Is libertarianism practical? What would a society in which individual freedom is prioritised? What are your opinions on the prohibition of drugs, prostitution, censorship of images and text on the internet and so on?
It all depends what kind of Libertarianism your talking about. Real libertarianism or Libertarian Party libertarianism.
Liberatarian Party librertarianism is essentially "BAWWWW REPUBLICANS DON'T LIKE US BECAUSE WE'RE EVEN MORE RIGHT THEN THEM, SO WE'LL MAKE OUR OWN PARTY THAT'S EXACTLY LIKE THE REPUBLICAN PARTY ONLY EVEN MORE CRAZY."
> censorship of images and text on the internet and so on
what country are you talking about?
In a true libertarian society, in which individual freedom is prioritised, there is no need for democracy.
Giving the emotive hysterical masses the right to vote is like letting a child decide what time they go to bed. Laws prohibiting "obscene" pornography and an individuals right to take drugs can only exist in a democracy. Politicians don't care about you - they wil say whatever it takes to get elected.
We need a libertaria one party state. We need to legalise all drugs, prostitution, and decriminalise the possesion of all images. There is no justification for limiting my freedom. There is no evidence to suggest victimless crimes like viewing pornography will encourage me to commit crimes.
Look at the criminalisation of CP - a perfect example of a law based on emotive morality as opposed to fact. If 1 in 5 people who view CP rape a kid I would support its criminalisation. However the vast majority of persons viewing CP will not even concider reaping a real child. Possession of videos of murder, real or simulated, does not make me guilty of murder.
People are slowly giving all their freedom up for supposed 'security' - the threat of terrorism is justification for the prohibition of free speech. Pedophiles justify the censorship of the internet.
>"BAWWWW REPUBLICANS DON'T LIKE US BECAUSE WE'RE EVEN MORE RIGHT THEN THEM, SO WE'LL MAKE OUR OWN PARTY THAT'S EXACTLY LIKE THE REPUBLICAN PARTY ONLY EVEN MORE CRAZY."
What about libertarian socialism? The state owns everything but you can do whatever you want as long as it dosent infringe the rights of others?
>5
You do realize that in order to MAKE kiddy porn that kids would have to be raped and mollested, don't you?
If it were up to me pedophiles would be drawn and quarter and people who look at kiddy pron would have their eyes gouged out.
This is my impression of libertarianism. Feel free to correct any misinterpretations that I have:
I think libertarians lean too heavily on the argument that competition is "natural" while not really establishing that cooperation - even coerced cooperation - is "unnatural".
Or they sometimes look to free people economically - basically holding the idea that you can use money to do whatever you want. But why stop at money? Why not violence too? I see them all the time say things like "well, we think that government should stay out of everything but the business of protecting us". Why should they even do that? Wouldn't it be better for us as a society, wouldn't we all get stronger, if we had to fight for our lives against anyone who could come up behind us and crack us over our heads with a crobar? Wouldn't we all develop better ways of preventing ourselves from being victims of crime if we didn't have to depend on the government doing it for us? The competition for survival would cause an amazing development of self-sufficiency and self-protection.
And people would work harder and produce more if they had to afford to hire their own personal army of mercenaries to keep them from being bludgeoned by someone who wants to take their stuff.
What's that? You say that that's what the government basically is there for, except we all share it? Yeah, OK. We can do that for economic security infrastructure as well as physical security infrastructure then. Unless you can explain to me what the difference is or something.
I think you're operating under the assumption that CP is illegal because people think it makes people more likely to victimize children. I think a lot of people think it does, but I don't think that is why it is illegal. I think it is illegal - with a ban that can survive a first amendment challenge - because it infringes the privacy rights of those depicted, who cannot give consent to waive those rights. That is why written CP is legal (in the US), but photographic/video CP is not.
> written CP is legal (in the US)
not really; but i guess the charge of obscenity is pretty broad and arbitrary and not really comparable to child pornography involving children nyoro~n
www.usdoj.gov/criminal/ceos/Press%20Releases/WDPA_FLETCHER-GUILTY_08-07-08.pdf
>>9
No, CP is illegal because only sickos want to look at it and people don't want sickos looking at CP. The reasoning by the courts is that fucking kids is illegal and so pictures of people fucking kids should be illegal. Not good reasoning because looking at pictures of any other illegal thing is legal.
Libertarianism places too much power in the "responsibility" of the people. We've seen how this turns out over the past 8 years with the deregulation of the housing sector, reduction in taxes, etc and what a mess it's put us in. This recession is mainly around because no one working for older brother was watching, and as much as I can't believe I'm saying this, we need Government to watch over things like this, otherwise we risk having things tumble down even further like in the 20's. Then I hear people complaining about the economic stimulus package and how it's "not a free market move", not to step on anyone's toes but the good old "free market" is what got us into this mess, I'm not saying you can't buy what you want or anything, I'm saying that banks shouldn't loan out money to people who can't afford it, and now even more people are complaining that the mortgage relief is rewarding people who jacked up and instead, everyone should get relief. That's all good and dandy but here's the problem, Government debt=10 trillion dollars, Government deficit=1 trillion dollars. Bush's tax cuts alone cost the country an estimated 2 trillion dollars a year and the war in Iraq costs an estimated 10 billion dollars a month, that alone would have prevented the debt and allowed us to pay for all of this crap. My point is, we'd all like some relief in this package, but the Government simply cannot afford it, that's the problem with Libertarianism. It only works when the economy is good, there is no massive amount of spending going out, and things are nice and stable. The reason they were not stable 8 years ago was also the Governments fault, it's pretty simple, the government pumped it's 500 billion dollars surplus left over from the Clinton admin into housing, that lead to the houses popping up over night like hot cakes nation wide, people buying those houses, banks looking to make a quick buck, and bomb, 8 years later the bubble has popped and the US didn't prepare for it.
Fingers..... are...... tired...... sorry so much of this was off topic.
>>12
I keep on hearing stories of the government pressuring/incentivizing companies that would provide those loans to people who couldn't afford them. Oh well. Maybe it's just one of those mystery's that'll never get solved because of how god damn hard it is to get facts in this world.
"My point is, we'd all like some relief in this package, but the Government simply cannot afford it, that's the problem with Libertarianism."
Wrong wrong wrong. According to Libertarian philosophy, that package should not even exist, and the relief people would be getting, are less taxes (seeing what I owe Uncle Sam this year further increases my belief in what would best provide me relief)
Oh yeah, and the Libertarian/Republican philosophy of tax cuts has just worked so well >_>. Like I said:
>Bush's tax cuts alone cost the country an estimated 2 trillion dollars a year and the war in Iraq costs an estimated 10 billion dollars a month, that alone would have prevented the debt and allowed us to pay for all of this crap.
The idea behind budgeting for the government is to save when things are good, so that we have the ability to dig ourselves out of a hole when things are bad. Thieve a version of Democracy 2, play it on max difficulty, and see what I mean.
>Oh yeah, and the Libertarian/Republican
I wouldn't equate the Libertarian party with the Republican party at all. They're two different parties with two different platforms altogether. The only thing that the Libertarian party has in common with the Republican party is it promotes what the Republican party used to stand for, which it abandoned decades ago.
>philosophy of tax cuts has just worked so well >_>.
This ignores the fact that there is still control of the nation's money supply and economy by way of a central bank (Federal Reserve), completely the opposite of what a true free market economy is. A lot (but not every single one) of our woes can be traced back to the Fed.
Most libertarians and libertarian leaning people call for an abolishment of the Fed because of its meddling of the economy as a whole. In contrast, nearly all Republicans would be very hesitant, or outright oppose to abolish the central bank.