this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2023
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Libertarians are just Republicans who don't understand how taxes work.
Some of the funniest shit in the world to me is watching a libertarian talk to pretty much anyone remotely competent in discussing policy and watching in real time as the libertarian reinvents things like taxes and liberal democracy trying to make their policy prescriptions make sense.
I had a "debate" with a libertarian once. It's annoying because they reply with: "it's the government's fault" or "free market can do it better" and citing examples just leans to their boring hypotheticals.
Workers rights, healthcare, regulations, public transit, public healthcare, mail, etc, it's boring how uninterested they are in how things actually work.
Yeah that can get very boring. I suppose though if they had any interest in how things actually worked they wouldn't be libertarians. That's exactly what kept me from aligning with them back in high school when I first started getting into politics.
Like I got as far as roads and it was like "Wait a second, how would you handle roads going into areas where where it wouldn't be profitable to run them?" They either just wouldn't have roads, or someone would build it and would make it profitable by charging exorbitant tolls. Neither of those were acceptable to me and my agreement with libertarianism died. There are always going to be things in society that are not profitable but are worth having because they have downstream benefits to society.
The problem I've had with a lot of them related to what you mentioned is that their very base motivation for wanting libertarianism is selfishness. They don't want to pay for things other people use so the argument becomes "well that area just doesn't have roads. I won't live there so I don't care. That's for the locals in that area to figure out."
From what I've gathered libertarianism is "I got mine, fuck you."
Like hospitals. Sure they can be profitable, but they should still be running with funding even if they are not.
Education of the masses being a great example.
Yea, like, you know, clean water, moderate temperatures and a livable environment...
The argument is generally to favor non-coercive solutions to avoid centralized power breeding corruption (admittedly with a caveat that wealth can also create centralized power). I'm not clear how that would entail more taxes. Or exactly what you mean by "liberal democracy", which in the conventional use isn't something they disagree with?
I don't mean more taxes I mean taxes at all. Pretty much every libertarian I've ever heard talking about it says "Taxation is theft," then the ones I'm talking about will for example get asked to describe their ideal society and when asked how to say maintain some key infrastructure they essentially describe collecting taxes from the citizens for it. Things like that.
That's a special breed of American right-wing libertarianism. It's not indicative of the ideology worldwide, nor does it reflect the beliefs of the more academic libertarians.
Do those True Libertarians live in Scotland?
Australia.
The True Scotsmen are hanging out with the True Libertarians in Australia. Good to know. Are the True Christians there as well?
I understand you're being snarky with the No True Scottsman parable, but what I said is accurate. Libertarian has taken on a different meaning in America than it has in most of the world. There are Libertarians in most developed nations. I chose Australia because there's an Australian commenting on this very post, expressing his surprise at what Americans view as libertarian. I'm sure you can find his comments if you look.
So Australian Libertarians don't believe in the free market above all else and that governments basically should only exist to enforce individual property rights? Awesome.
Republicans don't even know how taxes work.
I always thought a Libertarian is a Republican who is trying to sleep with a Democrat - or vice versa.
I was a libertarian until I vacationed in a country where taxes were used on its people instead of it military.
(Gross over simplification for comedy before anyone comes at me for my political beliefs)
Pretty much. It doesn't take a whole lot of brains to figure out that if you are spewing out all these policies that are going to hurt people that cute coed isn't going to want to hang out with you. So, you lie about what you believe. You aren't mean nasty gop you are cool enlightened libertarian. You don't respect her intelligence enough to expect her to figure out what you really believe.
Quite a few years ago I came to the decision that if I had any opinion that I was embarrassed about, it was a sign that I should reevaluate it. That doesn't mean always going with the herd. It means that I was only going to defend embarrassing ideas that I am so sure about I am willing to take whatever society will throw at me for holding them.
Libertarians are just not ready to admit to daddy that they too are a Conservative/Republican.
I wouldn't say Democrat takes on libertarianism have ever been very good. Especially in recent years with the alt-right trying to occupy the middle space between "libertarian" and "Republican" and adding to the confusion.
You have a problem on two ends - corporate interests can get out of hand, pollute, monopolize, etc., and you want to rein that in somehow. This can be done via the market, since corps do need money to survive, but a lot of people don't care enough to make it happen. On the flip side, if you rely on government to just control everything and hope they'll act benevolently, there are huge risks - a government agency could be benign or beneficial, or it can turn into a machine for oppression and monopolization.
I feel like the Democrat takes never acknowledge the negatives of state control (at least unless it's something Republican-associated) and also never acknowledge there's a valid way to accomplish anything outside of the state. It seems like their answer is always to just throw state programs at everything. Well, we did try having the state run everything once...
Democrats constantly complain about government control. Defund the police ring a bell? How about all the wars over school district control? Or wasting money on the military?
Just because you lean towards moving power and resources from private to public sector doesn't mean you always always agree with the public sector.
If I support NASA does that mean I agree with every decision ever made by the Fed?
Look what I wrote:
Wouldn't really say "defund the police" was a mainstream Dem thing though, they mostly distanced themselves from it.
Democrats in the US are not as left-leaning as they make themselves out to be. I'd argue they moved further right economically a couple of decades ago, which pushed the Republicans even further right to the point of absurdity. What to you seem like the Democratic Party's attempt at "state controlling" things aren't actually that extreme, or that left-wing for that matter. Both parties are right-leaning. There's no center or center left in the US. Bernie tried to be center-left, but he was seen as too extreme.
It's not an issue of perception, either the state controls something or it doesn't (or somewhere in that gray area in between w.r.t regulations, public-private partnerships and so on).
Yes, exactly, most traditionally public institutions in the US are now carried by private companies and cititzens. Universities, for example.
Not sure how accurate your example is. Government spending as % of GDP has been steadily increasing for a century.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7M6Qk22TGko/UDMQywXhifI/AAAAAAAARVM/AUKK51HNBPM/s1600/Governemnt%2BSpending%2Bas%2BPercent%2Bof%2BGDP%2B-%2BFederal.png
The pie grows, so you need to look into the funding of these institutions, into the percentage of government vs private coffers. I'll look into it later, still at work now
Hi, I'm back.
State colleges receive the same amount of funding from tuition as from state governments
U of Wisconsin-Madison, 15% State Revenue, 21% Tuition There's also a graph showing the percentage decline since 1976
U of Texas, Austin, 10% State Appropriation, 20% Tuition Also with a fun cow shaped graph showing the decline from 34% State Appropriation in 1990 to the 10% of today. Important to add that they have income from an endownment that generates oil and gas revenues that is not included in these figures.
U of Virginia 2011, 10.3% State Funding
Other universities show the amount of money instead of the percentage, I'm too lazy to do the maths right now. These are some of the ones that are easier to read on the go. Speaking of, here's another light read on healthcare The World’s Costliest Health Care, David Cutler, Harvard Magazine
As to HOW COME the percentage of GDP increased and it didn't translate into better finance for institutions, my leftist ass would guess that the laissez-faire market failed to self-regulate. This is definitely an oversimplification of a more complex economical issue, this could also be a post hoc ergo propter hoc, or a cum hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. In any case, you asked for sources and I provided.
OK, fair enough re: colleges. Not sure what institutions you're referring to. Government spending as % of GDP is a rough indicator of their general presence in the economy (either through which institutions they're running directly, or which institutions they're regulating).
Hi, read my comment again, I specifically mentioned university in my example. Other public institutions would be schools, libraries, recreation centres, etc. The US government spends a lot on armament and military tech, maybe if you can look at a graph where the spendings are separated you'll get a clearer picture
I think it's because, as you laid out, the only 2 current options are market led control which isn't viable, and govt based which is viable but risky. Since it's the only viable option it gets the risks downplayed.
Well, in market or government, if you have bad people you get bad results. It's not a simple "viable or not viable" - right now we're in a mode where most people implicitly assume that any business allowed to exist is probably OK, and don't really exercise boycott, while relying on regulators etc. to clean up the mess. But that kind of abdication of responsibility isn't a constant of human nature or something, it's just what we've lazily been doing in this society for a while. Likewise, it's not the case where regulators, politicians, judges etc. are universally acting in good faith - it's hard to put a number to it, but there are examples of abuse all over the board as well.
No they're not. That's an American Republican appropriation of an otherwise complex ideology. Do you think Chomsky is a Republican who doesn't understand taxes?