Four Reasons to Reject Libertarianism

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Conservatives that supported the Confederate States of America have always argued that free labor is unaffordable.

You are living in an alternative universe. The only earnings being redistributed in this one, are from the poor and middle class to the rich. Thanks to the libertarians and conservatives.

The liberals are just as guilty of giving huge government handouts to elite company's. How about the auto industry bailouts? The bank bailouts? A lot of that had purely to do with politics.

G.E. Is a classic example as well.

http://www.forbes.com/2011/04/13/ge-exx ... taxes.html

Whether you are conservative or liberal it is about buying votes to stay in office. The democrats are just as guilty as the republicans are.

By having a flat tax, you avoid all of these sleezebag politicians doing things to buy them votes.

How is denying your 'rights' not taking them away? Rights are nothing more than privileges. There's a George Carlin video about that somewhere...

Why do agreements need to mean contracts? Contracts essentially say "Do X and don't do Y for time Z under threat of force". Contracts only exist under threat of force, which is why I want to do away with them. Instead agreements should be "I'll do X, but not Y until I find it no longer benefits me".



1. My definition of freedom... I suppose would be being able to do with my life as I choose without coercion on others.

2. How about the fact that the state would still exist, for one? "Libertarianism" is really nothing revolutionary, because we'd still have the basic formula of state-capitalism that we have now. Absentee-landlordship enforced by the gun of the state that forces us to participate in the market or starve, essentially. Notice my emphasis on the word 'force'. I don't want to participate in the market, but this system doesn't give me a choice, and neither would Libertarianism.

You seem to be thinking of one strain of one variety of libertarianism, which hardly anyone believes in...?

In a free market, you'd be able to drop out and homestead some unused land. Well, as long as it's a free market, not a Rothbardian system that believes living on a bit of land for a time gives you eternal ownership of it. Or you could trade for food from someone who's done that, whilst building your own house on other unused land, but then that would be a market transaction...

But seriously, why would you be stopped from smallholding?

Libertarians want the poor to starve to death.

That's funny, I thought the government was in the respective hands of Democrats and Republicans during that period, both of whom practice crony capitalism and expand the size of the state.

No, we don't, but this libertarian would certainly like to see less no content posts.

Depends on the libertarian, as we're not particularly homogenous. I'm kind of unusual in that I support a lot of social safety systems such as health care on efficiency grounds, that it's cheaper to provide preventative care than to pick up the pieces when someone allows something serious to go untreated, I just want to see it done in such a way that it minimizes the creation of a new bureaucracy with it's own built in and ever growing constituency.

Environmental stuff is tougher, I mean the EPA is off it's rocker with some regulations, the ones that actually cost billions of dollars per life saved and such, but where to draw the line is a question I don't have an answer to. Of course, I'm personally just not that up on environmental issues, it's not that I don't care about them, I just don't find them interesting enough to really dig into the subject. I'm sure CATO or someone has actually done the research and has a viable system stashed away in their papers somewhere, I'm just not up on it myself.

Liberals don't believe in freedom, they believe they know what's best for other people and set out to impose it on them; you do a pretty good job of demonstrating this yourself.



No, it wasn't. People can live wherever they want, they don't get to live wherever they want and force other people to support them in doing so. If I move to the middle of a desert and then demand that the government drill me a well, run power lines out to me, and pave a road to my doorstep at public expense and they say no, has the government just infringed upon my freedom to liver where I choose? According to you, they have.

Also, you don't understand off-shoring in terms of efficiency, that using a cheaper labor pool is functionally identical to inventing a more efficient widget that allows a job to be done with less labor. Would you have outlawed the car because it put blacksmiths out of business? How about the robot, because it put auto factory workers out of jobs? CNC equipment that displaced machinists? This is econ 101 stuff here, increasing efficiency is always going to create economic disruption, and some people are going to have the bad luck to be in careers that suddenly become obsolete, it's inexorable. The best you can do is offer retraining and job placement programs, the alternative is stiffing the entire economy and suppressing innovation in the name of keeping people busy.



No, they're not, for the reasons explained above.



Yes, that's why some of our biggest causes are ending the drug war, which grossly affects the poor, eminent domain abuse, i.e. corporations colluding with the government to steal people's property, and crony capitalism, large corporations deriving an unfair advantage from their relationship with the state. All very Scrooge McDuck of us...
I'll spare you the wall of rolling eyes.

Like I said believing that there is one group of people that only do good is not helpful for anyone only ignorant and dangerous. You seem to be under some false belief that liberals don't help out the rich and ship jobs over seas. Under the leadership of the new liberal president and his people the Trans-Pacific Partnership was signed into agreement. What is it for it is there to make it more profitable and easier to ship jobs over seas. But according to you liberals never do this why you could believe such none sense is beyond me.

Those people might as well have been forced out of their homes at gun point, by armed government troops. Because the results are the same.[/quote]

Yes and liberals help to do this you cant show me prof of anything different because it dosent exist you are under the false assumption that they want to help people. When all that they have really done is say that they did and then do the exact opposite and hurt the people they said they would help.

Liberals support freedom. Libertarians and conservatives support poor people being slaves to the rich.[/quote]

Liberals don't support freedom conservatives don't support freed libertarians don't support freedom they support rich people. The libertarians are the only party though that seems to want to make changes that will help make jobs and free up the justice system by doing away with government bureaucracy and hypocrisy. Something that liberals and conservatives seem to not understand just as you don't seem to understand.

WOW!! !! ! Whats it like living in your world

Yes, and this is even worse now thanks to the very libertarian 'Citizens United' decision by SCOTUS.

How can you be an economics major and think that this is true? Do you really think that all, or even a majority, of lobbying is done over simple taxation?

Because you'd be trespassing on the King's... oops, I mean the Native Americans'... oops, I mean the People's Hunting Grounds. Land that is committed to one purpose cannot be used for another, and its use for other purposes is sometimes impaired far, far into the future. In various places in California and the West, there are areas with acres and acres of gravel tailings piled up along former stream beds, where hydraulic gold mining was done on public lands on a massive scale. This type of mining was stopped a century ago, but there's still nothing growing on those tailings and no use that land can be put to.

Homesteading isn't this harmful or this long-lasting in its consequences, but it's still removing public land from public use. It is preventing any individual who wants to hunt, fish, or camp on that property, from being able to do so, as long as that homesteader is there. If said homesteader is, for a Humboldt County example, a paranoid pot grower who runs enormous diesel generators 24-7 (which leaks diesel and solvents into local watersheds (edit: and disturb the other neighbors, who may have legitimately moved into the area for a peaceful, quiet rural lifestyle, with noise that can be heard for miles away)), shoots at anyone who trespasses on "his" property, uses huge quantities of herbicides and pesticides, and deliberately poisons and tortures endangered species... weellll, at least it was public land, right? And, no, <=that isn't an isolated example. It's rampant in the Emerald triangle.

I'm willing to entertain that idea. Please provide sources that can convince me, otherwise this is just another opinion.



I never said all lobbying is done over taxation. But our tax code is thousands of pages long. There are too many loopholes in favor of people that have connections to people in office. Do you not agree?

Lobbying is done over many reasons but tell me how a flat tax would hurt this country? Remember, there are tax returns. Poor people get most of their taxes back. Rich people don't.

Lobbying is done for anybody who has their own agenda, whether it's good or bad is for you to be the judge. But a flat tax would not hurt this country.

"sources that can convince you"?
*snort*
Ad-hominem before the argument is even made. Tell me, what sources will you accept? Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, The Heritage Foundation? Anyone else?


You said changing the tax system would end the influence of money in politics.

I do agree with that.


Who gets most of their tax return back currently has nothing to do with a flat tax... unless you're implying that poor people will continue to get most of their taxes back after the imposition of a flat tax? In which case, it wouldn't be a flat tax.


yes, it would be.
A flat tax is a de facto regressive tax,
http://www.forbes.com/sites/leonardburm ... -is-a-vat/
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/ ... ss-warfare

...and de facto increases economic inequality in a country.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/top ... sive-taxes
http://www.epi.org/publication/rising-i ... ng-market/

Extreme economic inequality is causally associated with a whole host of social ills.
http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/20 ... r-society/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_inequality
http://www.economist.com/node/21564414
http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson.html
http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10 ... 308-115926

Therefore a flat tax, which will exacerbate the already extreme economic inequality that we have in the US, will cause social ills. Social ills hurt a country. Therefore, a flat tax will hurt this country.

Note:
A flat tax which was applied to ALL income, including bonuses, presents, corporate profits, offshore holdings, and especially capital gains, would actually be better (more progressive, if not progressive in an absolute sense) than the current income tax which is actually quite regressive. I would support such a tax program on a strictly pragmatic level, especially if it had a floor (ie, no taxation up to 3x the poverty level, for example), maintained the EIC, and allowed for basic social-good deductions like education costs.