Freedom is the ONLY thing that counts. I do acknowledge that Libertarians claim to want to pursue freedom.
However I believe that Libertarianism, will only replace tyrannical government with tyrannical rule by businesses.
The problem with governments no matter their political leaning is that most political ideologies lack any mechanism to deal with corruption and abuses of power. Libertarianism seeks to deal with this by removing government and instead hand the power to private companies.
Companies are usually small dictatorships or even tyrannies. Handing them the power over all of society will only benefit the owners of these companies. The rest of society will basically be reduced to the status of slaves as they have no say over the direction of the society they maintain through their 9to5s.
These companies already control governments around the world through favors, bribes or other means such as regulatory capture or even by influencing the media and thereby manipulating the public’s opinion through the advertisement revenue.
Our problems would only get worse, all the ills of today’s society, lack of freedom, lack of peace, lack of just basic human decency will be vastly aggravated if we hand the entirety of control to people like petur tihel and allen mosque.
Instead the way to go about this is MORE democracy not less of it. The solution is to give average citizens more influence over the fate of society rather than less. However for that to happen we all need to fight ignorance and promote the spread of education. It has to become cool again to read books (or .epub/.mobi’s lol)
The best way to resolve the the corruption issue is to not allow any individual to hold power, instead having a distributed system.
More of a community-driven government. Sort of like these workers owned companies. We should not delegate away our decision-making power. We should ourselves make the decisions.
Although this post is in English it does neither concern the ASU nor KU or any other English speaking countries, in particular. It’s a general post addressing a world wide phenomenon.
Subsidies for big business, regulatory capture and other forms of corporate rent seeking are all things libertarians are against. For big L libertarians you even have party platforms.
I thought Libertarianism promoted the removal of government regulations and allowing companies to do as they please. Basically let the markets regulate themselves. For example not having environmental regulations instead hoping customers vote with their feet. Am I misunderstanding Libertarianism?
No, not at all. Right Wing libertarians are just embarrassed capitalist. That haven’t found the one thing that makes them want to come out in the open as fascist or a conspiracy theory enthusiast. Actual libertarians, those on the left. Are equally concerned about people’s freedom “from” things. As they are people’s freedom “to do” things. They’re opposed to large many level government, that obfuscates while at the same time consolidating power. Not government itself.
Actual libertarians are just as horrified by the brutality and cruelty of under regulated corporations, as they are large government behemoths.
The origin of libertarians and left libertarianism is inconvenient though. And something never touched on outside poly sci courses. Pretty much any libertarian you’ve likely been exposed to would fall under the neo-libertarian moniker. Like the neo liberals and neo conservatives. Right wing reactionary groups forming in reaction to the red scare of the mid 20th century. Right wing libertarianism itself has its origins in the 50s and 60s. Murray, rothbard, Milton Friedman, Frederick Hyak and a few others are generally seen as the fathers of it. Where actual libertarianism’s origins go back another 100 years.
But when it comes to who has the wealth and resources to promote their ideology. Wealthy thieves always win out in the end. And they largely set the standards by which we are all educated.
Maybe one of the reasons people hate education these days.
Definitely. The only reason to hate education. Is because you cling to something that you can’t logically or factually defend. That education would only highlight.
Also knowledge is power, what happens when we become too knowledgeable? Does it become easier or more difficult to exert power over us? /r (rethorical queston)
In some cases yes but its not universal nor is that belief universal among all Libertarians.
I’m a Registered Libertarian and aside from Anarcho-Capitalists, which are only small number of Libertarians, this simply isn’t true.
In nearly all version of Libertarianism the Courts are still around and still function. Corporations who impugn on the liberties of others are still subject to lawsuits.
It can depend, since it’s a large ideological umbrella. Big L (party) peeps tend to prefer environmental damage be handled as damaging property, so it’d be hashed out in the courts. Some minarchists are fine with certain types of regulation anyway.
Voting with your feet would be for things that aren’t just straight up violation of your rights.
“I’m against murder, but I leave loaded guns around daycares.” Corruption is the natural state of things at scale. I realize that this isn’t necessarily your opinion that you’re voicing but libertarians always strike me as equal parts naive and willfully malicious.
I’ve got feet in both left and right. I’m much more anti-corporatist than most. Large corps are only possible due to limited liability and shit like IP. I’d like to see those laws gradually changed so that risk they take on isn’t covered by the rest of us.
I’m not a genius or a magician so I’m not 100% sure how exactly to implement things, but trade and governance are technologies and if we eliminate adverse incentives we should be able to steadily grow as a society.
Abolition of IP and limited liability while simultaneously pushing for reduced regulation is just going to increase incentive and capacity for political capture and massively boost corporate power. It’s leaving guns at a daycare and feigning shock when toddlers grab hold of them. The US government is already partly proxy to many companies. Offering them the opportunity to adjudicate their own actions further by removing safeguards is equal parts naive and malicious.
Those are both reductions in legislation/regulation.
… which will incentivize more regulatory capture and accelerate us into a dystopia. Don’t worry, I finished your thought.
I went a bit too hard with the alliteration and decided to trim a couple of words that may have clarified my meaning. “…for even further.“ It was meant to draw the line where libertarians cease to make sense. Reasonable ideas to horrifically shortsighted step toward dystopia.
I’m down with alliteration. If you can make it fit it’s worth it.
I was referring to IP being regulation that must die. Farms subsidies. A lot of zoning trash. The regulations that made trucks so much more popular. Not all regulation is beneficial. I’m talking about removing regulatory capture shit that only serves to entrench large corporations.
In our current society a sudden shift would suck horribly regardless of direction. Some libertarian ideas require analogous private structures in some instances and it’s reasonable to want to see that.
It’s kind of unreasonable to analyze any political ideology assuming it happens overnight.
We should absolutely subsidize farming as otherwise we’d be purchasing food from outside the US more or less exclusively. That’s a national security concern, in the very least. Breaking up the gigafarm structure with regulations is a better option, starting with a robust and well intentioned reporting structure for h1 visa holders to report mistreatment. It’s a real shitshow…
I apologize, but there’s a small textbook’s worth of conversation to have around this and I promised myself that I would avoid internet dissertations. Especially after an internet detox. So I cut it off there. Libertarian-style deregulation would be either helpful or horrifying in many of your examples but unpacking it would definitely require the sort of time that I’m not willing to offer. In short, I agree on some points and balk at others.
It’s all good. I certainly don’t think anything should be done quickly or without proper monitoring. Fucking up on even a small scale can cause a lot of misery and death.