You may of heard it all before but it’s clear you guys really don’t understand it. Also what is your logic of having a gov’t? Because people can’t get along to help each other (even though that’s what markets do) , we should take a subset of those people who can’t get a long and put them in charge of the rest of us? And give them power and control over our lives? Well, I have to ask, what if we don’t get along with them?

Here’s what we know, the degree to which countries thrive and create wealth is the degree to which they adopt free market capitalism.

Even if I were to admit a State controlled society could handle a corona ebola hybrid better than a libertarian one, that doesn’t debunk libertarianism and justify the State. That doesn’t justify initiating force against peaceful people and stealing their money because you think you know how to spend it better. That doesn’t justify all the wars, the failing education and healthcare systems.

If you want to argue against Libertarianism, at least be fair and compare it against our current system, and not perfection. No one is claiming it is a perfect system.


I’ll get to the rest later.

Are you saying we need a State to determine ownership of private property?

Heh, never heard that line of logic from zealots before.

I was not involved in whatever the battle was with libertarians in the past, and I cannot imagine it was particularly interesting. I just want to know what type of materials you use when you build your portion of a road, and how do you make sure others are respecting certain minimum standards as well. Thanks!

All the best.

1. Article makes the point I have made for years. Corporate America is owned by the public. There is a reason why index funds in particular are so popular.

2. His thought experiment is basically what you state.

3. What you state about pharma companies competing, the point is better made if you take the companies private.

There are reasons companies go public though. One is access to capital. It is an interesting article.

If history is anything to go by, yes you do. In western history private property was pretty much non-existent before the Westphalia treaty and the concept of a sovereign state with a legal entity.

Prior to this the land belonged to the monarch and his / her state (or status) was determined by his political and military reach. Property in the hands of others was "landed". This means you had the right to profit of the land, but not the land itself. This was was a matter of necessity, not legality. The king needed his taxes and he needed supporting nobles.

Most people were serfs and thus legally part of the land (if the landed property took on a new lord, the serfs did as well). A few freemen might also get landed property.

In the 17th century, arising with the modern concept of the state as legal entity, we begin to see legal definitions of private property. The king isn't the primary legal entity, the state is. This opens the book for actual citizen ownership. First as an economic concept and then as a concept of citizens owning land independently.

Oh roads would never work of course. Because no one has any incentives to travel or ship things in a libertarian society. And we are too dumb as a people to build roads without the geniuses in gov’t. We’d all be standing around on our porches, scratching our heads, staring out across fields of unmowed grass.

Plenty of A-hole business owners too. Just sayin'.





I mean we are all forced to participate in the modern economy. That depresses wages and helps the investor class. Unless participation in the market is voluntary none of your libertarian ideas will ever be tested.

I'm for less military and police spending. Probably about 25% of what we spend now. But I'd spend the money on things like M4A, affordable education, infrastructure, workfare programs etc. To me that spending seems like it would help the economy. It would also keep the wealth in the US where the taxes were levied which should keep the dollar strong.


All money is worthless. It's a medium of exchange. The problem is, you can pump as much into the economy as the Fed has over the last 10 years and it doesn't cause inflation. That's because too few people have too much of it.



I agree about the state sponsored killing. But you don't seem to consider the idea that it's done of behalf of businesses and investors. It is. Take a close look.

As far as destroying the dollar, meh. The state gives us the dollar. Give to Ceaser and all that. If you have no state you have no unified currency. Just two chickens for a goat.

Health insurance is a good example of a product that has been abused by the private sector. Selling junk policies that don't cover anything was very common. You're assuming that people on an individual level will out smart businesses working together to con them. I don't have that much faith in the consumer.

Agreed. As is the private sector.




So.....don't touch my stuff ?


Well, to be fair, the USSR managed to create a bunch of wealth. Their system didn't distribute it very evenly though. The premise that without capitalism there is no wealth creation is actually mistaken.

The state should stop monopolies from forming in the private sector and run monopolies in certain sectors to provide for the common good.

For example, rural postal delivery would never have been a thing if the private sector ran the post office. Also building roads that don't go where investors want them to go (eg company towns).

Don't kid yourself. CEO's want to control people even more than government officials do. They have more motive.


It's the corporations that control the state right now. We should be so lucky to have the opposite problem. There was a time when corporations were very limited for obvious reasons that everyone seems to have forgotten.

So let me ask you, in your vision of a libertarian state, do we have corporations that limit individual liability ?

Because that's like a problem.

It’s too funny that when it comes to preventing unnecessary wars, a monopoly on violence, the destruction of our currency etc. you guys go “but what about the roads!”

Let’s continue to bomb brown people and extract wealth from our citizens until someone can can show me how to build a road without our lord and savior Uncle Sam.

Isn’t this a moot point since we already have roads though? I’m not advocating abolishing the State AND then digging up all the roads they built.

The roads are a proxy argument my dude, an example of a public good. The reason people keep mentioning roads is that, much as we may all disagree with a lot of things the government does, the idea that a modern-day society can function without one is pretty laughable on its face, and betrays the childlike naivete of its proponent.

"Western" society spent some 1000 years without proper road-building, relying mostly on remnants from ancient empires and footpaths.

This contributed strongly to clan-based societies, an extreme amount of local conflict and geopolitical wars, people huddled into walled cities and villages (and they were the lucky ones!), a decline in shared knowledge and travel over land being extremely hazardous.

Roads are a solid example, as they are without a doubt one of the the most important things about our civilization. It's a testament to the success of many modern governments that roads can be taken for granted to the extent that the topic is hand-waved aside. A road is "nothing special" anymore for most of us here, and that's brilliant.

I'm history-nerding hard in this thread now, so my apologies if I sound lecturing. But I do genuinely believe that in a discussion of modern government, it is clever to look the past.

So you really don't know our infrastructure is crumbling ?

You're living in the US at the moment ?

Also, I don't see most of the regulars here calling for more war spending.
You're starting to present a false dichotomy. We can stop using government for profiteering and imperialism and still use it to provide or our collective needs. Right ? (that's right, I used the 'c' word)

The whole concept of government working 'for' the people instead of the people working 'for' the king is huge for our individual quality of life.

I'm not sure how much individualism is healthy though. In the end we're social animals. We all depend on the labor of the next guy, like it or not.

Yeah, that's the rub isn't it and an extremely good question. At some point there is a line between "individual" and "selfish", and there isn't much society left if it most of us end up on the latter.

In a somewhat ironic development, modern society allows us to isolate more, but we also increasingly depend more on each-other. The network of people needed to sustain modern life for one person is unheard of in history.

So how far can we roll back gov't in your opinion? Whats the minimum amount of gov't we can get by with? And then how do we keep them that small.

That is a question for deeper thinkers than I am, but it seems pretty clear to me that the following belong in the public sector: infrastructure, law enforcement, basic education, emergency services and environmental regulation just to name a few obvious examples. Of course, you could have "private" businesses administering these functions and have them funded by some sort of fee paid by members of the public. We could call that fee a "tax" or something like that.

Certainly of land, yes, a state, or an entity that I'm sure you can try to argue is distinct but that won't really be, is necessary to demarcate ownership and resolve disputes thereof. It's either that, or land owners are in fact feudal lords who control their fiefdoms by their own force and alliances with other lords, and your idea of freedom is nothing but feudalism repackaged.

Very interesting observation.

Libertarianism is not conducive to handling COVID

In finding a cure? Ramping up testing? Track and trace? Sure

But if I were POTUS, I'd have wanted a complete and effective lockdown until cases were manageable and each state had a plan in place to handle any small, local spike

Freeze all taxation and obligations ingeneral. Temporary UBI for all for 3-4 months, maybe not those who got unemployment. Not quite sure about that yet

The economy essentially frozen, now would've been the time for INFRASTRUCTURE WEEK! It would have been the PERFECT time with no traffic and no congestion of any sort. It would have employed some people ffs...

We gave the money to businesses and that was a mistake imo. Demand went off a cliff and people are scared. Force them back to work? We don't even know or understand the importance/proper use/purpose of a mask here! Just give money to the idle people to sustain at least a few months and re evaluate our position as time goes by. The US completely ****ed this up and missed a huge opportunity, not that they would have seized it regardless, Congress is loony with their priorities rn

Libertarianism bores me. It's obvious it has excellent, arguably optimal motions, but power is nothing without control. The control part would've really ****ing helped the US right now. And it's only going to get better if we get lucky or if we start having control

It's cool that people want to go back to work and have opportunity, but no amount of available jobs are going to matter if the risk is death or permanent damage/severe harm just to pay the ****ing bills most people are in a desperate struggle to pay anyway

All COVID did was expose how weak our safety net is, and how corrupt gov't is. Just wait until those unemployment checks run out, in coincidence with the 2nd waves. I'm sure more tax breaks for the uber elites and money to businesses with no patronage will be super, super meaningful. The US is a mature economy that wants to act like a 90/10 retirement fund when it should be at 70/30, maybe 60/40. Adjusted for risk it's apparently the same ****ing thing, relatively speaking

What I fear is the libertarian part of our econmic function becoming so blatantly corrupt, untenable, and hated that it gets obliterated out of sheer reactionary ignorance. CHAZ exists. Nobody ****ing wants anarchy! But CHAZ makes a point beyond the weirdos involved. We should probably recalibrate our mixed economy to a more accepted balance, morally and out of acquiescence, or we're increasing the odds everything burns down when it very clearly does not have to

Two reasons:
- your precious markets can't exist without people with enforcing the rules with the threat of violence
- lots of things that allow society to function and flourish exist thanks to the extraction of taxes, which you consider theft

I'm old enough to remember Ron Paul saying at a GOP debate that the solution to people dying in the street is charity.

Show your work? Probably depends on your definition of "thrive", like, the happiest countries in the world are the social democratic states of Scandinavia. The USA might be the richest nation in the world in the aggregate but I hardly think the amount of poverty here is an advertisement for free market capitalism.

Looking forward to the answers to the other parts of my posts!

You know that roads need to be maintained, right?

If I show up and maintain a section of road in a post-State world, does that mean I now own it?

I can see some disputes arising from the definition of "maintenance" in this scenario. Perhaps we will need some sort of corporation to resolve those disputes. What could we call that?

this thread has done little to change my opinion that libertarians are the dumbest of all politically aware/active.

it's an ideology for facebook memes that people that still live near your highschool post even though you forgot you were friends with them.