I finally realized why I don't call myself a libertarian

  • Thread starter Thread starter Cyan Connect
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Well then, that's fairly accurate. Your ideas are directly contrary to essentially all of modern economic thought, but to each his own.
 
True. It could be that the confluence of assholes on OT/the internet and libertarians on OT/the internet has skewed my perception of libertarians.

There are some serious asshole atheists on OT too, but I still usually call myself an atheist. Maybe it's because I had that label nailed down before I got here.
 
And sure, maybe that makes me "not libertarian" by a lot of definitions. Which obviously doesn't bother me at all.
 
generally when people say someone is "an asshole" they really mean "he clearly cares about himself more than me" ... and in that respect its really not surprising that libertarians are "assholes"
 
Actually no.

Libertarians get called assholes because all they do is cry about the injustices of the government on the internet, but when faced with a call to actually do something about it they pretend to be above the "game" of politics and do nothing.
 
I don't doubt this either, but that doesn't mean they don't act like assholes when they're staring at a keyboard instead of a face.
 
I believe that a free-market with some level of government protectionism may work well. I am against anarcho-capitalism.
 
libertarians are assholes because for the most part they refuse to acknowledge market failures
 
Libertarianism is a broad philosophy.


Anarcho-capitalism is a more specific philosophy, within libertarianism.
 
Well, by their definitions, generally, there aren't any free markets, so the failure of a given market is not an exogenous event, but the result of whatever aspect makes it less than perfectly free.

Which is another component of the common idealism that irritates the crap out of me. The notion that pushing pure Capitalism will eventually produce perfectly free markets is just as silly as the notion that pushing Socialism will eventually produce a Communist utopia.
 
it isnt just here, there are a lot of holier than thou assholes in the LP... they tend to be more the idealists than the pragmatists though, go figure.

the philosophical roots of the LP are strangling the party these days, that's the problem when you form a party based on a very specific worldview instead of amalgamating a party out of various interests... The diversity of the views in the other parties is really a strength, imo.
 
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