There's liberal as in "tolerate how other people choose to live" and there's liberal as in "spend a lot of money on big government solutions to social problems" and nobody can claim to be libertarian and be liberal in the latter sense.
not in the American sense, but "libertarianism" has long usage in Europe as well, where it's usually associated with 'left libertarian' thinkers such as Orwell, Kropotkin and so forth. Chomsky would be a contemporary example.
Many European anarchists describe themselves as libertarian, in the US the terminology is just not common, so people might be talking past each other here.
Bookchin has spoken about this, but I can't find the lecture at the moment. When I use "libertarian" to describe myself, it's in the Socialist/anarchist sense, rather than what I view as antithetical to libertarian (i.e concerned with the freedom of people) philosophy; I think I would rather call "libertarians" as "propertytarians", as they are so much more concerned with the ownership of property rather than individual freedom, but the name won't catch on.
I consider myself to be a "bleeding heart libertarian". I'm against the drug war, believe in a strong separation of church an state, live and let live, etc. But I don't mind paying taxes for the government to help people help themselves and to help people who can't help themselves.
Small, localized governance. True representative government (no career politicians like the sleaze John McCain and Nancy Pelosi). Strong adherence to property rights. Government not picking winners and losers. Government not accepting bribes (campaign contributions via big-money lobbyists). No corporate welfare--if a bank fucks up, they go out of business and shitbirds like Jamie Dimon get to live under a bridge the rest of their lives and (hopefully) die drunk while OD'ing on heroin.
ETA: End to the drug war, non-interventionist foreign policy.
I haven't heard liberals talk too much about legalizing all drugs. Clinton in the 90s started the whole tough on crime, 3 strikes you're out, crusade. I am against the minimum wage - I think it skews supply and demand and contorts the free market -- but I do believe in the basic income for people who work in the form of an expansion of the earned income tax credit.
I still mind paying taxes and always will--anyone who doesn't is a doormat. It's just that I also no that a certain amount of expropriation is going to happen no matter what. I still don't support in collectivism or collectivist solutions, though. I think those things are the big lie told to people--that no other system can do what government does. The US government is mainly involved in theft from the middle class via taxation and inflation.
It's not that no other system can do what government does, it's that there is no other system. Government is a local monopoly on violence. Getting rid of violent (coercive) government does not remove the ability of men to be violent. Because violence is the birthright of man, we develop these agreements about when it's okay to be violent. These are called 'governments'.
Libertarianism is an idealist philosophy which elevates individual rights over that of the collective. This is not a logically inconsistent position, but the real world is not required to conform to what you think is logical. In the real world, rights don't exist if they're not enforced, and you'll note how that word is also inseparable from violence. It would be nice if we lived in a world where libertarianism were possible, or communism too for that matter. Unfortunately such is not the case.
> the libertarian platform is basically defined by its anti government stance
See, this is why I think arguing about labels is a complete waste of time. The majority of libertarians that I personally know are for smaller government in some areas. That doesn't always meant anti government. Sure you'll find plenty of libertarians that are anti government but you're going to find a lot of people with a lot of views calling themselves all sorts of different things that, ultimately, do not fit very well.
For example after reading multiple websites regarding my own political views it would seem some places labeled me as a Libertarian Socialist, others a Liberal and one other a Fiscal Conservative Liberal. I'm not even convinced these labels make complete sense and really only capture some of my viewpoints in a pretty inarticulate way.
Ultimately I just think all of these labels are a complete waste of time. People are imperfect and you'll never bucket them well. Even when you have finally come up with the perfect buckets for people you'll be lucky if half of the people put themselves in the correct bucket either due to a misunderstanding or some other reason.
Not anti-government. Some are as anti all government as anarchist. A lot are for governments to be limited.
What to limit it to is what differentiate different liberal (the original definition, not what your parties have done to it) movements. Some will want nothing, others include only the police, army and diplomacy. Some will include basic infrastructure. Most think contracts enforcement is the responsibility of the government. You even have libertarians who are for a universal basic income.
But using a huge brush of "hurr durr libertarians, tea party, Ayn Rand" to paint libertarians is an error. Which a lot of so-called libertarians do too, like far left people who will parrot concepts while they never read -and certainly not studied- Marx books.
As a side note if the only knowledge you have from the libertarians points come from media (old and new) you should reflect on how they report on tech things you know about and how maybe they report all subjects as badly.
One could argue that the goal of a libertarian is to maximize individual liberty, and plausibly argue that the loss of liberty via taxation is both a faux loss (eg, actually a charge for externalities, not an "extra" cost imposed by others) and liberty maximizing (eg, freedom from concern of unemployment ruining your life is more freeing than the loss of freedom to not pay taxes).
Why? For he simple reason that the more money funnels through the government, the less choice an individual has in how to use it. It’s about power, and in our world, money is power.
>For he simple reason that the more money funnels through the government, the less choice an individual has in how to use it.
Well, if the money funnels in billionaires and overseas corporate accounts, an individual has even less choice in how to use it (unless he is the owner of said company or the billionaire).
Whereas with the government at least the individual gets a vote on how those money should be used.
>It’s about power, and in our world, money is power.
So better than the government, where we have some say, have that money, than billionaires and mega-corps, which we don't control.
> Well, if the money funnels in billionaires and overseas corporate accounts, an individual has even less choice in how to use it
Billionaires buy things, travel, and hire people to work for them. They don't hold onto their money forever. And if they do hold on to, it lowers the supply of money in circulation, thus increasing the value of the dollars YOU hold. A rising tide lifts all ships. So I fail to see the problems. Besides, it's their money, what right does anyone else have to it? If you want their money, find something to sell to them. Maybe start a billionaire vacation resort on the moon. That will create tons of jobs.
> Whereas with the government at least the individual gets a vote on how those money should be used.
Voting is just a small piece, the bigger part is the full-time lobby groups and interest. They have a much more control than the individual gets 1 vote out of 200+ million. And just because 51+% of voters think it's ok to steal someones income, doesn't make it right.
>Billionaires buy things, travel, and hire people to work for them. They don't hold onto their money forever.
Their living and partying costs are so tiny compared to their wealth, we can just as well say that they are "holding onto their money forever".
>Besides, it's their money, what right does anyone else have to it?
I don't believe in the concept of "their money" above a certain degree. After a point such gains are so much part of systemic faults and imbalances that it should be "everybody's money" but its just hoarded.
>And just because 51+% of voters think it's ok to steal someones income, doesn't make it right.
Absent a god, it's only what people think that makes something right or wrong.
It's not a zero-sum game. Money is just a symbolic representation of value. Value is created by people working and innovating. It's not about sharing a finite size pie. It's a planet full of people innovating and making pies.
There can be billionaires and average people all prospering at the same time. It doesn't bother me when billionaires have hordes of money and private jets. I have an average income, but my life is very comfortable especially compared to human history. I don't have to work on a farm, I have air conditioning, time for entertainment, cheap plane tickets to travel thousands of miles in a single day. I think ancient kings would be jealous of what the average person has access to now.
I am super grateful for all the "selfish ba$#@rds" like Henry Ford who brought cars to the masses and made them selves massively wealthy in the process. Communists, Italian Fascists and Nazis all tried to provide the "peoples car" and every time they failed. Capitalism benefits the common man the most! Even when capitalism doesn't work right, it's still far better then centralized systems.
Another "selfish ba$#@rd" is Steve Jobs. Thank him for helping bring the computing power to the common mans home!
> it's only what people think that makes something right or wrong
To be logically consistent, you must admit there is no moral basis to say what the Nazis did was wrong. Or the nice friendly communists who believe in sharing "everybody's money" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_... I'll take my chances with the Rockefellers :)
It does apply to healthcare because healthcare costs are only inflated due to artificial influences. Health insurance, removal of choice of health insurance from the marketplace, government influence on that arrangement due to tax deductibility of employer sponsored insurance but not personally purchased insurance, and finally the expansion of "insurance" to mean a payment system in all transactions and not just the serious items (home owners insurance doesn't pay for minor things).
Government influence is what inflated healthcare costs in the first place by removing all aspects from true consumer choice (aka - the market).
Healthcare costs a hundred times more. That makes it almost incomparable. And has knock-on effects like different people wanting different styles of coverage with very different price schedules.
Courts/police are relatively straightforward and cheap, and act as an enabler for contracts and personal choice.
It's about 10x more if you count just police and fire; about 2x more if you count defense spending along with policing, using UK numbers. (Nowhere near 100x!)
Of course, many more people spread colds, cause accidents, etc than commit crimes, so it makes sense that the cost of controlling their externalities is more than those of criminals.
But your choice seems arbitrary: you couch it in pragmatic terms, because you're not categorically against government programs, but then avoid actual cost-benefit analysis, rendering your opinion nothing more than whim.
That's what it always seems to come down to with "libertarians": unprincipled bullshit that aligns with their whims (such as yes police, no NHS).
I would definitely not categorize defense spending as police.
Healthcare doesn't stop people from spreading colds. You're not actually reducing externalities with most categories of care. And if there were no police you would see a lot more theft.
Anyway, you can put it in cost-benefit terms, but you have to include a strong freedom factor. A government that takes 2% of GDP to keep public order is far better than not doing that. But taking a very large fraction of income to provide health care? That is an enormous cost to both spending and freedom, and reasonable people can see those costs as higher or lower than the benefits.
They don't have cold vaccines. And vaccines are part of the reason I said "most categories". Note also that vaccines are pretty cheap. They're far removed from expensive surgery and drugs.
I believe you're describing classical liberalism, freedom with governmental safety nets. Libertarianism would have no safety nets and very minimum police and military. If you can't afford food or health care, that's on you.
I'm a libertarian who believes that in a modern industrialized world, you can't not have SOME sort of safety net - the days of the yeoman farmer are long gone (subsistence farming isn't possible in the city) - I'd rather it be in the form of a GMI which would enhance personal freedom of choice, over the existing patchwork of expensive, discriminatory programs and wage controls.
Give people money, give them mandatory financial literacy training before they get said money, let them figure out how best to live their lives, remove the minimum wage in the process. I'm also strongly opposed to malum prohibitum laws as well - the government does a poor job of respecting peoples civil liberties out of the misguided concept that any and all evils are preventable - the truth is, sometimes bad things happen, and not every potential bad thing is worth the collateral costs to prevent it.
I guess those seeking your brand of liberty should just get thrown in prison. There you're "free" to not worry about having to feed yourself, "free" from having to pay for healthcare, and rent. Way to completely invert the definition of freedom.
