libertarianism

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Left/right, liberal/conservative one dimensional line does not cover the issues.

If you only think left/right, it's easy to call the right wing hypocrites when libertarian leaning people and the "religious-right" are both labeled as "right wing." But it is also just as easy to call the left wing hypocrites when they have both the pro-drug pro-freedom hippies grouped on the same side of the line as the social justice & socialist leaning liberals. The left side of the line somehow contains both those who would legalize marijuana and ban tobacco.

I find it much better to think a bit wider as represented in the style of a Nolan Chart.


While the tea party is trying to move the Republican party up on this chart, it seems the Democratic party keeps seeming to go down on the chart

The Tea Party consists of two groups. One group is the traditional republicans who are socially conservative and economically on the right. They tend to be older and come almost exclusively from traditionally conservative regions of the country. The other group are economically on the right and identify as libertarian, yet aren't very passionate about social issues either way. These tend to be younger and are more evenly dispersed throughout both traditionally conservative and traditionally progressive regions of the US. Overall, the Tea Party isn't very receptive to vocal social progressives.

Last edited by marshall on 06 Nov 2010, 9:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I may have worded that incorrectly. I don't think the majority of people that push for disregulation are trying to set up monopolies. I also certainly don't believe that unregulated free trade is the only way that monopolies are created or sustained (that can be done in ANY form of government). However, when looking at the cutthroat world of big business and capitalist drives for profit margins, the ideal of that system is to increase or at least sustain profit. To continually increase profits a company must continually increase its percentage of market dominance and beat out or buy out the competition.

On the small scale, the competition leads to quality goods, competitive prices and a productive system of entrepreneurs. Once you move towards economic macrocosms and globalization you run into the truth of modern capitalism that demonstrates quite a tilted table and people at the top who will do whatever necessary in a global economy to grow and maintain their own wealth while stifling the free enterprise system under the guise of assisting "lesser" countries in modernization in order to harvest natural resources and exploit the available cheap labor.


Now with that example there is obviously room for debate simply because there are regulations on monopolies, but there are thousands upon thousands of loopholes in the system and layering of ownership and all that happy jazz. In addition, there is the issue of the fact that most governments are highly influenced by the wealth, i.e. large business owners. The two rarely can be separated because the means of political agendas often tie back directly into the pockets of those who have the most to gain by whatever platform is being pushed.

So...to sum up...It sucks all around and there is a lot of corruption no matter which way you slice it. If we loosen regulation we end up with more ways for people to screw you over in some ways, and if you increase regulations usually they aren't the right ones anyhow because the people who are in power are the ones with all the money. Its one of the many reasons I don't play to political party crap.

That makes sense. I haven't studied their sociology in depth.

It depends on they type of libertarian that you are talking about. There are economic libertarians who actively engaged in the removal of government restraint on commerce and business in general. They, tend however, to be more conservative on social issues.

Then there are social libertarians who tend to want the removal of government influence in the private live of citizens and their conduct. They tend to be much less interested in issues of business and commerce.

Then there is a combination of the two, which is really something pretty close to anarchism. Removal of government from both both the public and private spheres.

The true tea party, not the ones backed by the Republican establishment and corporate interests, such as the Koch brothers, are not really libertarians. They tend to be economic conservative and adhere to constitutional literalism. There concern is not necessarily government restraint of business for example, but simply the reduction in the scope and size of government. They hearken back to the message that Ronald Reagan was promoting in the early 1980's.

As with most things in life and politics, there are no true dichotomies -- it is all shades of gray. In fact, lots of people hold contradictory beliefs and still find them perfectly logical. However, what we see and hear constantly is a false dichotomy of right and left, conservative and progressive, etc. In fact, there is considerable over lap in politics between what a progressive and conservative believe, however, we only hear from those of the periphery or most extreme adherents to these belief systems. It makes people seem much more divided than they truly are.

My view of libertarians is that they are a bunch of guys that just disagree with everything.