What draws you to libertarianism?

Still

The purpose was to ask what was appealing about libertarianism – I’m asking the same thing about right wing libertarianism, I mean what would draw someone to so obviously flawed ideas?

But you seem unable to defend what you’ve said from criticism

Thing is that anarcho-capitalism (the far right branch of right wing libertarianism) is not thought to be really Anarchy by many if not most Anarchists.

Try reading http://www.hipforums.com/forum/topic/143078-bringing-in-libertarianism/?p=2069483

Anarcho-capitalists are against the State simply because they are capitalists first and foremost. Their critique of the State ultimately rests on a liberal interpretation of liberty as the inviolable rights to and of private property. They are not concerned with the social consequences of capitalism for the weak, powerless and ignorant. Their claim that all would benefit from a free exchange in the market is by no means certain; any unfettered market system would most likely sponsor a reversion to an unequal society with defence associations perpetuating exploitation and privilege. If anything, anarcho-capitalism is merely a free-for-all in which only the rich and cunning would benefit. It is tailor-made for 'rugged individualists' who do not care about the damage to others or to the environment which they leave in their wake. The forces of the market cannot provide genuine conditions for freedom any more than the powers of the State. The victims of both are equally enslaved, alienated and oppressed.
Peter Marshall (Demanding the impossible)

 

Still

But validity is the question to me the ideas seem flawed and so there validity is suspect, are you saying you cannot address the criticisms leveled at you views – if so then it seems irrational to hold onto them?

I mean I would not hold onto ideas I could not defend it would cause me to either adapt them so they could be defended or I’d drop them all together.

Can you please point out the innuendo; I think I’m quite open in my views of right wing libertarianism.

As to personal opinion well differing opinions is the bedrock of debate if we all had the same opinion all we would do is nod at each other.

Can you say which Libertarian views you are referring to?

For me at the beginning most of the US was basically a plutocratic oligarchy with voting rights being based on wealth and property ownership which meant that only about 10% of Americans at that time had the vote, there were even more stringent rules based on wealth for entering into office so far fewer were actually able to stand but the very rich.

To see if they can stand up to scrutiny and criticism – if an ideas cannot stand up to scrutiny and criticism it is probably a bad idea.

Well it is not good to try something without making some kind of risk assessment, do you jump into a hungry lions cage going ‘well I’ve never tried this before it should be fun’

And the scientific method is that any theory is put under scrutiny to see if it stands up to it, so far right wing libertarian ideas don’t seem to be stand up very well.

I’m pointing out that I don’t think they will work because the ideas that they are based on seem to be flawed and I’ve explained why and given examples. You don’t seem to be putting up any counter arguments other than you just don’t like your ideas being criticized.

I’m well aware of right wing libertarian views and I don’t agree with them because after examining them I think them flawed and I have presented my criticisms many times – my purpose is to warn people that right wing libertarianism seems like a very bad route to take.

You don’t seem to understand what debate is – it involves people with differing opinions presenting arguments as to why they have them and putting forward criticisms of differing views and defending their own views from criticism.
I’ve examined right wing libertarian ideas and think they are flawed (and dangerous if followed) and I’ve presented my arguments and criticisms.

Can you address those criticism? Do you have any rational counter arguments?

The open minded question ideas even their own they are happy to debate them to see if they can stand up to scrutiny (and change them when they don’t) is that the intelligent thing to do?

But you seem to be the one that is refusing to examine your idea, who in fact seem so annoyed that you views are even been questioned.

 

Still

Please can you stop obfuscating and start address the point – you seem to be saying you were attracted to right wing libertarian views because of ideas that you seem to be admitting that you cannot defend from criticism.

So why do you continue to hold onto these ideas?

 

As I’ve said I can’t understand why people would be attracted to right wing libertarianism because the ideas seem extremely flawed even at the very fundamental level, I’ve explained why many times but let’s go through a few in no particular order and remembering that many of these ideas are interlinked and cross pollinated.

Let’s begin with competition

Competition in an evolutionary sense (survival of the fittest) seems to underpin a lot their ideas they seem to think that ‘natural’ and to some degree unfettered competition will bring about the most natural and beneficial outcome. It colours their view of economics and of social issues.

There are many things wrong with that outlook.

It’s an evolutionary approach – based on natural selection - so just as in the wild the old and weak lion at the head of the pride will be taken down by a younger stronger competitor, so will (and should) old and weak individuals and companies be taken down by younger stronger newcomers. The better and fitter will naturally rise to the top. Those at the head of society therefore must be ‘naturally’ superior having fought their way there.

But humans don’t live in a state of nature, the rules and institutions we live by are artificial.

I mean the old lion doesn’t make a will and hand over the pride to his relatives with police and the courts there ready to protect his property (even if they are younger and physically and mentally ‘better ‘than him).
So at the fundamental level competition in an evolutionary sense doesn’t work because the whole thing about evolution is that it is based on natural selection.

That's the criticism and you can stop reading here - but if you want additional information you can read on.

Humans in many places live in a artificial environment under human created and manipulated systems.

As to companies, new ones can arise with new innovations but many out there are very old and still going – for example take DuPont – the DuPont family are the descendents of French nobility, the family moved to America and the DuPont Company was established there in 1802, they were well off and then made a huge fortune in the American Civil War and they are still one of the richest families in the US, (surviving the conviction of one heir for murder and another for child rape) and the company is still going strong.

The thing is that once wealth becomes established it has a tendency to try and hold on to its position and I don’t many American realise that they are growing their own inherited wealth ‘nobility’. With incredibly wealthy families who’s riches come from passed on assets.

The Rockefellers are probably the most famous, but there are obscurer ones like the Mellon’s (rich since the 1840’s) the last heir being Richard Mellon Scaife one of the biggest contributors to right wing causes (like the Cato Institute) and founder of the Heritage Foundation where he was vice-chairman.

One of the things highlighted by Thomas Piketty’s in Capital in the 21st century is how wealth once acquired can be held and accumulated and he warns of the rise of a system of “patrimonial capitalism”, dominated by inherited wealth.

You see as a group these families are most likely to try and bring influence to bare in their interests - it’s not just the obvious ones like the Koch and Walton family who pay for influence. For example take the lobbying around inheritance tax, while some like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are roughly supportive of such a tax many rich families are deeply opposed -

"A 2006 report by Public Citizen and United for a Fair Economy -- both nonprofits opposed to concentrated wealth -- identified 18 families financing a coordinated campaign to repeal the estate tax altogether. Among the leading names behind that push: the Gallos (E&J Gallo Winery), the Kochs (Koch Industries), the Mars' (Mars Inc.), the Waltons and the Wegmans (Wegmans Food Markets). At the time, the report estimated the families' collected net worth to be at least $185 billion” http://money.cnn.com..._lobby.fortune/

Thing is that I don’t think many American realise that they are growing their own inherited wealth ‘nobility’. With incredibly wealthy families who’s riches come from passed on assets.
OK I’ll write another criticism soon

 

If that were the case, then the Libertarian parties of the world would have the most power and influence over everything. You just don't see that now do you.

And I'm sorry you're missing my point. I'm applying my ideology to real-life situations that a typical working person experiences regularly.

I didn't say I hated increased pressure to work harder, from a supervisor or boss. I said I hated when someone with no experience, knowledge, or training in my line of duty, tries to tell me how to do my job. And I'm sure if you worked you'd feel the same. That's the problem with centralized command economies you lefties love so much, too much authoritarian power is put into the hands of those who know very little about the day and life of the workers themselves. A worker is better off being instructed from an upper level supervisor, than a government bureaucrat or a career politician.

Again you're missing the point, or you're trying to dodge.

I'm not here to debate whether public education should stay or go. Save that for a different thread.

My example about teachers being under pressure and dominance of a faulty administration system, that has little to no involvement in actually educating a classroom, is instituting policies that are overreaching and deteriorating the quality of a public education. The Department of Education became way to strict and over-regulatory. Then Bush's no-child-left-behind policies made it so that failing students succeeded anyway. Now we have Common Core which allows students to say 2+2=5 as long as they can provide a written example that says how they got that answer. All of these public education policies are examples of an inexperienced outsider telling a teacher how to do their job.

This test-culture you speak of originated from leftist ideologies such as Jimmy Carter's Department of Education. Republicans are just as responsible if not more, for making matters worse with NCLB. A testing system where no child is left behind, and they don't experience getting their feelings hurt over failure. That's sure gonna prepare them for the real world once they leave the comforts of school and enter the professional world.

 

watching ron paul speak is what attracted me to libertarianism. he just made more sense then the other presidential candidates and i just found myself agreeing with him over all others.

 

6 eyes

As I’ve said many times its about political pull – in the US you basically have two major parties of the right (one centre right the other further right) and then you have right wing libertarians pulling from the more extreme right – if they attach supporters then politics in the US is pulled to the right it helps wealth get the things that it wants tax regimes and regulation policies that advantage it. Many probably think that right wing libertarian ideas are one can short of a six pack and wouldn’t want them enacted but they are just tools to an end.

Just as many gave support to the Tea Party movement.

But I’m not sure you actually understand the ideology you claim to support – so far you seem to be unable to defend it from the many criticisms leveled at it

Then you need to explain a bit more – I mean I’ve worked in lots of places (and I know others have) where supervisors or bosses had little or no experience or knowledge of what some workers beneath them did but that didn’t stop them from bringing in new working methods or restructurings that very much effected those workers jobs.

Can you be more specific about what work you do and what exactly is the interference you are experiencing?

I’ve worked at lots of things and in many different places abroad and in Britain, some jobs were good some not so. Maybe you need to get a bit more experience of life, and you might realize that not everywhere and everyone’s experiences are the same as yours.

Again other than some rather obvious right wing bias you don’t really explain what you grips are in any way that backs up them up.

 

6 eyes

I’m missing what point? You raised education I gave my opinion so in what way was that a dodge?

‘It's no wonder the school system is falling apart and the next generation is gonna be a bunch'a retard babies. Teachers are being plenty oppressed by government and administrators who don't know jack shit about how to teach a class and make learning an enjoyable and interesting process.’

I have already explained why right wing policies have and would make things worse.

Why it seems to be what many right wing libertarians want and to some degree or other and what attracts them to right wing libertarianism.

I’ve explained why I (and others) think this whole testing thing seems based on ‘free market’ thinking

Since 2001 and No Child Left Behind, the focus of education policy makers and corporate-funded reformers has been to insist on more testing—more ways to quantify and measure the kind of education our children are getting, as well as more ways to purportedly quantify and measure the effectiveness of teachers and schools.
For a dozen or so years, this “accountability movement” was pretty much the only game in town. It used questionable, even draconian, interpretations of standardized-test results to brand schools as failures, close them, and replace them with for-profit charter schools.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/education-uprising/the-myth-behind-public-school-failure

Have you some evidence for thinking students are allowed to say 2+2+5 is a correct answer?

“as long as they can provide a written example that says how they got that answer”

I mean that makes perfect sense in mathematics it’s all about how you got to the answer (the working out) because that is how someone can see where mistakes were made and what needs correcting and taught to the child. Giving working out does not mean the answer given is accepted by the teacher as correct.

Maybe you need to understand teaching methods before making comments on them?

Again what evidence have you that children are not been told when they have given incorrect answers?

Have you children in the system is that is what happening to them?

 

Fishin

Are you saying you liked Ron Paul as a person and so became a libertarian or that the libertarian ideas put forward by Ron Paul attracted you to libertarianism

In both cases I’d ask if you’ve even examined right wing libertarian ideas and if you have can you please try and defend them from the many criticisms that seem to show them as been flawed?

 

i like his ideas, i dont really know much about him as a person. also, i learned about him only during the last two presidential campaigns starting on 2008. i thought he did great considering his budget and meager media coverage. i liked his straight-forward ideas especially on auditing the federal reserve and some of his ideas about taxes i thought were great and radically different from the other presidential runners.

what right-wing libertarian philosophies do you see as being flawed?

 

[SIZE=11pt]Fishin[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Haven’t you read this thread? [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]I’ve explained a number of times why I think the ideas put forward by right wing philosophy are flawed, try and address the ones above and then if you want more we can carry on in the mean time I’ll begin a thread just on flawed libertarianism. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Which tax ideas do you favour and which not? [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Most would seem to advantage wealth, increasing its power and influence – can you defend then from that charge? [/SIZE]

 

So there are two sorts of ideological representations for support, the conceptual abstract libertarianism of enough to stop uncontrolled Anarchy, the rest of the problematic belonging to conceiving the trust for power by the banks, and ideology as a whole in the understanding that competition for business was primarily a communications arrangement of the power for trust amongst the interests of good conscience.

 

Anaximenes

I still think you are a computer algorithm, trying for the Turing test*, but come on your programmers need to work on this it’s still not sounding human.



*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test

 

What's this article: (a) written for, (b) did an actuarial scientist write it? get quoted in it.


http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/european-union-drops-plan-to-label-oilsands-crude-dirty-1.2789868

 

No one has invented a political system yet that doesn't have major flaws and usually the number one flaw with any political system is they stomp on peoples liberties in one way or another.

libertarianism is the only logical choice when it comes to what political system is best.

 

is that because libertarians like barefooters?

 

Maybe that's it !

 

Libertarians favor the rights of corporations over the rights of people.

I'm sure no libertarian would agree with that statement but when you favor complete deregulation in the business sector that us what you end up with.

 

"I ran many miles, jumped fences, dodged bullets, swam across rivers, to escape libertarianism."

Said no person ever

 

Not necessarily, the reason the big corporations can screw everyone over now is because they are the only ones that can deal with all the regulations because they have massive legal departments 100s and 100s of Lawyers full time .

Like Monsanto and Eli Lilly the two dirtiest I know of.


But anyway the big corporations like heavy regulations because they can deal with it but startups and small business can't. The government destroys the competition for them.