If Libertarianism is so great, why has no country tried it?

[KingOrfeo]

Every government that ever was hasta pay its soldiers, scribes, enemies, and VIPs. Consequently every government swells in size and eventually destroys the economy that fuels it.

Then how come that has never happened before?

 

[Wok]

Is it being tried in Somalia?

 

[RobDownSouth]

Is it being tried in Somalia?

Give them credit, quite a number of libertarian elites in America put their money where their mouth was after a coup toppled Honduras.

They spent a small fortune to establish the first libertarian paradise.

And it would've worked too, except for those pesky voters.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Is it being tried in Somalia?

Well, not exactly, it just sorta happened.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Myeah. I'm gonna have to invoke the No True Scotsman on that.

Oh, Pinochet was No True Libertarian, certainly not, but that didn't repel the Chicago Boys.

 

[about_average]

why hasn’t any country anywhere in the world ever tried it?

Very simple. The vast majority of people want to control at least some aspect of other people's lives. Obviously not all the same, but some aspect nonetheless.

 

[Sean Renaud]

Very simple. The vast majority of people want to control at least some aspect of other people's lives. Obviously not all the same, but some aspect nonetheless.

With good reason. It's not exactly like the actions of those around you don't have an effect on you.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Very simple. The vast majority of people want to control at least some aspect of other people's lives. Obviously not all the same, but some aspect nonetheless.

Like, that aspect where you think my car is yours, to start with. But, beyond controlling that -- which even most libertarians would cede to the state as a legitimate function -- I think it's more important that events of past decades have shown the vast majority of people want at least some positive services from government. Obviously not all the same, but some services nonetheless.

 

[Byron In Exile]

Indeed.
So, what was your point again?

Scroll up.

 

[WeedSmoke420]

Scroll up.

lol..

 

[BotanyBoy]

If that is a cycle, why has it never happened before? (What you're describing goes way, way beyond voter backlash.)

Then how come that has never happened before?

Name one leading world super power that lasted.....they all self destruct.

From the Romans to the British and your favorite the USSR they all eat it. US will be no different, and in 50 years I seriously doubt we will be the global shot callers anymore. We have a nice LOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG stretch of suck ahead of us.

 

[CandiCame]

With good reason. It's not exactly like the actions of those around you don't have an effect on you.

Yeah, and I'm a lot more willing to change my behavior when people acknowledge that rather than just being a douchebag.

Example of non-douchebaggery because my behavior does affect you:

"Don't smoke in here!"
"Why?
"I don't want to get second hand cancer."
"Sorry, dude, I'll go outside."

Example of douchebaggery because my behavior doesn't affect you:

"Don't make out in here!"
"Why?"
"Um..."
"Yeah."

 

[CandiCame]

I didn't know what libertarianism was or that it existed prior to reading this thread. It's like republi-light? Republican with half the hate but the same full bodied flavor?

 

[KingOrfeo]

I didn't know what libertarianism was or that it existed prior to reading this thread. It's like republi-light? Republican with half the hate but the same full bodied flavor?

I wouldn't say "half the hate," since the thoughts and writings of Ayn Rand are nowadays closely associated with it (despite her personally disapproving of the Libertarian Party and movement, since it wasn't hers).

 

[KingOrfeo]

Yeah, and I'm a lot more willing to change my behavior when people acknowledge that rather than just being a douchebag.

Example of non-douchebaggery because my behavior does affect you:

"Don't smoke in here!"
"Why?
"I don't want to get second hand cancer."
"Sorry, dude, I'll go outside."

Example of douchebaggery because my behavior doesn't affect you:

"Don't make out in here!"
"Why?"
"Um..."
"Yeah."

"Because we're about to close the library."

 

[Sean Renaud]

Name one leading world super power that lasted.....they all self destruct.

From the Romans to the British and your favorite the USSR they all eat it. US will be no different, and in 50 years I seriously doubt we will be the global shot callers anymore. We have a nice LOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG stretch of suck ahead of us.

How many countries can you name that lasted? I mean if you're not counting Russia as the USSR and Britain as. . .Britain then are there even countries that have lasted period? You may as well ask how many Heavy Weight Champions of the world have lived forever and the best answer we could give is "Mike Tyson's still alive!"

 

[KingOrfeo]

Name one leading world super power that lasted.....they all self destruct.

Yes, but generally not because of the expense of bloated bureaucracy. Not even the USSR went that way -- look again. It's an occasionally-contributing factor at worst, never the root of whatever problem it is that makes a power decline.

 

[BoyNextDoor]

The whole premise of the thread is flawed. "Libertarian-ism" is not like Capitalism or Communism. It is not an "ism" at all. It is not a philosophy of political economy in and of itself. It is more like a Jeffersonian political approach being translated into modern day. As in:

"When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty."
- Thomas Jefferson

Or -

"A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circlue of our felicities."
Thomas Jefferson

Forget about Ayn Rand, Ron Paul and Rand Paul and most of the bullshit they spout. They are just Capitalist shills.

Libertarians are Democrats that think people should pay their own way, or Republicans unfettered from the Christian fundamentalists. In other words - people with common sense.

 

[CandiCame]

"Because we're about to close the library."

Text date!

http://i4.ytimg.com/vi/kRQQ8b24zXs/maxresdefault.jpg

 

[CandiCame]

How many countries can you name that lasted? I mean if you're not counting Russia as the USSR and Britain as. . .Britain then are there even countries that have lasted period? You may as well ask how many Heavy Weight Champions of the world have lived forever and the best answer we could give is "Mike Tyson's still alive!"

Britons confuse the fuck out of me. There's England, Britain, and the United Kingdom and they all have different things in them. It's too much for an American.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Britons confuse the fuck out of me. There's England, Britain, and the United Kingdom and they all have different things in them. It's too much for an American.

What? We have 50 states and all their state capitals and stuff.

 

[KingOrfeo]

The whole premise of the thread is flawed. "Libertarian-ism" is not like Capitalism or Communism. It is not an "ism" at all. It is not a philosophy of political economy in and of itself. It is more like a Jeffersonian political approach being translated into modern day. As in:

"When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty."
- Thomas Jefferson

Or -

"A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circlue of our felicities."
Thomas Jefferson

Forget about Ayn Rand, Ron Paul and Rand Paul and most of the bullshit they spout. They are just Capitalist shills.

Libertarians are Democrats that think people should pay their own way, or Republicans unfettered from the Christian fundamentalists. In other words - people with common sense.

Maybe you think it looks like it when you state it in general terms like that, but it never seems to look like common sense when it gets into specifics, like going on the gold standard or flat-tax or abolishing the FDA or Social Security. And your argument ignores the fact, which the article in the OP points out, that all the richest and freest countries in the world spend at least a third of GDP on government, which is not very libertarian, but on the evidence that level of public spending works where nothing else does, in a modern industrialized economy.

 

[CandiCame]

What? We have 50 states and all their state capitals and stuff.

Yeah, and that was a pain in the fucking ass too. If not for the song I wouldn't know those.

And my geography on them is still sketchy at best. Had the schools, and not animaniacs tried to teach me I'd never have learned where they were.

50 States

 

[KingOrfeo]

I didn't know what libertarianism was or that it existed prior to reading this thread. It's like republi-light? Republican with half the hate but the same full bodied flavor?

Well, we're really talking about modern movement Libertarianism, which is a bit more radical than what is usually thought of as "Classical Liberal," e.g. John Stuart Mill. Here's a summary of the Libertarian Party's platform.

The preamble outlines the party's goal: "As Libertarians, we seek a world of liberty; a world in which all individuals are sovereign over their own lives and no one is forced to sacrifice his or her values for the benefit of others." Its Statement of Principles begins: "We, the members of the Libertarian Party, challenge the cult of the omnipotent state and defend the rights of the individual." The platform emphasizes individual liberty in personal and economic affairs, avoidance of "foreign entanglements" and military and economic intervention in other nations' affairs, and free trade and migration. It calls for Constitutional limitations on government as well as the elimination of most state functions. It includes a "Self-determination" section which quotes from the Declaration of Independence and reads: "Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of individual liberty, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to agree to such new governance as to them shall seem most likely to protect their liberty." It also includes an "Omissions" section which reads: "Our silence about any other particular government law, regulation, ordinance, directive, edict, control, regulatory agency, activity, or machination should not be construed to imply approval."[22]

This includes favoring minimally regulated markets, a less powerful federal government, strong civil liberties (including support for same-sex marriage and other LGBT rights), the drug liberalization, separation of church and state, open immigration, non-interventionism and neutrality in diplomatic relations, free trade and free movement to all foreign countries, and a more representative republic.[22] The party's position on abortion is that government should stay out of the matter and leave it to the individual, but recognizes that some libertarians' opinions on this issue are different. Ron Paul, one of the former leaders of the Libertarian Party, is strictly pro-life, but believes that is an issue that should be left to the states and not enforced federally. Meanwhile Gary Johnson, the party's 2012 presidential candidate, is pro-choice.

The Libertarian Party has also supported the repeal of NAFTA, CAFTA, and similar trade agreements, as well as the United States' exit from the World Trade Organization and NATO.[23]

For perspective see the TVTropes UsefulNotes page on Political Ideologies:

Liberalism

The chief objective for liberalism is human freedom. In liberalism, freedom means the ability to do what one wills with one's own life and property. Liberals stand in opposition to government restrictions on private actions, and tend to be skeptical of authority.

There have been some splits in liberalism over time. The first important split is the one between natural law liberalism and utilitarian liberalism. Natural law liberalism holds that humans, due to divine or natural law, have certain rights that no government should infringe. These rights are due to self-ownership, meaning that you own yourself, and no other human does (though you may belong to God, according to early liberals, you do not belong to any other person). John Locke was a major proponent for this view, which was also influential in The American Revolution.

Utilitarian liberalism grew in popularity in the 19th Century, and it holds that the best course of action is to pursue what would bring the greatest happiness to the greatest number of people. Since only the individual knows what would bring the greatest happiness to himself or herself, then governments should pursue a policy of personal autonomy, letting everybody pursue their own happiness. The most influential advocate for utilitarian liberalism is John Stuart Mill.

The other great split is between classical liberalism and left-liberalism. The split between classical liberalism and left-liberalism (also known as social liberalism) is arguably due to different concepts of rights. To the classical liberals, rights are nullifications of the power of the State (i.e. the ability to legitimately initiate the use of force), meaning no individual or groups thereof can use force, fraud or threats thereof to stop any other individual from performing a specific action. For instance, if you have the right to free speech, this means that no individual or institution can start or threaten the use of force or fraud against you in order to stop you from speaking in a specific way (provided, of course, said speech constituted neither fraud nor coercion).

To social liberals, rights are seen as entitlements to the ability to perform specific actions. For instance, if you have the right to education, this means that other people (or groups thereof) must act in order to provide you an education if you cannot provide it yourself.

So, to classical liberals, rights are things others cannot use force to stop you from doing, and to social liberals, rights are things that others are forced to enable you to do. Isaiah Berlin referred to the former as "negative liberty" and the latter as "positive liberty."

Classical liberalism argues that economic activities should be treated the same way that all other liberties are (or, further, that a meaningful distinction between economic and non-economic liberties cannot be made). Thus, economically speaking, any activity that does not involve force, fraud, or threats thereof (i.e. coercion) is just as much a right as free speech. As such, classical liberals are generally skeptical and/or hostile to government intervention in economic matters. This stance is also known as laissez-faire free market economics (which some people call "Capitalism," although that term has other definitions depending on who you ask).

Social liberalism argues that negative liberty is an insufficient condition for full human freedom. Social liberals in general do accept a significant level of negative liberty is indeed a necessary component of human freedom, but they argue a certain level of positive liberty is required as well. The typical rationale that social liberals give for this position is that the proper objects of positive liberty (according to social liberalism) will not be available to everyone in the absence of positive liberties to these objects. Whilst the proper objects of positive liberty have been debated by social liberals, they are usually justified as being necessary for "human flourishing" and "human development."

Note that this division is one of means rather than ends. Both classical and social liberals believe that the kinds of things which social liberals consider proper objects of positive liberty are good things! The division is over how they should be provided; social liberals argue that the State should provide them and classical liberals argue the State should not (there are several rationales for this position; such as the State being too incompetent to do it, or that empowering the State is inherently dangerous for further liberties, and/or that it is immoral to sacrifice negative liberties for the sake of positive ones).

During the middle parts of the twentieth century, the boundaries between social liberalism and social democracy (the latter being ideologically a product of socialism (see below), even if it had a centrist political platform) began to get blurry due to the popularity of socialism amongst many of the cultural elites of the time. During these decades, a resurgence of classical liberalism began to form. This resurgence is often called "libertarianism" (see also below) and occasionally seen as a separate ideology, but this is partly due to the fact that it originated as a rebuke to the intellectual hegemony of socialist ideas. Fundamentally, it was merely a modern reformulation of the classical liberal case.

This resurgence had two separate origins, the first in academic economics. The Austrian School of economic thought gained notoriety for an argument known today as the Economic Calculation Problem which began in 1920 with Ludwig von Mises' publication of "Economic Calculation In The Socialist Commonwealth". In this article, Mises argued that State Socialism (defined as an economy wherein which all means of production was owned by the State, ostensibly on behalf of the Proletariat) rendered economic efficiency impossible because without market prices for capital, there was no way to make efficiency-based decisions between various methods of production for a specific item.

Socialist economist Oskar Lange argued that Mises identified a genuine problem (a lack of economic accounting), which he argued could be fixed by replicating market prices. Lange's solution was disputed by Frederich von Hayek in his article "The Use Of Knowledge In Society". Hayek argued that the preference data from which market prices are ultimately generated rests within individual human minds, and that this data only gets expressed via voluntary trades in a free market. Assuming a lack of Instrumentality, there is no way to access this data and as such any attempt to replicate market prices would fail.

In academic economics, Hayek (and by extension, Mises' initial argument) is generally regarded as Vindicated by History (although this has been disputed) and his works on knowledge and spontaneous, undesigned order have been influential in fields ranging from sociology to research on artificial intelligence. As such it is hard to overstate his importance (and that of the Austrian School in general) to modern classical liberals. In terms of the utilitarian-natural law liberalism split, Austrian School economics generally made its case in utilitarian terms, but is embraced by classical liberals from both sides of the division. At least one famous Austrian economist, the anarcho-capitalist Murray Rothbard, was a natural law libertarian in terms of personal political philosophy, and the strain of anarchism he inspired (generally best seen as a fusion of Austrian economics with Lockean Individualist Anarchism) is very natural-law-oriented.

The second origin of this resurgence came from a surprising source; popular novelists. As stated before, the intellectual milieu of the mid-twentieth century was generally anti-individualist and against most values that liberals (both classical and social) profess. Novelists such as Robert A Heinlein and (most infamously) Ayn Rand produced novels explicitly defending individualistic, anti-authoritarian values. In the case of Ayn Rand, her work ended up becoming the basis for the philosophy of Objectivism, which has been significantly influential on many modern classical liberals. Of course, Rand's philosophy, most specifically its moral component, is a controversial and divisive subject that quite a few classical liberals do not necessarily agree with; some even reject it outright. Whilst they often acknowledged the utilitarian case and considered it true that classical liberalism produced the greatest good for the greatest number, they did not accept that the moral justification for classical liberalism was utilitarianism.

As for social liberalism, it is arguable that (in recent times) the doctrine has been replaced by or assimilated into various forms of social democracy. Some even argue that social liberalism was always a front for socialistic ideas but this is a highly controversial claim. Since the division between social liberalism and social democracy is primarily one of values rather than political program (and the division between social and classical liberalism being one of political program rather than values), the categories can get muddled. Additionally, political programs contain matters of degree; social liberals can advocate either relatively moderate amounts of government intervention (arguably, some of the more moderate libertarians fit here) or similar levels of government to a social democrat, depending on what the liberal believes is required to enable full human flourishing.

It is also worth pointing out that while classical liberals are often painted as being opposed to all government intervention in the marketplace, this is not strictly true. Adam Smith, for example, actually supported subsidies to the unemployed as well as fledgeling businesses (although he was uneasy about the latter due to his fears that businesses would lobby against being removed from the subsidy rolls), as well as progressive taxation, while Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek proposed replacing the existing welfare programs and minimum wage with negative income taxes that would provide living wages to all citizens, not the complete elimination of welfare. Where Friedman and Hayek stopped short of social liberalism was in opposing redistribution of wealth for the sake of bringing living standards closer together, although they have been criticised by others further to the right economically for supporting any redistribution at all.

 

[SgtSpiderMan]

Power abhors a vacuum.

So does my mom's cat.