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Does the libertarian movement embody the worst of human traits?

hazlnut said:
But does that include regulating banks and preventing predatory lending practices... or, for example, are the consumers just on their own to read and understand every word of a contract written by lawyers hired to write contracts impossible for laymen to understand.
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For fraudulent business practices, definitely yes, government should police banks.

For private contracts, I see no reason why any concerned citizens (outside of government) could not create one or more (preferably more) regulatory agencies, the purpose of which would be to forbid certain contracts or practices. If such a regulatory agency were to forbid a shady practice or contract, that agency would withhold its seal of approval. People would then be able to trust that contracts and services were on the up and up, based on testimony from a trusted and knowledgeable third party, pretty much the same as the fed or sec.

If more and more people do not respect reasonable government authority, we move toward anarchy. When the central government is impotent to enforce law and order, then you have a de facto anarchy.
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Again, I don't think anyone is suggesting that government authority not be respected, or that the government's ability to investigate and apprehend criminals be weakened. I believe that most libertarians are opposed to the government interfering in voluntary agreements between competent and consenting parties. There is no reason for the government to interfere in the peaceful activities of the citizen. To do so would be for the government to itself act as an aggressor.
 
Harshaw said:
And you continue with the primer.

Here's the "Libertarian platform":

Platform | Libertarian Party

Go into it and prove what you say.
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I can't imagine anyone reading that platform and still accusing libertarians of being hate mongering, slave owning racists. The document above clearly paints the picture of tolerance, pacifism and freedom from coercion.
 
RabidAlpaca said:
I can't imagine anyone reading that platform and still accusing libertarians of being hate mongering, slave owning racists. The document above clearly paints the picture of tolerance, pacifism and freedom from coercion.
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Those are the items the militant left (such as UppityProle) see as getting in their way.
 
This thread is funnier than the little car filled with clowns who climb out grateful to no longer have their face pressed into the armpit or crotch of some other clown who forgot to shower that day.

The idea that anyone here can pretend to be the Papal Authority on libertarianism and speak with certainty that they know what libertarians believe is hysterical given the wide variance in types of libertarians and what they believe.

The one thing that has been firmly established through all the snide comments and snarky attacks on the left is that libertarianism - at least as voiced here by its most ardent lovers - is a right wing ideology.
 
Question (per the thread title): Does the libertarian movement embody the worst of human traits?

Answer: No. It actually presumes the best... and that is precisely its fatal flaw. It naively assumes that the worst of human traits will voluntarily keep themselves in check. And since the more libertarian a person is, the less accepting they are of "outside" limits and regulation, the more likely those with the worst of human traits will take over pretty much unopposed and we'll be right back where we started... if not worse. Essentially, a pure libertarian society would be very short-lived, except maybe in name only.
 
radcen said:
Question (per the thread title): Does the libertarian movement embody the worst of human traits?

Answer: No. It actually presumes the best... and that is precisely its fatal flaw. It naively assumes that the worst of human traits will voluntarily keep themselves in check. And since the more libertarian a person is, the less accepting they are of "outside" limits and regulation, the more likely those with the worst of human traits will take over pretty much unopposed and we'll be right back where we started... if not worse. Essentially, a pure libertarian society would be very short-lived, except maybe in name only.
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laughable

if peoples are so flawed, how is an ideology that expressively grants individuals power over other individuals an improvement?
 
haymarket said:
This thread is funnier than [blah blah blah juvenility blah blah blah] . . .

The idea that anyone here can pretend to be the Papal Authority on libertarianism and speak with certainty that they know what libertarians believe is hysterical given the wide variance in types of libertarians and what they believe.

The one thing that has been firmly established through all the snide comments and snarky attacks on the left is that libertarianism - at least as voiced here by its most ardent lovers - is a right wing ideology.
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Well, aren't you a self-owning eight year-old?
 
hazlnut said:
I believe there is good and bad everywhere, Dems, GOP, any mainstream party. No one party has all the answers and many libertarians are motivated by a genuine feeling that liberty and basic freedoms are important. When you take that desire to its extreme you end up with the dog-eat-dog, no government protection, no safety nets, dystopia.

You made some valid points about any political thought taken to an extreme.
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Yes, it's possible I'm only attacking the fringe of this movement. But take a look at some of their posts. It really does seem that the majority don't believe in safety nets. (Some of them advocate "opt-in" welfare -- presumably they also want opt-in taxes.) They pretend that only government has power over the individual, even though it's clear that the average voter is more in thrall to his boss than the democratically-elected government. Even the more intellectually respectable among them, like RabidAlpaca, have made some pretty outrageous statements in other threads. (RabidAlpaca in particular has claimed that the working poor are poor because they aren't willing to "bleed".)

The intellectual content of libertarianism is ankle-deep. Ultimately the "liberty" gimmick appears to be a semi-transparent front for a movement which is at bottom pro-capitalist, pro-rich, anti-worker, and anti-poor.

I'm not saying they're monsters, because I know that an attitude of self-congratulatory narrow-mindedness is an easy trap to fall into. I used to be that way myself before I experienced a long period of unemployment followed up by a tenure of overworked and underpaid servitude, which doesn't put to use almost all of my core skills in any case. It was brought home to me with force that **** happens and the job market is more a question of luck than who deserves what.
 
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UppityProle said:
Yes, it's possible I'm only attacking the fringe of this movement. But take a look at some of their posts. It really does seem that the majority don't believe in safety nets. (Some of them advocate "opt-in" welfare -- presumably they also want opt-in taxes.) They pretend that only government has power over the individual, even though it's clear that the average voter is more in thrall to his boss than the democratically-elected government. Even the more intellectually respectable among them, like RabidAlpaca, have made some pretty outrageous statements in other threads. (RabidAlpaca in particular has claimed that the working poor are poor because they aren't willing to "bleed".)

The intellectual content of libertarianism is ankle-deep. Ultimately the "liberty" gimmick appears to be a semi-transparent front for a movement which is at bottom pro-capitalist, pro-rich, anti-worker, and anti-poor.
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Thanks for the pseudo-compliment. I think.. ;)
 
UppityProle said:
Yes, it's possible I'm only attacking the fringe of this movement.
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Nah, it's accurate for the majority of them, and many of them jumped in to verify it. Many of them don't have an ideology, they're just sociopaths hiding under the label as a cover, trying for some legitimacy for mindless self-absorption, greed, class warfare, whatever.

What is interesting is that the Jeffersonian 'libertarians' had a schism that widened under Jefferson's Presidency, one faction endorsed what Forest McDonald called 'totalitarian libertarianism', i.e. that libertarians were just so extra special good that things like habeas corpus and Bill of Rights protections of citizens didn't apply if it stood in the way of their infinite wisdom, while the other major faction thought individual self-indulgence trumped all, regardless if it destroyed the state in the process. Jefferson himself was of the 'totalitarian' faction, and he turned his second term into a military dictatorship at the flimsiest excuse.

What Jefferson meant by 'We the People' is not at all what most of those quoting him think it means. Jefferson had very selective beliefs as to who 'the People' were.
 
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haymarket said:
Most of your drive-by posts are far less than obvious.

And now even you are impotent to explain it.
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Haymarket has a strange definition of "drive-by."

Most of the time, he calls a post a "drive-by" when someone's gone around and around with him on a point, multiple times, and he's being profoundly thick, perhaps intentionally half the time. The point is going nowhere; haymarket is just stonewalling, and finally whoever he's in it with figures out it's like talking a brick wall, and concludes with a quip. And THEN, after dozens of total posts, haymarket declares the quip a "drive-by."

In any case, I can't help you didn't follow my post; it should be obvious to anyone; I guess you'll just have to deal with not understanding it. Waaaaah.
 
UppityProle said:
"Stop buying their products", hilarious. If Kraft Foods Inc. sells me poison, I'll stop buying their products. My ghost will compile a painstaking list of every company that's a subsidary of Kraft Foods, just so I can be certain I'm avoiding them.
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Well maybe not your ghost, but other people will and then they will go out of business. So if they know what's good for them, they'll refrain from selling poison in the first place.
 
ARealConservative said:
The more complicated society gets, the less likely that central planning is implemented correctly.
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True, yet the more complicated a society gets, the more important it is that central planning be implemented correctly.
 
UppityProle said:
It really does seem that the majority don't believe in safety nets.
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Why should people like myself support safety nets? No one can ever figure a way around any of my arguments and just keep going back to that it feeds people. Which is fine if it was news to me or if it dealt with my arguments, but its neither news to me, or does it do anything to counter my arguments.
 
Ikari said:
Well maybe not your ghost, but other people will and then they will go out of business. So if they know what's good for them, they'll refrain from selling poison in the first place.
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How many people would be dead before this news got around? There might be a time lag of years. And is it realistic to memorize the name of every dodgy company in the world? One doesn't have the time to do that research for every different product you purchase. The main reason you feel secure is the deterrent provided by the government.

Even when consumers do start to learn about these faulty products, whoever is responsible would just have to rebrand, change their name, put their money elsewhere. There's a thousand ways they can make it hard for people to "stop buying their products". Even worse, if they had a monopoly, like the Aguas de Tunari Consortium had a monopoly on water in Bolivia, you'd have no choice but to eat whatever **** they served.
 
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Oberon said:
Nah, it's accurate for the majority of them, and many of them jumped in to verify it. Many of them don't have an ideology, they're just sociopaths hiding under the label as a cover, trying for some legitimacy for mindless self-absorption, greed, class warfare, whatever.
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That's an inaccurate but popular take on libertarians. Yet, they actually eschew the initiation of aggression against their fellow man, and they wish to limit laws that use the power of the state to infringe on the liberty or property of their fellow man. I would actually call those who wish to initiate aggression against their fellow man the sociopaths, not the libertarians.
 
UppityProle said:
How many people would be dead before this news got around? There might be a time lag of years. And is it realistic to memorize the name of every dodgy company in the world? One doesn't the have time to do that research for every different product you purchase. The main reason you feel secure is the deterrent provided by the government.

Even when consumers do start to learn about these faulty products, whoever is responsible would just have to rebrand, change their name, put their money elsewhere. There's a thousand ways they can make it hard for people to "stop buying their products". Even worse, if they had a monopoly, like the Aguas de Tunari Consortium had a monopoly on water in Bolivia, you'd have no choice but to eat whatever **** they shovelled.
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Bolivia needs some libertarianism.
 
UppityProle said:
How many people would be dead before this news got around? There might be a time lag of years. And is it realistic to memorize the name of every dodgy company in the world? One doesn't have the time to do that research for every different product you purchase. The main reason you feel secure is the deterrent provided by the government.

Even when consumers do start to learn about these faulty products, whoever is responsible would just have to rebrand, change their name, put their money elsewhere. There's a thousand ways they can make it hard for people to "stop buying their products". Even worse, if they had a monopoly, like the Aguas de Tunari Consortium had a monopoly on water in Bolivia, you'd have no choice but to eat whatever **** they served.
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You seem to think that our current system does a good job of preventing faulty products. This couldn't be further from the truth, however, I'll leave it for now.

As far as the Aguas de Tunari Consortium goes, the bolivian government passed a law (law 2029) that essentially gave the consortium a monopoly.
Also under this law: "The broad nature of Law 2029 led many to claim that the government would require a license be obtained for people to collect rainwater from their roofs."

It wouldn't have been able to happen without the government's coercion and involvement. If this is your idea of an example of no government involvement, try again.
 
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UppityProle said:
How many people would be dead before this news got around? There might be a time lag of years. And is it realistic to memorize the name of every dodgy company in the world? One doesn't have the time to do that research for every different product you purchase. The main reason you feel secure is the deterrent provided by the government.
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There's no reason that those who are concerned could not create their own food and drug agency (or agencies) that would regulate food producers. Anyone who wants their food to be regulated could only buy foods that are regulated and bear the seal of approval of the food and drug agency they trust. I agree with you that there is a need for standards and quality assurance. I just disagree that the government is the best organization to do this work. For example, our government fda actually forbids food producers from indicating whether or not their products contain genetically engineered corn. I call bullsh*t on that.
 
UppityProle said:
How many people would be dead before this news got around? There might be a time lag of years. And is it realistic to memorize the name of every dodgy company in the world? One doesn't have the time to do that research for every different product you purchase. The main reason you feel secure is the deterrent provided by the government.
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Alright, I can't let it go. The FDA is a monopoly machine. They openly admit to cockblocking certain drugs for the sole reason of protecting the market for other drugs. FDA?s New Claim: ?Your Body Is a Drug?and We Have the Authority to Regulate It!? | The Alliance for Natural Health USA
They even claim to have power over the cells in your body, because hey, your body has drugs in it, and you walked across a state line once.
 
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