While all of this speculation is quite entertaining, it might tend to distract us from the point that both the Republicans and Democrats are more or less equally responsible for the almost inevitable (in my opinion) collapse of the federal government due to overwhelming debt.

I pretty much agree with the person who said that if Trump wins in 2020 there may not be a Senate in 2024. I suspect that's true even if a Democrat wins the White House in 2020.

It might require a victory by the Libertarian candidate to save the federal government from collapse.

Someone rainbow this

A minimalist federal government is probably preferable to a non-existent federal government. A business that has to lay off a third of its workforce is preferable to one that has to close its doors completely and lay everybody off.

The kind of libertarian person who wants to reduce the federal government by 1/3 is not very interested in keeping the other 2/3 operating as a going concern. For most libertarians, an immediate 1/3 reduction in federal government spending is considered the kind of timid incrementalism that ensures statist victory.

A lot of modern (academic) libertarians recognize "minimalist" federal government is probably pretty big, and potentially bigger than current US federal government.

Sadly libertarianism has been reduced to a caricature of itself and a label appropriated by those who are not motivated by liberty but by bigotry.

Please document. Thanking you in advance.

Former US Presidential Candidate Ron Paul Promotes Bitcoin-based Retirement Investments

https://www.google.com/amp/s/cointel...nvestments/amp

So, Gary Johnson is a typical politician who can't answer a "yes or no" question.

Kewl! I'll check it out. Thanks for sharing.

you couldn't figure out that he supports driver's licenses? seemed pretty clear to me

He said he supported the idea that a driver should demonstate competence. He didn't specifically say that he supported a government issued license. It was a short clip, and his entire answer may have been snipped.

It seems a bit strange to ask someone to document what is clearly an opinion, but if you replace "bigotry" with something like "naked corporate interests" it isn't too difficult to find libertarians and conservatives who make this claim against the Koch brothers, who are self-styled leaders of the libertarian movement.

For example, Jane Mayer, in Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right quotes quotes noted conservative Thomas Frank as saying "Libertarianism is supposed to be all about principles, but what it's really about is political expedience. It's basically a corporate front, masked as a philosophy." (I'm still mad at you, Microbet)

Fair enough. I took it as a statement of fact.

Speaking only from my personal experience, all the libertarians that I know are libertarians because they want to be left alone to do what they want to do. They don't think one way or another about corporations.

Yeah, Latinos are not all the same. I bet young Cuban-Americans are pretty solid for Deomcrats though. The Vietnamese here in Cali also fled communism and the first generation here was overwhelmingly Republican. The generation born here is a lot different.

I think what Meyer says is very true for the Kochs and the more powerful element of the Libertarian Party/Establishment, but as lagtight mentioned, not necessarily for a lot of people who consider themselves libertarian.

I agree with you, but the power the GOP currently has to draw districts and appoint judges is going to continue to make it harder for the demographic trends you rightly note to fully take effect. The right is going down, but they're certainly not going down without a fight.

That's why the line must be drawn HERE. People like Trump have to not only be defeated, with some narrow 271 seat victory, but CRUSHED.

If Hispanics don't turn out in record numbers in '18 and '20 to stop Trump and Co then they're never going to. The current administration is a threat to their very existence ffs. I mean, they just let what, 4000 odd people in Puerto Rico die after the hurricane and now they're trying to cover up the number.

But that said, I do think that it takes someone with the right message to truly galvanize them. For sure that's the case in the midterms. Texas will show how well Beto can deliver on that.

This is of course absurd. A true libertarian system such as you propose would collapse almost instantly.


Until they own one. Then they want to do away with pretty much all laws.

Of course whether this is because they truly believe in libertarian philosophy, or whether they just pander to it because they know it will increase profits exponentially is something you'd have to ask the Koch brothers. But I suspect I know what the answer is.

Sorry, I don't remember "proposing" any particular "libertarian system", other than to suggest that perhaps the only way to prevent our federal government from going bankrupt is to reduce spending by about a third.

In my opinion, the current federal monolith will probably collapse within five years or so.




I never plan to own a corporation, but I want to do away with probably the majority of Federal laws.

The context here is federal laws. Each state can regulate as they see fit, in my opinion.

State laws are generally more oppressive. Local laws too. What kind of a libertarian are you if you aren't irate about having to get a permit from the city to work on your house? Or get a license to cut hair?

If you firm this prediction up somewhat you can probably get a large bet down on this opinion. How do you define the monolith collapsing?

Why? What is a state except a microcosm of a country?

Besides, unless you have border controls between each state, then all that ends up happening is that corporations (and criminals) move to the states with the least amount of regulations and then do business from there. It just becomes a race to the bottom.

How shocked would you have been in 2008 to learn that the federal government is still chugging along a decade later?

Tangentially related to the subject of this thread: an article and a tweet

Democrats Must Reject Howard Schultz and His Radical Centrist Ideology

Can anybody make a case for Beto running even if he loses to Ted Cruz?

To me if he can pull Texas, he absolutely needs to be the nominee. Delivering Texas is gg GOP. But what if he doesn't?