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Don’t let them fool you, libertarians are just Republicans who are too chicken shit to admit it and be open about it. They still side together on every issue, small government or not. I don’t see a difference between the two in their actions
They still side together on every issue
So you think that Libertarians believe drugs should be illegal, the government should ban abortion, books, and gay rights, and tons of money should be spent on military budgets and corporate subsidies? That’s like the opposite of Libertarianism. But you’re right, there are a lot of Republicans who incorrectly call themselves libertarian.
Hey now, be fair, not all self described libertarians are just being dishonest about their political affiliations.
Some don’t know how anything works and call themselves libertarian because they think it sounds cool.
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US American Democrats aren’t much better. I mean, sure, pro-choice, environmental policies, etc, but their economic policies? Haven’t been great for the working class at least since Bill Clinton’s era.
*It seems like I have to explain myself, I’m a socialist. I’m very left leaning, very pro regulations, it doesn’t trickle down. Bill Clinton signed NAFTA, he was very openly Neoliberal. (And, btw, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was also from his era). Obama, however charming, did little to bring the dignity of work back to the US, he instead played the respectability politics, pull yourself up by the bootstraps through higher education (which was not available for everyone).
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It’s their firearms policy for me, the economic stuff is just the icing on the cake. I’m literally in the industry, so I know a thing or two about firearms and the laws regarding them, and watching the democrat party be so wrong about the basic functionality of a semi auto rifle or the current laws we already have, or what the one they’re proposing will do (spoiler alert: it’ll disproportionately affect minorities just like drug laws and stop and frisk) that they’re either intentionally misleading the public or have no business making decisions on the matter as they are woefully uninformed has made it so now I can’t trust anything they say. It’d be like if you know a lot about cars and then I come on talking about how a catback makes your car faster and more deadly should you try to Charlestown someone so we need to ban them, immediately you’d know I’m a moron and disregard everything I say, same for the entire dem party and firearms.
Politicians are idiots, but there are plenty of gun lovers on the left. Sweeping bans will be massively unpopular and won’t happen. Nobody left wants to push effective legislation and the right will fight absolutely everything tooth and nail.
Yeah, it’s the democrat party (which leftists often argue isn’t “left,” so take that how you will) that is the issue on that. I’m aware of the SRA and such.
Firearms usage in the US is dysfunctional anyway. It causes heightened tensions in every situation. I don’t know how it can ever be better.
Well tbf I’d rather be heightened than stabbed, and the presence of a firearm has prevented me from being stabbed at least once, so net win.
I guess the stabber was afraid that you had a firearm, that’s why they tried to stab you? To avoid getting shot first?
Well, besides the fact that that is a very poor plan that is more likely to get you shot than “leaving someone alone,” you should look into the concept of “concealed” carry. Idk, maybe he did have X-Ray vision, but somehow I doubt that.
I never owned a gun in my life, but I also have never lived in a country where guns are widely available. Well, I lived in Brazil for a spell, but not in a gun toting neighbourhood, though some of the farmers had air rifles
Cool, but I assume you’re still able to connect the concept of “concealed” to your theory to see that it has pretty big holes. He didn’t know I had a gun until he pulled a knife on me and I showed him, so he couldn’t have pulled it in effort to murder me at for being an open carrying person minding their business, as I was concealed carrying not open carrying.
Furthermore, once he saw it, he decided to leave for some strange reason, so that’s another hole in the theory that he likes to use inferior armaments to murder innocent people for having a different armament than he does.
Your theory is flawed,
sirindividual.
Our progressives still have to be fairly conservative to pull in the swing voters we need to keep batshit Republicans at bay. The Overton window has some fucking miles on it here in the US
It’s often a push and pull. The US “progressives” was pulled to the right, which pushed the “conservatives” further to the right. From the outside looking in, it seems that the new anti-abortion laws are proving to be unpopular, which might just pull conservatives back to the centre of this particular issue, and then the progressives can go further left again.
For activism, whichever side you’re on, they must always ask for a lot right now, to get a little very soon. It goes both ways.
Libertarians are just Republicans that don’t want to say they’re Republicans, their stances are almost completely the same.
A more honest comic would be a frame of two republicans (use the lion from this comic) tearing part and eating America…say, Uncle Sam, just visceral and blood all over their mouths and claws. Second frame has that scene in the background with a third lion standing with another animal looking upon the carnage. The third lion saying “I’m not republican, I am a libertarian that leans right” while also having blood all over it’s mouth and claws.
Actual libertarians would never vote Republican. They’d be pro-choice, pro-trans rights, against any kind of book ban and for way less invasive religion in the state.
People who vote republicans and call themselves libertarian only like their own freedom.
It is true and unfortunately common that many Americans who claim to be Libertarians are generally Republicans who don’t want the label. It is also true that no true Libertarian would align themselves with the Republican party as it is today, or maybe as it has ever been. The two ideologies are dramatically different. Libertarians are closer to anarchists and republicans are closer to fascists.
I’m just going to post this article every time a libertarian post makes it to the front page now. Yes, libertarian taking over a New Hampshire town only to get overrun by feral bears will never stop being funny.
https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-into-bear-book-review-free-town-project
I don’t respect conservatives. Someone who votes Republican is either ignorant of what their party is doing, is willing to look the other way, or is actively encouraging it. None of these traits are admirable, or respectable.
Used to call myself Libertarian at one point. Then I grew up and realized most “Libertarians” are a group of morons who would get eaten by the wealthy if the world suddenly switched over to their ideal “Libertarian” society. You think the gap is bad between the rich and poor now? Let “Libertarian” ideals run amok for a decade…
Libertarians are just Republicans who don’t understand how taxes work.
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?
Republicans don’t even know how taxes work.
Libertarians are just not ready to admit to daddy that they too are a Conservative/Republican.
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.
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 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.
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).
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
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?
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?
Look what I wrote:
I feel like the Democrat takes never acknowledge the negatives of state control (at least unless it’s something Republican-associated)
Wouldn’t really say “defund the police” was a mainstream Dem thing though, they mostly distanced themselves from it.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
Education of the masses being a great example.
Like hospitals. Sure they can be profitable, but they should still be running with funding even if they are not.
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.”
Yea, like, you know, clean water, moderate temperatures and a livable environment…
This is my prediction. After the GOP crashes and burns, the Chris Christie/Mike Pence wing will do a hostile takeover of the Libertarian Party. They are already on the ballot in every state, so that would be easier than building a new party from scratch.
Your optimism is unwarranted. 😥
The mental illness is strong
Libertarians are just Republicans wearing silly hats.
Republicans run on the campaign that government doesn’t work, and once they are in power they prove it.
elites rather
Libertarianism is the ideology of the childish and selfish, it is the ideology of putting oneself and one’s own interests before everything else, just dressed up in pretty words about “liberty”.
A nice word that Rothbart stole from Anarchists to use for his capital-Feudalism
It makes me a sad left a libertarian/anarchist.
Anarchism has the same individualist liberal basis as “regular” capitalism. An anarchist commune will always transform either to regular capitalism (pre-imperialist capitalism) or socialism.
Anarchism can mean socialism without tyrannical central authority.
“Finnish Nationalist.”
Such “socialism” will simply degenerate back into capitalism as it cannot eliminate the markets, as it cannot have a planned economy. Markets always lead to competition, which leads to consolidation and accumulation.
Okay Buddy, make assertions and leave. That’s how something becomes a fact.
China didn’t eliminate markets.
Markets breeding competition and competition leading to consolidation is economics 101, i don’t think anyone regardless of ideology disputes this.
As for China, they indeed have markets, ever since the reforms of Deng. China has been liberalising ever since said reforms. The Chinese economy isn’t socialist, only some parts of it are owned by the state, lots of the industry is privately owned. Not that China started as an anarchist commune to begin with. Right now China is liberalising further, in the future they will either completely abandon socialism and embrace social democracy, or essentially have a new revolution nationalising all private industry. Time will tell, but judging by Xi’s rhetoric, the former sounds likelier.
Okay Buddy
I kept misreading it as librarians which really confused me xD
