help make this happen!

I have an idea about how to bring attention to libertarian philosophy and educate our elected representatiVes at the same time.
I recently read an artical by Tom Woods and he pointed me towards a campaign to strong arm Paul Krugman into a debate with a knowledgeable Austrian economist, Robert Murphy.
The plan uses a site named The Point(www.thepoint.com). Use the site to raise funds for charity but the funds don't get charged to supporters or given to the charity until a certain condition is met(Krugman agreeing to the debate). By continuing to avoid a debate he denies money going to help the homeless(almost 50,000 so far). Here is the address for the campaign: http://www.thepoint.com/campaigns/campaign-0-1240

After contributing I had an idea for another campaign. Raise funds to send a copy of Ludwig Von Mises: Human Action to every member of congress, the president, and his cabinet.
I went with it and created the campaign for a couple reasons:
1st. Some of our "representatives" might actually read it and learn something.
2nd. Even if they don't it would be a great opportunity to draw attention to a book that promotes liberty and truly free markets.
I'm trying to get the word out about both of these campaigns and would really appreciate any pledge to the campaign I started or the one for the Krugman debate. If you can't or would rather not pledge you can help by spreading the word to liberty minded people such as those on this forum.

Once again the Murphy-Krugman debate is at this address:
http://www.thepoint.com/campaigns/campaign-0-1240
The page for my book campaign is here:
http://www.thepoint.com/campaigns/campaign-0-1300

 

Great idea M. I'm a Libertarian Muslim & doing my part to help the cause. I'm hear today because HIP Forums sent me birthday greeting. I joined the forum *shortly after Last Hamlet died*. Maybe you've heard of him.

I've been trying to bring the truth of freedom to everyone. I've used my experience at West Point, to help this along.
I've been a lifelong Libertarian, and I simply tell it like it is. Human Action is too thick of a book to expect our politicians to read it. Anyway, Ludwig missed the point of eastern religious philosophy. All he thinks is that we need things to make us happy. That is a lie. In reality if you want to be free, you must first free your mind. Once you've discovered this freedom, you don't need much to survive.
You won't ask the government for anything but the minimum required. Everything else is our own responsibility, whether you're trying to get high, or have society reach a higher plane.
Do you understand what I mean? to tell you the truth I know the reason for our being, & I"m passionately telling the world. You may think I'm immaculately stoned, but in reality I'm...




virtually jesus christ. What do you think of that?
The "International Fellowship of Christians & Jews" thinks I'm Mr. Jesus 2.3, The God of Abraham. In reality I'm not a God, I'm just Dan the Man, who knows the reason for everything.

As I've said, I vote libertarian because I don't give a shit what you do!
I've been doing it all my life, and my life has been just fine. Don't blame me for the mess you think you're in, it certainly wasn't my fault.
My life has been fine, & it still is, even though my employer "severed our relationship". At least it wasn't my head! I was a favorite pot head of theirs, but they didn't like what I said. C'est la vie!

If you think I'm a bit blunt with my presentation, maybe you should just smoke a blunt & get out of our way! Vote libertarian before you do it.

 

In the U.S. we already have liberty and the Free Market system just isn't working. The financial institutions were free to gamble OUR assets and take the nation's economy down the rabbit hole. Wal Mart has been free to move anywhere they choose and put mom and pop out of business while moving your jobs to China. Just exactly how much freedom do you want to give them?

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What part of massive subsidies for government preferred business, regulations written by the industries they regulate to snuff out up and coming competition, bailouts with taxpayer dollars, federal reserve artificially lowering interest rates to create loose credit, government programs that force banks to make subprime loans(which fail), and all of the other massive regulations on every industry have to do with free markets? We haven't had free markets in this country in my lifetime. If you think so then you have no idea what the word FREE means.

How do we have liberty when every thing we do is regulated and controlled. You haave to get permission to get married. Even at a church the church still has to get a marrige license from the state. Start a business without getting permission and paying a fee and see how things go. Buy a home, pay it off, then see if they don't charge you just for owning a home for the rest of your life anyway. It's yours but you still have to pay them for your right to own property. That way they can finance their wars and empire over seas.

How is that liberty? How is that freedom? I could go on and on and on. But why bother. Seems like you have preconcived notions and anything that doesn't fit with those notions will be disregarded anyway. I could show all the facts and figures but I didn't come here to do that. I thought it was a libertarian forum, didn't come to educate or debate. Just to look for support for the Murphy-Krugman debate and my book drive.

 

How do you propose to fund government without property taxes for example then. Property taxes are often more favored over income taxes by libertarians.

Also you can in fact get a spiritual marriage that doesn't involve the state. It's just normally when people are getting married in a church they 99% of the time also want the civil marriage part for legal, tax and status reasons.

 

Actually further on this point, I'm taking a sign from today's rally to restore sanity

 

Well said!
I have to correct you on Mises though. He never says we need things. He says that people desire to change their circumstances to the most desireable. That we trade less desireable things for more desireable. He never says that people do or should desire the same things. You might desire to have as much free time as possible and sacrifice material possessions for that end. Or you might just want to smoke a blunt and would rather have a few ounces instead of the new video game system. You might desire to spread the word of god and work towards those ends. Maybe to do that you need a car to travel around and preach? It's not materialism that he speaks of but just simply the way things are.

 

Tell that to gay people who want to marry or the inter racial couples that weren't allowed to marry just a generation or two ago.
How about gas taxes to pay for roads? Then only people who use them are paying for them. Privatize schools or leave them in the hands of local and state governments. Each one could tax how they wanted, small sales tax, property, or local income. A lot of fire departments are volunteer. They could also be supported by local taxes. Libertarians are against social services or taxes. They should be done at a state and local level though. Not federal. All the tax dollars we would save in federal could be transferred to states. Each state taxing as they see fit. The money would go much farther because your not paying for the massive federal bureaucracy. Wouldn't be paying for nancey polosi to get drunk any more.
Lol, that was a low blow. She's no worse than any others.

 

I personally disagree with Libertarians on a wide spectrum of issues. But I dig any attempt to introduce a third party to American politics.

Because, really, the so-called "small government conservatives" in America would puke if they heard a true libertarian's thoughts on sex, dope, and all that good stuff.

By the way, I'm a small "L" libertarian in regards to sex, porn, dope, and 'all that good stuff'. I happen to be a social democrat on almost everything else.

(Thinking of this after MadCap's post) In the spirit of the Rally to Restore Sanity, here's to people who don't adhere to strict ideology! atriot:

 

Here's something you probably don't know about people who really support liberty. We don't have a problem with socialism, or any other form of governance for that matter. The problem lies in forcing that idea and way of life on everyone.
Let's say we have a libertarian federal government(almost none at all). The states handle their own internal affairs and local communities deal with day to day things like schools.
Now, the people of, let's say California, want to socialis their state. Everyone pay high taxes and the state takes care of everything. You can't have a free society and tell individual communities how to live. If they want to try it full blown, they could. But without the federal one size fits all policies each state would live how they wished here in America. I'm sure they would all have some level of social programs. It would vary by state.
Now in this senerio each state would manage itself as they see fit and the states would be competing with each other to draw business to their state and to have a happy citizenry. Because of this competition new ideas and solutions would form and they would copy each other and incorporate what works best. Or we can continue to have an ever expanding federal government that tells everyone how they should live and be.
In a free society people live as they see fit. Even if some of them want to form socialist communities withing that society.

Now think about a socialist society. Would they let libertarians have a community or state and live as they see fit?

 

You're not looking for support, you're looking for help to extort a debate from someone who has expressed a desire not to while you refuse to debate yourself. You're demanding the same freedom that want to take away from another. You have no idea what freedom is all about and you probably wouldn't last 6 months in the society that you espouse.

The hell of it is, you can live that life that you want. Move to Montana in the woods and get out of this society that you seem to hate, but you have no right to tear down what others have made.

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He's free not to do it just as we're free to try to get him to. If his economic principals are so sound then why would he worry. Kensian economics is a flawed theory. Inaccurate. That's why no Kensians would debate with a knowledgeable Austrian economist. He'll debate. He's done it many times. He just won't debate with an Austrian.
No, I didn't come to a libertarian forum to debate with a troll. You can here to argue. You didn't come with an open mind. We've been using your socialist democracy form of government since the new deal. It's collapsing. It's unsustainable. If you don't believe it look around you. you know why your a troll. Cause the topic of this post doesn't say "let's debate the advantages and disadvantages of liberty" or something of that nature.
Just so you know though. The problem with democratic socialism is that the majority holds the power to take from every minority. "Oh damn we need some money for ______, let's have a vote and take it from an unpopular minority group"
Has it ever bothered you that the greatest atrocities ever committed by man have always been state sanctioned? What more reason than that do we need to limit the states power to as little as possible? Just because the ruling body right now doesn't abuse the massive amount of power that any form of socialism gives them, they do, doesn't mean that the next ruling body wouldn't.
Democracy isn't freedom by the way. It's the power for the majority to oppress a minority. That's why the U.S. Was originally set up as a constitutional republic.

 

Btw, what's wrong with putting on a debate FOR CHARITY. I'm not sure what part of the concept you find appalling. Surely it's not the charity part. So it must be the debate. What are Kensians afraid of? Are you scared it'll expose that bail outs and constant credit expansion does not work? That's what it's about. OMG! What if printing new money and inflation are exposed to be detrimental to the well being of everyone! What will we do!
Guess who was at the helm and advising the policies that led us to the situation we're in now. People who follow the Kensian school of economics. Same people who are "getting us out of" the mess they put us in by doing the exact same things that got us into the mess in the 1st place.
Guess who predicted and warned that what happened was going to happen. People from the Austrian school of economics.
It's a debate, for charity, between an Austrian and Kensian economist. That's it.
Sorry you find the idea so appalling.

 

I'm not sure if you're aware of the fact schools and fire departments are already generally funded by local property and business taxes to begin with.

Also being against social services leads to the fall of society. Christ even the Roman empire provided some social services. You can't have people pick and choose what social services they get to pay for. I'd like not to pay for roads since I don't own a car, but I'm sure 90% of people who don't bicycle everywhere would have voted not to pay for the bike road that goes from New Haven to Cheshire.

 

You will have to excuse me. I mis-typed or my spell check got me or something. I'm posting from a phone. In a previous post I said "libertarians are against" and it was supposed to say "aren't". The rest of my post should have clarified but just in cause. Social services are fine. But they should be kept to a state and local level.
Why not have gas taxes pay for roads? A lot of fire departments are ran by people in the area paying dues. If you don't pay and your house catches fire guess what, they don't put it out. Some communities have additional property taxes to pay for schools. That's in addition to what they pay to the state for what the hell ever. That's their option. It should be done at a community level.
Real solutions are local solutions. One town over from my home they raised city sales tax by 1%. They built a new school. They had to because in spite of all the taxes they paid to the federal and state governments their school was still falling apart and couldn't get one built. They pay more in taxes to the federal gov that's supposed to go towards education than the school cost. They now have one of the best schools in the area. No thanks to all the taxes the paid "towards education". It all gets wasted in the bureaucracy.
The federal gov is inefficient and wasteful. The smaller it is the less they waste.
Sure, states wouldn't get federal funding. So what? With all the money we'd save in taxes the states could raise their taxes a little and pay for whatever.

Btw, if anyone is pro-war they are not a libertarian.

Economic libertarianism as you call it is simply letting people do what they want without the feds having a hand in everything. Has them having a hand in everything helped? If it wasn't for federal interference all those fat cat bankers you hate would be out of business and bankrupt. But no! We had to keep them afloat with government interference and tax dollars. "Economic libertarianism" as you called it means pass or fail, sink or swim, your business is on it's own. And successful businesses are always beneficial to everyone. Keeping bankrupt fat cat bankers and giant corporations afloat doesn't help anything.
Or did anyone think all the government meddling helped us?
Your greedy insurance companies got a piece too. They got a law that's going to require everyone to buy their product. That'll show 'em!

 

I think it's really sad that you can't see the irony of trying to force someone into debate and refusing to debate yourself. The term I've been avoiding is hypocrite.

Says the guy with 7 posts, whose only purpose seems to be promoting his own extortion scheme, to the guy with 1,391 posts. But, then, I wouldn't feel comfortable trying to debate on the side of those tired old worn out Libertarian ideas either. It's hard to defend a ship that already sank.

FYI... that's what these forums are for.

Sorry, but I don't support your scheme; and I didn't know that you weren't able to support your Libertarian ideas in a debate with real people.
I should have guessed it, though; after all you're here trying to promote others debating for you.

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I guess you missed my statement, so here it is again: "You're not looking for support, you're looking for help to extort a debate from someone who has expressed a desire not to while you refuse to debate yourself. You're demanding the same freedom that you want to take away from another."

That's really not a very clever strategy because it's so easy to see through. Throw the word charity out there and then accuse anyone who disagrees with your forced debate as being against widows and orphans. And, IMO, this is the problem with Libertarians, you think you should get what you want despite what everyone else wants.

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The reason the federal government provides social services is because the states were letting people starve. Most federal programs exist because the states won't do it.

Well spank my ass and call me Red, I thought that's what gas taxes were for; and I also thought a lot of them were imposed by the STATES.

Dude, all of these things are paid for at a community level.

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I'm not sure what you have against a debate against 2 major scholars in 2 major schools of economics. Being forced and being persuaded are two different things. Also, its not that Krugman won't debate. He debates about all kinds of things all the time. He just won't debate on economic theory. Although he'll trash anyone who doesn't agree with him. He'll trash and lie about the people who are trying to get him to have a real debate and then refuse to answer when he's proven wrong. He just won't enter into a debate that he might lose. His reason for not doing it is because its just not worth his time. If that's the case then we've simply given him another reason to do it. Help the homeless. If he's so sure his economic principals are sound then why not go school us all for charity. If you love the guy so much you should want him to do it so he can make the austrians look like fools.