If you are a Libertarian and hold liberty as your core value, why do you not believe in universal healthcare? Nothing impacts liberty more than sickness and death.
Libertarians don’t give a flying fuck about liberty. It is an authoritarian movement that aims to eliminate any force standing in the way of their organizing society into a rigid hierarchy predicated upon wealth. A government that is answerable to the people is a countervailing force against the formation (or re-formation I suppose) of such a system. That was indeed the whole reason such a government was invented in the first place.
I don't think it's quite so organized as this mindset leads to extremely self-absorbed and selfish people who arent good at organizing en masse. Multiple times now, libertarians have tried to form their own communities on land and sea and it always falls apart once they actually try to form the communities as it just turns into government rules and taxes like we have now. They don't even want to live by their own group's authority.
I'm really upset that the coinbro boat didn't actually get to set sail. That article was insane. Reading it was like watching a pilot episode to one of the finest shows ever conceived, then learning the show got canceled.
Libertarians are political extremists who hate anything related to the government but don't care about being oppressed by private businesses, or they think that it simply won't happen in their utopia. Libertarians are everything they hate about the woke left, only applied to the government.
My anecdotal experience is 'temporarily embarrassed millionaires' lean Libertarian and imagine they'll be young and healthy until they're old and wealthy.
Famous libertarian Friedrich Hayek supported universal basic income. As a libertarian myself, I always ask myself: “Will this make people more free?” If the answer is yes, then I support it because that’s what true libertarianism is. In the case of UBI and universal healthcare, both of those would unequivocally make people more free. People will be more free to choose a profession they like rather than one that merely keeps a roof over their heads. America already has a form of limited universal healthcare. It just happens to be restricted to the military and maybe some other government servants. Those members don’t have to worry about their healthcare and it allows them to focus their attention on more important matters, as their healthcare needs are met. Clearly the government has seen that universal healthcare is beneficial.
The sovereign citizens and the right wingers masquerading as Libertarians have given the ideology a bad name.
I recently got out of the military and it's been a complete shock how bad the private healthcare system is. So much red tape, so many charges, so much money being spent on both ends: to the insurance company, again to the insurance company (copays), and then to the provider when the insurance company won't cover things.
With Tricare? "Hey doc, I need this med for my migraines." "Alright, here you go." No charge.
The American health system is a complete scam keeping people under the boot of their employers and of the for-profit insurance companies.
If anarchists are often misunderstood I'd imagine libertarians even more so. Both philosophies advocate for the lack of a state, splitting between preference towards the community/collective vs individual, and are often misinterpreted to mean every thing the state does or should provide today can't exist without it.
American "Libertarians" consider liberty as self-sufficiency, not just freedom from a government, but from being required to contribute to society as a whole.
This is a bit of a loaded question and very poorly written. Bad troll is bad.
The problem stands that modern "Libertarians" have been corrupted by corporations and conservative bigots to mean "elimination of government and regulation" and not "government to uphold liberty" like it originally did. A correctly Libertarian government would write laws that solely uphold the power of the individual's self determination, which inherently requires restriction of the power of capital.
I consider myself Libertarian, but I feel there now has to be a distinction made between "Capital Libertarians" and "Individual Libertarians". One wants the liberty of capital, the other wants the liberty of the individual. I find myself in the latter. Corporations can go fuck themselves, the individual is paramount.
"Socialist" things like public infrastructure, and yes, public healthcare, would be supported by individual libertarianism. Social support structures like these support individual liberty but restrict capital liberty by requiring taxes to support them, whereas supporting capital liberty by making it "pay as you go" does nothing but remove the individual liberty of the population that finds themselves without any capital through no fault of their own. I absolutely support universal healthcare.
100% Libertarianism originated as a left wing movement in the 19th century. Right wing libertarianism didn't ooze out of the swamp till nearly a century later. In the mid 20th century. Post red scare when actual leftist were keeping their heads down due to fascist witch hunts. And unable to really call out the posers.
Real libertarians don't have a problem with government. They just believe that it should be focused on maximizing freedom, and access to it. Where the larpers are all about maximizing their personal freedom (privilege) and don't care if others have access.
"Left wing", and "right wing" are far too nebulous to really have any continuous historical use. Even in current parlance they are borderline useless terms.
This is probably where I align economically, but I support statist mandates that are inconsistent with "individual libertarianism" or "civil libertarianism."
For example, we should decriminalize drug use, but there should absolutely be a strong statist intervention where people are forced to stop using drugs.
A capital libertarian government would not fund public roads. You would need to pay a toll to drive on every privately built road, because your capital is free to move. But roads to certain places would cost more than others, thus restricting the individual's liberty to their ability to pay.
A individually libertarian government funds public roads. Individuals then retain the right to self-determination to decide where they want to go without restriction. How they go on those roads might be subject to their capital restrictions- whether they walk, bike, drive, rollerskate, or whatever. But they are at least allowed to use those roads.
Certain things will always be needed in our society for humans to function. If humans are not functioning correctly, they are not free to self-determine their path. Gating such a simple thing as healthcare, which again, humans absolutely need to function, behind the ability to pay is inherently restricting their individual liberty in an immoral way.
I feel there now has to be a distinction made between “Capital Libertarians” and “Individual Libertarians”.
You might be interested in Isaiah Berlin's "Two Concepts of Liberty".
Basically, there is no absolute thing called "liberty", because anything you do changes the material world and the state of the material world also shapes what you're able to do. So you can't talk about simply "liberty", and must always describe it in terms of those two relationships. What Berlin calls "freedom to" and "freedom from".
For instance, I might consider my liberty to mean that I have the "freedom to" shoot a gun in the air. My neighbors might consider their liberty to mean that they have the "freedom from" falling bullets.
We can't create a policy which guarantees both "freedom to" and "freedom from" for all people. But we can create a policy that guarantees both for some people. We just have to allow that some people get to enjoy both the rights and the protections, while other people lack the rights and must suffer the consequences of others' actions.
And that might be why the contemporary conservative version of so-called "libertarianism" plays so well with a notion of a superior social class, whether that's economic, religious, or racial. You can invoke the word "liberty" in support of your attempts to bully others, and then you can invoke it again as a protection against others' attempts to bully you.
I consider myself Libertarian, but I feel there now has to be a distinction made between “Capital Libertarians” and “Individual Libertarians”. One wants the liberty of capital, the other wants the liberty of the individual. I find myself in the latter. Corporations can go fuck themselves, the individual is paramount.
It may be better to stick with existing terms like positive and negative liberty.
It’s not really about liberty, it’s about freedom from taxes and consequences. They don’t get far enough in the reasoning to understand that they would benefit.
The term "libertarian" has been hijacked in the anglophone-world (starting in the US, of course) to essentially just mean "fundamentalist capitalist" - they are right-wingers who have been immunized from reality and mindlessly support only "liberty" as it applies to private corporations and their interests. Therefore, it shouldn't surprise anyone that you can find these (so-called) "libertarians" anywhere you find neo-nazis and the KKK.
In the non-anglophone world, the term libertarian still holds it's original meaning - a socialist... or, more specifically, an anarchist.
"Libertarian" became popular in the US when it started being incorporated into various science fiction novels. Probably the most famous is "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress." I love the book as science fiction, but the society the author creates depends on so many caveats that even the author has the old style 'free' system fall apart as soon as an actual government [as opposed to prison regulations] is formed.
“Libertarian” became popular in the US when it started being incorporated into various science fiction novels.
They got their que from right-wing economic grifters like Rothbard and Hayek - people whose beliefs wouldn't be out of place in Nazi Germany. That's why olden days US sci-fi writing was a festering hole of fascism - nothing else could have produced people like Heinlein.
Heinlein was a huge friend to Philip K. Dick, and any number of Jewish science fiction writers. He was one of the first writers to have an African woman as a hero, one of the first to have a transman character. Stop using the word 'fascist' for anyone on the Right. It dilutes the term.
I'd personally prefer to not give them the satisfaction of calling themselves "libertarians", and to, instaed, call them out on their missapropriation — the philosophy should be defended from those who would tarnish it.
Or they delude themselves into thinking everyone will pay their fair share voluntarily, forgetting that rich people exist who don't give a fuck about the common good.
Libertarians want freedom from government force. They want to be able to fund healthcare by choice. They want the freedom to not have taxes being used to send weapons oversees. Libertarians are for social and economic freedom.
I'm not sure what you are implying. An individual can pay for insurance or not. They are free to choose. Or they can pay for the entire cost upfront when problems arise.
Just going to the doctor for the first time at say 30 (imagining you started working at 20 but "decide" to not pay taxes) would cost you houndred of thousands of missed back pays before you get let into the building.
Is that your libertarian thing? Or do you think you just would never go to the doctor/hospital/dentist/need an ambulance ride, ... ?
Libertarians are, to an individual, categorical idiots who don’t seem to have the mental capacity to seriously and rigorously analyze and understand what a true “free-for-all” hypercapitalist society would imply. They just want to not pay taxes.
Yeah, but libertarians are antisocial asshole idiots by simple virtue of the fact that they think libertarianism is a viable concept. It’s just not, nor will it ever be going forward.
I can put it another way: I find the ideology offensive and societally caustic in the extreme. We do not live in a vacuum. We live in a society (in a literal sense - not going for the meme here). To pretend that we don’t is incredibly dumb.
Used to think I was libertarian. But now I think it's too absolute of an ideal to be any good for humanity. I definitely think free healthcare, housing, food, and education should be guarenteed for everyone.
They don't want to pay taxes because they don't like how government uses taxes and don't trust the government to do a good job. Plus, it's an additional layer of bureaucracy at the top which costs more money and is less efficient.
If you think private healthcare is more efficient than single payer healthcare when EVERY PIECE OF DATA WE HAVE says the opposite then I think that says more about you than it does about the government.
That graph is relating cost of healthcare to quality. Not necessarily comparing cost of countries with universal healthcare to America. Additonally, most of the healthcare spending in America is already by the government and look how that's going. America is also significantly larger than any of those countries listed. Overseeing healthcare for a country so large requires way more overhead.
Every graph of healthcare costs vs privatisation with the US in it is necessarily a comparison between private and public healthcare systems since most countries have single payer as most of their healthcare.
The US government healthcare programs are by far the most cost effective offering in the US but it's hampered by regulations such as not having the ability to negotiate prices (until the recent tiny concession on a handful of drugs that has paid off in spades).
Finally, other large countries including India and China may have lower life expectancy, but they're close and rising rapidly compared the stagnant US trends. Of course the bang for the buck they get is at least 5x what the US gets with its ridiculous system
They don’t want to pay taxes because they don’t like how government uses taxes and don’t trust the government to do a good job.
The opposition to taxes is generally due to a power imbalance resulting in compulsion through the use of force. Taxes are in opposition to negative liberty, which is what libertarianism generally aligns with.
Libertarians only care about 2 things: lowest taxes possible and legal weed, and they would gladly sacrifice the latter in favor of the former. Anything else is nothing more than lip service.
Universal healthcare means taxes, and that is the one thing Libertarians hate above all. Never mind that it would be cheaper than private insurance. They relish in the fact they can skip buying insurance, and if they get hurt, ERs are required to treat them anyway.
Libertarians only care about 2 things: lowest taxes possible and legal weed, and they would gladly sacrifice the latter in favor of the former. Anything else is nothing more than lip service.
I look at who self-professed libertarians actually vote for.
Personally, I see this as a very weak metric, if it is measured within a FPTP system. It is generally not within one's best interest to vote for an entity that perfectly aligns with one's interests under FPTP — one must often vote strategically.
Libertarians only care about 2 things: lowest taxes possible and legal weed
I have read it, and find it bullshit. Libertarians always manage to decide to “strategically” vote for the Republican that promises authoritarianism but also promises low taxes. Again, it’s not about what Libertarians say they support, it’s who they actually support.
What exactly do you disagree with? It's really just a definition. If you are encountering people who are advocating for authoritarianism while calling themselves libertarian, then they are misappropriating the term.
Libertarians always manage to decide to “strategically” vote for the Republican that promises authoritarianism but also promises low taxes.
This is very likely to be a faulty generalization. Also, there are policies on both the Democrat, and Republican side which can be construed as authoritarian.
Again, it’s not about what Libertarians say they support, it’s who they actually support.
I'd be very hesitant to call stategic voting "supporting".
I think there are roughly three subgenres of libertarian; the two you identify (wants hierarchy with warlords and wants public heroin use without jail time) but then there is also a third group that has focused a lot of rage on age of consent laws for some reason.
Libertarian care about maximizing social and economic liberties. Liberty being defined as freedom from authority. Taxes are forced on citizens so libertarians generally want to limit taxes to a minimum. I see no reason to believe that universal healthcare would be cheaper than insurance. The government is an inefficient monopoly where private insurance companies have to compete for the lowest rates.
You want to maximize liberty, but have a funny way of showing it. Libertarians vote for the most authoritarian they can, as long as they will cut taxes. Even if that means banning abortion, keeping marijuana prohibition, forcing religion on children in schools, supporting civil forfeiture, preventing people from choosing sustainable energy, and so much more.
As has famously been said, taxes are the price we pay for civilized society. The non-aggression principle I believe is absolute bullshit. Libertarian would happily screw over anyone, claiming they are simply exercising their personal liberty. They couldn’t care any less about the well being of anyone else but themselves. Absolute barbarians if you ask me. Personally, I’m happy to get good services for my taxes, and not see my money go to a greedy asshole CEO. Sure, politicians are also greedy assholes, but at least the people can vote them out.
It would cost less because a single entity, costing much less overhead. Also, a single entity would have far more buying power. Almost every doctor would have to accept them, eliminating out-of-network costs. And we wouldn’t have hundreds of overpaid executives that pat themselves on the back with multimillion dollar bonuses for denying sick people coverage. And we can see it in action. Most industrialized countries already have some form of universal healthcare, and they all cost less per capita. People that actually have universal healthcare generally love it. And don’t talk to me about waiting lists. I’ve been on plenty of waiting lists right here, and lots of people can’t even get on them because they can’t afford the care they need.
Competition simply does not work in the healthcare market. When people are sick, they are limited typically to one option. And it has inelastic demand, so changing prices don’t change demand, and thus hospitals and doctors can charge whatever. The system, built on the economic principles libertarians espouse, is god-awful.
Profit margins are to keep a company out of debt and ensure it can grow as technology advances. Government would still need to pay employees and keep up with tech. But your right, government does need to avoid debt because it can just print money but that leads to inflation. There is no way to make cost just disappear.
How is having numerous private companies all concerned with billing in any way efficient? Imagine if everyone was covered and the money and time and intelligence used to decide how much they pay and how much you pay went towards actual healthcare. The whole existence of health insurance is an inefficiency.
I consider myself a libertarian and I believe in free healthcare. I think certain industries should not be run for profit. It creates perverse incentives that harm the common man. For example healthcare.
If there's a profit incentive in bealthcare, there is incentive for drug companies or hospitals to raise their prices. This would mean less people getting treatment or more people in medical debt.
Another industry I think shouldn't be for profit is education. We want an educated population. It should be encouraged, so it should be free for anyone who wants it.
In my view, libertarianism is a perspective that the government should interfere with the personal liberties of the individual as little as possible.
Every single government action should be heavily scrutinized and challenged. Some actions are justified. For example regulating healthcare I think is justified. You are taking away the liberty of starting a hospital - but the benefits outweigh the costs.
I believe that cooperatives should be encouraged if not explicitly mandated for large companies.
I think to Chomsky's conception of anarchism. Look at all hierarchies of power and challenge them. Some are justified - the power a father has over his child. Some are not - the power a cash advance place has over their customer base.
I think governments often make mistakes and through heavy handed actions end up screwing the average person. By dramatically limiting government action, you help prevent this.
That's probably the more popular way, but I think it's easier to misinterpret. For example the freedom of speech, one could think of it as the freedom to speak instead of the freedom from undue censorship. But that right is usually considered a negative one.
For example the freedom of speech, one could think of it as the freedom to speak instead of the freedom from undue censorship.
As I currently understand it, freedom of speech is regarded as a negative liberty because it is purely focused on freedom from the government imposing restrictions on what you can and can't say. It's not, however, the government giving you the freedom to say whatever you want, whenever you want, under any circumstance — e.g. people are free to trespass you from their establishment if they don't like what you are saying.
I agree that it's a negative liberty. It's just the from/to language can be misconstrued IMO, the not impede/oblige others framing is more clear without additional information. It's, again IMO, targeting the core of the differential. Asking of others for inaction vs asking for action.
IIUC, I just think that the intent/mentality is somewhat altered in what you described in this comment. For example, you said "Positive rights oblige others to provide something (like healthcare)." — positive liberty isn't necessarily about forcing people, in an authoritative manner, to do things for, or to, another person. It's essentially taking the position that people should have the freedom to experience life on a level playing field, if you will — it is interested in lowering the amount of barriers preventing people from doing what they want. I don't think your wording is necessarily incorrect, I'm just not convinced that the connotation is the same.
I think this cleared up our disconnect. I chose oblige to indicate that they require others to do something for them to occur. Most often paying taxes, to pay the provider of a service. This typically isn't a 'at gunpoint' interaction. But negative rights will never require another to do something for it to be practiced.
I agree with your highlighting of the philosophy behind them. I was more concerned about a short rememberable way to differentiate the two.
So I chose oblige vs force to make sure it had the connotation of a civil concession.
I don't think being downvoted for answering the question in good faith should happen, but I do see a few bad faith answers that absolutely should be downvoted
Disclaimer, I am not a libertarian by a long shot.
But - there is a difference between freedom to and freedom from. I think in general libertarians believe in freedom to, not freedom from. So you are free to yell, but not free from noise. You are free to walk in traffic, not free from being run over.
It almost makes sense, I don't think people should be free from seeing things that offend them, right? Or free from consequences. So no, they don't think freedom from sickness is a right.
It seems like you have an interesting definition of liberty. Liberty (to me) is freedom from authority. Libertarians core value is not having government force individuals to do anything. If people want to opt into a universal healthcare private system they are free to do so (kind of like insurance). A big motivation for this is lack of trust in government to handle the job well. Libertarians see government as inherently prone to corruption and thus want to limit their power as much as possible. The extent to which a given libertarian wants to limit government varies. By appointing government authorities to the system the cost of everything rises as in addition to health care you also have to pay the government workers who oversee the system and it's not very efficient. Not to mention politicians get to decide how much money goes to these programs etc etc. do you really want politicians involved in your health? With all the inefficiency and corruption in politics why do you trust them to handle your health?
To me, this reads like it implies that government and govt programs are bad because of the govt employees, but if you were to take those same "corrupt" politicians and put them to work at private companies that they would stop being "corrupt." Like it is a belief/reaction to one specific bad instance of a large government/program. "The government sucks at program X, so if we get rid of that program, the same general population will gain empathy, morals and efficiency if working for a company to run program X."
It's a about competition. I'm not saying business owners aren't corrupt. But if one company, say nestle, turns out to be rotten then you can buy your chocolate chips from another company. But with government I don't have a say. If I don't pay taxes I go to jail and if I don't like how my taxes are spent then too bad. There is no alternative.
How often do we see real competition? Even if a new company comes along with a great idea, it's more likely to be gobbled up by a bigger company than be left to flourish.
And that's the right of the individual who owns and started the company. Part of the problem is people don't seek alternatives and just buy what is convenient. People value the big brand names. If we want competition then look for alternatives. Look around at the brands you use and figure for yourself if you are buying big brands or supporting competition and smaller brands. Focus on your contribution. We can't and shouldn't control others. Worrying about what you support is enough on its own.
There is often no alternative in private business either. Take Nestle for example. Go look up how many different brands they actually own. You may think you've boycotted them, but in fact you're just buying one of their hundreds of other brands. We're very late in the capitalist system now, and the power has been heavily consolidated. Many industries are completely dominated by 1-3 companies, and they all collude to eliminate competition.
But with government I don't have a say. If I don't pay taxes I go to jail and if I don't like how my taxes are spent then too bad. There is no alternative.
It's called voting, really basic part of our world you seem to have forgotten about.
You happy with how that's been going so far? Do you honestly feel represented by trump/biden? We are presented two rotten options and told we get a say in politics. That's just one more option than dictatorships. If I don't want us tax dollars gifting missiles to Israel I have no option in either party. That's not a say in government. I don't get to tell the president to spend my portion of the taxes. I would rather keep those taxes and voluntarily give to homeless shelters and other charitable groups which do a much better job helping people then the government ever will.
Damn, you'd have to be completely brain dead to still believe anything is more efficient than single payer healthcare. The US has the worst outcomes for the highest cost in terms of life expectancy. Same with roads, utilities, schools etc... the more you privatise the more expensive things get for a lower quality product.
A well regulated, competitive market is good for many things, but for others it's atrocious. An unregulated market has never produced good outcomes on any scale larger than the board of directors.
If you're seriously summarizing the libertarian agenda then I can't believe any one over 14 could hold these ideas unless they were VERY sheltered from reality.
If you want a healthy discussion, you need better arguments.
Competition is inherently meaningless in the context of healthcare. What are you going to do, shop around while you're having a heart attack? Also, with single payer, the government is not involved in your healthcare directly. Compare that with the current system where insurance companies often decide if you're worth the treatment or, if you're under or uninsured, you get to carry the debt until you die.
I think part of the problem is the blurred lines between routine healthcare and emergencies. You are right, if you are having a heart attack insurance should step in to help you front the unexpected large cost. But for expected care like dentist visits you can and absolutely should shop around.
I like your point about insurance getting to decide but I think it's important to note you can still get treated even if insurance doesn't pay. Or you can sue them if you feel they should pay. You make some good points though.
Preventative care. If you have insurance that covers checkups, screenings, etc. then you get that benefit. If you don't have the insurance and can't afford the out of pocket expense, you skip. The issue is that then people wait until they're in really bad shape before seeking treatment meaning that outcomes are worse and treatment is much more expensive than if the illness had been caught earlier. Who pays for that? We all do through increased premiums.
This doesn't happen in a well-run single payer system.
But for expected care like dentist visits you can and absolutely should shop around.
Why? I'm not seeing any benefit to your idea vs single payer dental. It's not like your mouth isn't a part of your body or that dental issues don't effect your overall wellbeing.
Or you can sue them if you feel they should pay.
If someone can't afford insurance, what makes you think they can afford a lawyer?
It's very frustrating seeing someone argue for disproven theories (like the government is less efficient than the free market in arenas most countries have socialised) using easily disprovable statements (like single payer healthcare would be more expensive to US citizens than the private system you have now). Especially when those ideologies can only hurt everyone.
I do apologize for the tone since you have been respectful and I have been less so. You don't deserve the rudeness but your ideas don't deserve the consideration they get in civilised society either.
If you listen to online libertarians they seem to believe everything is on the tables. Utilities have already been partially privatised and they've successfully impressed the classification of broadband as a utility which would have improved service, accessibility, and price at the cost of corporate profit.
the more you privatise the more expensive things get for a lower quality product.
Err, well, no — a competitive free market will ensure that prices are driven down. What I think you are trying to get at is that healthcare, generally, doesn't function in a capitalist market, and I would agree. The reason healthcare doesn't function well under capitalism is because purchases are made under a leonine contract.
Same with roads, utilities, schools etc… the more you privatise the more expensive things get for a lower quality product.
This is the same sort of issue as mentioned above, but for somewhat different reasons — public utilities are intrinsic monopolies, which are inherently anti-competitive.
A well regulated, competitive market is good for many things, but for others it’s atrocious.
It is good under the exact restricitions that you initially described. As soon as you deviate from those restrictions, it breaks down.
Libertarians see government as inherently prone to corruption and thus want to limit their power as much as possible.
I prefer voluntary interaction to using force or violence. Personally I believe we're obligated to help each other and our community and would voluntarily be a collectivist - I'm just not willing to force everyone else to.
We still need to modify liability and IP law to disincentivize megacorps and not use violence to benefit the wealthy.
Government programs IS US HELPING EACHOTHER. Sure corporations have been undermining democracy, but the government is OUR corporation. It's the only one that we get the choose what it does. The fact we're obligated to pay taxes is EXACTLY the implementation of your statement "we're obligated to help eachother"
I don't understand how you can make statements like this. The threat of violence? The government's monopoly on violence is rephrased as the will of society to ban violence in public life by restricting violence only to the enforcement of democratically selected laws. There is no other way I can conceive. Should more people have the ability to use violence to enforce their views on others? Should corporations have that right? If no one has that right how can we stop someone who decides THEY have that right?
The whole "government monopoly on violence" is for me the most absurd librarian statement of them all. What's the alternative? Who should decide what deserves violence? Who should use violence? What do we do if someone breaks this compact? Because the current answers are at least ideally "the people, through democratically enacted, clear and transparent laws", and "the people, through the police they pay for accountable only to the people" and "apply fair and balanced justice through the judiciary system, run by the people and accountable only to them". I'm in no way saying that it's working perfectly as is clear in recent politics, but it's certainly trending in the right direction in social democracies. We're closer to that ideal now than we have ever been. As far as I've seen libertarian ideology has only come up with absolutely HORRIFYING answers to these questions, or wishy washy nonsense.
The issue with this, imo, is that it is a conflict of interest. The government creates the laws — the ultimate restrictions on what a populace can and can't do. What happens if the government gets perverted to the point where you no longer have a say in changing it?
Should more people have the ability to use violence to enforce their views on others?
It's about balance. Imbalanced power distribution will lead to abuse. The difference lies in if you want a true democracy, or an oligarchy. In the end, it is always the group that holds the majority power that holds the ultimate say. Would it not be better that this lies in the hands of the people than in the hands of a minority of elected officials?
Dude what the fuck? You do NOT want it to be legal for people to use violence to enforce their views on others. That's what "might makes right" is and it's how gangs are run. It's brutal. Every positive consequence you imagine will be completely dwarfed by the depths of human violence and depravity this would unleash.
The problem lies in the distribution of power. If you have the majority power held within a minority, then that is similar to gang rule, as you have pointed out. Now, if you spread power evenly, and equally, over all people so that there is no imbalance, that puts you on a path to equality. But one must, of course, never forget the saying: "democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding on what's for dinner".
That's how a lot of stuff works, true. I don't agree that can work with violence. I also don't appreciate the conceptual response to very practical questions.
I live in a peaceful society. I wouldn't want my neighbour to be able to use violence because my tree dropped it's leaves on his side of the lawn. I wouldn't want an alternate police force hired and paid by a group of white supremacists (current statistics aside) to enforce laws in a biased manner. Having other corporations able to use violence is an absolute dystopian nightmare and is 100% the cause of every dystopian fantasy world. If the government WASN'T empowered with violence then there is nothing to stop the above 3 scenarios. So I'm not sure what other "equalizing distribution" you're imagining and I'm not certain a better one exists.
I am open minded, which is why I asked those 3 very specific questions. If your have a better idea I'm all ears. If your idea is just to open up the floodgates and hope for the best because that will equalise access to violence and more equal is more better, then I will keep treating libertarian ideology as a threat to civilization. Mostly ideas that sound nice, but no practicable solutions that don't destroy society. Like communism.
I also don’t appreciate the conceptual response to very practical questions.
I apologize if I have offended you — that wasn't my intent. What exactly do you mean by this?
I wouldn’t want my neighbour to be able to use violence because my tree dropped it’s leaves on his side of the lawn.
This depends. A violent outcome need not be in response to an action, but it can stem from it. Laws carry with them the threat of force.
I wouldn’t want an alternate police force hired and paid by a group of white supremacists (current statistics aside) to enforce laws in a biased manner.
If a country allows for a citizens arrest, everyone holds within themselves the power of enforcing the law. Though you may be referring to the idea of paying for private police and leaving others without. If so, this is more of a question of positive and negative liberties. Having a public police force would be a positive liberty, imo — in that case, it potentially doesn't align with libertarianism, but that is very debatable.
Having other corporations able to use violence is an absolute dystopian nightmare
Do note that if a corporation is not allowed to use violence, then that means that they cannot take it upon themselves to protect their property. Perhaps you think that that is how it should be?
If the government WASN’T empowered with violence then there is nothing to stop the above 3 scenarios.
I'm not sure I follow this point. I don't think that I have argued that the government shouldn't be allowed to use force — it wasn't my intent if my previous statements were interpreted in that way. The point that I'm trying to make is that the government should be kept in check. You have pointed out that threat of violence is what must be used to uphold the law. The only way for the people to keep the government in check is for the people to keep the government under threat of violence. If the distribution is just right, then no minority group in a democracy can hold the majority of the power.
I am open minded, which is why I asked those 3 very specific questions.
Which 3 questions are you referring to?
more equal is more better
I don't understand this point. Are you stating that you don't believe in individual equality?
How do libertarians generally handle minority rights? Is it as bad as conservatives? A good example are all of these anti-trans and anti choice in abortion bills. What would a libertarian think of these?
Looking on the internet it kind of feels like libertarians are usually suburban people or people so out of the way that the messes in Washington don't affect them as hard as those in the cities. So I have only met one and he didn't seem to fond of our black coworkers, if you get what I mean.
Libertarians are just like other political parties. There are different groups that subscribe the the term libertarian each with slightly different beliefs. Whatever extremists people are out there in the Internet do not represent the whole. I really suggest watching some of the 2024 libertarian debates. They are educated smart people who are informed about the complex issues like those you mentioned. This whole thread has been really eye opening for me. I had no idea people had these conceptions about libertarians. I am guessing there are a bunch of far right groups that like to identify as anarchists and throw around the term libertarian while they do. But if you listen to the rhetoric of the political party and the representatives you will see that those ideas are not held by the party as a whole.
To answer your question, libertarians are, in general, pro personal liberties and pro economic liberties. They believe the individual should get to choose. A common line they use is government should not exert force one way or the other. This means they tend to agree with Democrats on issues like race, drugs, LGBTQ etc. The people who actually get a stage in the political party are absolutely against racism, sexism etc. There was a debate recently where the candidates (about 7 primary) were Asked their stance on abortion. Most of them said they were personally pro life BUT they would still veto any bill or cut funding to any program that forced that perspective on others. Any person who goes around saying they think this and they want the government to force and regulate that disagrees fundamentally with the libertarian perspective. I said most, because one of the candidates was unapologetically pro choice. Please don't think that whatever alt right edge lords are out there actually have any idea what libertarianism is.
The term for this is "negative liberty": the freedom from something; whereas, "positive liberty" is the freedom to do something. Libertarianism, generally, aligns with the idea of negative liberty.
If there is freedom from a governing authority then there is no one to take away my freedom to do what I like. Sounds like two ways of saying the same thing. Maybe I miss your point.
The distinction between positive and negative liberties is, indeed, a rather blurry one, but there is generally a difference in mindset between the two. That being said, libertarianism seeks to minimize the size and influence of the government, but they don't seek to abolish it — those that seek to abolish it are anarchists (I'm not sure if I am reading your comment correctly, but it seems that you are advocating for anarchism rather than libertarianism when you said "freedom from a governing authority"). It's important to note that negative liberty is a concept that distinguishes a certain class of liberties — it doesn't require the presence of a government.
Well said, I probably wasn't very clear, but I am not an anarchist. There are certain critical functions that the government must control. When I say freedom from authority I refer to specific government agencies that can exert force on individuals. Government roads don't force users to do anything but rather empower citizens.
Government roads don’t force users to do anything but rather empower citizens.
Another argument for why government roads are ethical is because they fight off monopolization — property ownership is at high risk for monopolization. I'm not sure if the Georgist idea of taxing the land value that a private road would be on is enough.
Right, government should provide oversight to public goods that, by their nature, require monopolies such as roads or utilities. Government also needs to have a judicial branch that mediates conflicts between individuals and entities.
The problem with this is that in a free democratic system, government is something you do, not something which is done to you. You can't just pick and choose which aspects of government you like. Part of the social contract is that if you want clean water and plumbing and shit, then you agree to abide by fair democratic consensus. If you don't, I suppose you are free to go live in the woods.
I imagine it's a "negative liberty vs positive liberty" conundrum.
American libertarianism seems to consistently skew towards negative liberty, which is complete autonomy to anything but without any power or resources. I believe this predilection came from Ayn Rand and Reaganism, and that It now manifests mostly as anarchocapitalist sentiments.
I'm a bigger fan of positive liberty - possessing the resources and power to do what you desire within a constrained system.
Unfortunately we live in a society which provides neither. The amazing results of constant compromise.
The problem is defining what acceptable positive rights involves. There are people who think that having to "work to survive" is somehow a major human rights abuse. I don't think that anyone should be entitled to not have to work unless they are severely disabled and can't work. At the same time, expecting people to work multiple jobs is corporate oppression.
I really like your answer but to me this is what motivated me towards libertarianism. We have been voting between two parties that both are authoritarian in different ways and the result stinks. Let's try the other half of the compass for a change. If government sucks then don't vote for more government to fix the corrupt system. Vote to limit government and give power back to the people.
Libertarians are people who imagine living in their idea of personal, fictional, utopia. Their utopia is one where they pay for only what they want, nobody else gets any of their money, corporations will do no harm, and somehow, magically, they have all the conveniences of modern life.
They just completely ignore that their miserly financial outlook undoes centuries of understanding that an educated society reduces poverty, crime, and unrest, hence the need for public education. Corporations still cause environmental ruin and poison the land, sea, and air…as if giving them minimal or free rein would improve that. Usually their solution to anyone intruding on their ideal world is to shoot them, no need to pay for cops.
In other words, they’re all about their Liberty to do what ever they want. Their version of liberty for you is “You’re free to sink, swim, or die on your own.” They just assume they’ll always be fine or have enough money to do whatever they need. No need to chip in for anyone els’s health care if a) they can’t pay for their own or b) they have their money to pay for theirs, and you’re not getting any of it.
Libertarians are the right wing version of 20 year old socialists who want free stuff and have no understand of what really drives and motivates people.
I tend to lean left but I'm incredibly disappointed with the state of the political landscape.
I'm not a Libertarian, but I sympathize with some of their economic viewpoints -- significantly more so than tends to be welcome here. Unlike some of you, I don't speak to the motives and attitudes of all libertarians, only my own. I'm not a Republican. I don't smoke pot. I did vote for Jo Jorgensen in 2020. I do give a flying fuck about liberty. I don't confirm or deny being a myopic cunt.
Oddly enough, I do support some form of public healthcare. I'm well aware that most libertarians don't. A hundred years ago, maybe even 50 years ago, I wouldn't have either. The problem is that medical science has advanced to where a free market insurance model doesn't work as well as it used to. Health insurance used to be a luxury when lung cancer would kill a rich man almost as quickly as it killed a poor man. That's no longer the case, and the costs have accelerated to where the treatment can bankrupt an uninsured middle class man.
The real sinker however is pre-existing conditions. You can't insure a house that's already on fire, and we don't ask homeowners policies to do so. Waiting periods for costly conditions sometimes almost work, except for patients born a pre-existing medical condition. If the insurer had the choice, they'd just refuse to write the policy, even if treatment is cost-effective from a public policy standpoint.
So I support free market solutions where they exist. Health insurance may be one of the few situations where it doesn't.
I always assumed it was impossible for a free market to exist in healthcare. One important tenant of a free market is being able to freely enter and exit the market at will. Exiting the healthcare market is impossible. You can't reasonably choose to leave the market when life is forcing you to engage in it, or choosing to leave the market would lead to death. It's the equivalent of having a gun put to your head.
Exactly. To me all the basics of life, the bottom tiers of Maslow's pyramid can't be privatised. Healthcare, utilities, education, infrastructure, social safety nets, you need those things as a PREREQUISITE to participation in the market. The market can't provide its own prerequisites. If you don't provide these things you simply cannot have a competitive free market in the first place.
Do not be deluded by the abstract word Freedom. Whose freedom? Not the freedom of one individual in relation to another, but freedom of Capital to crush the worker.
So far, outside of a classroom, the only “Libertarians” I’ve seen in real life are people who vote republiQan and refuse to take accountability for it.
Or people who don’t vote, and allow republiQans to rule while taking no accountability for it.
So, they don’t support universal healthcare because republiQans don’t, and that’s what they really are.
Actually, not voting is one of the most ideologicaly consistent things someone who is extremely libertarian could do. Because if you voted for something and got it passed. Technically your will could be used to infringe against perceived rights of others. So by rights any true ideological libertarian should never vote. But you'll almost never see that on the right.
So far, outside of a classroom, the only “Libertarians” I’ve seen in real life are people who vote republiQan and refuse to take accountability for it.
This is, imo, most likely a symptom of a first past the post voting system. It results in people not voting for whom they believe in, but, instead, to vote strategically in the very general direction of what is actually wanted.
This is the problem with "ism"s. At whatever point you decide that philosophy X is the answer to everything, you start being wrong about a lot of the world, because whatever it is, there's at least like 30% of situations (and potentially a lot more) that your particular ism actually isn't the answer to.
Libertarianism or anti-imperialism or ACAB or socialism or pro-the-Democrats or anarchist or whatever it is, it's never always the answer. Trying to hold a debate about, well is it philosophy X or philosophy Y that's always right about everything, or any other discussion that feeds into the basic wrong premise, is just compounding the imaginary non-situation-dependent way of looking at it.
Although yes some of them are wrong a lot more of the time than some others.
Before applying any of these so-called "isms" to the collective, the most important step, imo, is to ensure that there is synchronization on the collective's ideals and principles. In general, understanding all extremes, their benefits and drawbacks, is the best approach forward. One must be rooted in their ideals and draw from diverse pools of experience to round out one's beliefs.
When you combine "Libertarian" with the greed that is typical in the ultra wealthy, their core value typically only includes liberty for themselves and no empathy for others. You can use any party label you want but without empathy, members of every party are nothing more than selfish pieces of shit. Just to be clear, I am not a "they're all the same" idiot, as Republicans clearly think empathy is a four letter word. But there are sociopaths without empathy everywhere in society, especially in the US.
As far as universal healthcare is concerned, we can't even agree as a society to provide clean water to our population by removing leaded pipes. Why would we expect something as reasonable as universal healthcare?
On a political spectrum, the term libertarian should relate to anti-authoritarian. So, I can see how the case can be made against socialized healthcare for them. It's not really about true freedom or liberty. And in the US anyway, it's largely just facade co-opted by the fascist [authoritarian and wealthy] right wing, ironically.
The word "Libertarian" in US has less relation to the dictionary definition than "Republican" and "Democrat". These are names of parties over here, even if they have a namesake of governmental mechanisms.
Examples:
Ron Johnson said in a single breath that he was a libertarian and opposed the legalization of marijuana.
Find the average "libertarian" policy position on border policies.
US politics is unfortunately entrenched in tribalism rather than searching for the right tool to match a job or solve a problem and maximize outcomes, the libertarians over here are no exception.
I like the idea of universal healthcare. I have zero trust in the US federal government to implement it properly. I think it would be a clusterfuck and make things worse for everyone, especially with Republicans on the warpath doing everything they can to sabotage it.
I can't really understand the tradition of never trusting the government in the US. The government is designed in a way that enables, even requires public oversight, public opinion. If that is not the case, you are not living in a democracy. Many Americans trust private initiatives, charity more than taxes and a working public system. People have no say in what corporations do. If people don't trust the government the attitude should be towards fixing it and enabling trust, not to accept it as is. I am not judging, maybe a little bit but not really. I live in a middle eastern country. We really don't trust the government but we keep working on steering it in the right direction. We are many times smaller than the US but we have minimum income, universal healthcare, unions are the norm, etc.
I can't really understand the tradition of never trusting the government in the US
I used to trust them, before 9/11 when I was young and naive. Then the attack happened. We ended up with bipartisan legislation to strip our civil liberties, torture captives, spy on citizens in direct violation of the bill of rights, and invade 2 countries that had nothing to do with it. Never again.
People have no say in what corporations do
Shareholders do. They get a vote. The government is essentially a mutual fund you're legally obligated to buy into.
If people don't trust the government the attitude should be towards fixing it and enabling trust, not to accept it as is.
I agree. I also believe we should take care of that before we go granting them vast additional powers.
We are many times smaller than the US but we have minimum income, universal healthcare, unions are the norm, etc.
Thats a good example of why universal healthcare doesn't need to be at the federal level here. States like New York and California are larger than many countries which have universal healthcare. What's stopping them from passing it themselves?
But corporations hold each other accountable. They have to compete for your trust. If corporation A does something shady then it's im their competitors interest to call them out in order to raise people's trust in themselves. There are also countless charities and third party sites to grade them. I can choose which programs I fund. I don't get any say in what government gets my taxes or what the government does with my taxes. What if I don't want to fund war but want my money to go to charity to help the poor? How effective is universal healthcare where you are?
Wow, you seriously still believe that corporations compete with eachother in the healthcare sector despite the fact that most insurance companies have a "network" specifically so that they don't have to compete with eachother? How is healthcare a competitive market that drives towards efficiency exactly? The more you privatise healthcare the lower life expectancy you get and the higher you all pay!
93% of stocks are owned by just 10% of people... They own all the companies, and are diversified... They aren't really competing with each other in any meaningful way
Then don't shop at those companies? Go buy produce at your local farmers market etc etc. You get to choose what you spend money on. Or you can start your own business if you feel there is a market gap. You cant start your own government.
I should go to my local farmer's market to sign up for Internet service, or to buy a cell phone? The big industries are so heavily dominated by massive colluding corporations that "don't shop there" is not a tenable solution.
The reason the government is garbage is because most of them are working for the corporations. If we heavily regulated the corporations and made it so they couldn't interfere with politics, the government would be better... They'd actually be working for the people and our interests, like they're supposed to
The problem isn't government, it's corporate control of the government
Privatizing things will always cost more because then you need to account for profits as well. Publicly controlled=x cost, privately controlled=x costs+profit for the rich
Even the most corrupt government employee is only getting a pay check (no profits). They make their corruption money by colluding with corporations and rich people
Libertarians usually define liberty narrowly as "freedom from government".
Freedom does not mean the ability to do as you please, but rather the ability to not be told what not to do, or to be made to do something you do not wish to do.
A libertarian usually does not object to wage slavery, and would disagree with the concept of wage slavery entirely, on the grounds that you were not forced to work a job you dislike, since you could always choose to starve instead.
What you're looking for is one of the schools of anarchism.
Although usually painted as "anti-government, anti-society", it actually derives from being against hierarchy, and is characterized generally (there are many schools) as being opposed to involuntary power hierarchies.
Sometimes government is the best way to reduce the total amount of coercion in the system, since forcing a lot of people to pay a little can free many, many people from being forced to do stuff they loath to survive.
Libertarians aren't pro-liberty they're anti-government, and anarchists aren't pro-chaos they're anti-coercian.
They're both entire political schools of thought, so I've obviously not encapsulated them entirely in two paragraphs.
However, you are on Lemmy where the vast majority of users are from the US which means they have their own weird skew on libertarianism and liberalism, thanks to their media and social media. Somehow it's distinctly Republican, conservative (lol, yes), and pro-capitalism, which obviously isn' correct because of their many, many, many, anti-liberal views.
Only in the US can socialists be mad about a school of thought that values social equality and welfare, because a form of media informed them it's pro-capitalism and the red-cap redneck that cries "Liberty!" with their AR-15 must be liberalism or libertarian.
Libertarians are pro liberty. Generally, they align the most with the upholding of negative liberty. Libertarians are not anti government; libertarians advocate for the minimization of government — that is, minarchy. Anarchists are anti-government.
Do you mean ancaps? Because I'm pretty sure most libertarian would be for universal healthcare. I have heard Americans use libertarian for ancap which are pretty opposing ideologies, I'm not sure what's up with that.
Actually, education and health are the 2 things I think the government should take care of in a serious way. That said, I still Believe people should be able to pay for alternative education or health care if they wish, I just think I should never see a bill for either of those two ever. Especially for children. Wtf are we doing if we as a society cannot afford for children to be healthy or educated?
the issue is that everyone needs to have equal opportunity.
Is it okay for parents to purposefully give their kids a worse opportunity for education and health than every other American? (I know homeschooling is a controversial topic, but sadly the vast majority are just dumb as a box of bricks religious nut jobs)
I'm sorry, I genuinely don't understand the question of, is it right to give a worse education. Are you saying that homeschool is worse? Sorry not trying to deter from the topic, but I might just not be reading it right.
I will say this in response though, I don't agree that everyone should be given a completely equal opportunity. What I do think is that everyone should be given a very superior baseline of opportunity.
Chasing completely equal opportunity seen like a fools errand. But we really should be putting education and health first, unfortunately we just don't.
homeschooling: absolutely, because of the quality of the vast number of 'teachers' (in the USA). You should read about how batshit insane they are. And lets not get started on the rampant child abuse.
it sounds like you're trying to confuse equality and equity. But yes, same baseline = equal baseline, which is not what they're getting in the slave states.
We all pay for it when a child with potential gets sick and dies because their parents couldn't afford health care.
We all pay in one way or another when health care bankrupts a family.
We are all going to pay for it anyways, and if someone in a worse financial position than you needs health care and your taxes can provide that, you're garbage if you feel you're being forced or you're mad cause a poor person got medicine with your taxes.
No. I'm a Canadian that actually knows what socialized programs like healthcare do to a country. It's not great. Socialized medicine is one of the major of the hundred little cuts impoverishing Canadians. Mississippi and Alabama have higher per capita average income and personal wealth than the richest Canadian province, before and after taxes. Despite the huge amount of wealth transfer to the government for reallocation, they inevitably start acting like its their money, wasted in ridiculous ways aside from the original point, a bureaucratic mafia forms intent on nothing but its own continuance, and then you've Canadians denied health insurance either formally (I'm not allowed to have it because I've not a fixed address in the province I pay income tax, but i can't just not pay taxes either) or informally by denial of needed care (that's the common one). I do have American health insurance. I spend 5 months a year in the states, acquiring insurance was as simple as paying for it.
I'm not being impoverished by universal health care, I'm being impoverished by corporation and those "free market" fucks who are anti union, anti workers, and pro fascism.
Orphans are real and a serious issue. A large percentage of homeless people today are people who went through the US foster system.
Children whose parents are A) unable B) unwilling or C) dead ... all become society's problem to feed and house and you've basically said that its unethical to do so.
Libertarian doesn't just mean "dumbshit conservative who likes smoking weed."
There is a whole spectrum of leftist libertarian traditions which uphold the egalitarian and worker-first ideas of socialism, but reject the authoritarianism of Marxist Leninism. Though I admit it would be hard to know this if your only exposure to leftist ideas was via the internet, which tends to tilt heavily towards these ML traditions, and very confused anarchists who think MLs are allies for some reason.
I am not THE libertarian to fully hold this argument and as others have mentioned there are libertarian arguments for universal healthcare, but I will present the best case I can from those I've heard be against it.
The primary case is the idea of negative rights vs positive rights. Where the idea that the state should protect you from others wanting limit your rights vs providing you the ability to do something.
So using the state to punish someone for who is trying to stop you from providing healthcare service is justified use of violence as it protects your negative rights and define and preserves you and the violators boundary.
Whereas using state violence to force you to provide healthcare someone you don't want to would not as it violated your negative right.
This is primary argument against any positive right, is that since it requires a service to be fulfilled the state would be use violence (the basis of state power) to enforce it. Making it tantamount to slavery.
Now the reality of it though is that most libertarians do support this slavery at least in service of giving the state the monopoly on violence (police, military, etc) in order to protect their defined negative rights. And because of our current material abundance we are able to have a fractionalized slavery extracting wealth from people to small enough degree that most people don't find as aborrent full servitude of an individual.
I believe in universal basic income, because it is simple and easy to define, and therefore doesn’t have these two problems
Universal healthcare is problematic because of two things:
How much is covered? Because healthcare isn’t fungible like money is, unlike UBI, UH has a problem where a ton of attention and discussion is required to determine what’s covered and what isn’t. It becomes a “to each according to his need” scenario where “his need” is being determined by the central committee
Once society is promising to take care of my body, I now have to promise to society to take care of my body. If I want to take risks with my own health or safety, there is now opposition to that from others on the basis that I’m ruining their investment. This means less self-ownership and less liberty.
I am libertarian-ish, but generally don't like all the loud libertarian nuts (I register Dem and vote Dem because the things I care about aren't represented anywhere on the ballot anymore).
For me, it comes to a very simple economics truism: Governments are pretty damn inefficient and tend to waste a lot of money because of the process and bureaucracy. Markets on the other hand, tend to be really efficient at allocating capital when left alone. The times a government should step in is when the market has created a form of externality that breaks things. The old economics example is the people downstream from a chemical plant are paying the price for the plant's pollution.
From a libertarian lens:
The government should negotiate SPH b.c. it's obvious that markets failed and we'd all be better off (spend less money) if everyone had healthcare.
The government should stay out of people's bedrooms and love lives, it has no business there.
The government should use UBI and then eliminate every other deduction, and tax break, and subsidy (Social Sec, . The office running UBI could be one guy sending checks out once a month (exaggerated obvi)
Unfortunately the things I'd like to see from a libertarian don't actually show up.
I really recommend people who are actually curious about libertarians to watch the 2024 free and equal debate on YouTube (link below). A lot of people here have some strong words against libertarians but don't really understand what they stand for. I think that is a dangerous mindset. I imagine a lot of feminists, BLM or LGBTQ folk understand how frustrating that can be.
I would take anybody in the free and equal debate over the two choices presented by the democratic and Republican party. I personally feel the libertarian candidates resonate with me but make your own decision. Vote for who you feel will represent your views best.
As a socialist libertarian that access health care, yes I think is a great step forward, I see all this social services that benefit the proletariat given by a government as positive part of the transition, but it's also a double edge sword if people become too dependent or get use to it once stops been an urgent matter people stop demanding it because they forget that's even there and end up voting for politician that would take it away, I'm thinking about Sweden or the uk.
The correct way is demand these services to become more decentralized, f.e. having fully equipied clinics everywhere instead of just big hospitals
I'm not a libertarian, but from what I've seen of their positions on this, they don't think that it's possible in an effective way. There's two possible versions: the government pays for everything, or there's public and private health care. A lot of countries have both, which is probably the best option since driving out competition is going to make everything go to crap.
The problem is that there are some arrangements that simply can't work or the existing system would implode in the transition.
There are also a lot of people who don't want to pay because someone who refused to get insurance for years finally decided to sign up for public health care because they suddenly got a serious health problem. In some possible arrangements, it would be necessary to force people to have health insurance, which is its own rabbit hole.
Do they not realize that universal health care has been done successfully and at a lower cost than privatized healthcare, in many other countries? Seems like a weak argument when there's so much proof against it
There’s two possible versions: the government pays for everything, or there’s public and private health care. A lot of countries have both, which is probably the best option since driving out competition is going to make everything go to crap.
There's a potential third option through cooperatively run hospitals.
when a huge multinational corporation worth more than the GDP of many nations organizes their resources using a plan decided by executives, and starts to vertically integrate to control their supply chain, and reaps the cost savings, that's just good capitalism.
No organization that's publicly owned could ever vertically integrate and make efficient use of resources, no, you need a dictatorship where the wealthiest have all the power for that kind of thing to work
The reason markets trend toward monopoly is that it's so ineffective
I don't think libertarians really see wage slavery as the worst thing.
I think the fundamental difference is that libertarians don't care about outcomes. Or, at least they don't think that they do as long as they have food in their stomach and a barrier against the cold.
In their minds, it's all about them not being compelled to partake in anything they don't want to. If that means starving, fine (so they say, and I'm very suspicious of this claim), but at least there was no authority over them.
Most sane people strike a balance between valuing good practical outcomes, and more abstract notions like liberty and justice.
Full authoritarians say that only outcomes are important, that abstract notions like freedom are impediments to the greatest good, and you end up with things like the USSR.
So you're right that there wouldn't be a minimum wage... But you're wrong to appeal to the concept of wage slavery because it presupposes a libertarian values satisfactory outcomes. They don't.
Honestly there is no talking down a libertarian without first convincing them their lives are worth more than some definition of liberty.
Roads? Slave labor. Taxes? Slave labor. Taxes that fund the police? Somehow not slave labor.
Like you're not wrong, democrats do advocate slave labor in the form of supporting the prison-industrial complex, but I know you're not talking about that.
Glad you brought that up. The US Dollar hasn't meant anything since coming off the gold standard, and we can't control it's value so long as the Federal Reserve controls interest rates, and the government has a monopoly over what currencies we can and can't use. (No this isn't advocation for company script, if you can't spend it anywhere else it's not currency)
With actual competition between companies, the laborer could actually compete for the best jobs and get the best compensation for their labor.
Because someone needs to be enslaved to provide universial health care. If even one person wants to opt out, no matter how wrong their reason you if you allow don't allow it they are enslaved. (note that there have been many different systems of slavery, but even the best still remones choice from someone). as such I prefer other options if they exist.
There are other options and so I oppose universial health care. Do not confuse that with approving of the system we have.
Because someone needs to be enslaved to provide universial health care. If even one person wants to opt out, no matter how wrong their reason you if you allow don't allow it they are enslaved.
Congratulations, you just said the dumbest thing I've read on the Internet in a very long time. That's impressive!
I pay for the military, for roads, for schools, for police, for fire departments...and I can't opt out of any of that. So am I already a slave? If so, then I might as well get some healthcare out of the deal.
If I'm not already a slave then universal healthcare isn't making me a slave either. No one would be forcing you to use your healthcare either.
As an American man I only have a 40% chance of developing cancer in my lifetime, but with universal healthcare there’s 100% chance I will have to pay for it.
A risk assessment is a normal part of gambling. You’re just describing games, like the one you’re playing now to rationalize your gambling with your own life by avoiding getting any sort of health insurance.
They are when you bet something on the outcome— ya know, gambling… like how you risk both your financial future and your life when you choose to not have health insurance.
Insurance is by definition not gambling. It is only indemnity. The reality is that without insurance you are gambling that you'll get to keep the money you didn't spend on insurance and not be financially ruined.
Not if you lose your bet that anyone is willing to pay you your desired wage. Then it’s unemployment because you gambled and lost. And even if they do agree, it’s just luck that you won— but it’s still a gamble.
What the hell man.. The guy is just sharing his view on what OP asked..
Just because you disagree with the guy doesn't mean you need to wish cancer upon him.
Libertarians don’t give a flying fuck about liberty. It is an authoritarian movement that aims to eliminate any force standing in the way of their organizing society into a rigid hierarchy predicated upon wealth. A government that is answerable to the people is a countervailing force against the formation (or re-formation I suppose) of such a system. That was indeed the whole reason such a government was invented in the first place.
I don't think it's quite so organized as this mindset leads to extremely self-absorbed and selfish people who arent good at organizing en masse. Multiple times now, libertarians have tried to form their own communities on land and sea and it always falls apart once they actually try to form the communities as it just turns into government rules and taxes like we have now. They don't even want to live by their own group's authority.
I'm really upset that the coinbro boat didn't actually get to set sail. That article was insane. Reading it was like watching a pilot episode to one of the finest shows ever conceived, then learning the show got canceled.
Libertarians are political extremists who hate anything related to the government but don't care about being oppressed by private businesses, or they think that it simply won't happen in their utopia. Libertarians are everything they hate about the woke left, only applied to the government.
This is simply describing the idea of "negative liberty" which is, essentially, what libertarianism is more inline with.
Are you talking about people who are misappropriating the term, or the actual philosophy of libertarianism?
My anecdotal experience is 'temporarily embarrassed millionaires' lean Libertarian and imagine they'll be young and healthy until they're old and wealthy.
Famous libertarian Friedrich Hayek supported universal basic income. As a libertarian myself, I always ask myself: “Will this make people more free?” If the answer is yes, then I support it because that’s what true libertarianism is. In the case of UBI and universal healthcare, both of those would unequivocally make people more free. People will be more free to choose a profession they like rather than one that merely keeps a roof over their heads. America already has a form of limited universal healthcare. It just happens to be restricted to the military and maybe some other government servants. Those members don’t have to worry about their healthcare and it allows them to focus their attention on more important matters, as their healthcare needs are met. Clearly the government has seen that universal healthcare is beneficial.
The sovereign citizens and the right wingers masquerading as Libertarians have given the ideology a bad name.
I recently got out of the military and it's been a complete shock how bad the private healthcare system is. So much red tape, so many charges, so much money being spent on both ends: to the insurance company, again to the insurance company (copays), and then to the provider when the insurance company won't cover things.
With Tricare? "Hey doc, I need this med for my migraines." "Alright, here you go." No charge.
The American health system is a complete scam keeping people under the boot of their employers and of the for-profit insurance companies.
It is important to note that, specifically, they are examples of positive liberty.
I agree.
If anarchists are often misunderstood I'd imagine libertarians even more so. Both philosophies advocate for the lack of a state, splitting between preference towards the community/collective vs individual, and are often misinterpreted to mean every thing the state does or should provide today can't exist without it.
No it doesn't. Anarchism advocates for the abolition of the state, libertarianism advocates for minarchy — the minimization of the state.
American "Libertarians" consider liberty as self-sufficiency, not just freedom from a government, but from being required to contribute to society as a whole.
This is a bit of a loaded question and very poorly written. Bad troll is bad.
The problem stands that modern "Libertarians" have been corrupted by corporations and conservative bigots to mean "elimination of government and regulation" and not "government to uphold liberty" like it originally did. A correctly Libertarian government would write laws that solely uphold the power of the individual's self determination, which inherently requires restriction of the power of capital.
I consider myself Libertarian, but I feel there now has to be a distinction made between "Capital Libertarians" and "Individual Libertarians". One wants the liberty of capital, the other wants the liberty of the individual. I find myself in the latter. Corporations can go fuck themselves, the individual is paramount.
"Socialist" things like public infrastructure, and yes, public healthcare, would be supported by individual libertarianism. Social support structures like these support individual liberty but restrict capital liberty by requiring taxes to support them, whereas supporting capital liberty by making it "pay as you go" does nothing but remove the individual liberty of the population that finds themselves without any capital through no fault of their own. I absolutely support universal healthcare.
100% Libertarianism originated as a left wing movement in the 19th century. Right wing libertarianism didn't ooze out of the swamp till nearly a century later. In the mid 20th century. Post red scare when actual leftist were keeping their heads down due to fascist witch hunts. And unable to really call out the posers.
Real libertarians don't have a problem with government. They just believe that it should be focused on maximizing freedom, and access to it. Where the larpers are all about maximizing their personal freedom (privilege) and don't care if others have access.
Like any good system that is a threat to those in power, it was co-opted and corrupted to remove the threat and turn public perception against it.
"Left wing", and "right wing" are far too nebulous to really have any continuous historical use. Even in current parlance they are borderline useless terms.
Only to people who don't understand the difference.
The issue is that most people have slight differences in how those terms are defined, and they morph substantially and continuously over time
This is also known as "Libertarian Socialism." Interestingly enough, this idea predates the current definition of Libertarianism by decades.
Interesting! I didn't know this existed, but I can align myself pretty well with this terminus. Thank you :)
This is probably where I align economically, but I support statist mandates that are inconsistent with "individual libertarianism" or "civil libertarianism."
For example, we should decriminalize drug use, but there should absolutely be a strong statist intervention where people are forced to stop using drugs.
Huh??????
A capital libertarian government would not fund public roads. You would need to pay a toll to drive on every privately built road, because your capital is free to move. But roads to certain places would cost more than others, thus restricting the individual's liberty to their ability to pay.
A individually libertarian government funds public roads. Individuals then retain the right to self-determination to decide where they want to go without restriction. How they go on those roads might be subject to their capital restrictions- whether they walk, bike, drive, rollerskate, or whatever. But they are at least allowed to use those roads.
Certain things will always be needed in our society for humans to function. If humans are not functioning correctly, they are not free to self-determine their path. Gating such a simple thing as healthcare, which again, humans absolutely need to function, behind the ability to pay is inherently restricting their individual liberty in an immoral way.
You might be interested in Isaiah Berlin's "Two Concepts of Liberty".
Basically, there is no absolute thing called "liberty", because anything you do changes the material world and the state of the material world also shapes what you're able to do. So you can't talk about simply "liberty", and must always describe it in terms of those two relationships. What Berlin calls "freedom to" and "freedom from".
For instance, I might consider my liberty to mean that I have the "freedom to" shoot a gun in the air. My neighbors might consider their liberty to mean that they have the "freedom from" falling bullets.
We can't create a policy which guarantees both "freedom to" and "freedom from" for all people. But we can create a policy that guarantees both for some people. We just have to allow that some people get to enjoy both the rights and the protections, while other people lack the rights and must suffer the consequences of others' actions.
And that might be why the contemporary conservative version of so-called "libertarianism" plays so well with a notion of a superior social class, whether that's economic, religious, or racial. You can invoke the word "liberty" in support of your attempts to bully others, and then you can invoke it again as a protection against others' attempts to bully you.
My bad....
It may be better to stick with existing terms like positive and negative liberty.
It’s not really about liberty, it’s about freedom from taxes and consequences. They don’t get far enough in the reasoning to understand that they would benefit.
Libertarians: maximum freedom for everyone!
Everyone: what about healthcare?
Libertarians: you're free to die in a gutter!
Because (so-called) "libertarians" aren't.
The term "libertarian" has been hijacked in the anglophone-world (starting in the US, of course) to essentially just mean "fundamentalist capitalist" - they are right-wingers who have been immunized from reality and mindlessly support only "liberty" as it applies to private corporations and their interests. Therefore, it shouldn't surprise anyone that you can find these (so-called) "libertarians" anywhere you find neo-nazis and the KKK.
In the non-anglophone world, the term libertarian still holds it's original meaning - a socialist... or, more specifically, an anarchist.
It does seem to now mean "people that don't want to pay their taxes".
The best description for the modern "libertarian" I've heard is that they're just conservatives who smoke weed
"Libertarian" became popular in the US when it started being incorporated into various science fiction novels. Probably the most famous is "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress." I love the book as science fiction, but the society the author creates depends on so many caveats that even the author has the old style 'free' system fall apart as soon as an actual government [as opposed to prison regulations] is formed.
They got their que from right-wing economic grifters like Rothbard and Hayek - people whose beliefs wouldn't be out of place in Nazi Germany. That's why olden days US sci-fi writing was a festering hole of fascism - nothing else could have produced people like Heinlein.
Heinlein was a huge friend to Philip K. Dick, and any number of Jewish science fiction writers. He was one of the first writers to have an African woman as a hero, one of the first to have a transman character. Stop using the word 'fascist' for anyone on the Right. It dilutes the term.
And?
And?
Again... and?
All right-wingers walk the same path. If you write fascist drivel, you are a fascist. Heinlein was a fascist. Stop making excuses for him.
And then you wonder why the Left loses pretty much every election.
I got mine from the Libertarian party, a few decades ago.
They didn't seem too fascistic back then.
I'd personally prefer to not give them the satisfaction of calling themselves "libertarians", and to, instaed, call them out on their missapropriation — the philosophy should be defended from those who would tarnish it.
Libertarians want all the benefits of libertarianism AND socialism, but they don’t want to pay for any of it.
That’s it. That’s the entirety of the political belief.
Or they delude themselves into thinking everyone will pay their fair share voluntarily, forgetting that rich people exist who don't give a fuck about the common good.
So... Taxes?
"Bb-but.. I w-wanna.. !"
How childishly reductive. I can’t believe this got upvoted.
Just like libertarian talking points!
Money Babies.
This is conjecture. Based on what are you making this claim? Libertarianism's main focus is on maximizing the negative liberty of the individual.
They want state-enforced socialism for themselves and crushing capitalist competition for all the people they feel are "beneath" them.
In that sense, you are correct.
Libertarians want freedom from government force. They want to be able to fund healthcare by choice. They want the freedom to not have taxes being used to send weapons oversees. Libertarians are for social and economic freedom.
So where were you "libertarians" when BLM and other leftists were calling to defund and abolish the police?
The police can use a bit of de-funding; also wp:Waukesha Christmas parade attack.
Probably defending their shops from BLM rioters
Just be honest about how badly you want to see black people lynched in the streets, white supremacist.
Don't hide behind dog-whistles.
I don't.
non-socialist ≠ necessarily racist
Man whatever drugs you on, pass them
I'm not doing white supremacism sprinkled with liberal handwringing - so curb your enthusiasm.
Did Stalin do white supremacism when the USSR was the first country to recognize Israel?
At this point it's hard to tell
Until they get a tooth ache I guess.
Is it morally right to make you pay ten times more when you need it (at the dentist /hospital/...) because you didn't want to pay before?
I'm not sure what you are implying. An individual can pay for insurance or not. They are free to choose. Or they can pay for the entire cost upfront when problems arise.
Exactly!
So I pay my taxes for decades, and you don't?
Just going to the doctor for the first time at say 30 (imagining you started working at 20 but "decide" to not pay taxes) would cost you houndred of thousands of missed back pays before you get let into the building.
Is that your libertarian thing? Or do you think you just would never go to the doctor/hospital/dentist/need an ambulance ride, ... ?
Or worse, you get it basically free?
Libertarians are, to an individual, categorical idiots who don’t seem to have the mental capacity to seriously and rigorously analyze and understand what a true “free-for-all” hypercapitalist society would imply. They just want to not pay taxes.
There is no need to be rude. OP asked for libertarian views.
Yeah, but libertarians are antisocial asshole idiots by simple virtue of the fact that they think libertarianism is a viable concept. It’s just not, nor will it ever be going forward.
I can put it another way: I find the ideology offensive and societally caustic in the extreme. We do not live in a vacuum. We live in a society (in a literal sense - not going for the meme here). To pretend that we don’t is incredibly dumb.
Used to think I was libertarian. But now I think it's too absolute of an ideal to be any good for humanity. I definitely think free healthcare, housing, food, and education should be guarenteed for everyone.
Because they really just don't want to pay taxes, which are needed to fund universal healthcare.
Also most people who say they're libertarian have no clue what the word means, and are morons.
That is rather reductionist — it is more complicated than that.
I would be very hesitant to say "most" but there is indeed a faction that misappropriates the term.
They don't want to pay taxes because they don't like how government uses taxes and don't trust the government to do a good job. Plus, it's an additional layer of bureaucracy at the top which costs more money and is less efficient.
If you think private healthcare is more efficient than single payer healthcare when EVERY PIECE OF DATA WE HAVE says the opposite then I think that says more about you than it does about the government.
That graph is relating cost of healthcare to quality. Not necessarily comparing cost of countries with universal healthcare to America. Additonally, most of the healthcare spending in America is already by the government and look how that's going. America is also significantly larger than any of those countries listed. Overseeing healthcare for a country so large requires way more overhead.
Every graph of healthcare costs vs privatisation with the US in it is necessarily a comparison between private and public healthcare systems since most countries have single payer as most of their healthcare.
The US government healthcare programs are by far the most cost effective offering in the US but it's hampered by regulations such as not having the ability to negotiate prices (until the recent tiny concession on a handful of drugs that has paid off in spades).
Finally, other large countries including India and China may have lower life expectancy, but they're close and rising rapidly compared the stagnant US trends. Of course the bang for the buck they get is at least 5x what the US gets with its ridiculous system
No, that's saying too much. They don't want to pay. Full stop. That's it.
The opposition to taxes is generally due to a power imbalance resulting in compulsion through the use of force. Taxes are in opposition to negative liberty, which is what libertarianism generally aligns with.
Libertarians only care about 2 things: lowest taxes possible and legal weed, and they would gladly sacrifice the latter in favor of the former. Anything else is nothing more than lip service.
Universal healthcare means taxes, and that is the one thing Libertarians hate above all. Never mind that it would be cheaper than private insurance. They relish in the fact they can skip buying insurance, and if they get hurt, ERs are required to treat them anyway.
That's not fair. They also really care about getting rid of age of consent laws!
This is a very ignorant statement.
Paying lip service is meaningless. I look at who self-professed libertarians actually vote for. That is the basis of my statement.
Personally, I see this as a very weak metric, if it is measured within a FPTP system. It is generally not within one's best interest to vote for an entity that perfectly aligns with one's interests under FPTP — one must often vote strategically.
If you haven't already, I strongly encourage you to, at the very least, read through the Wikipedia article on libertarianism.
I have read it, and find it bullshit. Libertarians always manage to decide to “strategically” vote for the Republican that promises authoritarianism but also promises low taxes. Again, it’s not about what Libertarians say they support, it’s who they actually support.
What exactly do you disagree with? It's really just a definition. If you are encountering people who are advocating for authoritarianism while calling themselves libertarian, then they are misappropriating the term.
This is very likely to be a faulty generalization. Also, there are policies on both the Democrat, and Republican side which can be construed as authoritarian.
I'd be very hesitant to call stategic voting "supporting".
I think there are roughly three subgenres of libertarian; the two you identify (wants hierarchy with warlords and wants public heroin use without jail time) but then there is also a third group that has focused a lot of rage on age of consent laws for some reason.
Libertarian care about maximizing social and economic liberties. Liberty being defined as freedom from authority. Taxes are forced on citizens so libertarians generally want to limit taxes to a minimum. I see no reason to believe that universal healthcare would be cheaper than insurance. The government is an inefficient monopoly where private insurance companies have to compete for the lowest rates.
You want to maximize liberty, but have a funny way of showing it. Libertarians vote for the most authoritarian they can, as long as they will cut taxes. Even if that means banning abortion, keeping marijuana prohibition, forcing religion on children in schools, supporting civil forfeiture, preventing people from choosing sustainable energy, and so much more.
As has famously been said, taxes are the price we pay for civilized society. The non-aggression principle I believe is absolute bullshit. Libertarian would happily screw over anyone, claiming they are simply exercising their personal liberty. They couldn’t care any less about the well being of anyone else but themselves. Absolute barbarians if you ask me. Personally, I’m happy to get good services for my taxes, and not see my money go to a greedy asshole CEO. Sure, politicians are also greedy assholes, but at least the people can vote them out.
It would cost less because a single entity, costing much less overhead. Also, a single entity would have far more buying power. Almost every doctor would have to accept them, eliminating out-of-network costs. And we wouldn’t have hundreds of overpaid executives that pat themselves on the back with multimillion dollar bonuses for denying sick people coverage. And we can see it in action. Most industrialized countries already have some form of universal healthcare, and they all cost less per capita. People that actually have universal healthcare generally love it. And don’t talk to me about waiting lists. I’ve been on plenty of waiting lists right here, and lots of people can’t even get on them because they can’t afford the care they need.
Competition simply does not work in the healthcare market. When people are sick, they are limited typically to one option. And it has inelastic demand, so changing prices don’t change demand, and thus hospitals and doctors can charge whatever. The system, built on the economic principles libertarians espouse, is god-awful.
Private health insurance still has a "profit margin" that boards are legally bound to. The public system removes that line item.
Profit margins are to keep a company out of debt and ensure it can grow as technology advances. Government would still need to pay employees and keep up with tech. But your right, government does need to avoid debt because it can just print money but that leads to inflation. There is no way to make cost just disappear.
How is having numerous private companies all concerned with billing in any way efficient? Imagine if everyone was covered and the money and time and intelligence used to decide how much they pay and how much you pay went towards actual healthcare. The whole existence of health insurance is an inefficiency.
I consider myself a libertarian and I believe in free healthcare. I think certain industries should not be run for profit. It creates perverse incentives that harm the common man. For example healthcare.
If there's a profit incentive in bealthcare, there is incentive for drug companies or hospitals to raise their prices. This would mean less people getting treatment or more people in medical debt.
Another industry I think shouldn't be for profit is education. We want an educated population. It should be encouraged, so it should be free for anyone who wants it.
In my view, libertarianism is a perspective that the government should interfere with the personal liberties of the individual as little as possible.
Every single government action should be heavily scrutinized and challenged. Some actions are justified. For example regulating healthcare I think is justified. You are taking away the liberty of starting a hospital - but the benefits outweigh the costs.
I believe that cooperatives should be encouraged if not explicitly mandated for large companies.
I think to Chomsky's conception of anarchism. Look at all hierarchies of power and challenge them. Some are justified - the power a father has over his child. Some are not - the power a cash advance place has over their customer base.
I think governments often make mistakes and through heavy handed actions end up screwing the average person. By dramatically limiting government action, you help prevent this.
Remember the government is not your friend.
Tldr non partisan answer: Libertarian philosophy favors negative rights over positive rights.
Negative rights oblige others to not impede (like not censoring free speech).
Positive rights oblige others to provide something (like healthcare).
Imo, it would be better worded as follows:
That's probably the more popular way, but I think it's easier to misinterpret. For example the freedom of speech, one could think of it as the freedom to speak instead of the freedom from undue censorship. But that right is usually considered a negative one.
As I currently understand it, freedom of speech is regarded as a negative liberty because it is purely focused on freedom from the government imposing restrictions on what you can and can't say. It's not, however, the government giving you the freedom to say whatever you want, whenever you want, under any circumstance — e.g. people are free to trespass you from their establishment if they don't like what you are saying.
I agree that it's a negative liberty. It's just the from/to language can be misconstrued IMO, the not impede/oblige others framing is more clear without additional information. It's, again IMO, targeting the core of the differential. Asking of others for inaction vs asking for action.
IIUC, I just think that the intent/mentality is somewhat altered in what you described in this comment. For example, you said "Positive rights oblige others to provide something (like healthcare)." — positive liberty isn't necessarily about forcing people, in an authoritative manner, to do things for, or to, another person. It's essentially taking the position that people should have the freedom to experience life on a level playing field, if you will — it is interested in lowering the amount of barriers preventing people from doing what they want. I don't think your wording is necessarily incorrect, I'm just not convinced that the connotation is the same.
I think this cleared up our disconnect. I chose oblige to indicate that they require others to do something for them to occur. Most often paying taxes, to pay the provider of a service. This typically isn't a 'at gunpoint' interaction. But negative rights will never require another to do something for it to be practiced.
I agree with your highlighting of the philosophy behind them. I was more concerned about a short rememberable way to differentiate the two.
So I chose oblige vs force to make sure it had the connotation of a civil concession.
Itt, people being downvoted for answering the question.
Gotta love Lemmy. Lol
I don't think being downvoted for answering the question in good faith should happen, but I do see a few bad faith answers that absolutely should be downvoted
I haven't gotten to the depths yet, but some responses seem earnest. Different degrees of proof needed when confirmation bias is in play.
Kinda thought lemmy was the better reddit. Seems it's just a different reddit.
All of the extremists from Reddit came here.
Disclaimer, I am not a libertarian by a long shot.
But - there is a difference between freedom to and freedom from. I think in general libertarians believe in freedom to, not freedom from. So you are free to yell, but not free from noise. You are free to walk in traffic, not free from being run over.
It almost makes sense, I don't think people should be free from seeing things that offend them, right? Or free from consequences. So no, they don't think freedom from sickness is a right.
You're right especially in that it almost makes sense - the only people I've seen who are more allergic to nuance than libertarians are Trumpists
The terms that you are looking for are postive and negative liberty, respectively.
It seems like you have an interesting definition of liberty. Liberty (to me) is freedom from authority. Libertarians core value is not having government force individuals to do anything. If people want to opt into a universal healthcare private system they are free to do so (kind of like insurance). A big motivation for this is lack of trust in government to handle the job well. Libertarians see government as inherently prone to corruption and thus want to limit their power as much as possible. The extent to which a given libertarian wants to limit government varies. By appointing government authorities to the system the cost of everything rises as in addition to health care you also have to pay the government workers who oversee the system and it's not very efficient. Not to mention politicians get to decide how much money goes to these programs etc etc. do you really want politicians involved in your health? With all the inefficiency and corruption in politics why do you trust them to handle your health?
To me, this reads like it implies that government and govt programs are bad because of the govt employees, but if you were to take those same "corrupt" politicians and put them to work at private companies that they would stop being "corrupt." Like it is a belief/reaction to one specific bad instance of a large government/program. "The government sucks at program X, so if we get rid of that program, the same general population will gain empathy, morals and efficiency if working for a company to run program X."
It's a about competition. I'm not saying business owners aren't corrupt. But if one company, say nestle, turns out to be rotten then you can buy your chocolate chips from another company. But with government I don't have a say. If I don't pay taxes I go to jail and if I don't like how my taxes are spent then too bad. There is no alternative.
How often do we see real competition? Even if a new company comes along with a great idea, it's more likely to be gobbled up by a bigger company than be left to flourish.
And that's the right of the individual who owns and started the company. Part of the problem is people don't seek alternatives and just buy what is convenient. People value the big brand names. If we want competition then look for alternatives. Look around at the brands you use and figure for yourself if you are buying big brands or supporting competition and smaller brands. Focus on your contribution. We can't and shouldn't control others. Worrying about what you support is enough on its own.
All the time. Competition is going on all the time. Have you ever worked for any company ever?
Ten major companies control all the food in the US, and six companies control all the media.
So not one? So there’s competition?
Yes, a competition to see which company ends up runnign everything.
There is often no alternative in private business either. Take Nestle for example. Go look up how many different brands they actually own. You may think you've boycotted them, but in fact you're just buying one of their hundreds of other brands. We're very late in the capitalist system now, and the power has been heavily consolidated. Many industries are completely dominated by 1-3 companies, and they all collude to eliminate competition.
Name a nestle product that doesn’t have competition.
Name a Nestle product where the major competition isn't another Nestle product.
It's called voting, really basic part of our world you seem to have forgotten about.
You happy with how that's been going so far? Do you honestly feel represented by trump/biden? We are presented two rotten options and told we get a say in politics. That's just one more option than dictatorships. If I don't want us tax dollars gifting missiles to Israel I have no option in either party. That's not a say in government. I don't get to tell the president to spend my portion of the taxes. I would rather keep those taxes and voluntarily give to homeless shelters and other charitable groups which do a much better job helping people then the government ever will.
Voting does not excuse you from whatever obligations a majority has decided are best for you.
FTFY.
All monopolizations of power should be held under the utmost scrutiny.
Damn, you'd have to be completely brain dead to still believe anything is more efficient than single payer healthcare. The US has the worst outcomes for the highest cost in terms of life expectancy. Same with roads, utilities, schools etc... the more you privatise the more expensive things get for a lower quality product.
A well regulated, competitive market is good for many things, but for others it's atrocious. An unregulated market has never produced good outcomes on any scale larger than the board of directors.
If you're seriously summarizing the libertarian agenda then I can't believe any one over 14 could hold these ideas unless they were VERY sheltered from reality.
There is no need to be condescending or rude. I'm trying to share my ideas and have a healthy discussion so maybe we can learn from each other.
If you want a healthy discussion, you need better arguments.
Competition is inherently meaningless in the context of healthcare. What are you going to do, shop around while you're having a heart attack? Also, with single payer, the government is not involved in your healthcare directly. Compare that with the current system where insurance companies often decide if you're worth the treatment or, if you're under or uninsured, you get to carry the debt until you die.
I think part of the problem is the blurred lines between routine healthcare and emergencies. You are right, if you are having a heart attack insurance should step in to help you front the unexpected large cost. But for expected care like dentist visits you can and absolutely should shop around.
I like your point about insurance getting to decide but I think it's important to note you can still get treated even if insurance doesn't pay. Or you can sue them if you feel they should pay. You make some good points though.
Thanks.
A couple of things you might not have considered:
Preventative care. If you have insurance that covers checkups, screenings, etc. then you get that benefit. If you don't have the insurance and can't afford the out of pocket expense, you skip. The issue is that then people wait until they're in really bad shape before seeking treatment meaning that outcomes are worse and treatment is much more expensive than if the illness had been caught earlier. Who pays for that? We all do through increased premiums.
This doesn't happen in a well-run single payer system.
Why? I'm not seeing any benefit to your idea vs single payer dental. It's not like your mouth isn't a part of your body or that dental issues don't effect your overall wellbeing.
If someone can't afford insurance, what makes you think they can afford a lawyer?
That's fair.
It's very frustrating seeing someone argue for disproven theories (like the government is less efficient than the free market in arenas most countries have socialised) using easily disprovable statements (like single payer healthcare would be more expensive to US citizens than the private system you have now). Especially when those ideologies can only hurt everyone.
I do apologize for the tone since you have been respectful and I have been less so. You don't deserve the rudeness but your ideas don't deserve the consideration they get in civilised society either.
Surely you’re not claiming these are free market sectors?
If you listen to online libertarians they seem to believe everything is on the tables. Utilities have already been partially privatised and they've successfully impressed the classification of broadband as a utility which would have improved service, accessibility, and price at the cost of corporate profit.
Err, well, no — a competitive free market will ensure that prices are driven down. What I think you are trying to get at is that healthcare, generally, doesn't function in a capitalist market, and I would agree. The reason healthcare doesn't function well under capitalism is because purchases are made under a leonine contract.
This is the same sort of issue as mentioned above, but for somewhat different reasons — public utilities are intrinsic monopolies, which are inherently anti-competitive.
It is good under the exact restricitions that you initially described. As soon as you deviate from those restrictions, it breaks down.
I prefer voluntary interaction to using force or violence. Personally I believe we're obligated to help each other and our community and would voluntarily be a collectivist - I'm just not willing to force everyone else to.
We still need to modify liability and IP law to disincentivize megacorps and not use violence to benefit the wealthy.
Government programs IS US HELPING EACHOTHER. Sure corporations have been undermining democracy, but the government is OUR corporation. It's the only one that we get the choose what it does. The fact we're obligated to pay taxes is EXACTLY the implementation of your statement "we're obligated to help eachother"
I don't understand how you can make statements like this. The threat of violence? The government's monopoly on violence is rephrased as the will of society to ban violence in public life by restricting violence only to the enforcement of democratically selected laws. There is no other way I can conceive. Should more people have the ability to use violence to enforce their views on others? Should corporations have that right? If no one has that right how can we stop someone who decides THEY have that right?
The whole "government monopoly on violence" is for me the most absurd librarian statement of them all. What's the alternative? Who should decide what deserves violence? Who should use violence? What do we do if someone breaks this compact? Because the current answers are at least ideally "the people, through democratically enacted, clear and transparent laws", and "the people, through the police they pay for accountable only to the people" and "apply fair and balanced justice through the judiciary system, run by the people and accountable only to them". I'm in no way saying that it's working perfectly as is clear in recent politics, but it's certainly trending in the right direction in social democracies. We're closer to that ideal now than we have ever been. As far as I've seen libertarian ideology has only come up with absolutely HORRIFYING answers to these questions, or wishy washy nonsense.
The issue with this, imo, is that it is a conflict of interest. The government creates the laws — the ultimate restrictions on what a populace can and can't do. What happens if the government gets perverted to the point where you no longer have a say in changing it?
It's about balance. Imbalanced power distribution will lead to abuse. The difference lies in if you want a true democracy, or an oligarchy. In the end, it is always the group that holds the majority power that holds the ultimate say. Would it not be better that this lies in the hands of the people than in the hands of a minority of elected officials?
Dude what the fuck? You do NOT want it to be legal for people to use violence to enforce their views on others. That's what "might makes right" is and it's how gangs are run. It's brutal. Every positive consequence you imagine will be completely dwarfed by the depths of human violence and depravity this would unleash.
The problem lies in the distribution of power. If you have the majority power held within a minority, then that is similar to gang rule, as you have pointed out. Now, if you spread power evenly, and equally, over all people so that there is no imbalance, that puts you on a path to equality. But one must, of course, never forget the saying: "democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding on what's for dinner".
That's how a lot of stuff works, true. I don't agree that can work with violence. I also don't appreciate the conceptual response to very practical questions.
I live in a peaceful society. I wouldn't want my neighbour to be able to use violence because my tree dropped it's leaves on his side of the lawn. I wouldn't want an alternate police force hired and paid by a group of white supremacists (current statistics aside) to enforce laws in a biased manner. Having other corporations able to use violence is an absolute dystopian nightmare and is 100% the cause of every dystopian fantasy world. If the government WASN'T empowered with violence then there is nothing to stop the above 3 scenarios. So I'm not sure what other "equalizing distribution" you're imagining and I'm not certain a better one exists.
I am open minded, which is why I asked those 3 very specific questions. If your have a better idea I'm all ears. If your idea is just to open up the floodgates and hope for the best because that will equalise access to violence and more equal is more better, then I will keep treating libertarian ideology as a threat to civilization. Mostly ideas that sound nice, but no practicable solutions that don't destroy society. Like communism.
What are you referring to?
I apologize if I have offended you — that wasn't my intent. What exactly do you mean by this?
This depends. A violent outcome need not be in response to an action, but it can stem from it. Laws carry with them the threat of force.
If a country allows for a citizens arrest, everyone holds within themselves the power of enforcing the law. Though you may be referring to the idea of paying for private police and leaving others without. If so, this is more of a question of positive and negative liberties. Having a public police force would be a positive liberty, imo — in that case, it potentially doesn't align with libertarianism, but that is very debatable.
Do note that if a corporation is not allowed to use violence, then that means that they cannot take it upon themselves to protect their property. Perhaps you think that that is how it should be?
I'm not sure I follow this point. I don't think that I have argued that the government shouldn't be allowed to use force — it wasn't my intent if my previous statements were interpreted in that way. The point that I'm trying to make is that the government should be kept in check. You have pointed out that threat of violence is what must be used to uphold the law. The only way for the people to keep the government in check is for the people to keep the government under threat of violence. If the distribution is just right, then no minority group in a democracy can hold the majority of the power.
Which 3 questions are you referring to?
I don't understand this point. Are you stating that you don't believe in individual equality?
So just go offer medicine to your community for free. Too bad we don’t have enough of a free market to allow you to do that though, right?
I'm honestly not sure what you think the dunk is here.
How do libertarians generally handle minority rights? Is it as bad as conservatives? A good example are all of these anti-trans and anti choice in abortion bills. What would a libertarian think of these?
Looking on the internet it kind of feels like libertarians are usually suburban people or people so out of the way that the messes in Washington don't affect them as hard as those in the cities. So I have only met one and he didn't seem to fond of our black coworkers, if you get what I mean.
Libertarians are just like other political parties. There are different groups that subscribe the the term libertarian each with slightly different beliefs. Whatever extremists people are out there in the Internet do not represent the whole. I really suggest watching some of the 2024 libertarian debates. They are educated smart people who are informed about the complex issues like those you mentioned. This whole thread has been really eye opening for me. I had no idea people had these conceptions about libertarians. I am guessing there are a bunch of far right groups that like to identify as anarchists and throw around the term libertarian while they do. But if you listen to the rhetoric of the political party and the representatives you will see that those ideas are not held by the party as a whole.
To answer your question, libertarians are, in general, pro personal liberties and pro economic liberties. They believe the individual should get to choose. A common line they use is government should not exert force one way or the other. This means they tend to agree with Democrats on issues like race, drugs, LGBTQ etc. The people who actually get a stage in the political party are absolutely against racism, sexism etc. There was a debate recently where the candidates (about 7 primary) were Asked their stance on abortion. Most of them said they were personally pro life BUT they would still veto any bill or cut funding to any program that forced that perspective on others. Any person who goes around saying they think this and they want the government to force and regulate that disagrees fundamentally with the libertarian perspective. I said most, because one of the candidates was unapologetically pro choice. Please don't think that whatever alt right edge lords are out there actually have any idea what libertarianism is.
I'll look up some of those debates. Thank you for the explanation.
The term for this is "negative liberty": the freedom from something; whereas, "positive liberty" is the freedom to do something. Libertarianism, generally, aligns with the idea of negative liberty.
If there is freedom from a governing authority then there is no one to take away my freedom to do what I like. Sounds like two ways of saying the same thing. Maybe I miss your point.
The distinction between positive and negative liberties is, indeed, a rather blurry one, but there is generally a difference in mindset between the two. That being said, libertarianism seeks to minimize the size and influence of the government, but they don't seek to abolish it — those that seek to abolish it are anarchists (I'm not sure if I am reading your comment correctly, but it seems that you are advocating for anarchism rather than libertarianism when you said "freedom from a governing authority"). It's important to note that negative liberty is a concept that distinguishes a certain class of liberties — it doesn't require the presence of a government.
Well said, I probably wasn't very clear, but I am not an anarchist. There are certain critical functions that the government must control. When I say freedom from authority I refer to specific government agencies that can exert force on individuals. Government roads don't force users to do anything but rather empower citizens.
Another argument for why government roads are ethical is because they fight off monopolization — property ownership is at high risk for monopolization. I'm not sure if the Georgist idea of taxing the land value that a private road would be on is enough.
Right, government should provide oversight to public goods that, by their nature, require monopolies such as roads or utilities. Government also needs to have a judicial branch that mediates conflicts between individuals and entities.
I agree with both statements.
The problem with this is that in a free democratic system, government is something you do, not something which is done to you. You can't just pick and choose which aspects of government you like. Part of the social contract is that if you want clean water and plumbing and shit, then you agree to abide by fair democratic consensus. If you don't, I suppose you are free to go live in the woods.
It is both.
I imagine it's a "negative liberty vs positive liberty" conundrum.
American libertarianism seems to consistently skew towards negative liberty, which is complete autonomy to anything but without any power or resources. I believe this predilection came from Ayn Rand and Reaganism, and that It now manifests mostly as anarchocapitalist sentiments.
I'm a bigger fan of positive liberty - possessing the resources and power to do what you desire within a constrained system.
Unfortunately we live in a society which provides neither. The amazing results of constant compromise.
The problem is defining what acceptable positive rights involves. There are people who think that having to "work to survive" is somehow a major human rights abuse. I don't think that anyone should be entitled to not have to work unless they are severely disabled and can't work. At the same time, expecting people to work multiple jobs is corporate oppression.
I really like your answer but to me this is what motivated me towards libertarianism. We have been voting between two parties that both are authoritarian in different ways and the result stinks. Let's try the other half of the compass for a change. If government sucks then don't vote for more government to fix the corrupt system. Vote to limit government and give power back to the people.
Libertarians are people who imagine living in their idea of personal, fictional, utopia. Their utopia is one where they pay for only what they want, nobody else gets any of their money, corporations will do no harm, and somehow, magically, they have all the conveniences of modern life.
They just completely ignore that their miserly financial outlook undoes centuries of understanding that an educated society reduces poverty, crime, and unrest, hence the need for public education. Corporations still cause environmental ruin and poison the land, sea, and air…as if giving them minimal or free rein would improve that. Usually their solution to anyone intruding on their ideal world is to shoot them, no need to pay for cops.
In other words, they’re all about their Liberty to do what ever they want. Their version of liberty for you is “You’re free to sink, swim, or die on your own.” They just assume they’ll always be fine or have enough money to do whatever they need. No need to chip in for anyone els’s health care if a) they can’t pay for their own or b) they have their money to pay for theirs, and you’re not getting any of it.
I disagree. What you are describing is positive liberty. Libertarianism, generally, aligns more with negative liberty.
Libertarians are the right wing version of 20 year old socialists who want free stuff and have no understand of what really drives and motivates people.
I tend to lean left but I'm incredibly disappointed with the state of the political landscape.
Libertarians are, typically, just republicans who dont want the label or baggage, at least from every single one I've ever seen or interacted with.
In my experience, libertarians tend to be extremely moderate conservatives who don't want to submit to God.
I'm not a Libertarian, but I sympathize with some of their economic viewpoints -- significantly more so than tends to be welcome here. Unlike some of you, I don't speak to the motives and attitudes of all libertarians, only my own. I'm not a Republican. I don't smoke pot. I did vote for Jo Jorgensen in 2020. I do give a flying fuck about liberty. I don't confirm or deny being a myopic cunt.
Oddly enough, I do support some form of public healthcare. I'm well aware that most libertarians don't. A hundred years ago, maybe even 50 years ago, I wouldn't have either. The problem is that medical science has advanced to where a free market insurance model doesn't work as well as it used to. Health insurance used to be a luxury when lung cancer would kill a rich man almost as quickly as it killed a poor man. That's no longer the case, and the costs have accelerated to where the treatment can bankrupt an uninsured middle class man.
The real sinker however is pre-existing conditions. You can't insure a house that's already on fire, and we don't ask homeowners policies to do so. Waiting periods for costly conditions sometimes almost work, except for patients born a pre-existing medical condition. If the insurer had the choice, they'd just refuse to write the policy, even if treatment is cost-effective from a public policy standpoint.
So I support free market solutions where they exist. Health insurance may be one of the few situations where it doesn't.
I always assumed it was impossible for a free market to exist in healthcare. One important tenant of a free market is being able to freely enter and exit the market at will. Exiting the healthcare market is impossible. You can't reasonably choose to leave the market when life is forcing you to engage in it, or choosing to leave the market would lead to death. It's the equivalent of having a gun put to your head.
Exactly. To me all the basics of life, the bottom tiers of Maslow's pyramid can't be privatised. Healthcare, utilities, education, infrastructure, social safety nets, you need those things as a PREREQUISITE to participation in the market. The market can't provide its own prerequisites. If you don't provide these things you simply cannot have a competitive free market in the first place.
The main issue with healthcare, imo, is that it is a leonine contract. Because of that, it is incompatible with capitalism.
The main issue with healthcare is that it is a leonine contract. Because of that, it is incompatible with capitalism.
-- Karl Marx, On Free Trade
So far, outside of a classroom, the only “Libertarians” I’ve seen in real life are people who vote republiQan and refuse to take accountability for it.
Or people who don’t vote, and allow republiQans to rule while taking no accountability for it.
So, they don’t support universal healthcare because republiQans don’t, and that’s what they really are.
Actually, not voting is one of the most ideologicaly consistent things someone who is extremely libertarian could do. Because if you voted for something and got it passed. Technically your will could be used to infringe against perceived rights of others. So by rights any true ideological libertarian should never vote. But you'll almost never see that on the right.
Yeah. Lots of fake or failed Libertarians then?
A shit ton. Enough that most people have no idea there are any other kind.
This is, imo, most likely a symptom of a first past the post voting system. It results in people not voting for whom they believe in, but, instead, to vote strategically in the very general direction of what is actually wanted.
This is the problem with "ism"s. At whatever point you decide that philosophy X is the answer to everything, you start being wrong about a lot of the world, because whatever it is, there's at least like 30% of situations (and potentially a lot more) that your particular ism actually isn't the answer to.
Libertarianism or anti-imperialism or ACAB or socialism or pro-the-Democrats or anarchist or whatever it is, it's never always the answer. Trying to hold a debate about, well is it philosophy X or philosophy Y that's always right about everything, or any other discussion that feeds into the basic wrong premise, is just compounding the imaginary non-situation-dependent way of looking at it.
Although yes some of them are wrong a lot more of the time than some others.
Before applying any of these so-called "isms" to the collective, the most important step, imo, is to ensure that there is synchronization on the collective's ideals and principles. In general, understanding all extremes, their benefits and drawbacks, is the best approach forward. One must be rooted in their ideals and draw from diverse pools of experience to round out one's beliefs.
Wanna be free to stay unwell.
I wanna eat buckets of cheese
When you combine "Libertarian" with the greed that is typical in the ultra wealthy, their core value typically only includes liberty for themselves and no empathy for others. You can use any party label you want but without empathy, members of every party are nothing more than selfish pieces of shit. Just to be clear, I am not a "they're all the same" idiot, as Republicans clearly think empathy is a four letter word. But there are sociopaths without empathy everywhere in society, especially in the US.
As far as universal healthcare is concerned, we can't even agree as a society to provide clean water to our population by removing leaded pipes. Why would we expect something as reasonable as universal healthcare?
On a political spectrum, the term libertarian should relate to anti-authoritarian. So, I can see how the case can be made against socialized healthcare for them. It's not really about true freedom or liberty. And in the US anyway, it's largely just facade co-opted by the
fascist[authoritarian and wealthy] right wing, ironically.The word "Libertarian" in US has less relation to the dictionary definition than "Republican" and "Democrat". These are names of parties over here, even if they have a namesake of governmental mechanisms.
Examples:
Ron Johnson said in a single breath that he was a libertarian and opposed the legalization of marijuana.
Find the average "libertarian" policy position on border policies.
US politics is unfortunately entrenched in tribalism rather than searching for the right tool to match a job or solve a problem and maximize outcomes, the libertarians over here are no exception.
I like the idea of universal healthcare. I have zero trust in the US federal government to implement it properly. I think it would be a clusterfuck and make things worse for everyone, especially with Republicans on the warpath doing everything they can to sabotage it.
I can't really understand the tradition of never trusting the government in the US. The government is designed in a way that enables, even requires public oversight, public opinion. If that is not the case, you are not living in a democracy. Many Americans trust private initiatives, charity more than taxes and a working public system. People have no say in what corporations do. If people don't trust the government the attitude should be towards fixing it and enabling trust, not to accept it as is. I am not judging, maybe a little bit but not really. I live in a middle eastern country. We really don't trust the government but we keep working on steering it in the right direction. We are many times smaller than the US but we have minimum income, universal healthcare, unions are the norm, etc.
If one trusted their government, then, arguably, none of these checks would be required.
The trust in private enterprise is predicated on one's ability and ease to opt out of such a system. The same cannot be said for the government.
I used to trust them, before 9/11 when I was young and naive. Then the attack happened. We ended up with bipartisan legislation to strip our civil liberties, torture captives, spy on citizens in direct violation of the bill of rights, and invade 2 countries that had nothing to do with it. Never again.
Shareholders do. They get a vote. The government is essentially a mutual fund you're legally obligated to buy into.
I agree. I also believe we should take care of that before we go granting them vast additional powers.
Thats a good example of why universal healthcare doesn't need to be at the federal level here. States like New York and California are larger than many countries which have universal healthcare. What's stopping them from passing it themselves?
completely agreed
yes but they vote to maximize profit not overall social benefit
They're the same people that are voting in elections.
They are a very small subset of those people, and they are not a proportional representation of all types of people.
But corporations hold each other accountable. They have to compete for your trust. If corporation A does something shady then it's im their competitors interest to call them out in order to raise people's trust in themselves. There are also countless charities and third party sites to grade them. I can choose which programs I fund. I don't get any say in what government gets my taxes or what the government does with my taxes. What if I don't want to fund war but want my money to go to charity to help the poor? How effective is universal healthcare where you are?
Wow, you seriously still believe that corporations compete with eachother in the healthcare sector despite the fact that most insurance companies have a "network" specifically so that they don't have to compete with eachother? How is healthcare a competitive market that drives towards efficiency exactly? The more you privatise healthcare the lower life expectancy you get and the higher you all pay!
93% of stocks are owned by just 10% of people... They own all the companies, and are diversified... They aren't really competing with each other in any meaningful way
Then don't shop at those companies? Go buy produce at your local farmers market etc etc. You get to choose what you spend money on. Or you can start your own business if you feel there is a market gap. You cant start your own government.
I should go to my local farmer's market to sign up for Internet service, or to buy a cell phone? The big industries are so heavily dominated by massive colluding corporations that "don't shop there" is not a tenable solution.
The reason the government is garbage is because most of them are working for the corporations. If we heavily regulated the corporations and made it so they couldn't interfere with politics, the government would be better... They'd actually be working for the people and our interests, like they're supposed to
The problem isn't government, it's corporate control of the government
Privatizing things will always cost more because then you need to account for profits as well. Publicly controlled=x cost, privately controlled=x costs+profit for the rich
Even the most corrupt government employee is only getting a pay check (no profits). They make their corruption money by colluding with corporations and rich people
Well said.
Most people are not "free" enough under current system to shop at farmers markets haha
Yes, but only if there is competition. In an anti-competitive market (thus a non-capitalist system), this balance breaks.
You will know the answer if you look more specific at what exactly different people understand as "liberty"
Libertarians usually define liberty narrowly as "freedom from government".
Freedom does not mean the ability to do as you please, but rather the ability to not be told what not to do, or to be made to do something you do not wish to do.
A libertarian usually does not object to wage slavery, and would disagree with the concept of wage slavery entirely, on the grounds that you were not forced to work a job you dislike, since you could always choose to starve instead.
What you're looking for is one of the schools of anarchism.
Although usually painted as "anti-government, anti-society", it actually derives from being against hierarchy, and is characterized generally (there are many schools) as being opposed to involuntary power hierarchies.
Sometimes government is the best way to reduce the total amount of coercion in the system, since forcing a lot of people to pay a little can free many, many people from being forced to do stuff they loath to survive.
Libertarians aren't pro-liberty they're anti-government, and anarchists aren't pro-chaos they're anti-coercian. They're both entire political schools of thought, so I've obviously not encapsulated them entirely in two paragraphs.
This is exactly right.
However, you are on Lemmy where the vast majority of users are from the US which means they have their own weird skew on libertarianism and liberalism, thanks to their media and social media. Somehow it's distinctly Republican, conservative (lol, yes), and pro-capitalism, which obviously isn' correct because of their many, many, many, anti-liberal views.
Only in the US can socialists be mad about a school of thought that values social equality and welfare, because a form of media informed them it's pro-capitalism and the red-cap redneck that cries "Liberty!" with their AR-15 must be liberalism or libertarian.
Libertarians are pro liberty. Generally, they align the most with the upholding of negative liberty. Libertarians are not anti government; libertarians advocate for the minimization of government — that is, minarchy. Anarchists are anti-government.
I'd argue we should give voice to actual libertarians instead of trashing them here.
Like, otherwise you at least don't help people find how actual libertarians respond.
Do you mean ancaps? Because I'm pretty sure most libertarian would be for universal healthcare. I have heard Americans use libertarian for ancap which are pretty opposing ideologies, I'm not sure what's up with that.
This I believe is the 3rd party the US needs. People should redefine the meaning of being a Libertarian in the US and take it away from the crazy.
Actually, education and health are the 2 things I think the government should take care of in a serious way. That said, I still Believe people should be able to pay for alternative education or health care if they wish, I just think I should never see a bill for either of those two ever. Especially for children. Wtf are we doing if we as a society cannot afford for children to be healthy or educated?
the issue is that everyone needs to have equal opportunity.
Is it okay for parents to purposefully give their kids a worse opportunity for education and health than every other American? (I know homeschooling is a controversial topic, but sadly the vast majority are just dumb as a box of bricks religious nut jobs)
I'm sorry, I genuinely don't understand the question of, is it right to give a worse education. Are you saying that homeschool is worse? Sorry not trying to deter from the topic, but I might just not be reading it right.
I will say this in response though, I don't agree that everyone should be given a completely equal opportunity. What I do think is that everyone should be given a very superior baseline of opportunity.
Chasing completely equal opportunity seen like a fools errand. But we really should be putting education and health first, unfortunately we just don't.
homeschooling: absolutely, because of the quality of the vast number of 'teachers' (in the USA). You should read about how batshit insane they are. And lets not get started on the rampant child abuse.
it sounds like you're trying to confuse equality and equity. But yes, same baseline = equal baseline, which is not what they're getting in the slave states.
Why the hell do you think that libertarians don't believe in universal healthcare?
The liberty they believe in is different than the more common use of the word, perhaps.
"liberty to" rather than "liberty from".
The question was "Why do you not believe in universal healthcare?" not "Why don't you like the libertarian movement?" Jeez, guys.
Honestly it's just an ethical stance against forcing one to pay for another, emphasis on force.
We all pay for it when a child with potential gets sick and dies because their parents couldn't afford health care. We all pay in one way or another when health care bankrupts a family. We are all going to pay for it anyways, and if someone in a worse financial position than you needs health care and your taxes can provide that, you're garbage if you feel you're being forced or you're mad cause a poor person got medicine with your taxes.
No. I'm a Canadian that actually knows what socialized programs like healthcare do to a country. It's not great. Socialized medicine is one of the major of the hundred little cuts impoverishing Canadians. Mississippi and Alabama have higher per capita average income and personal wealth than the richest Canadian province, before and after taxes. Despite the huge amount of wealth transfer to the government for reallocation, they inevitably start acting like its their money, wasted in ridiculous ways aside from the original point, a bureaucratic mafia forms intent on nothing but its own continuance, and then you've Canadians denied health insurance either formally (I'm not allowed to have it because I've not a fixed address in the province I pay income tax, but i can't just not pay taxes either) or informally by denial of needed care (that's the common one). I do have American health insurance. I spend 5 months a year in the states, acquiring insurance was as simple as paying for it.
I'm not being impoverished by universal health care, I'm being impoverished by corporation and those "free market" fucks who are anti union, anti workers, and pro fascism.
Sure you are lil buddy.
Insults are a sure sign that your argument was destroyed and you can't handle it
Just keep telling yourself that
so is it unethical for society to take care of orphans?
Fuck them orphans. (Completely irrelevant amd illogical appeals to emotion will be treated as seriously as deserved)
Orphans are real and a serious issue. A large percentage of homeless people today are people who went through the US foster system.
Children whose parents are A) unable B) unwilling or C) dead ... all become society's problem to feed and house and you've basically said that its unethical to do so.
Stay on topic
Libertarian doesn't just mean "dumbshit conservative who likes smoking weed."
There is a whole spectrum of leftist libertarian traditions which uphold the egalitarian and worker-first ideas of socialism, but reject the authoritarianism of Marxist Leninism. Though I admit it would be hard to know this if your only exposure to leftist ideas was via the internet, which tends to tilt heavily towards these ML traditions, and very confused anarchists who think MLs are allies for some reason.
I am not THE libertarian to fully hold this argument and as others have mentioned there are libertarian arguments for universal healthcare, but I will present the best case I can from those I've heard be against it.
The primary case is the idea of negative rights vs positive rights. Where the idea that the state should protect you from others wanting limit your rights vs providing you the ability to do something.
So using the state to punish someone for who is trying to stop you from providing healthcare service is justified use of violence as it protects your negative rights and define and preserves you and the violators boundary. Whereas using state violence to force you to provide healthcare someone you don't want to would not as it violated your negative right.
This is primary argument against any positive right, is that since it requires a service to be fulfilled the state would be use violence (the basis of state power) to enforce it. Making it tantamount to slavery.
Now the reality of it though is that most libertarians do support this slavery at least in service of giving the state the monopoly on violence (police, military, etc) in order to protect their defined negative rights. And because of our current material abundance we are able to have a fractionalized slavery extracting wealth from people to small enough degree that most people don't find as aborrent full servitude of an individual.
I believe in universal basic income, because it is simple and easy to define, and therefore doesn’t have these two problems
Universal healthcare is problematic because of two things:
I am libertarian-ish, but generally don't like all the loud libertarian nuts (I register Dem and vote Dem because the things I care about aren't represented anywhere on the ballot anymore).
For me, it comes to a very simple economics truism: Governments are pretty damn inefficient and tend to waste a lot of money because of the process and bureaucracy. Markets on the other hand, tend to be really efficient at allocating capital when left alone. The times a government should step in is when the market has created a form of externality that breaks things. The old economics example is the people downstream from a chemical plant are paying the price for the plant's pollution.
From a libertarian lens:
Unfortunately the things I'd like to see from a libertarian don't actually show up.
Nice to see so many pleasant replies from all sides! Didn’t know how casually people viewed this topic.
Don't expect unbiased learning about politics on Lemmy.
I really recommend people who are actually curious about libertarians to watch the 2024 free and equal debate on YouTube (link below). A lot of people here have some strong words against libertarians but don't really understand what they stand for. I think that is a dangerous mindset. I imagine a lot of feminists, BLM or LGBTQ folk understand how frustrating that can be.
I would take anybody in the free and equal debate over the two choices presented by the democratic and Republican party. I personally feel the libertarian candidates resonate with me but make your own decision. Vote for who you feel will represent your views best.
https://www.youtube.com/live/Bmidtp1_K-Y?si=A62jmReZvv8zt1n6
Or old and sick. Or old and dead. "It's better be young and healthy, than old and sick".
New quote in my quotational quotes quollection.
As a socialist libertarian that access health care, yes I think is a great step forward, I see all this social services that benefit the proletariat given by a government as positive part of the transition, but it's also a double edge sword if people become too dependent or get use to it once stops been an urgent matter people stop demanding it because they forget that's even there and end up voting for politician that would take it away, I'm thinking about Sweden or the uk. The correct way is demand these services to become more decentralized, f.e. having fully equipied clinics everywhere instead of just big hospitals
I'm not a libertarian, but from what I've seen of their positions on this, they don't think that it's possible in an effective way. There's two possible versions: the government pays for everything, or there's public and private health care. A lot of countries have both, which is probably the best option since driving out competition is going to make everything go to crap.
The problem is that there are some arrangements that simply can't work or the existing system would implode in the transition.
There are also a lot of people who don't want to pay because someone who refused to get insurance for years finally decided to sign up for public health care because they suddenly got a serious health problem. In some possible arrangements, it would be necessary to force people to have health insurance, which is its own rabbit hole.
Do they not realize that universal health care has been done successfully and at a lower cost than privatized healthcare, in many other countries? Seems like a weak argument when there's so much proof against it
I want there to be a viable public option that exists. The alternative would be to require that everyone get coverage.
There's a potential third option through cooperatively run hospitals.
"The problem is that there are some arrangements that simply can’t work or the existing system would implode in the transition."
can you even cite a real world example of this or is this another runaway hypothetical?
medical practitioners competing with each other isn't how medicine advances
If there's no competition, then providers can just make up any price that they want and the government has to pay it.
When there's an entirely planned economy, there's no possibility for alternatives to be created.
when a huge multinational corporation worth more than the GDP of many nations organizes their resources using a plan decided by executives, and starts to vertically integrate to control their supply chain, and reaps the cost savings, that's just good capitalism.
No organization that's publicly owned could ever vertically integrate and make efficient use of resources, no, you need a dictatorship where the wealthiest have all the power for that kind of thing to work
The reason markets trend toward monopoly is that it's so ineffective
Google Libertarian Socialism. Not all liberians are evil
Edit: docking autocorrect
Yeah, but what about libertarians?
Some people from Liberia are quite nice in fact
I am one
With the general state of health in America, it's probably better for the fit 0.1% if they don't have to share healthcare resources with the rest.
Because you can only implement universal healthcare through violence/theft. Doctors need a motivation to work, right? So you either
Libertarians are Republicans that smoke weed. They are identical at their core.
Little of what the republican party seems to support aligns with libertarianism.
I disagree. Libertarians are more evil and stupider than Republicans.
Republicans are pretty awful all round, yes. But have you tried selfishness-extreme, our new flavor? Now with less self-awareness!
Liberty
Universal Healthcare @ gun point.
Can't have both.
Because no one should have the rights to someone else's labor. If it's a completely voluntary system, that's a different story
Democrat advocating for slave labor. Nothing new for the past 200 years.
If libertarians had their way, there wouldn't be a minimum wage and wage slavery would be even worse.
They'd bring back company script.
And then get eaten by bears.
I don't think libertarians really see wage slavery as the worst thing.
I think the fundamental difference is that libertarians don't care about outcomes. Or, at least they don't think that they do as long as they have food in their stomach and a barrier against the cold.
In their minds, it's all about them not being compelled to partake in anything they don't want to. If that means starving, fine (so they say, and I'm very suspicious of this claim), but at least there was no authority over them.
Most sane people strike a balance between valuing good practical outcomes, and more abstract notions like liberty and justice.
Full authoritarians say that only outcomes are important, that abstract notions like freedom are impediments to the greatest good, and you end up with things like the USSR.
So you're right that there wouldn't be a minimum wage... But you're wrong to appeal to the concept of wage slavery because it presupposes a libertarian values satisfactory outcomes. They don't.
Honestly there is no talking down a libertarian without first convincing them their lives are worth more than some definition of liberty.
don't even get them started on 'age of consent' laws, they always seem to bring those up too
Roads? Slave labor. Taxes? Slave labor. Taxes that fund the police? Somehow not slave labor.
Like you're not wrong, democrats do advocate slave labor in the form of supporting the prison-industrial complex, but I know you're not talking about that.
I am. ACAB
But you understand that cops, above all else, exist to protect the institution of property correct?
Do they really though with policies like qualified immunity and civil asset forfeiture?
They protect the institution of private property, not any individual's personal property.
Wut
https://youtu.be/pkEDz2T4GSI
you hate the fire department? you hate representional democracy?
So, society as we know it shouldn't even remotely exist. None of it.
They should just lord over the true value whilst paying peanuts to the workers? Cause that's where we're at already.
Glad you brought that up. The US Dollar hasn't meant anything since coming off the gold standard, and we can't control it's value so long as the Federal Reserve controls interest rates, and the government has a monopoly over what currencies we can and can't use. (No this isn't advocation for company script, if you can't spend it anywhere else it's not currency)
With actual competition between companies, the laborer could actually compete for the best jobs and get the best compensation for their labor.
Capitalism will NEVER allow free competition, nor for the workers to be paid their true value.
So long as government meddles in it, yes you are correct.
🙄 regulations are the only thing that slow the unfettered greed built into the system.
Ya'll have some weird and completely incorrect fantasies.
Because someone needs to be enslaved to provide universial health care. If even one person wants to opt out, no matter how wrong their reason you if you allow don't allow it they are enslaved. (note that there have been many different systems of slavery, but even the best still remones choice from someone). as such I prefer other options if they exist.
There are other options and so I oppose universial health care. Do not confuse that with approving of the system we have.
Congratulations, you just said the dumbest thing I've read on the Internet in a very long time. That's impressive!
I pay for the military, for roads, for schools, for police, for fire departments...and I can't opt out of any of that. So am I already a slave? If so, then I might as well get some healthcare out of the deal.
If I'm not already a slave then universal healthcare isn't making me a slave either. No one would be forcing you to use your healthcare either.
You are a slave and should opt out of those things.
Your proble is you know what is and cannot imangine what could be.
As an American man I only have a 40% chance of developing cancer in my lifetime, but with universal healthcare there’s 100% chance I will have to pay for it.
Do you have health insurance? Well guess what, then you are paying for it already, only more than with universal health care.
No, I don’t believe in gambling.
Strange, as you’ve clearly laid out the odds, risks, etc. and you’re betting your life on your supposed “beliefs”.
Sure sounds like gambling to me…
No that’s just risk assessment.
Gambling is things like blackjack, slots, poker or any kind of insurance.
A risk assessment is a normal part of gambling. You’re just describing games, like the one you’re playing now to rationalize your gambling with your own life by avoiding getting any sort of health insurance.
A deck of cards or a die are normal parts of gambling too but they aren’t intrinsically gambling either.
They are when you bet something on the outcome— ya know, gambling… like how you risk both your financial future and your life when you choose to not have health insurance.
Insurance is by definition not gambling. It is only indemnity. The reality is that without insurance you are gambling that you'll get to keep the money you didn't spend on insurance and not be financially ruined.
Insurance is gambling because I’m betting that if I get cancer I get a payout larger than the amount I wagered by buying insurance.
That’s not how health insurance works. You would never get more than your medical costs and would almost always get less.
The entirety of our economic structure is gambling.
All of it.
No, I set a value on my labor and I take that value, no more or less.
You’re gambling that there’s someone willing to pay that amount for your labor. The stakes? Your financial security.
That’s not gambling.
That is working.
Then you need to define gambling and working in no uncertain or ambiguous terms.
When describing that which you do not wish to partake in, you gotta be REAL clear.
Then we can understand what you mean by gambling vs working.
Not if you lose your bet that anyone is willing to pay you your desired wage. Then it’s unemployment because you gambled and lost. And even if they do agree, it’s just luck that you won— but it’s still a gamble.
What the hell man.. The guy is just sharing his view on what OP asked..
Just because you disagree with the guy doesn't mean you need to wish cancer upon him.
Have some decency for crying out loud.
K. Should I care as much as he does about others? Because I think you'll find it's the same amount.
Who do you pray to for things like that?
3M, DuPont, Bayer, etc. Take your pick.
As a sun worshipper, I pray to Joe Pesci.
Godfella Joe Pesci or Home Alone?
Depends on what I pray for.
Satan?
Satan was the good guy.
If there is a god she is obviously a women because men can’t create life.
Oh SatansMaggotyCumFart!