Give me an Introduction on Liberterians

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What are Libertarians like and how do you feel about them?

They value individulality and they care about fair and equal rights for everybody and not just the privilaged. That's why I like them, but the one thing I don't enjoy about them is "liberal guilt".

And conservatives always claim that liberals are the true bigots, but conservatives DON'T support my right to get married as a gay man (among other things). So I will never support a conservative politician unless they support MY rights.

Libertarians (at least most of the people who call themselves that in the US) are strong believers in individual and economic freedom. They believe that government interference people's lives should be minimized or eliminated entirely. They believe that allowing capitalism and the free market to function without government interference or regulation is the best way to ensure prosperity and the general welfare. They believe that private individuals acting voluntarily out of self-interest would be better suited to carrying out some or all services offered by the government. It can be hard to generalize about libertarians because they can run the gamut from small-government conservatives to genuine anarcho-capitalists. They tend to be moderate or left-leaning on social issues in my experience, but there is no shortage of socially conservative libertarians as well. That being said, virtually all of them support unrestricted gun ownership. They have faith that unrestrained capitalism leads to meritocracy.

I attempted to give you a very objective description of them, largely because I strongly disagree with them on many things lol. I agree with them that government is essentially an oppressive system of domination based on force and that it should be very limited or eliminated. However, I am very much on the left end of the economic spectrum. I fear that a purely capitalist society would just see the tyranny of the government replaced by the tyranny of corporations.

Probably one of the broadest belief systems but they tend to believe that the state or society cannot trump the rights of the individual.

I fundamentally disagree with libertarians for this same reason.

I cannot imagine businesses getting so powerful without the help of government.

You can always boycott businesses, you can't boycott your government.

Aren't you the "black people can't be British" guy? Yeah I don't expect to be able to have a rational conversation with you.

The Asians who came to Britain from Uganda. Why are they not African if they came from Uganda?

If a single corporation holds a monopoly or near-monopoly on a single industry, then it can be more or less impossible to boycott them. Single corporation holds a monopoly on oil? Hope you can afford an electric car (or you don't need to commute literally anywhere) or you're not boycotting them any time soon. Single corporation holds a monopoly on pharmaceuticals? Hope you find some damn good holistic remedies or you're not boycotting them either. Even in duopolies or oligopolies there can be such little difference between their business practices that boycotting one just leads to you enabling the abuses of another. Furthermore, the more control one company obtains of an industry, the more they can use their disproportionate influence to snuff out potential threats to their market dominance. Free markets are not necessarily competitive markets.

But I cannot imagine how a single company could get a monopoly on something so important without the backing of government or without infringing on the rights of others.

Just to clear up I am not a libertarian and think many businesses are under regulated especially factory farms. I just think government is a much bigger threat.

I see nothing wrong with monopolies. And yes, the government is a bigger threat. It’s government policies that basically allowed monopolies to crop up in the past which led to consumer abuse. Once government created the problem, they later decided to regulate the same businesses to death. If they’d just left them alone in the first place, there’d have been no problem.

The idea that monopolies are inherently a problem is pure nonsense. If a monopoly were to corner one entire industry and price products out of reach for consumers, it would devastate not only its own base but cause the collapse of entire industries besides. Left entirely alone, these monopolies cannot survive. If they price products and services out of reach of consumers and other businesses, they would have no money coming in. They couldn’t possibly survive. The only way they could truly corner a market, charge what they want, and manage to survive is if gov passed laws keeping them in business and mandated that cons could ONLY buy from them. Without enforceable laws, such a business would collapse while individuals and groups rise up to provide same goods/services at prices cons could afford. Competition means, yes, that these same groups and persons would war with each other to price each other out. Someone who provides mediocre goods to break dependence on unreasonable monopolies would become very rich, very fast UNTIL someone comes along who could make better, cheaper. So when the first guy goes under, he might either end up working FOR the better startup, or he’ll start a business he’s passionate about and better at than what he previously did.

Now, you COULD ask what would happen when the monopoly buys everyone out. Well, see, there’s a problem with that. If a monopoly corners an entire industry and sets unreasonable prices, they lose their operating income. So...the question is if they are buying out startups, WHAT exactly are they buying people out WITH? Credit? With no income, how are they paying all this back? It’s a matter of time before they declare bankruptcy and liquidate. I’d want to be right there at the auction, too, when it happens.

And if you don’t believe me, go visit your local Sears—if it’s even still there, or try any indoor shopping mall. How’s Blockbuster Video’s business these days? What are they using to buy up competitors? (Hint: Sears bought K-Mart...how did that work out? And where was Blockbuster when Netflix was just seeing the light of day?)

If no money is coming in, you can’t buy out competitors. I have no problem with monopolies if the product is good and I can afford it. But it’s corporate suicide to get greedy, corner a market, and give your cons the finger. You just cannot hope to compete with startup entrepreneurs who think the risk is worth it. You will die. And if gov has you on taxpayer life support after some lobbyist or pol has taken a bribe, then you’re a looter. I’d love to have seen Government Motors go down the tubes while Nissan and Toyota took up the slack, built more plants, and hired all those people who’d have lost their jobs. The Big Three are despicable in my view. They are textbook crony capitalists and looters. They are the result of gov meddling in business. If the gov had left them alone in the first place, if the gov had stayed out of the oil industry, we might very well be in cheap, clean electric cars right now.

There are all kinds of evils leftists lob at the free market, but they are total non-issues when the gov stays out of it. Cornering markets and charging outrageous prices can’t realistically happen UNLESS the gov legislates it, and I’ve already outlined why the idea is absurd. And you can’t legislate innovation, either (Solyndra). Renewable, cheap, clean energy is ALWAYS a good thing. But you MUST leave people alone and let them do it the right way. Forcing it when the time is wrong won’t magically make it work. Solar farm materials are cheeeeeeaaaaaaaap. Wind is cheeeeeeeeaaaaaaaap. Energy storage is getting cheaper by the day. Cheaper, more efficient lighting is exponentially more available. If fools want to keep using incandescents, let them. If you won’t even offer LED’s while the startup down the street makes millions and steals your customers, don’t be surprised when your workers leave you and you’re forced to close your doors. It’s too often gov regs kill innovation by making it difficult for companies to bring their very best to the market (Microsoft AND Apple, not to mention Android phone manufacturers). MS and App have too much demand to worry about, plus they have all the smart people working for them. MS has survived anti-trust suits, and Apple is walking a fine line with their phones and Chinese labor (gov regulations and trade deals made China more attractive labor, and now new gov foreign relations is making this difficult). Min wage SOUNDS good, but you can’t get reasonably priced American products because Americans want too much money for shoddy workmanship.

I could go on and on all day. The way things are right now makes no sense. The success stories out there are those folks who don’t live by asking “Who’s going to let me?” but rather “Who’s going to stop me?”

I know Standard oil as a monopoly not only brought down oil prices but made a safer product. When the government Broke it up Rockefeller actually got richer.

Standard Oil is an EXCELLENT example of everything I'm talking about. The Sherman Anti-trust Act is quite possibly the worst thing to ever happen to doing business in America. Standard Oil was little more than a victim of jealous, greedy people who had to go crying to Uncle Sam to get their way. Truth is there were a number of oil companies following the same model as Standard and doing quite well for themselves. Standard wasn't guilty of anything except just being good at what they did. They were accused of "discriminatory" practices...but then that just illustrates my point. A person's reasons for doing business the way he chooses are his own and it's wrong to dictate how and why one must do something. You want a strong company, you engage in practices that secures your position as a strong company. That's basically what they were getting punished for--being better than everyone else.

Rocky only got richer after the split because he had so much stock all across the company. Those companies continued to do well, so he continued to get richer, and he had more sources of dividends to draw from. IMO, it's a sad way to get rich. But it's hard to hate these people. They got rich by being smart and innovative...and when their business grew too big for them, they brought in even smarter and more innovative people. The relationship between Standard and the rail companies was well-nigh mythical.

The best products out there today are also examples of what happens when one company has control of everything. Apple makes proprietary software to work on computer architecture they design and control. You never have to worry about problems because of the tight software/hardware integration. They even make it easy for 3rd-party developers to create stable apps to run on their computers and mobile devices. I suck at coding and haven't finished a single app yet, but as someone who could barely get anything out of BASIC I have to say writing functions in Swift is crazy-smooth, and that's after struggling with C++, etc. People hate Apple for the same reason--they're too good. That's to say that there aren't excellent open-source or Windows systems that are stable and powerful, and I'm not necessarily saying that Apple products are exactly superior. It's just nobody else is doing it quite like Apple does, and Apple's reliability only depends on the power of the system you get (I had to finally give up my 2007 MBP because the OSX updates were no longer supported, and trying to create full-orchestra scores brought operation below a crawl. My current MBP is almost completely maxed out and I rarely have problems, typically just audio breakups after it's been running for a couple of weeks at a time). Back in the day, with Standard, oil companies were dumping gasoline into rivers. Standard figured out ways to make money off waste products, including gasoline. The best people STILL waste nothing, nor take anything for granted, and there's much to learn from Rocky and Standard.

They tend to believe in maximising rights and freedoms of the individual. There are many types of libertarians such as left-libertarians which tend to be socialist and right-libertarians which tend to be more capitalist/laissez-faire. I am personally a right wing libertarian with the belief of having some sort of a social safety net to help people get by in society.

If I had full information, that'd make some sense - but I can't pick a corporation based on what I know about them paying taxes, for example, because basically, I only know that amazon, google and apple pay next to no taxes - but I don't know if their competition (if there is any) is any better.
I can't boycott a government? well, I live in Germany. Boycotting the government of the GDR brought on its collapse, and German reunification.
Then there's democratic processes.
Basically: with governments, there's a possibility of having influence. With corporations, the only influence I have is choosing a competitor - but I can't actually influence HOW that corporation is going to react.
And corporations are, unlike governments, not incentivised to satisfy anyone but their shareholders. The sale of products and services is incidental to that.