Four Reasons to Reject Libertarianism

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Libertarians have a point when it comes to:

- Size of government (less is better)
- Free Trade (more is better)
- Free Investment (more is better)
- Free labour (more is better)

Libertarians have a problem when it comes to:

- Health care (due to information asymmetry)
- Environmental protection (due to collective action problems)

Well, that depends on what kind of libertarian you are. Lockean proviso or not (the former could actually be used to justify limits on how much land someone could acquire, by giving everyone the inalienable right to own the minimum needed to survive)?

Environmental problems aren't too difficult to solve in a libertarian framework. By polluting the environment, you're affecting others property and thus must compensate them for it. If you pollute a lake and destroy the livelihoods of those living there... I hope you have enough to pay the damages the court awards them. If the pollution spreads, you're going to be having to pay more people. If you kill someone through it, you'll be doing jail time for negligence resulting in death.

So let's say there is a family. A mom and dad, son and daughter. Everything is exactly the same except for income. Same house (fairly cheap, low mortgage), same bills (all food and expenses are frugal). One family makes 30k a year (Family 1), the other makes 100k (Family 2). Family 1 is not able to save near the amount of money if any depending on where they live if there is a sudden catastrophe that befalls them. Whether it is one of the parents losing a job, an injury, robbery/damage to property, etc. Many studies have showed a flat tax hurts the poor significantly more.

A flat tax taxes everybody the same right? No. Everyone has certain aspects of their life that are necessary to spend money on (food, water, shelter, clothes, transportation). A flat tax cuts into that more for poor people than rich people.

A progressive tax is supposed to tax in a way that shouldn't effect necessity spending much at all. It taxes more for rich people because they have more discretionary spending.

How much compensation are US citizens currently paying for the adverse effects of global warming on citizens in other countries?

Leaving aside the controversy of AGW, since when did US citizens live in a libertarian country?

Vigilians, is that you?

As far as a flat tax goes, yes a poor family will end up feeling the effects of the flat tax more. But did you ever consider that with the flat tax system under a libertarian government that there would be much less poor families as you mentioned?

Yes a flat tax does tax everybody the same. That's why it's called the flat tax.

Just because you can tax rich people more and spend their money on what you want doesn't mean that is the right thing to do.

Are you on disability? It's obvious that you have never owned or started your own business before.

BS, only liberals believe in true freedom. If a large multinational company decides to move their factory from a small American town to China to take advantage of cheap Chinese prison labor, putting 10,000 Americans out of work, and forcing the people to relocate from the town they were born in, to cities to take lower paying jobs, then those people's freedom to live where they want was infringed upon.

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.

Liberals support freedom. Libertarians and conservatives support poor people being slaves to the rich.

The Libertarians do not want a flat tax. For example once the public schools are privatized we will have the equivalent of a regressive tax imposed in order to pay for tuitions. the rich will pay a lesser percentage of their income than the poor.

Because people have a right to a job? Seriously? And hence the owners of the factory have no rights to dispose of their property as they wish?

What in Celestia's name is your philosophical basis for government? Strange women lying around in ponds, distributing swords?

There's 2 sides to every story.

The market demands cheap products; people keep going back to Wal mart to get their goods instead of getting higher quality goods somewhere else for example.

Companies ship their jobs overseas because it is too expensive to operate and produce goods here in the United States.

The iPad that I'm typing on would cost 600 dollars instead of 400 dollars to make it in the states instead of making in china.. Probably even more. That would kill sales and profit.

That's a bold statement to say that only liberals are for freedom when they believe it's ok to take what one man has earned and distribute it to another.. And time and time again their policies have failed. You should know this living in California. Taxes aren't the solution. The only reason that California has gotten away with as much taxation as it has is because it's location & weather is a monopoly.

China is far more guilty of contributing to global warming than the United States is. Just saying. They aren't paying anything either and they are the farthest thing away from libertarians.

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?