Obviously.

I'm much more interested in a reduction of government surveillance and interference.

I guess I don't fit in with most of the "libertarians" here because I'm fine with using great force in the apprehension and detention of individuals selling children.

Then again, I don't feel a religious adherence to Rothberg/Paul/Mises et al.

FFS I disagree with my own party on some issues. What can I say, I'm human.

Cannot accept. Cannot change philosophy. Engage txtwall.exe.

What votes are proof rp is racist. Is it that rosa parks vote

Unlikely the Marxist will become "unhinged". In a socialist utopia taking out the trash and cleaning the sewers are just govt jobs. Kinda like how it is right now.

Does not compute. It's impossible that libertarians want to solve it or it's impossible that there's a solution? And if it's impossible they there's a solution, then the solution is simply whatever provides for the lowest amount of aggression.

So yeah....

Hhahahahhahahahahhahahahahhahahha holy ****

Oh this is pretty good too, and not just because of the robotic intonation. It's because FEZ KNOWS A THING. He has a talking point in response to the Rosa Parks vote, and he's just WAITING for someone to fall into the trap.

I believe that after fezjones here defeats whoever he is possibly responding to, Ron Paul will become President.

but but ron paul offered to pay for the medal himself!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAA

"Mom, Dad, I have something I want to talk to you about. It's important. Before we start, though, do you know what Youtube is?"

Of course not. There's a difference between a reasoned argument about the consequences of specific fiscal practices (whether right or wrong), which you've presented below, and the sort of view I was criticizing. I specifically think that libertarians should not do things like insist that fiat money is somehow intrinsically dishonest or argue that it is a manipulative attempt by the central bank to use inflation to expand production possibilities. These arguments are, at best, severely intellectually lazy. However, as is probably already obvious from my parenthetical comment there, I do not agree with your arguments below and would say that, if your views represent the stock libertarian stance, I do not consider myself a libertarian.

I don't think this is correct. The ability to run a deficit in a national budget is a function of the availability of credit, not the money supply. It's not as though Congress approves an annual budget of, say, $5 trillion, realizes it only expects $4 trillion in tax revenue, and then orders the Federal Reserve to print up the remaining trillion. Further, I do not understand what role you think foreign banks' collective need for U.S. dollars qua reserve currency plays in the equation; the only impact of this fact is that the U.S. is, relative to other nations, able to achieve a lower cost of credit in foreign exchanges. While competitive currency devaluation may help other nations, I see no reason to believe this has many negative impacts on the U.S. middle class

So? This seems to me like arguing against credit on the grounds that lending is a necessary precondition of bankruptcy. I don't see what's wrong with believing that regulatory improvements could have stifled some of the worst practices; certainly subprime mortgage loan origination wouldn't have taken place at the astronomical rates it did in a tighter regulatory environment.

This paragraph seems like more or less pure rhetoric to me, in that I do not see what your economic argument is. Why isn't fiat money a market outcome? How would a gold standard be different?

I respectfully disagree. Your personal well-being probably will not be substantially affected by any of the forces you described above. To my mind, libertarian-minded people who are focused on these issues are the right-wing equivalent of Occupy Wall Street: vehement, upset, and politically strident, but ultimately lacking when it comes to a detailed understanding of the very enemy they've selected. You can't fight what you don't understand.

I'm torn . On one hand, it's the parent's fault for listening to this terrible advice. On the other hand, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

No, it's not. In the utopian phase of communism there is no government. People are just supposed to clean sewers voluntarily for the greater good of society.

Well, when the stock libertarian answers involve reducing the power of the institutions that have made the present the most non-aggressive in recorded history, I can't help thinking that maybe less aggression isn't really their goal. When I look at all this horrible, freedom-robbing oppression around me, sometimes I compare it to other scenarios past, present, and hypothetical future. By those standards, I generally feel pretty damn lucky to be alive in my current where and when.

Although I was mostly just laughing at the NAP.

1. The US is not responsible for this. They are, in fact, currently the greatest violators in the world.

2. So because things used to be worse, they're now the best they can possibly be? I assume you think the civil rights movement shouldn't have happened since things were way better in the 50s than they had been under slavery?

And the countries that, on almost every conceivable scale, are most peaceful and free (in the ways that matter) are notable for having large, centralized governments with a clear socialist bent in certain areas.

I saw the bolded coming from a mile off, and you know damn well that's not what I'm saying. The point originally raised by the OP is one of being effective. Libertarians have a pretty miserable track record on that. All of the progress on all of the issues that matter has come from the established not-very-radical left.

Do you want to change the world for the better, or do you want to argue about pet political theories on the internet? If it's real change you're after, that trail is well blazed and the people who walk it would appreciate some help.

If you'd rather worship at the altar of Paul and have dorm room stoner discussions about gold buggery and how super awesome it would be if we could all just be excellent to each others' massive gun collections, I guess you can find that on Team Libertarian.

This is false. Countries like Sweden only have 10 million people. No matter how centralized they are, it's equivalent to doing things at the state level.

And I personally have no problems with a socialist bent, though I think it should be done at the maximum level of about 10 million.

Hard to disagree on that one.

You have to be very careful not to be circular here. If you define a child to mean "somebody who is incapable of consenting", then obviously no child is capable of consenting. The way 99% of the world uses the word "child", however, is quite different. It does overlap with the category of people who are unable to consent, but it certainly isn't identical with it. If you're talking about the arbitrary "age of consent" laws, then sorry but that makes no sense. We need to be more intelligent than that. There are many people who are fully able to consent even before they reach 18, as well as many who are still in a way not mature enough to make sound decisions when they're 19+ (I'm not even talking about unhealthy individuals).

But if I'm still following this conversation, we're talking about consent when it comes to some absurd thought experiment in which the child is consenting to being molested. When we're simply talking about transferring the parenting rights to somebody else, there is no need for the child's consent for that. If you disagree with the last sentence and think about it objectively, we should ask for the child's consent even when it comes to whether they want to be parented by their biological parents (some biological parents can do pretty nasty stuff, agree?) But then we also know that some children are really incapable of consenting (especially, say, when they're newborn), so this could simply not work.

No, you don't have to worry about being circular. Some policy issues do not require exact logistical consistency. Nor do they require adherence to a singular philosophical principle. The big thing you have to worry about is protecting all of society's children from being abducted into wealth pedo rings.

I mean if op is saying orthodox Marxism (not socialism) is ridic because it's utopian state resembles the utopian state in a libertarian society then I agree.

Can you define "for the better" without reference to any pet political theories?

I'm not sure we do need to be more intelligent than that. There's 'consent' and there's 'informed consent', which is the relevant concept here, the thing children are held not to be capable of.

I tend to think of it like this. Consider a very tall eight-year-old who wants to drive a car. It's possible that she would be fine to do so. But it's equally possible that she would be able to pass the test and still be a very irresponsible driver owing to a lack of concentration, maturity, etc. As hard as that might be to determine in advance with any degree of certainty, it's so much the harder to determine whether any given person under the age of consent is capable of offering informed consent for other actions - there isn't even a driving test for consent to sex etc, and even the driving test seems inadequate for allowing a child to drive.

Given the difficulty and likely expense involved, as well as the high cost of false positives in testing (ie, children dying in car crashes, how could we have seen this coming?) then drawing an arbitrary line - even one that's definitely a little high in some individual cases - is a very practical solution.

There's an argument to be had about where the line should be drawn, of course. But that argument can be had no matter where it's drawn.

Sorry, but I just don't like that type of brute force solutions to complicated problems. "Let's just draw a line" you say. Well, life is way more complicated than that. I hate robotic laws that are applied blindly without taking into account the subtleties of a case. I remember a year or so ago how a judge sent an 18-year-old to prison for refusing to comply with his ruling that he can't be together with his 17-year-old girlfriend. Do you understand that nobody has the right to get between those two people? And any law that allows it is hideous in my mind.

Check this out. It's written by a lawyer and I hope you won't be thrown off by the non-academic-looking presentation.

Can you cite that case please?

They do this a lot of time, and a lot of the time they don't. The idea they are supposed to support is of course a good one. It doesn't always work that way in practice, though.