the Tea Party wants big government to push their social beliefs. The rest is just their talking points.

Libertarians are truly crazy. Tea Partiers have a sense of realism that libertarians do not.

 

I see them as identical, none deal in realism. Tea party extremists want no regulations, no oversight, no safety net of any kind...Much like the libertarians. Social issues is really the only difference between them and the tea part is dominated by religious extremists while libertarian parties tend not to be. However I will agree both are truly crazy.

 

Not at all, but on it's own it cannot work.

Perhaps Libertarian values within another system may have some merit, but on it's own, no chance.

The big will just devour the small, till they then start eating each other, then themselves.

 

and how about land ownership, what is to stop one company buying up all the land and only leaving scraps for overcrowded rat pits for everyone else to live on?

 

Based on some of the replies in this thread, I should have also listed an example of criticism from people who know little about what libertarianism is.. well first off there are two common groups of libertarians, socialist libertarians and market libertarians.. what we seem to be referring to in this thread is market libertarian.. that is the libertarians who believe in individual freedom as well as market freedom. To give you an idea of what market freedom looks like, here's a global ranking of the freest markets

http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking (note that this is just market freedom, and not individual freedom rankings)

you'll notice the higher ranked countries do not experience higher exploitation, nor are their citizens eating each other....

and libertarians do not believe in lawlessness, quite the contrary in fact. The ideal libertarian laws are ones that are used to protect individual freedom, as well as prevent the government from over expanding its power.... for example, in the earlier days of the US it was in law that the federal government not get too involved with corporations, nor could corporations themselves make donations to political candidates. Libertarians generally want to take the money out of the political process, one common misconception about market libertarians like Hayek and Friedman is that they do not want the government to intervene in the market... which is not entirely accurate, while market libertarians wish to limit the state's involvement in the market, they are not so much against market intervention so much as they are against the state steering the market on where it should go.. mostly to prevent state and special interest coalitions (similar to what happened during the industrial era)

as for the libertarian principle of what the state should actually do, Milton Friedman gave an example of 4 main areas of government responsibility

these are:

1.Military and Police. To protect us from our enemies both internal and external

2. Administration of Justice. Government should provide the administration of justice, to establish courts that we can go to for reconciliation of conflicts/disagreements and validation of contracts, ect

3. Provision of goods/Negative externalities. Provision of goods includes the things that cannot be denied to citizens that the private sector is not as good at providing than the state (public sector goods, like our roads, schools, fire departments, ect)

Negative externalities, include interaction that may have negative consequences for third parties, for example, a company that provides a certain good may cause pollution that affect the people occupying the surrounding area, and thus there is a necessity for the state to control these negative externalities (pollution control). Poverty is another example of a negative externality, and thus is it is necessary for the government to provide some form of social safety net to protect people from falling into severe poverty

4. Protection of children and mentality handicapped. The protection of those we assume are not responsible to take care of themselves, primary example being children and the mentally challenged, normally we can rely on parents/guardians to take care of these people, but there is a necessity for the state to keep a watchful eye on these circumstances, for not all adults treat children properly, and there are some people who are mentally incapable of making decisions on their behalf, the government must make sure that their interests are protected

far from lawlessness.. but rather critical opinion against laws that they see as a violation of individual freedom, and the free market (if you are a market libertarian)

 

Yes they are. Oh, maybe you thought that Sweden had a planned economy, which we don't, and was going to point out how our economy had "failed" so much that we have the seventh highest gdp per capita? Or maybe you were just making a totally irrelevant remark to my post?