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> I'm a Libertarian and thus social conservative and economically liberally That's fascinating; I've been called Libertarian because I'm the opposite. I'm soci

> I'm a Libertarian and thus social conservative and economically liberally That's fascinating; I've been called Libertarian because I'm the opposite. I'm socially progressive yet fiscally conservative, and from what I've read, there are branches of Libertarianism that can embrace either extreme or a mixture. I've listened to NPR since I was a teenager in the early 90s, and while I don't always agree with the commentators, I usually find the subjects fascinating and the content entertaining. Here in Atlanta the "Second Cup Concert" classical music show kept me motivated at work, and Lois Reitzes' voice was as soothing as listening to Bob Ross talk about his paintings.

throwaway2016a 9y ago
It was a mistake (see bellow - I edited my post). It's late at night and I'm tired. I in fact meant the opposite. I am most definitely not socially conservative or economically liberal.
- kobeya 9y ago
  A whole flamewar erupted over defending a typo :)
- dadoprso 9y ago
  you should add that you edited the post haha. I was very confused by the next comment.
ams6110 9y ago
There's liberal as in "tolerate how other people choose to live" and there's liberal as in "spend a lot of money on big government solutions to social problems" and nobody can claim to be libertarian and be liberal in the latter sense.
- SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
  Why? One could argue that the goal of a libertarian is to maximize individual liberty, and plausibly argue that the loss of liberty via taxation is both a faux loss (eg, actually a charge for externalities, not an "extra" cost imposed by others) and liberty maximizing (eg, freedom from concern of unemployment ruining your life is more freeing than the loss of freedom to not pay taxes).
  - djrogers 9y ago
    Why? For he simple reason that the more money funnels through the government, the less choice an individual has in how to use it. It’s about power, and in our world, money is power.
    - SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
      Does that argument extend to courts and police? If not, why not? Do the same reasons not apply to healthcare?
      - Dylan16807 9y ago
        Healthcare costs a hundred times more. That makes it almost incomparable. And has knock-on effects like different people wanting different styles of coverage with very different price schedules. Courts/police are relatively straightforward and cheap, and act as an enabler for contracts and personal choice.
        SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
        It's about 10x more if you count just police and fire; about 2x more if you count defense spending along with policing, using UK numbers. (Nowhere near 100x!) Of course, many more people spread colds, cause accidents, etc than commit crimes, so it makes sense that the cost of controlling their externalities is more than those of criminals. But your choice seems arbitrary: you couch it in pragmatic terms, because you're not categorically against government programs, but then avoid actual cost-benefit analysis, rendering your opinion nothing more than whim. That's what it always seems to come down to with "libertarians": unprincipled bullshit that aligns with their whims (such as yes police, no NHS).
        Dylan16807 9y ago
        I would definitely not categorize defense spending as police. Healthcare doesn't stop people from spreading colds. You're not actually reducing externalities with most categories of care. And if there were no police you would see a lot more theft. Anyway, you can put it in cost-benefit terms, but you have to include a strong freedom factor. A government that takes 2% of GDP to keep public order is far better than not doing that. But taking a very large fraction of income to provide health care? That is an enormous cost to both spending and freedom, and reasonable people can see those costs as higher or lower than the benefits.
- Barrin92 9y ago
  not in the American sense, but "libertarianism" has long usage in Europe as well, where it's usually associated with 'left libertarian' thinkers such as Orwell, Kropotkin and so forth. Chomsky would be a contemporary example. Many European anarchists describe themselves as libertarian, in the US the terminology is just not common, so people might be talking past each other here.
  - etplayer 9y ago
    Bookchin has spoken about this, but I can't find the lecture at the moment. When I use "libertarian" to describe myself, it's in the Socialist/anarchist sense, rather than what I view as antithetical to libertarian (i.e concerned with the freedom of people) philosophy; I think I would rather call "libertarians" as "propertytarians", as they are so much more concerned with the ownership of property rather than individual freedom, but the name won't catch on. Edit: Found it, it's a short speech, but it's from a larger one about freedom: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cnj3dObd6do https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cnj3dObd6do
- BinaryIdiot 9y ago
  > nobody can claim to be libertarian and be liberal in the latter sense. To be fair it's not a blanket black and white thing. You can be both, one in one area and one in another. I think we worry too much about labels.
  - kobeya 9y ago
    While arguing over definitions is usually a waste of time, the libertarian platform is basically defined by its anti government stance.
    - arkh 9y ago
      Not anti-government. Some are as anti all government as anarchist. A lot are for governments to be limited. What to limit it to is what differentiate different liberal (the original definition, not what your parties have done to it) movements. Some will want nothing, others include only the police, army and diplomacy. Some will include basic infrastructure. Most think contracts enforcement is the responsibility of the government. You even have libertarians who are for a universal basic income. But using a huge brush of "hurr durr libertarians, tea party, Ayn Rand" to paint libertarians is an error. Which a lot of so-called libertarians do too, like far left people who will parrot concepts while they never read -and certainly not studied- Marx books. As a side note if the only knowledge you have from the libertarians points come from media (old and new) you should reflect on how they report on tech things you know about and how maybe they report all subjects as badly.
    - BinaryIdiot 9y ago
      > the libertarian platform is basically defined by its anti government stance See, this is why I think arguing about labels is a complete waste of time. The majority of libertarians that I personally know are for smaller government in some areas. That doesn't always meant anti government. Sure you'll find plenty of libertarians that are anti government but you're going to find a lot of people with a lot of views calling themselves all sorts of different things that, ultimately, do not fit very well. For example after reading multiple websites regarding my own political views it would seem some places labeled me as a Libertarian Socialist, others a Liberal and one other a Fiscal Conservative Liberal. I'm not even convinced these labels make complete sense and really only capture some of my viewpoints in a pretty inarticulate way. Ultimately I just think all of these labels are a complete waste of time. People are imperfect and you'll never bucket them well. Even when you have finally come up with the perfect buckets for people you'll be lucky if half of the people put themselves in the correct bucket either due to a misunderstanding or some other reason.
- scarface74 9y ago
  I consider myself to be a "bleeding heart libertarian". I'm against the drug war, believe in a strong separation of church an state, live and let live, etc. But I don't mind paying taxes for the government to help people help themselves and to help people who can't help themselves.
  - PhasmaFelis 9y ago
    That just sounds like a standard progressive liberal (and there's nothing wrong with that). What viewpoints do you consider specifically libertarian?
    - scarface74 9y ago
      I haven't heard liberals talk too much about legalizing all drugs. Clinton in the 90s started the whole tough on crime, 3 strikes you're out, crusade. I am against the minimum wage - I think it skews supply and demand and contorts the free market -- but I do believe in the basic income for people who work in the form of an expansion of the earned income tax credit.
      - AsyncAwait 9y ago
        I don't believe Clinton is a progressive liberal, but most progressives support these policies, as far as I know.
        justadeveloper2 9y ago
        The Clintons, as far as I can tell, are some kind of crime family masquerading as career public servants.
        InitialLastName 9y ago
        Either that or career public servants who have been painted by their opponents as a crime family for decades. In practice, not sure there's a difference. When everybody insists the Emperor's clothes are nice...
alphaalpha101 9y ago
I'm not super familiar with American politics. What do you mean by 'fiscally conservative'? You want the Government to lower taxes and lower benefits and such, is that right? Because that sort of 'the market is right, we don't need no government spending in our economy' view.. well.. that just is the same as being economically liberal. But then again Americans seem to use 'liberal' to mean 'left-wing', is that right? Because that's pretty insane IMO, that's not really what it means anywhere else..
- biofox 9y ago
  That's an interesting point I hadn't noticed before. Everyone downvoting the comment should read this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_liberalism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_liberalism
  - donkeyd 9y ago
    It's because the US is slightly messed up in the sense that there's a group of people people who say that they care about "free market" and "less government spending and regulations". At the same time, these people also support protectionism, closed borders and government regulation on things they don't agree with. On the other side, there's a group that is often called liberal, who support open borders and (often) free international trade, but don't tend to agree with capitalism because they think it increases inequality. There don't seem to be any true liberals (if you look at the two groups that the US is always talking about) in the full sense of 'economic liberalism'.
    - fennecfoxen 9y ago
      You are in error. There's a major political party which has been saying "free market", "less spending and regulations", and only turned protectionist as of the last election (Republicans) with the election of a populist president. This change hasn't pleased everyone associated with the party. You can read many editorials inveighing against Trump's economic policies in the Wall Street Journal, for instance - whilst also finding plenty of disdain for his erstwhile political opponent Hillary Clinton. (Concerns about their desire to regulate other things are not addressed by this comment.) There's also the Libertarians, certainly a minor party, but one which has been consistently against protectionism for longer than I've been alive, and is likely to remain that way until I'm dead.
teekert 9y ago
As long as you can be given a label that allows you to be put in the "with" or "against" category, people don't really care about exact and paradoxical definitions, you Libertard Tea party Deep State believer.

throwaway2016a 9y ago

It was a mistake (see bellow - I edited my post). It's late at night and I'm tired. I in fact meant the opposite. I am most definitely not socially conservative or economically liberal.

kobeya 9y ago
A whole flamewar erupted over defending a typo :)
dadoprso 9y ago
you should add that you edited the post haha. I was very confused by the next comment.

ams6110 9y ago

There's liberal as in "tolerate how other people choose to live" and there's liberal as in "spend a lot of money on big government solutions to social problems" and nobody can claim to be libertarian and be liberal in the latter sense.

SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
Why? One could argue that the goal of a libertarian is to maximize individual liberty, and plausibly argue that the loss of liberty via taxation is both a faux loss (eg, actually a charge for externalities, not an "extra" cost imposed by others) and liberty maximizing (eg, freedom from concern of unemployment ruining your life is more freeing than the loss of freedom to not pay taxes).
- djrogers 9y ago
  Why? For he simple reason that the more money funnels through the government, the less choice an individual has in how to use it. It’s about power, and in our world, money is power.
  - SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
    Does that argument extend to courts and police? If not, why not? Do the same reasons not apply to healthcare?
    - Dylan16807 9y ago
      Healthcare costs a hundred times more. That makes it almost incomparable. And has knock-on effects like different people wanting different styles of coverage with very different price schedules. Courts/police are relatively straightforward and cheap, and act as an enabler for contracts and personal choice.
      - SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
        It's about 10x more if you count just police and fire; about 2x more if you count defense spending along with policing, using UK numbers. (Nowhere near 100x!) Of course, many more people spread colds, cause accidents, etc than commit crimes, so it makes sense that the cost of controlling their externalities is more than those of criminals. But your choice seems arbitrary: you couch it in pragmatic terms, because you're not categorically against government programs, but then avoid actual cost-benefit analysis, rendering your opinion nothing more than whim. That's what it always seems to come down to with "libertarians": unprincipled bullshit that aligns with their whims (such as yes police, no NHS).
        Dylan16807 9y ago
        I would definitely not categorize defense spending as police. Healthcare doesn't stop people from spreading colds. You're not actually reducing externalities with most categories of care. And if there were no police you would see a lot more theft. Anyway, you can put it in cost-benefit terms, but you have to include a strong freedom factor. A government that takes 2% of GDP to keep public order is far better than not doing that. But taking a very large fraction of income to provide health care? That is an enormous cost to both spending and freedom, and reasonable people can see those costs as higher or lower than the benefits.
Barrin92 9y ago
not in the American sense, but "libertarianism" has long usage in Europe as well, where it's usually associated with 'left libertarian' thinkers such as Orwell, Kropotkin and so forth. Chomsky would be a contemporary example. Many European anarchists describe themselves as libertarian, in the US the terminology is just not common, so people might be talking past each other here.
- etplayer 9y ago
  Bookchin has spoken about this, but I can't find the lecture at the moment. When I use "libertarian" to describe myself, it's in the Socialist/anarchist sense, rather than what I view as antithetical to libertarian (i.e concerned with the freedom of people) philosophy; I think I would rather call "libertarians" as "propertytarians", as they are so much more concerned with the ownership of property rather than individual freedom, but the name won't catch on. Edit: Found it, it's a short speech, but it's from a larger one about freedom: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cnj3dObd6do https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cnj3dObd6do
BinaryIdiot 9y ago
> nobody can claim to be libertarian and be liberal in the latter sense. To be fair it's not a blanket black and white thing. You can be both, one in one area and one in another. I think we worry too much about labels.
- kobeya 9y ago
  While arguing over definitions is usually a waste of time, the libertarian platform is basically defined by its anti government stance.
  - arkh 9y ago
    Not anti-government. Some are as anti all government as anarchist. A lot are for governments to be limited. What to limit it to is what differentiate different liberal (the original definition, not what your parties have done to it) movements. Some will want nothing, others include only the police, army and diplomacy. Some will include basic infrastructure. Most think contracts enforcement is the responsibility of the government. You even have libertarians who are for a universal basic income. But using a huge brush of "hurr durr libertarians, tea party, Ayn Rand" to paint libertarians is an error. Which a lot of so-called libertarians do too, like far left people who will parrot concepts while they never read -and certainly not studied- Marx books. As a side note if the only knowledge you have from the libertarians points come from media (old and new) you should reflect on how they report on tech things you know about and how maybe they report all subjects as badly.
  - BinaryIdiot 9y ago
    > the libertarian platform is basically defined by its anti government stance See, this is why I think arguing about labels is a complete waste of time. The majority of libertarians that I personally know are for smaller government in some areas. That doesn't always meant anti government. Sure you'll find plenty of libertarians that are anti government but you're going to find a lot of people with a lot of views calling themselves all sorts of different things that, ultimately, do not fit very well. For example after reading multiple websites regarding my own political views it would seem some places labeled me as a Libertarian Socialist, others a Liberal and one other a Fiscal Conservative Liberal. I'm not even convinced these labels make complete sense and really only capture some of my viewpoints in a pretty inarticulate way. Ultimately I just think all of these labels are a complete waste of time. People are imperfect and you'll never bucket them well. Even when you have finally come up with the perfect buckets for people you'll be lucky if half of the people put themselves in the correct bucket either due to a misunderstanding or some other reason.
scarface74 9y ago
I consider myself to be a "bleeding heart libertarian". I'm against the drug war, believe in a strong separation of church an state, live and let live, etc. But I don't mind paying taxes for the government to help people help themselves and to help people who can't help themselves.
- PhasmaFelis 9y ago
  That just sounds like a standard progressive liberal (and there's nothing wrong with that). What viewpoints do you consider specifically libertarian?
  - scarface74 9y ago
    I haven't heard liberals talk too much about legalizing all drugs. Clinton in the 90s started the whole tough on crime, 3 strikes you're out, crusade. I am against the minimum wage - I think it skews supply and demand and contorts the free market -- but I do believe in the basic income for people who work in the form of an expansion of the earned income tax credit.
    - AsyncAwait 9y ago
      I don't believe Clinton is a progressive liberal, but most progressives support these policies, as far as I know.
      - justadeveloper2 9y ago
        The Clintons, as far as I can tell, are some kind of crime family masquerading as career public servants.
        InitialLastName 9y ago
        Either that or career public servants who have been painted by their opponents as a crime family for decades. In practice, not sure there's a difference. When everybody insists the Emperor's clothes are nice...

alphaalpha101 9y ago

I'm not super familiar with American politics. What do you mean by 'fiscally conservative'? You want the Government to lower taxes and lower benefits and such, is that right? Because that sort of 'the market is right, we don't need no government spending in our economy' view.. well.. that just is the same as being economically liberal. But then again Americans seem to use 'liberal' to mean 'left-wing', is that right? Because that's pretty insane IMO, that's not really what it means anywhere else..

biofox 9y ago
That's an interesting point I hadn't noticed before. Everyone downvoting the comment should read this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_liberalism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_liberalism
- donkeyd 9y ago
  It's because the US is slightly messed up in the sense that there's a group of people people who say that they care about "free market" and "less government spending and regulations". At the same time, these people also support protectionism, closed borders and government regulation on things they don't agree with. On the other side, there's a group that is often called liberal, who support open borders and (often) free international trade, but don't tend to agree with capitalism because they think it increases inequality. There don't seem to be any true liberals (if you look at the two groups that the US is always talking about) in the full sense of 'economic liberalism'.
  - fennecfoxen 9y ago
    You are in error. There's a major political party which has been saying "free market", "less spending and regulations", and only turned protectionist as of the last election (Republicans) with the election of a populist president. This change hasn't pleased everyone associated with the party. You can read many editorials inveighing against Trump's economic policies in the Wall Street Journal, for instance - whilst also finding plenty of disdain for his erstwhile political opponent Hillary Clinton. (Concerns about their desire to regulate other things are not addressed by this comment.) There's also the Libertarians, certainly a minor party, but one which has been consistently against protectionism for longer than I've been alive, and is likely to remain that way until I'm dead.

teekert 9y ago

As long as you can be given a label that allows you to be put in the "with" or "against" category, people don't really care about exact and paradoxical definitions, you Libertard Tea party Deep State believer.