Stereotypes associated with Libertarianism and Ron Paul

You're talking about the Ayn Rand libertarians, right?

Wups didn't see my second Arrow my bad.

edited 7th Mar '11 2:52:37 PM by tnu1138

That was for johnnyfog.

yes sorry about that my bad. I'm a little unsure of Ayn Rand's Positions myself.

Libertarians in America believe in less regulation. Historically, less regulation in America has been bad. But we have been steadily moving-still-in the direction of less regulation.

There is no reason to believe that yet less regulation is the way to go. It is contrary to observable reality.

Would you at least say that you should look at specific regulations to determine whether they're good or bad rather than simply saying more is better?

Of course. But NO ONE is saying "More is better!" as a universal position. People are saying, "The assertion that less is better is just flat-out false, and in a majority of cases where they are claiming less is better, the reality is that more-or better implemented-is better."

edited 7th Mar '11 3:23:13 PM by TheyCallMeTomu

I've seen a lot of people, percieve a problem, imagine an uninterested and competent regulator, and say the problem will be fixed with more regulation. This isn't a strawman, it's a real thing that I and others see a lot of the time.

So, to start:

Privatizing roads would be possible. Large corporations already build roads for their own benefit: Disney World, gated communities, certain housing developers are generally successful. Things like Fast Pass make toll roads efficient and massive toll roading more practical over all. There's no reason to think that massive privatization of roads would necessarily lead to more unsafe roads. Either because roads that were particuliarly unsafe would be avoided and lose profit, or if necessary, laws regulating safety of private roads could be established: privatization isn't an all or nothing thing.

That said, privatizing the entire US road system involves a lot of moving parts and could lead to a lot of problems. I can already think of market mechanisms that are already in place or that I would expect to come into place given such a thing happening. The biggest one, though, is that it's hard to have a road that isn't essentially, a local monopoly. With out introducing competition, I'm not sure what the point of privatization would be. You'd essential have to set up massive privatized gated communities with a few massive competing highways. It doesn't really solve the whole problem, but it's the most practical way to deal with it. This introduces other problems like barrier to entry and such. The competitive component is there, but it's much weaker. You could have an organization that you had to "buy into" to run a business or own a home on a private road. That makes it a little more competitive too, since that could lower the barrier to entry, even if you're still dealing with a local monopoly. This is basically how home owner's associations work on gated communities.

Basically, it could work, but there's no reason that I've heard to think it would work better than our current system. Unless you really think our current system of taxation for roads is really that coercive.

There are a lot of instances where having multiple competing entities can really improve things, but, as far as I can tell, the only way to get to hardcore libertarianism or anarchism, is to start with the assumption that coercion is bad and that government is fundamentally coercive.

edited 7th Mar '11 5:36:14 PM by Roman

The answer to that (the privatization of roads thing): Plausible but not compelling. If you actually look at US History, the data just doesn't support the conclusion that less regulation is a good thing. Agencies are brought in to make things better and they do. The EPA serves its purpose, the FDA serves its purpose-though it's underfunded-and OSHA serves its purpose. That's the facts-things got better after involvement.

Now, what CAN be a problem is when you have the government basically just giving a handjob to private industry. Like mandatory auto-insurance.

edited 7th Mar '11 5:43:02 PM by TheyCallMeTomu

Republicans = less economic regulation, less personal freedom. Libertarians = way fucking less economic regulation, MOAR personal freedom.

I would consider myself a Libertarian, because I believe that there are a large number of things that our governments could cut costs on by privatizing. But not fire departments, and not the police. And the FDA exists for a reason - so that we don't get screwed over by eating tainted food. So I'm Libertarian about almost everything EXCEPT for the FDA, which needs to really crack down on all this quackery going around.

Socially, I believe in the legalization of marijuana. (And by extension, most other drugs.) I believe that the Drug War is a waste of our precious taxpayer funds, and by telling kids that drugs are bad, we are only encouraging the inevitable. Marijuana should be easily available in state liquor stores. This provides both a source of income for the state and a safe place to get marijuana from. It's not the state's business what you put into your body. If you take a recreational drug out of your own free will and end up hurting yourself or someone else, that's your fault. And by making drugs illegal, the only people who will get them are those who work outside the law.

Abortion should be a perfectly legal medical procedure for all months of pregnancy. Birth control and extensive sex education should be taught in all schools. Teenagers are not the perfect little angels that their parents still want them to be. Sooner or later, they are going to start screwing each other. So they might as well know how to do it safely from a trustworthy source than from a friend who doesn't know what the crap he's talking about.

Also, we should raise the recruitment age and lower the drinking age to 18. It makes absolutely no sense that I'm almost old enough to be allowed to sign up for the Army, yet I can't have a sip of beer.

/rant

Now, when it comes to politicians, I think one of the politicians that I agree with most is not Ron Paul, but Jesse Ventura. Yes, he's a conspiracy theorist lunatic, and I generally hate conspiracy theorist lunatics, yet I can make an exception for him. Kind of. Ron and Rand Paul are overrated, IMO.

Like mandatory auto-insurance.

Auto insurance isn't mandatory. It's practically mandatory for non millionaires if you drive, but driving isn't mandatory.

I would be interested in an alternative system if you proposed one.

Unless there's good reason to think that our system raises the price of car repair to unsustainable levels, I'm not sure exactly what the problems with it are. I confess to not knowing much about it, since I don't drive.

edited 7th Mar '11 6:12:39 PM by Roman

You're talking about the Ayn Rand libertarians, right?

Sort of. Ayn Rand's opinion on personal freedom are often vaguely retrofitted for pretty much any debate, including even embryo rights or marijuana use or the war on terror.

And I have noticed that people who box themselves into her words can end up with NeoCon stances, or at least ones that are practically indistinguishable. So for example, libertarians oppose the war on drugs. But legalizing marijuana for, say, medical usage would require government sanction.

Not to get too off-track here, but to do that would establish a government body to police medical marijuana. And this is absolutely anathema to a Rand libertarian. So therefore, they are forced by Rand' own precepts to blockade medical marijuana, and thus legalizing drugs.

Likewise, if a hypothetical Islamic 'caliphate' poses a hypothetical threat to Objectivist freedom, then that doctrine says we go to war.

edited 7th Mar '11 6:51:21 PM by johnnyfog

I think you could also drive on privately owned roads.

Barkey, it's problematic in the case of libertarianism because libertarians say—and, to be fair, probably believe—that their philosophy, if widely implemented, would allow everyone to succeed or fail based solely on talent and effort. Yet it is most popular with those who already have a head start in life based on things they had no hand in. Thus I am skeptical that it would be as fair as is claimed.

To be fair Kara, most of the lower class don't do a whole lot of independent political research, and probably can't be arsed to research anything other than our main two parties with anything other than a cursory glance and a quick paragraph summary.

Most of the lower class doesn't vote.

^ And who's fault is that? The guy who chooses not to vote or those who vote religiously?

I find that libertarians are the most intellectually palatable of almost any political group. There is a strong underlaying philosophy that governs their responses in any given situation. That is something worthy of respect. That being said most libertarians have a sad grasp of what actually constitutes liberty increasing policy. They tend to gravitate towards the deregulation is freedom drug that the country has been sniffing for the last thirty years and the weird and pathological hate that the more militant of their number have for stuff like the income tax I will never understand.

What's wrong with believing in Empiricism?

I was pretty much soured on Libertarianism in 2008, when the political forums I was on had an influx of extremist Libertarians (I will point out that these were probably a very small but very Vocal Minority of libertarians) who acted as if anything left of them was socialist, acted as if Ron Paul would save the world, and acted as if corporations could regulate themselves in their entirety. This being my first dealing with them and they're being so extreme and loud, I was pretty much turned off of their message.

These are the same people who nominate Howard Stern for governor because they thought he'd save the world.

The FDA is actually pretty innefficent not just in the way that it regulates business and then again there is the fallacy that allregulation is for the greater good. Much of it exists topander to corpretinterests for example many regulations brought on by the FDA exist to prevent the use of many effective natural cures because they can't be copyrighted and the big businesses can't have that. I mean come on they even tried to outlaw Bacon dogs in California. Listne telling me what I can do with my body is crossing the line. My body belongs to me and i'll be damned if anyone tells me what to do with it under threat of force. They are outlawing raw milk for crying out loud. The way I see it is that freedom is the ability to make mistakes.

The intent isn't to tell you what you can do with your body (mostly) it's what firms can try and convince you you're capable of doing with your body. It's (theoretically) about preventing misinformation.

I'm frankly rather frustrated that, being a social and civil libertarian, I can't just call myself a libertarian in the US without the assumption of right-wing economic baggage... Which isn't what the term was originally about, as evidenced by the first great libertarian-by-name, Proudhon, whose best-known treatise is entitled Property Is Theft. Unqualified, it shouldn't be a left or right term; it should be an all-encompassing term for those who believe that the government has no right to co-opt the domain of the personal. The key difference, it seems, between what I am and what most self-described libertarians are is that I do not consider most economic activity - or, rather, corporate economic activity - to be part of the personal domain...

now here is a bit of a misunderstandign between capitolism and the free market verses corpretism where power is held by a select few corperations with government connections.

I never said that I didn't understand or acknowledge the difference; I am simply of the belief that, unchecked, one leads to the other.

Which is why, in addition to being a social libertarian, I am very much a socialist.