Is government the antithesis of liberty?
No, Force
One of the things that enhances freedoms are roads. Infrastructure enhances freedom. A social safety net enhances freedom. What should we do with the losers that are picked by the free market?
Leading question on many ways. I wouldn’t call them losers in a libertarian system, they’d learn one thing failed and move on. You also name 3 things that wouldn’t be first on a chopping block. Why would you think of failure in one thing losers? Is that not the problem?
Do we live in a society or don’t we? Are we a collective? Everybody’s success is predicated on the hard work of all of us; nobody gets there on their own. Why should it be that the people who lose are hung out to dry? For a group that doesn’t believe in evolution, it’s awfully Darwinian.
Social Conservatives are rather ardent on Evolution, and Jon, you should read The Man vs the State by Herbert Spencer, this is were the question of survival and the welfare state come in the Whig territory. Spencerian survival of the fittest. It’s true in our current Hegemonies people do not get their on their own.
Many School Ties and Born Wealth, but the US has the luck still having the ability to grow beyond a imposed class, be respected as new money. Stock Markets, the SEC, are a cheat. It’s a matter of not hating the players or game, but the cheats. Those who steal and defraud, for instance.
In a representative democracy, we are the government. We have work to do, and we have a business to run, and we have children to raise.. We elect you as our representatives to look after our interests within a democratic system.
Your in a Federalist Constitutional Republic, not simple Representative Government. Canada still has a Monarchy Head of State
Is government inherently evil?
Only when it goes beyond a small size where it only defended personal liberty.
Sometimes to protect the greater liberty you have to do things like form an army, or gather a group together to build a wall or levy. As soon as you’ve built an army, you’ve now said government isn’t always inherently evil because we need it to help us sometimes, so now.. it’s that old joke: Would you sleep with me for a million dollars? How about a dollar? Who do you think I am? We already decided who you are, now we’re just negotiating.
Yes, that’s from Bastiat’s “The Law,” a hand book of many libertarians. Even to an extent from Paine’s work, “Common Sense,” I think. Defending liberty of authoritarian evil is a different thing, than building a huge army of bureaucrats into a huge national welfare state that abuses reserved indigenous individuals.
You say: government which governs least governments best. But that were the Articles of Confederation. We tried that for 8 years, it didn’t work, and went to the Constitution.
That philosophy never changed with the Constitution. Freedom from hegemonic monarchy was one of a few things. Federalist Presidential Elections, another. But the Constitution to the 10th Amendment was still Govern least, in fact largely Govern self.
You give money to the IRS because you think they’re gonna hire a bunch of people, that if your house catches on fire, will come there with water.
No, City Hall usually does that with very underpaid strong men.
Why is it that libertarians trust a corporation, in certain matters, more than they trust representatives that are accountable to voters? The idea that I would give up my liberty to an insurance company, as opposed to my representative, seems insane.
When were they accountable? Was this before Van Buren? I don’t trust public companies, in a sense they are a sort of hybrid with the Government throught the SEC. Generally they are colletives, a form of collectivism. When compared to individuals who trade or sole owners of a business are not that trustworthy. The chrony capitalist is not a friend of liberty, they use the Government and put very unaccountable people in office if they can.
Why is it that with competition, we have such difficulty with our health care system? ..and there are choices within the educational system.
Would you go back to 1890?
You can’t roll back the clock. Competition has been rendered largely inaccessible to most people by state regulations and massive taxes. Which also kills opportunity. Canada has difficulty with the Healthcare. You can’t get a lot of important drugs, the federal Government has some chrony deal with a single supplier. Education is not that great either, a highly limited private competition. Vouchers may be a short fix and ween off. That will improve things.
If we didn’t have government, we’d all be in hovercrafts, and nobody would have cancer, and broccoli would be ice-cream?
You have an odd concept Utopia. Most libertarians have a minarchistic view, not no Government, that is a paradox and impossible long term situation. Your confusing the anarchist.
Unregulated markets have been tried. The 80’s and the 90’s were the robber baron age. These regulations didn’t come out of an interest in restricting liberty. What they did is came out of an interest in helping those that had been victimized by a system that they couldn’t fight back against.
It wasn’t tried, not in the 80s and 90s. In the 90s it was more selective than any period, chronyism again. The 80s was somewhat deregulated, but not that much. Even with Central Government, State and Cities did not all follow in this path. The problem is when people aren’t factoring all the jurisdictions. Some say a President did it or is to blame, when it could be a Governor or Governor, or Mayors or a balance of it all, Councillors and Reps and Senators. Executive Branches maybe the least to do with it.
Why do you think workers that worked in the mines unionized?
Black lung, death, fear, and someone to exploit it. Unions aren’t the problem, it’s the lack of access to competition and nationalization of Unions and lack of specialization you had with Guilds which were privatized minimum wage, work safety regulators who handled apprenticeships that wasn’t so bad. A Union is like a Unicron of Guilds.
Without the government there are no labor unions, because they would be smashed by Pinkerton agencies or people hired, or even sometimes the government.
Union bashers were around when the Government was growing bigger and bigger. Peaked during the new deal. Government tries to usurf what Unions do and Guilds did better. All Government has ever done is force people to join them.
Would the free market have desegregated restaurants in the South, or would the free market have done away with miscegenation, if it had been allowed to? Would Marten Luther King have been less effective than the free market? Those laws sprung up out of a majority sense of, in that time, that blacks should not.. The free market there would not have supported integrated lunch counters.
Libertarians have warmed up more to Malcom X, a more voluntary figure. Segregation vs Separation. Segregation is the enemy of the free market, the enemy of liberty. The idea of the Government or a collective telling you who to do business with, who to love, who to be friends with, who you can fuck….all this is an enemy of liberty. So racist policies are not friendly to liberty and free market. Voluntary co-existence with other people is a positive. But forcing it also works badly. George Wallace, was a Governor of a State. Not a businessman. Businessmen made opportunities for people like Sachmo.
Government is necessary but must be held accountable for its decisions.
It must be restrained, and not fed very much.
