You'd have to look in the upper reaches of Alaska or other far away places to find people who actually live on their own without the benefits of collectivist society...
In what way does being a Libertarian require being a backwoods, live-off-the-land type of individual?
Because, if you're really a true-blue anti-collectivist as some Libertarians claim to be, you'd have to live on your own and reject all the luxuries that collectivist society offers all of us.
...that libertarians suppossedly [sic] find some [sic] offensive and want to avoid.
I have no idea what this clause means. Translation?
Most libertarians I've debated rail against collectivist society, they detest it, they want to live without it. Although few are apparently willing to go out on their own and try to make it in this world without the help of society. I mean, unless you're living a romote area by your own means, you're benefitting from collectivist society one way or another every day of your life.
I've gone through the whole debate routine with liberatrians [sic]. They're mainly a bunch of idealists who have no grounding in how the real world works.
A political philosophy which advocates personal responsibility, individual freedom, rallies against overreaching government and eschews the 'entitlement mentality' is "idealistic"? ROFL!
Yes, it is idealistic. Isn't that what Republicans were suppossed to be all about, exactly what you described? The people who brought us the PATRIOT ACT and other unprecedented attacks on our civil liberties. Libertarians have a notion of a idealized society that doesn't exist and in fact has never existed in the history of mankind, for the most part. In some ways that's a good thing. Living standards weren't exactly good for a lot of Americans during a more Libertarian age like the late 19th Century.
Libertarianism is a great philosophy in my opinion. But, it is idealistic. How will it actually be implemented in our complex society? American society is hardly libertarian and if anything is becoming more and more authoritarian as I grow older. NYC used to be a friggin zone of anarchy when I was growing up. Now, it's just another law and order city where you can't even drink in public anymore. Not, that it is necessarily a bad thing, it's a much safer city than it used to be. But, overall our country is less free today than it was when I was a kid. Civil liberties are under attack from left and right.
For example, if we had libertartian [sic] roads...
What exactly makes a road a libertarian?
Private ownership and responsibility for its upkeep.
...we'd have to pay a toll everytime we turned down a new street, to pay the owners for the use of their roads.
LOL! And you're from New Jersey?
Taken to the extreme, Libertarianims would turn my entire state into the New Jersey Turnpike. You have to pay for infrastructure in some way. Currently, most roads are paid for by collectivist means like gas taxes and property taxes. A Libertarian New Jersey would mean that I would have to pay every neighborhood or town a fee (toll) to use their roads. Most people would like to see less tolls, not more of them.
How many people would prefer that method of paying for our roads?
Where did you get the idea that a Libertarian government would put tolls on every road?
Roads have to paid somehow. If not by collectivist means, then by individual means, which means user fees (i.e. tolls).
Libertarianism in the abstract is a beautiful idea, but it's a utopian idealogy like anarchy that's about as practical as pure communism (the diametrically oppossed philosophy) is in the real world.
Well, the very fact that you're using the adjectives "abstract" and "pure" indicates that you know that the full realization of any political philosophy is virtually unpracticeable. What makes you think that we don't know that?
The real world operates somewhere in between these two extremes.
Right. Now; do you think that the above sentence comes as a surprise to me or any other Libertarian?
Another fallicy [sic] of the libertarian idealogy is the belief in the superiority of the purely "free markets".
You'll have to define "superiority" before you hurl a charge like that. What do you mean?
I mean the fact that most markets really aren't free. Big Business and other fat cats manipulate markets in all sorts of ways, from government regulation to keep the competition at bay, to demanding government subsidies to keep their businesses afloat. For example, the U.S. airlines have never made a profit, they just got a big government bailout after 9/11. Now, I know that Libertarians don't support this sort of thing. But, the people who are suppossedly pro-free markets (the business community) certainly supports all sorts of government interference to keep their businesses profitable and free of competition.
Big Business and the wealthy elites who own them aren't really interested in "free markets" anyway. They never really have been, they've used the government to protect their industries from competition since the founding of this country.
That's very true. And a real Libertarian, like myself, is as against corporate welfare as we are against welfare for the poor. I don't support the government propping up teetering companies, erecting barriers to trade, or taking protective labor measures any more than I support affirmative action or a federal minimum wage.
Great! I'm glad to hear that you realize that. This is one of the things that makes Libertarianism idealistic. You're fighting the most powerful forces in American society who want to keep the gravy train of government largese rolling their way. You're never going to have a truly free market where companies and industries live or die on their own merits. The powers that be won't allow it.
You can't have debated libertarianism, let alone claim to understand it, if you didn't know that.
Look at all the federal largese [sic] that they're living off of under the suppossedly [sic] "free market" Republican party under Bush and his cronies in Congress.
"Free market" Republican party?! ROFL!
Big Business loves government subsidies and giveaways.
Of course they do - and so do individuals. To a Libertarian, the government needs to reject the needy whining of both.
It's like being a kid in the candystore.
It is under Democrats and Republicans, that's for sure.
So much for "free markets".
When have we had "free markets"? Are you claiming that Bush Administration policies embody "free markets"?
Free spending government is more like it.
That's for sure. But there's a monopoly shared, gleefully, by Democrats and Republicans alike.
True, both the Ds and Rs are guilty of feeding corporate welfare trough. At least the Ds don't try to hide it. They're more or less socialists, even though they don't use that label. The Republicans, on the other hand, are suppossedly against such nonesense, but as we've seen over the past 3 years nothing could be further from the truth. They've gone on a spending spree like there's no tomorrow and it's benefitting their buds in Big Business in a big way. Gravy Train!
LPS5 |
