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I have a very difficult time separating "true" libertarians with members of libertarian parties. Like people don't readily give up how pragmatic they are. On

I have a very difficult time separating "true" libertarians with members of libertarian parties. Like people don't readily give up how pragmatic they are. On one end, there seem to be people who really yearn for pure individual freedom with no government at all. I'm pretty sure that was tried for the first 50,000 years of humanity and the results are well documented. (spoiler, for populations larger than ~100 people, your chance of ending up a king's subject is >99%) The other end doesn't seem to mean anything concrete, other than a distaste for OSHA or environmental laws. Anyway, I think most Libertarians would be cool with a handful of ultra-wealthy, because they really think they can conquer the market someday and be one of them.

ryanwaggoner 9y ago
I consider myself a pragmatic libertarian, which off the top of my head basically means that: 1. I believe very strongly in the sovereignty of the individual. 2. I prefer more open and incentive-driven markets. 3. I’m skeptical of governments, particularly large and powerful ones, because they’re inefficient, rely on coercion, and are too tempting as prizes to be captured for power, prestige, and wealth. However, these are all on a spectrum and I’m open to trying other points along that spectrum if they work better than our current system. I also recognize that the optimal system may be too distant from where we are today to even move towards it directly. So for healthcare for example, our system is dreadful, but I’m not sure that pure free markets would be better. But I’d strongly prefer a public option (and maybe even single payer), or a well-designed hybrid system like Singapore or Switzerland has to fully nationalized healthcare like UK. Similarly, I’m open to trying basic income, a land value or VAT instead of income tax, and other alternative systems. I’m particularly in favor of systems that are more stable and resistant to changing from the whims of the current government. I personally don’t understand how anyone who thinks the government is awesome can continue to believe that when they watch episode after episode of unchecked police brutality, or constant encroachments on civil liberties, or the entire Trump administration.
- vidarh 9y ago
  The UK doesn't have fully nationalized healthcare. * GP surgeries (doctors offices) are private businesses, and may provide NHS services or private services. * The NHS contracts out for a growing number of services, ranging from operating whole departments (e.g. Virgin operates the out-of-hours walk in centre for non-emergency care next door to the A&E/ER at my local hospital) to cleaning. * The NHS rents out facilities to private providers, and individual NHS trusts may derive income from carrying out private work (though the proportion of this income is limited, and the revenue goes back into their budgets). This is in addition to NHS staff often renting NHS facilities to carry out private surgeries outside their normal rotation. * Dentists are mostly private and generally dentists that do NHS work also do private work, and often mix and match with the same patient (e.g. the NHS does not reimburse more expensive types of fillings, so your dentist may recommend e.g. things like porcelain veneers on visible teeth and stick to NHS options for less visible work). * Pharmacies are mostly private - the NHS mostly operates pharmacies only in hospitals etc. but they too can be privately operated. * 10% of the population have private health insurance. This is mostly "top up" insurance offering additional services or faster turnaround for non-essential surgeries etc. than the NHS. * Many types of healthcare services are mostly private. E.g. while you can get some types of cosmetic surgery on the NHS As it stands, the NHS is the most cost-effective hybrid or private system in any developed country. Too cost-effective some would say; to the point where it comes at the cost of making things more miserable for patients. But that's what you get when we pay far less than any other countries at a comparable income level.
  - ryanwaggoner 9y ago
    OK, you're sort of shining a spotlight on my ignorance here, but a few thoughts: 1. Maybe "fully nationalized" isn't technically true, but my understanding was that the UK was widely regarded to have a nationalized healthcare system. Not really interested in whether that's technically true at the margins unless there's some major policy impact. 2. "Cost-effective" is an interesting term, because it assumes we agree on what "effective" means. I want choice, innovation, better health outcomes, more convenience, shorter wait times, etc., and I'm willing to pay some premium (but not 4x or something) for them. For these reasons, I don't want want the NHS system here (nor do I think it'd work here), despite it being better for some values of "cost-effectiveness". 3. If by "cost-effectiveness", you just mean per-capita spending on healthcare, are you sure the NHS is the most cost-effective of any developed country? Doesn't seem to be the case here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea... -- maybe you're using some more complicated measure of spending per health outcomes?
- njarboe 9y ago
  It would be awesome if people with my values (my tribe) were in charge. Similar to the view that communism is a great political system; all those failures you point to are not true communism.
- Nursie 9y ago
  >> I personally don’t understand how anyone who thinks the government is awesome This is where I think some libertarians wander off from what those largely in favour of state actually think. I think a lot of people would agree there's a lot wrong with government, but most would also rather have one. They just want one that's run better. Your libertarianism seems quite pragmatic and I personally sympathise with the ideas behind libertarianism - lack of coercion, lack of people making arbitrary moral decisions (like drug laws) and imposing them on society. However I also like public services, welfare safety nets (BI is indeed interesting) and various other things that only come with state-level cooperation.
  - ryanwaggoner 9y ago
    I think a lot of people would agree there's a lot wrong with government, but most would also rather have one. I would argue that most libertarians aren't anarchists, but it's a popular strawman tactic from those arguing against it (particularly on the left). It's almost a cliche: "You know where is a libertarian paradise with no government? Somalia! Hurr durr!" I think we all agree that government has problems. Libertarians just think that the problems of government are inherent and fundamental, so the solution is usually in less government (but not no government), while "liberals" (huge spectrum here, I know) seem to think that the answer is more government. And we all agree that we need better government, but libertarians think that public accountability works better the closer the citizenry is to the decisions being made, and liberals seem to favor more centralized decision-making, I guess for efficiency? I'm not entirely clear on why :)
    - Nursie 9y ago
      I don't much care for that, but like I said, I do like a welfare safety net, public health service and other public services. I'm not saying it's all libertarians, but I have interacted with quite a number on the net, over the years, who would scrap those things entirely. I, personally, think inefficient government is a price worth paying for such things, but that we must seek to do better.
    - _Tev 9y ago
      The more / less government is false dichotomy. That's why leftists make jokes about you, even smart-sounding libertarians like you always make these stupid black / white statements. Universal healthcare being one example (at least our system seems simpler than your deductible / premium / medicare / medicaid / etc. chaos), UBI being another.
- socialist_coder 9y ago
  You strongly prefer a public option, or single payer. You are open to trying basic income. Do you think we should have laws and regulations to protect the environment? If so, then I think you have graduated from Libertarian to Liberal. Ha ha! I did the same thing after I realized that a true free market libertarian ideal is easily abused by corporations and the wealthy, and the common man has no chance.
  - ryanwaggoner 9y ago
    Classical liberal, yes.
- scotty79 9y ago
  > I believe very strongly in the sovereignty of the individual. You should be very interested then where your sovereignty comes from. At the moment it comes from having above yourself an entity so powerful that you and others around you (that are 10 times, 100, 1000 times as powerful as you) are equally insignificant and uninteresting as long as you pay your dues and don't make a fuss, ie don't try to overtake one another in violent way (even in some non-violent ways that in the past proved bothersome for the overlord so they were forbidden). The world is full of military technology that just invites anyone with a goal to put the finger on the trigger. So far best invention to control this state of affairs is to have the most dangerous weaponary in hands of just few actors preferably with non-overlapping geographical zones of interest.
dboreham 9y ago
What you are noticing is that one person's just cause is another person's business model. For many people the call to "have freedom and keep the government out your life" sounds wonderful, even if they either don't know exactly what that means, or if it means 1000 different things to 1000 people. It just sounds good. But it also allows some other people in the process to make more money. e.g. if you make money by digging something out the ground and selling it, you don't want to be told you can't dig any more and you don't want to be told you have to fill the hole in when you're done and put all the plants and wildlife back how it was. So you get a symbiotic relationship emerging between these two groups of folks : the money-makers spend their time and effort pushing "freedom", for purely personal gain, while the freedom-lovers eat it up, improving their self-esteem and feeling good about themselves even though they have very little actual freedom, and a big dirty hole in the ground next to their town.
moduspol 9y ago
> Anyway, I think most Libertarians would be cool with a handful of ultra-wealthy, because they really think they can conquer the market someday and be one of them. The existence of ultra-wealthy people isn't inherently bad. The question is about the alternative. If everyone's quality of life improves (including relative to the ultra-wealthy), I'd rather that happen than reduce everyone's quality of life out of a sense of "fairness." Claiming most libertarians act against their own interests because they think they can become ultra-wealthy is straw-manning the view.
- metalliqaz 9y ago
  That's a good point, but I don't concede that improving fairness makes the quality of life worse for the 0.001%. Their wealth far exceeds their ability to consume it. With a small shift, you can drastically reduce suffering without effecting their life in any perceptible way.
pascalxus 9y ago
Liberterians such as myself, would like to see a more prosperous world. With the technology we have available today, we're 1000s of times more productive than we were millions of years ago, and yet, 99% of society is still stuck working 40-60 hours a week and barely earning enough money to get by. There are many reasons why this is the case: taxes are only 1 reason. But, most of these reasons ultimately have something to do with government. Housing and Healthcare is no-where near as cost effective as it could be, if we were allowed to zone it properly and innovate on it. Ultimately, Libertarians stand for the freedom of people. Currently, when a government takes and uses 1/3 of every dollar earned, the society is not free. Note: that ratio would be a lot higher in expensive areas like the bay area, etc. 1/3 doesn't sound like much oppression, but when you add in the multiplicative effect on the spending side, it becomes more onerous because everything is more expensive. The day care has to charge 50% more, etc. It's about Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Most people, 99% are still working on their bottom tier. It would be morally, ethically, and economically wrong to stop their progress, by taking 1/3 of their productive efforts. As the above posts mentioned, we do differentiate between natural resources and earned resources. Natural resources like Land should be taxed because you didn't create it from your own labor. On Earnings However, if you make your bed in the morning, you should be able to keep that labor - no one should be allowed to come over and use 33% of your bed.
- metalliqaz 9y ago
  "Currently, when a government takes and uses 1/3 of every dollar earned, the society is not free." See, this is just nonsense. You follow this to its logical conclusion and the only free people have no government. You're free to reject it all. There's plenty of places where you can just say "fuck it" and nobody will come bother you. Go ahead. Nobody does, though, because they quite like the security of living in a city, where no matter what the emergency help is just a phone call away, and one can watch live video from the surface of Mars on a smartphone.

ryanwaggoner 9y ago

I consider myself a pragmatic libertarian, which off the top of my head basically means that: 1. I believe very strongly in the sovereignty of the individual. 2. I prefer more open and incentive-driven markets. 3. I’m skeptical of governments, particularly large and powerful ones, because they’re inefficient, rely on coercion, and are too tempting as prizes to be captured for power, prestige, and wealth. However, these are all on a spectrum and I’m open to trying other points along that spectrum if they work better than our current system. I also recognize that the optimal system may be too distant from where we are today to even move towards it directly. So for healthcare for example, our system is dreadful, but I’m not sure that pure free markets would be better. But I’d strongly prefer a public option (and maybe even single payer), or a well-designed hybrid system like Singapore or Switzerland has to fully nationalized healthcare like UK. Similarly, I’m open to trying basic income, a land value or VAT instead of income tax, and other alternative systems. I’m particularly in favor of systems that are more stable and resistant to changing from the whims of the current government. I personally don’t understand how anyone who thinks the government is awesome can continue to believe that when they watch episode after episode of unchecked police brutality, or constant encroachments on civil liberties, or the entire Trump administration.

vidarh 9y ago
The UK doesn't have fully nationalized healthcare. * GP surgeries (doctors offices) are private businesses, and may provide NHS services or private services. * The NHS contracts out for a growing number of services, ranging from operating whole departments (e.g. Virgin operates the out-of-hours walk in centre for non-emergency care next door to the A&E/ER at my local hospital) to cleaning. * The NHS rents out facilities to private providers, and individual NHS trusts may derive income from carrying out private work (though the proportion of this income is limited, and the revenue goes back into their budgets). This is in addition to NHS staff often renting NHS facilities to carry out private surgeries outside their normal rotation. * Dentists are mostly private and generally dentists that do NHS work also do private work, and often mix and match with the same patient (e.g. the NHS does not reimburse more expensive types of fillings, so your dentist may recommend e.g. things like porcelain veneers on visible teeth and stick to NHS options for less visible work). * Pharmacies are mostly private - the NHS mostly operates pharmacies only in hospitals etc. but they too can be privately operated. * 10% of the population have private health insurance. This is mostly "top up" insurance offering additional services or faster turnaround for non-essential surgeries etc. than the NHS. * Many types of healthcare services are mostly private. E.g. while you can get some types of cosmetic surgery on the NHS As it stands, the NHS is the most cost-effective hybrid or private system in any developed country. Too cost-effective some would say; to the point where it comes at the cost of making things more miserable for patients. But that's what you get when we pay far less than any other countries at a comparable income level.
- ryanwaggoner 9y ago
  OK, you're sort of shining a spotlight on my ignorance here, but a few thoughts: 1. Maybe "fully nationalized" isn't technically true, but my understanding was that the UK was widely regarded to have a nationalized healthcare system. Not really interested in whether that's technically true at the margins unless there's some major policy impact. 2. "Cost-effective" is an interesting term, because it assumes we agree on what "effective" means. I want choice, innovation, better health outcomes, more convenience, shorter wait times, etc., and I'm willing to pay some premium (but not 4x or something) for them. For these reasons, I don't want want the NHS system here (nor do I think it'd work here), despite it being better for some values of "cost-effectiveness". 3. If by "cost-effectiveness", you just mean per-capita spending on healthcare, are you sure the NHS is the most cost-effective of any developed country? Doesn't seem to be the case here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea... -- maybe you're using some more complicated measure of spending per health outcomes?
njarboe 9y ago
It would be awesome if people with my values (my tribe) were in charge. Similar to the view that communism is a great political system; all those failures you point to are not true communism.
Nursie 9y ago
>> I personally don’t understand how anyone who thinks the government is awesome This is where I think some libertarians wander off from what those largely in favour of state actually think. I think a lot of people would agree there's a lot wrong with government, but most would also rather have one. They just want one that's run better. Your libertarianism seems quite pragmatic and I personally sympathise with the ideas behind libertarianism - lack of coercion, lack of people making arbitrary moral decisions (like drug laws) and imposing them on society. However I also like public services, welfare safety nets (BI is indeed interesting) and various other things that only come with state-level cooperation.
- ryanwaggoner 9y ago
  I think a lot of people would agree there's a lot wrong with government, but most would also rather have one. I would argue that most libertarians aren't anarchists, but it's a popular strawman tactic from those arguing against it (particularly on the left). It's almost a cliche: "You know where is a libertarian paradise with no government? Somalia! Hurr durr!" I think we all agree that government has problems. Libertarians just think that the problems of government are inherent and fundamental, so the solution is usually in less government (but not no government), while "liberals" (huge spectrum here, I know) seem to think that the answer is more government. And we all agree that we need better government, but libertarians think that public accountability works better the closer the citizenry is to the decisions being made, and liberals seem to favor more centralized decision-making, I guess for efficiency? I'm not entirely clear on why :)
  - Nursie 9y ago
    I don't much care for that, but like I said, I do like a welfare safety net, public health service and other public services. I'm not saying it's all libertarians, but I have interacted with quite a number on the net, over the years, who would scrap those things entirely. I, personally, think inefficient government is a price worth paying for such things, but that we must seek to do better.
  - _Tev 9y ago
    The more / less government is false dichotomy. That's why leftists make jokes about you, even smart-sounding libertarians like you always make these stupid black / white statements. Universal healthcare being one example (at least our system seems simpler than your deductible / premium / medicare / medicaid / etc. chaos), UBI being another.
socialist_coder 9y ago
You strongly prefer a public option, or single payer. You are open to trying basic income. Do you think we should have laws and regulations to protect the environment? If so, then I think you have graduated from Libertarian to Liberal. Ha ha! I did the same thing after I realized that a true free market libertarian ideal is easily abused by corporations and the wealthy, and the common man has no chance.
- ryanwaggoner 9y ago
  Classical liberal, yes.
scotty79 9y ago
> I believe very strongly in the sovereignty of the individual. You should be very interested then where your sovereignty comes from. At the moment it comes from having above yourself an entity so powerful that you and others around you (that are 10 times, 100, 1000 times as powerful as you) are equally insignificant and uninteresting as long as you pay your dues and don't make a fuss, ie don't try to overtake one another in violent way (even in some non-violent ways that in the past proved bothersome for the overlord so they were forbidden). The world is full of military technology that just invites anyone with a goal to put the finger on the trigger. So far best invention to control this state of affairs is to have the most dangerous weaponary in hands of just few actors preferably with non-overlapping geographical zones of interest.

dboreham 9y ago

What you are noticing is that one person's just cause is another person's business model. For many people the call to "have freedom and keep the government out your life" sounds wonderful, even if they either don't know exactly what that means, or if it means 1000 different things to 1000 people. It just sounds good. But it also allows some other people in the process to make more money. e.g. if you make money by digging something out the ground and selling it, you don't want to be told you can't dig any more and you don't want to be told you have to fill the hole in when you're done and put all the plants and wildlife back how it was. So you get a symbiotic relationship emerging between these two groups of folks : the money-makers spend their time and effort pushing "freedom", for purely personal gain, while the freedom-lovers eat it up, improving their self-esteem and feeling good about themselves even though they have very little actual freedom, and a big dirty hole in the ground next to their town.

moduspol 9y ago

> Anyway, I think most Libertarians would be cool with a handful of ultra-wealthy, because they really think they can conquer the market someday and be one of them. The existence of ultra-wealthy people isn't inherently bad. The question is about the alternative. If everyone's quality of life improves (including relative to the ultra-wealthy), I'd rather that happen than reduce everyone's quality of life out of a sense of "fairness." Claiming most libertarians act against their own interests because they think they can become ultra-wealthy is straw-manning the view.

metalliqaz 9y ago
That's a good point, but I don't concede that improving fairness makes the quality of life worse for the 0.001%. Their wealth far exceeds their ability to consume it. With a small shift, you can drastically reduce suffering without effecting their life in any perceptible way.

pascalxus 9y ago

Liberterians such as myself, would like to see a more prosperous world. With the technology we have available today, we're 1000s of times more productive than we were millions of years ago, and yet, 99% of society is still stuck working 40-60 hours a week and barely earning enough money to get by. There are many reasons why this is the case: taxes are only 1 reason. But, most of these reasons ultimately have something to do with government. Housing and Healthcare is no-where near as cost effective as it could be, if we were allowed to zone it properly and innovate on it. Ultimately, Libertarians stand for the freedom of people. Currently, when a government takes and uses 1/3 of every dollar earned, the society is not free. Note: that ratio would be a lot higher in expensive areas like the bay area, etc. 1/3 doesn't sound like much oppression, but when you add in the multiplicative effect on the spending side, it becomes more onerous because everything is more expensive. The day care has to charge 50% more, etc. It's about Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Most people, 99% are still working on their bottom tier. It would be morally, ethically, and economically wrong to stop their progress, by taking 1/3 of their productive efforts. As the above posts mentioned, we do differentiate between natural resources and earned resources. Natural resources like Land should be taxed because you didn't create it from your own labor. On Earnings However, if you make your bed in the morning, you should be able to keep that labor - no one should be allowed to come over and use 33% of your bed.

metalliqaz 9y ago
"Currently, when a government takes and uses 1/3 of every dollar earned, the society is not free." See, this is just nonsense. You follow this to its logical conclusion and the only free people have no government. You're free to reject it all. There's plenty of places where you can just say "fuck it" and nobody will come bother you. Go ahead. Nobody does, though, because they quite like the security of living in a city, where no matter what the emergency help is just a phone call away, and one can watch live video from the surface of Mars on a smartphone.