• @finitebanjo
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    31 hour ago

    Honestly kind of works like a political compass lol

  • Eugene V. Debs' Ghost
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    10 hours ago
    • A government imposes taxation on the citizens to fund the services the citizens are required to use for daily life.

    Libertarians: “GOD THIS IS AN UNJUST TYRANNY TO ME AND ONLY ME”

    • A corporation imposes a new service fee and increases the subcription charges, to fund their wallets and act like its better than it was before.

    Libertarians: “This is normal and just, everyone is stupid except for me, I read Ayn Rand.”

    I’m down to talk out what is a just tax, what is unfair, what the taxes should go to once collected, but I think Libertarians are too hooked on think tank propaganda to decide something for themselves.

    • @[email protected]
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      21 hour ago

      Corporations are fucked up. They will never allow the state to be abolished because they need to collect taxes in order to bail themselves out of trouble and in order to fight wars for them at the taxpayer expense so they can reap the profits… a corporation will never go to war alone. War is fucking expensive and is rarely directly profitable. They want to socialize expenses and privatize gain, which is impossible to do without a government of some kind.

    • @Aceticon
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      7 hours ago

      It’s even better: a lot of essential or close to it things are pretty much monopolies or cartels (for example, Internet access in most of the US) so people have no actual choice but to pay a specific entity whatever they chose to charge.

      It’s like tax but without the upside of taxes (which is that they’re money that’s supposed to entirely end up benefiting you, even if most of it indirectly) because when you buy a product or service from a monopoly or cartel only part of it goes to cover the cost of the actual product or service you’re getting and a large fraction or even most of it goes to shareholder dividends, which has zero benefit for you.

      I’ve taken to call these things Taxes Paid Directly To Private Companies.

  • @[email protected]
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    139 hours ago

    I hate how the american version of “libertarianism” is what people think of instead of the original french left wing ideology.

    • @Buddahriffic
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      83 hours ago

      It’s deliberate. Left-wing ideologies are basically “we don’t really benefit from these traditional hierarchies and we’d be better off if we didn’t concentrate resources in the hands of a small number of owners so much”, which is hard to argue against.

      So those who want to keep their power in the current system try to misdirect the debates themselves with “libertarianism” and “neo liberalism” which are both economically conservative ideologies that try to separate the idea of personal freedom from economic ones and ignore that any “freedom” in business is against a background of negotiation leverage, so more freedom in business gives more advantages to those with more leverage.

      That first paragraph is also why conservatives put so much attention towards making it difficult to vote, get a good education, or find various supports. They know trying to argue that they should have control of most of the wealth is a losing argument so they go for confusing as many as possible or keeping them busy with their own survival.

  • mechoman444
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    78 hours ago

    Tranny.com is a shitty cam site.

    Trust me. I thoroughly checked so you don’t have to.

  • @[email protected]
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    1613 hours ago

    Most “Libertarians” grow up as soon as they read any political theory, I personally became an Anarcho-Syndicalist

      • DefederateLemmyMl
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        168 hours ago

        Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.

        • @[email protected]
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          116 hours ago

          Supreme executive power derives from a mandate of the masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony

          • @_stranger_
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            64 hours ago

            I’m glad we all agree you can’t expect to wield supreme executive power just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!

    • @Valmond
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      -311 hours ago

      You’ll be even more baffled when you read some history!

      • @[email protected]
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        45 hours ago

        Yup, especially the histories of the FAI/CNT and how Spain could have been Anarcho-Syndicalist (for a time Catalonia was). In addition popular Syndicalist movements in France and the Anarchist black army in Ukraine could have gone very differently.

    • EleventhHour
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      16 hours ago

      Do you expect despots to shell out their own money for things like that?

    • @macarthur_park
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      5617 hours ago

      I went to elementary school when whitehouse.com was still a porn site. I remember a class in the computer lab where we were supposed to do research on the government. Our teacher was very clear about going to the .gov website and absolutely not the .com one.

      Whatever adult content blocking they had set up did not work.

  • @Etterra
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    816 hours ago

    I hate to say I misread the site name the first time.

  • Kalcifer
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    1218 hours ago

    Ha, a rare example of an accurate meme about libertarianism.

    Though, to be fair, libertarianism doesn’t necessarily advocate for a market devoid of regulation (regulation being paradoxically required to ensure consumer freedom), but, generally, libertarianism seeks to maximize market freedom within the confines of the desired level and flavor of consumer freedom.

    • @Soup
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      3717 hours ago

      And yet every libertarian in practice just hates paying taxes and whines when potholes don’t get filled in despite them never reporting them. They’re sad and angry at the world and feel hyper-insecure about asking for, or even accepting, help.

      • @[email protected]
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        12 hours ago

        in despite them never reporting them.

        To be fair this is problem everywhere.

        Reminds me about RosYama project.

        Buuuuut I think piblic transport should be funded first.

      • Kalcifer
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        13 hours ago

        And yet every libertarian in practice just hates paying taxes and whines when potholes don’t get filled in despite them never reporting them. They’re sad and angry at the world and feel hyper-insecure about asking for, or even accepting, help.

        The absolutist language that you used in your comment reduces it to one large faulty generalization. It is impossible to know the beliefs of every single libertarian. Less absolutist language would still be rather dubious without any supportive studies.

        • @[email protected]
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          53 hours ago

          Libertarians can’t even agree among themselves if you should be allowed to sell meth to five year olds. That is to say, yes, they have a lot of diversity of opinions, but it’s not in ways where they come out looking good.

  • @[email protected]
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    1018 hours ago

    Not left libertarians (typically). I’m trying to reclaim this term from the right-wing chuds who have taken it over.

    • @Maggoty
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      913 hours ago

      I’ve seen the term Libertarian Communist around and that makes sense in an international setting. In the US both terms are tainted though. You could try a synonym like Social Autonomy though.

        • @Maggoty
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          3 hours ago

          I’ll have to do more reading but it looks like it’s contemporary to the Libertarian Communist writers and maybe, hilariously, a parallel attempt to unify anti-statist socialism and communism.

          Putting this here mostly to help my memory and have a searchable comment on my history. Proudhon referred to himself as a Mutualist, an Anarchist, and later a Federalist. But not a Libertarian. Left Libertarianism obviously has cause to reach back and claim him but those writers came later, and not as some claim, contemporary with Marx. It is fair to say LL has it’s roots in the first international, but it is very much an evolution of left Anarchism, not an origination of left anarchism.

    • g0d0fm15ch13f
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      817 hours ago

      Just like how the American left wing is still right of center, it feels like American libertarians are still auth of center. Glad there’s at least one maniac like me out there

      • cacheson 🏴🔁🍊
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        614 hours ago

        American liberals are right of center. The American left wing is leftist, we’re just small and don’t have much influence over politics here.

        • @[email protected]
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          12 hours ago

          Left and right wing are relative terms, leftist and liberal are not.

          The American left wing is barely able to agree on universal healthcare, much less seizing of means.

    • Omega
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      718 hours ago

      In my experience, right leaning Libertarians are just Republicans that are kinda indifferent with gays having legal rights.

      • @[email protected]
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        1016 hours ago

        Yeah a lot of them don’t seem to be very committed to libertarian ideas unfortunately. The government isn’t the only force that can restrict liberty.

      • @[email protected]
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        913 hours ago

        As an Anarcho-Syndicalist I disagree, the term Libertarian should be reclaimed by those who truly support Liberty and oppose hierarchy

        • enkers
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          13 hours ago

          I’d say because it’s a losing battle. It takes substantially less effort to drag a symbol or label through the mud than it does to clean it off. Add to that it’s still in active use by rightoids, and all you’re going to accomplish is giving people the wrong idea of what you stand for.

    • rigatti
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      618 hours ago

      What is a leftibertarian in your opinion?

      • @Donkter
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        2017 hours ago

        From Wikipedia, not dunking on you, I just thought this was a very clear explanation of why right-wing libertarianism is the anomaly:

        In the mid-19th century,[10] libertarianism originated as a form of left-wing politics such as anti-authoritarian and anti-state socialists like anarchists,[11] especially social anarchists,[12] but more generally libertarian communists/Marxists and libertarian socialists.[13][14]

        These libertarians sought to abolish capitalism and private ownership of the means of production, or else to restrict their purview or effects to usufruct property norms, in favor of common or cooperative ownership and management, viewing private property in the means of production as a barrier to freedom and liberty.[19] While all libertarians support some level of individual rights, left-libertarians differ by supporting an egalitarian redistribution of natural resources.[20] Left-libertarian[26] ideologies include anarchist schools of thought, alongside many other anti-paternalist and New Left schools of thought centered around economic egalitarianism as well as geolibertarianism, green politics, market-oriented left-libertarianism and the Steiner–Vallentyne school.[30]

        • @Maggoty
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          I don’t know who wrote that Wikipedia article but it’s really really wrong. Libertarian as a leftist idea actually surfaces in the early to mid 20th century, at the same time as the mostly unrelated right wing libertarianism. They had maybe a decade head start on using the term. It really gets going around 1920 when leftist political philosophers start trying to synthesize lessons from all of the different sections of communism.

          The mid 19th century is Karl Marx. The citations mostly talk about anarchism. One of them expressly says to call yourself a whole ass anarchist. So as best as I can tell this is a case where left and right wing editors have gone back and forth on the page with little oversight from political historians and left us with a page that doesn’t reflect reality.

          • @Takapapatapaka
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            47 hours ago

            The word “Libertaire” (french for left-wing libertarian, the amercian libertarian is called “Libertarien”) was created in 1857 to differentiate from “Libéral” (which could be seen as an equivalent to nowadays liberals). In France it is still used as a synonym for ‘Anarchist’, though it has a wider sense, since it describes any left-wing movement that opposes authority/power (so libertarian communists that do not accept the “anarchist” label are still included in the “Libertaire” label). The Wikipedia page seems well written from what I know.

            @[email protected] Good luck in your reclaming of the word. There are parts of the world and languages in which it is still a powerful and unifying word for anti-authoritarian left, english language can still evolve this way !

            • @Maggoty
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              14 hours ago

              That’s great. In one language. France also calls potatoes ground apples. But we don’t directly translate it. We use the words from the thinkers of communism. Which are Communism, Socialism, and Anarchy.

              In French it goes back to antinomianism. In English it goes back to the free will debates in religion and political philosophy.

              It hasn’t been a standardized label used by political thinkers until the early 1900’s though. The Wikipedia article is just plain wrong unless it’s the French language page. Which it isn’t.

      • @[email protected]
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        817 hours ago

        Similar to anarchism with a large overlap but I would say it includes other related ideologies as well. To be an anarchist I think you need to be very anti-capitalist and very anti-state. I think left libertarianism needs to be at minimum very skeptical of all authority structures but not necessarily opposed to them in all circumstances.

        For myself, I’d like to get to anarchy long term but I see more of a gradual transition happening. So I am OK with retaining some state and capitalist structures as intermediate steps with the long-term goal of eliminating them once we develop superior social systems.

        • cacheson 🏴🔁🍊
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          214 hours ago

          That could just mean that you’re an “evolutionary” (as contrasted with “revolutionary”) anarchist.