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I think this was the wrong way to approach building a libertarian utopia. Trying to go all out libertarian within a society that is not, is similar to how cert

I think this was the wrong way to approach building a libertarian utopia. Trying to go all out libertarian within a society that is not, is similar to how certain cities try to go all out on ending homelessness, only to result in more homelessness. (When other cities don’t provide the same resources, homeless people migrate to the cities that do) Libertarian ideas need to be experimented one segment at a time, kind of like a MVP. Healthcare seems like a low hanging fruit for example.

pasabagi 6y ago
"A healthcare system foiled by bears" sounds completely awful. On a more serious note, I think your description of 'libertarian ideas experimented one segment at a time' is a pretty good description of a normal state. You experiment with throwing trash everywhere, realize it draws bears, then ban throwing trash everywhere. Do this for a few hundred years, and you'll get a pretty normal regulatory apparatus.
- sixQuarks 6y ago
  the problem is when you do this for a few hundred years, you go way past the optimal regulatory environment. If applied correctly, I believe libertarianism is the ideal form of government. The problem of course is that no form of government can be applied correctly due to human greed and corruption, which would thus make libertarianism a terrible choice. For example, without regulatory agencies, consumers would have to rely on publications such as Consumer Reports to determine which products/services are free of dangerous defects, etc. The problem is information overload and the lack of critical thinking skills among the general population. Just look at the ridiculous things large swaths of the population believes today, even though we have more access to information than ever. What I'm saying is it would be very easy to game the system in a libertarian society. Therefore, the best form of government in the real world may be a benevolent dictatorship.
  - weare138 6y ago
    >Therefore, the best form of government in the real world may be a benevolent dictatorship. So what happens when your dictator changes their mind? What ensures they stay 'benevolent' and what recourse do you have when they don't? "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." -John Dalberg
    - sixQuarks 6y ago
      Then it goes from best to worst
      - pasabagi 6y ago
        Which is why dictatorship is the absolutely worst form of government. If dictators were always awful, then at least their nations would be united against them. The better the dictator, the more power they and legitimacy they accrue, the more intense the civil war when they are succeeded by a bad dictator.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > Therefore, the best form of government in the real world may be a benevolent dictatorship. “Dictatorship” is a form of government. “Benevolent” is a hoped-for personal characteristic that is separate from the form of government.
jfengel 6y ago
You end up with the same problem, though. When you only partially implement libertarianism, money and effort creep out into other domains. Like other idealized systems, the internal logic is foiled when it's limited. There's no way to isolate one aspect because people can move both in space and in activity. You always end up with some hybrid system which obscures the merit and faults of the experiment. For example, the American health care system is "more libertarian" than those in other developed countries, and it's widely considered worse than any of them. People want to experiment with both more libertarian and less libertarian systems. They agree on only two things: the current system is bad, and the badness comes entirely from the other guy's system. Healthcare is a case where less-libertarian systems have been clearly successful. That would make a more-libertarian system an interesting experiment, but potentially a costly one. And worse, the costs are likely to fall on people without money and therefore less influence to call for change.
- sixQuarks 6y ago
  Serious question: how is the American health care system more libertarian than in other developed countries?
  - jfengel 6y ago
    You have your choice of health care providers and health insurers. Nothing changed about that under the Affordable Care Act; it excluded some low-quality insurances and established a government exchange for locating insurers, but you still pick the one you want (or opt out). You can shop around for doctors and hospitals to your heart's content, especially if you want to pay for it out of pocket. You can even haggle on the price. Many other countries have a single government health system that everybody belongs to. When the UK PM got COVID, he went to exactly the same health care system everybody else did. Others, like Germany, have private insurers, but the government limits prices. And the taxpayer-funded public health care system covers 90% of people. In the US it varies a lot state to state. The federal government has relatively little say in it (and had even less before the ACA and HIPAA). It's dominated by some very large corporations which fight fiercely with each other.

pasabagi 6y ago

"A healthcare system foiled by bears" sounds completely awful. On a more serious note, I think your description of 'libertarian ideas experimented one segment at a time' is a pretty good description of a normal state. You experiment with throwing trash everywhere, realize it draws bears, then ban throwing trash everywhere. Do this for a few hundred years, and you'll get a pretty normal regulatory apparatus.

sixQuarks 6y ago
the problem is when you do this for a few hundred years, you go way past the optimal regulatory environment. If applied correctly, I believe libertarianism is the ideal form of government. The problem of course is that no form of government can be applied correctly due to human greed and corruption, which would thus make libertarianism a terrible choice. For example, without regulatory agencies, consumers would have to rely on publications such as Consumer Reports to determine which products/services are free of dangerous defects, etc. The problem is information overload and the lack of critical thinking skills among the general population. Just look at the ridiculous things large swaths of the population believes today, even though we have more access to information than ever. What I'm saying is it would be very easy to game the system in a libertarian society. Therefore, the best form of government in the real world may be a benevolent dictatorship.
- weare138 6y ago
  >Therefore, the best form of government in the real world may be a benevolent dictatorship. So what happens when your dictator changes their mind? What ensures they stay 'benevolent' and what recourse do you have when they don't? "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." -John Dalberg
  - sixQuarks 6y ago
    Then it goes from best to worst
    - pasabagi 6y ago
      Which is why dictatorship is the absolutely worst form of government. If dictators were always awful, then at least their nations would be united against them. The better the dictator, the more power they and legitimacy they accrue, the more intense the civil war when they are succeeded by a bad dictator.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > Therefore, the best form of government in the real world may be a benevolent dictatorship. “Dictatorship” is a form of government. “Benevolent” is a hoped-for personal characteristic that is separate from the form of government.

jfengel 6y ago

You end up with the same problem, though. When you only partially implement libertarianism, money and effort creep out into other domains. Like other idealized systems, the internal logic is foiled when it's limited. There's no way to isolate one aspect because people can move both in space and in activity. You always end up with some hybrid system which obscures the merit and faults of the experiment. For example, the American health care system is "more libertarian" than those in other developed countries, and it's widely considered worse than any of them. People want to experiment with both more libertarian and less libertarian systems. They agree on only two things: the current system is bad, and the badness comes entirely from the other guy's system. Healthcare is a case where less-libertarian systems have been clearly successful. That would make a more-libertarian system an interesting experiment, but potentially a costly one. And worse, the costs are likely to fall on people without money and therefore less influence to call for change.

sixQuarks 6y ago
Serious question: how is the American health care system more libertarian than in other developed countries?
- jfengel 6y ago
  You have your choice of health care providers and health insurers. Nothing changed about that under the Affordable Care Act; it excluded some low-quality insurances and established a government exchange for locating insurers, but you still pick the one you want (or opt out). You can shop around for doctors and hospitals to your heart's content, especially if you want to pay for it out of pocket. You can even haggle on the price. Many other countries have a single government health system that everybody belongs to. When the UK PM got COVID, he went to exactly the same health care system everybody else did. Others, like Germany, have private insurers, but the government limits prices. And the taxpayer-funded public health care system covers 90% of people. In the US it varies a lot state to state. The federal government has relatively little say in it (and had even less before the ACA and HIPAA). It's dominated by some very large corporations which fight fiercely with each other.