Libertarianism: Based or Cringe? - Thanks for reading my schizo rant

Libertarians for executive branch is cringe. They would make the worst governors and presidents. Mayor of a small town might work but they'd be shit at governing anything metropolitan.
Libertarians for legislative branch could go either way, depends a lot on the breed of libertarian. Not that most libertarians have any shot of being elected.
Libertarians for judicial branch is megabased,
 
"Papered over by legislation"? It was directly superseded by the 17th amendment, bro. You make it sound like it was some little-known surreptitious backdoor smoky room deal.

You can dislike that change all you want, but it's an extremely well-known amendment that went through the entire ratification process. There's no trickery at play.
True. But should be noted it did happen during the reconstruction era. The 17th amendment also has all the finesse or a sledgehammer with no regard for the issues it's existence causes
 
U.S. is decentralized, it has three branches instead of one, executive, judicial and legislative.

I was focusing more on the "small" than the "decentralized" part there. I'd question how "decentralized" it is as well, but I guess that's relative, and it's relatively less centralized than a lot of other white nations.

But that's like saying you are less likely to commit suicide than Jeffrey Epstein. It's pretty faint praise.
 
Small L. "if I'm not hurting anyone, leave me alone" Based.
That's only an idealistic take on life that is not implemented anywhere on the planet. Reality is people will fuck with you and you won't be left alone. Sometimes even isolating in some remote hut is not enough to prevent some business start oil drilling nearby or deforestation operations. Reality is that the despicable leftoids are often correct about some things, like "the person is political" and "everything is power relations".
But people that lean right or are centrists don't benefit from acknowledging that, as it comes with quite important implications. Leftoids also don't fully acknowledge the implications of their observations, i.e. that human rights do not actually exist and those in power can always take them from you.
I will give you that it would be pretty chill and relaxing to not get fucked with, but I've yet to see a path towards such a thing. Fucking with others, i.e. the beforementioned power relations, is simply human nature.
 
  • Like
Reactions: The Foxtrot
I like the font choice, it really helps to complete the authentic "encountering a crazy person on the internet" experience.
I speak in verdana. When I meet somebody in the hood they say "dis nigga really be speekin' in verdana"
I really wish someone could explain this to me in no uncertain terms, what are the Libertarians doing that's turning people away?
child labour.jpg (0_ 0 )
I mean fair, but along that line of thinking you can be a "civil libertarian" or have opinions or beliefs that broadly lean "libertarian" without being a capital-L Libertarian. The American "Libertarian Party" are widely regarded as cranks for a reason.
Ideologies don't exist, they're just modern justifications for world views people naturally have. Being "libertarian" is just another way to say you're Anglo-Saxon, or you were raised in a Protestant household. Communism is just another way to say you're a spiteful mutant/jew. Fascism (Mussolini style) is just another way to say you have the sensibilities of a Catholic Mediterranean. HOWEVER, ideologies do exist when you're in power in order to justify your own power.
 
they're not even entirely wrong here, working as an assistant/apprentice at a real business would be a lot better for many kids than sitting in public school.

the problem of course is that when you take it to its logical conclusion you don't just end up with kids doing apprenticeships at nice local businesses, you'd also end up with kids getting exploited to hell and back by soulless corporations, which is why child labor is a can of worms that really should stay closed.
 
As some have said in this thread: love the band, hate the scene.

The retard libertarian branch that chooses to debate people about totally irrelevant or academic bullshit has worked harder to convince everyone the whole ideology is stupid than any socialist ever did. Also, I think COVID revealed a lot of them were no talk no walk, as many self identifying libertarians were easily bullied into accepting big government tyranny, i.e the whole thing was a fucking LARP. I'm all for minimal government, but wear your mask because Fauci told you so! Fucking retard motherfucker (if anybody is offended by my comments on COVID, make a post in a relevant COVID thread and @ me as not to derail this one).

Also typical libertarians come off as extremely annoying and smug talking about their ideology. Somehow all of our societal problems will disappear right now if we remove the government, so to address real practical concerns is irrelevant, because I'm so much smarter than you. They also like to waste time fighting people on fringe issues that make them look stupid rather than try to talk to people about what will actually make a difference in the short term (i.e foreign policy in the U.S is a costly disaster, which I think most people agree with these days anyway).

TL;DR the morons that label themselves as Libertarians have totally ruined the term, I identify as a "small government conservative' now because of them. Actually discussing the issues related to big vs. small vs no government probably warrants another thread because the term "libertarian" has been so tainted by its own adherents. It's like Josh's line about Baked Alaska: they are so damn stupid they don't need to be feds, they do what the feds want anyway.
 
Extremely cringe for several reasons.

1. It's one of those ideologies that attracts teenagers and young adults because it puts forth a simple, easy-to-grasp understanding of the world that runs against the mainstream. This means that it becomes 'baby's first totalizing political ideology', so it's associated with insufferable 18 year olds who think that they have the whole world figured out and can boil it down to a few dumb, autistic slogans.

2. It tends to infect other political movements, and then completely hamstrings them because it's a retarded ideology. A good example is the cold war fusionism right wing, which completely abandoned pursuing positions in federal bureaucracies or public schools because the government was icky. This is what allowed the left to run a long march through the institutions in the later 20th century basically uncontested. The idea that you should never take political action because then someone might take political action against you is mind-numbingly retarded when the other side has already been taking increasingly draconian political action against you for almost a century.

3. It's the kind of ideology that people in academia or think tanks/media enjoy (or people who have a comfortable inheritance), so it has an incredibly lionized view of the private sector that would be instantly dispelled by actually working in it. This makes them immediately insufferable to anyone in the private sector, who knows how incredibly fucked up and dysfunctional it is, and how retarded the 'captains of industry' and their managerial staff often are. And how the 'market' doesn't correct for any of that retardation most of the time.

4. 'Real capitalism has never been tried'. Libertarians will constantly make fun of commies for pulling this one, then go around and do the exact same thing, moving the goalposts any time you make a criticism of capitalism. It's even easier for libertarians to do this because, while communism is a shitshow once put into practice, it can win political victories and so actually gain a position of power. It has a record to critique. Libertarians doesn't have a record to critique because it's politically impotent, and so never wins any sort of victory that can translate into an effective libertarian political structure.

5. Not understanding how the structure of capitalism is itself perverse and often leads to bad outcomes, and so they get btfo by commies whenever they argue - because they have to autistically defend the perfection of capitalism, and look like weird losers who are stubborn and wrong about a bunch of stuff to any politically ambivalent audience which doesn't already agree with them. This is especially annoying because they walk away from these arguments thinking that they won, and getting slapped on the back by their libertarian buddies. But the measure of 'winning' a debate isn't in who has the most beautiful, internally consistent arguments, it's who convinces the audience to change their minds. And they seldom do that.

It's easy to win arguments against communists. You agree that capitalism has fucked up aspects, put forward an alternative plan to address that, and then point out how retarded their own ideology is and how often its fucked everything up. If you dig in your heals defending a flawed system you automatically lose.
 
I would consider myself a small l libertarian, for sure.
Big L Libertarianism exists in a fairy tale vacuum though. I think big L "maximum freedom" Libertarianism is a good starting point when you're developing an opinion on something, start by considering the most permissive option. But you've gotta apply a healthy dose of reality and adjust your outlook based on that.
 
Think about it, kids these days play games like Minecraft, Factorio and Satisfactory. These kids yearn for the mines, they yearn to cover the lands in optimal and efficient machine to produce product at the highest level for the cheapest cost. Then expand their factories destroying the eco-system for 5% faster gear production and build gun turrets by the thousands using uranium enriched bullets to protect their NAP. We need to open our eyes and harness this power for the future of the planet, of the entire universe. Legalize child labour for your only hope for a future
 
  • Feels
Reactions: PipTheAlchemist
There are different "flavors" of libertarianism, but the loudest voices in the room seem to be the anarcho-capitalists, or "ancaps".

I always found the ancap obsession with the nonaggression principle to be highly idealistic, because as soon as anybody has the weapons or power to enforce their will on others there is nothing stopping them from saying "fuck the NAP" and basically using force to carry out their own personal ambitions whatever they may be. Libertarians often counter this by saying that communities can choose not to do business with or remove people that violate the NAP, but that sounds an awful lot like a municipal government in an "anarchist" society, and also who is going to stop bad actors that have built up a larger powerbase than what their local community can muster?

Then it gets into the weeds over how do you manage competing private law enforcement agencies in a libertarian society or court systems without it degenerating into gang wars, etc. I just do not see how it is workable.

There are also minarchists, I suppose, but then how do they determine what government services are and are not necessary in a "night watchman" state, and how extensive they need to be? Certain public institutions need to be extensively-funded in order to be effective, and it seems that minarchism would eventually just end up reinventing the wheel.
 
It is well intentioned cringe, but cringe.

Lolberts work well in small communities, but like a lot of utopias, they only work in a vacuum.

The idea of a lolbert state being able to keep a military that could oppose a collectivist civilisation is outright ridiculous.

Even if this ancap and lolbert paradise worked when no foreign power poked it, would you trust it to put up anything more than low tier guerilla fights against a single, united mass of enemies?

Realistically they would be taken out by mobs long before that, but lets give them the benefit of the doubt and say every countrymen of theirs is a lolbert true with no ill intentions, because Razordaddy was fuck you right.
 
Libertarianism is a good starting point when you're developing an opinion on something, start by considering the most permissive option.
Being able to prostitute your children for fentanyl is the most permissive option. If your ideology is known for spending a lot of time debating why that is a good thing, your ideology is shit.
 
lolwhat? That's an Anarchist talking point, Libertarianism calls for small or decentralized government, which is what the Federal U.S. government is.
No, it's the basic foundation of libertarianism. The US fed is not a libertarian government, because it has repeatedly and excessively inserted itself between the consenting actions of two individuals with the threat violence. This happens when they take taxes and you cannot opt out, it happens when they require you to file licences and forms. It's more of a libertarian government that my gay shitsack government (UK) where they charge you for having fucking chickens! But, it's still not actually libertarian. It's an implementation of some limited libertarian principles.
 
  • Like
Reactions: The Foxtrot
Being able to prostitute your children for fentanyl is the most permissive option. If your ideology is known for spending a lot of time debating why that is a good thing, your ideology is shit.
That's what I mean. It's fine to start your thinking at big L Libertarianism because living as freely as possible is a good thing, rather than starting from a point where all things are disallowed and debating what you would deign to allow people to do. But you have to consider reality and, to a degree, morality, and move from there, meaning at the end of the day you aren't going to stick with many Libertarian viewpoints because most only work in a fantasy vacuum.

For example, should people be allowed to say whatever they want? Start at "yes" but then reality sets in and you get the old yelling "fire" in a theater exception.

Should two consenting people be allowed to have sex? The answer should be yes, until reality sets in and situations arise where it shouldn't be. If it turns out one of them is 40 and one is 14 and then we've found a situation where the answer is absolutely "no." despite what some big L Libertarians might argue.
 
It's only based when it is ceneterd around a strong Christian ethos and mindset in addition to advocaring for a government that actually does what it needs to do (curb the influence big business and foreign states on the population and generally providing for the common good in clear definable ways (like having roads, national parks and the like)) and for strong communities filled with strong, God-fearing people like that of Ron Paul and Lord Acton. Modern libertarianism is just libertinism and a retarded political philosophy for teenagers.
 
Back