Rebellion in Libertarianland

Neither is "closer" without tacking on a bunch of dishonest bullshit qualifiers.

Don't you idiots get it? Libertarians have to speak english and be white. That and ammosexualizing everything is the core of what being a libertarian is.

Why do you view Mexico as a "failed narco state"? There's probably around 130 million Mexicans that would disagree with you, it's anything but. Having been to Mexico 25+ times myself, I'd also say you are wrong

But here you are proving my point, Mexico LITERALLY holds and employs more libertarian values and concepts than just about any other country anywhere, and you're like "that damn 3rd world drug country"

This is why it's impossible to take you libertarians seriously

History and human nature has shown us otherwise and that's why sensible people don't embrace libertarianism - no one wants to take massive steps backwards in quality of life, at least not intentionally. That's why libertarianism to me is like socialism, you're totally fucked under either one

Time to find a new hobby, old chap

More that a failed narco state is the result of a minimal government.

ignoring or intentionally being incapable of handling lawlessness and violence is pretty much the same as surrendering to it, innit?

Somalia, perhaps?

@Uncle Albert I'm personally fine with you not wanting to use Mexico as an example. What country would you prefer we use as reference for how hard libertarian ideas like no public education can still result in a successful society?

Hmmm

(also, five bucks says Al will tag this as dumb and respond "TL;DR")

Why are there no libertarian countries? If libertarians are correct in claiming that they understand how best to organize a modern society, how is it that not a single country in the world in the early twenty-first century is organized along libertarian lines?

It’s not as though there were a shortage of countries to experiment with libertarianism. There are 193 sovereign state members of the United Nations—195, if you count the Vatican and Palestine, which have been granted observer status by the world organization. If libertarianism was a good idea, wouldn’t at least one country have tried it? Wouldn’t there be at least one country, out of nearly two hundred, with minimal government, free trade, open borders, decriminalized drugs, no welfare state and no public education system?

When you ask libertarians if they can point to a libertarian country, you are likely to get a baffled look, followed, in a few moments, by something like this reply: While there is no purely libertarian country, there are countries which have pursued policies of which libertarians would approve: Chile, with its experiment in privatized Social Security, for example, and Sweden, a big-government nation which, however, gives a role to vouchers in schooling.

But this isn’t an adequate response. Libertarian theorists have the luxury of mixing and matching policies to create an imaginary utopia. A real country must function simultaneously in different realms—defense and the economy, law enforcement and some kind of system of support for the poor. Being able to point to one truly libertarian country would provide at least some evidence that libertarianism can work in the real world.

Some political philosophies pass this test. For much of the global center-left, the ideal for several generations has been Nordic social democracy—what the late liberal economist Robert Heilbroner described as “a slightly idealized Sweden.” Other political philosophies pass the test, even if their exemplars flunk other tests. Until a few decades ago, supporters of communism in the West could point to the Soviet Union and other Marxist-Leninist dictatorships as examples of “really-existing socialism.” They argued that, while communist regimes fell short in the areas of democracy and civil rights, they proved that socialism can succeed in a large-scale modern industrial society.

While the liberal welfare-state left, with its Scandinavian role models, remains a vital force in world politics, the pro-communist left has been discredited by the failure of the Marxist-Leninist countries it held up as imperfect but genuine models. Libertarians have often proclaimed that the economic failure of Marxism-Leninism discredits not only all forms of socialism but also moderate social-democratic liberalism.

But think about this for a moment. If socialism is discredited by the failure of communist regimes in the real world, why isn’t libertarianism discredited by the absence of any libertarian regimes in the real world? Communism was tried and failed. Libertarianism has never even been tried on the scale of a modern nation-state, even a small one, anywhere in the world.

Lacking any really-existing libertarian countries to which they can point, the free-market right is reduced to ranking countries according to “economic freedom.” Somewhat different lists are provided by the Fraser Institute in Canada and the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C.

According to their similar global maps of economic freedom, the economically-free countries of the world are by and large the mature, well-established industrial democracies: the U.S. and Canada, the nations of western Europe and Japan. But none of these countries, including the U.S., is anywhere near a libertarian paradise. Indeed, the government share of GDP in these and similar OECD countries is around forty percent—nearly half the economy.

Even worse, the economic-freedom country rankings are biased toward city-states and small countries. For example, in the latest ranking of economic liberty by the Heritage Foundation, the top five nations are Hong Kong (a city, not a country), Singapore (a city-state), Australia, New Zealand and Switzerland (small-population countries).

With the exception of Switzerland, four out of the top five were small British overseas colonies which played interstitial roles in the larger British empire. Even though they are formally sovereign today, these places remain fragments of larger defense systems and larger markets. They are able to engage in free riding on the provision of public goods, like security and huge consumer populations, by other, bigger states.

Australia and New Zealand depended for protection first on the British empire and now on the United States. Its fabled militias to the contrary, Switzerland might not have maintained its independence for long if Nazi Germany had won World War II.

These countries play specialized roles in much larger regional and global markets, rather as cities or regions do in a large nation-state like the U.S. Hong Kong and Singapore remain essentially entrepots for international trade. Switzerland is an international banking and tax haven. What works for them would not work for a giant nation-state like the U.S. (number 10 on the Heritage list of economic freedom) or even medium-sized countries like Germany (number 19) or Japan (number 24).

And then there is Mauritius.

According to the Heritage Foundation, the U.S. has less economic freedom than Mauritius, another small island country, this one off the southeast coast of Africa. At number 8, Mauritius is two rungs above the U.S., at number 10 in the global index of economic liberty.

The Heritage Foundation is free to define economic freedom however it likes, by its own formula weighting government size, freedom of trade, absence of regulation and so on. What about factors other than economic freedom that shape the quality of life of citizens?

How about education? According to the CIA World Fact book, the U.S. spends more than Mauritius—5.4 percent of GDP in 2009 compared to only 3.7 percent in Mauritius in 2010. For the price of that extra expenditure, which is chiefly public, the U.S. has a literacy rate of 99 percent, compared to only 88.5 percent in economically-freer Mauritius.

Infant mortality? In economically-more-free Mauritius there are about 11 deaths per 1,000 live births—compared to 5.9 in the economically-less-free U.S. Maternal mortality in Mauritius is at 60 deaths per 100,000 live births, compared to 21 in the U.S. Economic liberty comes at a price in human survival, it would seem. Oh, well—at least Mauritius is economically free!

Even to admit such trade-offs—like higher infant mortality, in return for less government—would undermine the claim of libertarians that Americans and other citizens of advanced countries could enjoy the same quality of life, but at less cost, if most government agencies and programs were replaced by markets and for-profit firms. Libertarians seem to have persuaded themselves that there is no significant trade-off between less government and more national insecurity, more crime, more illiteracy and more infant and maternal mortality, among other things.

It’s a seductive vision—enjoying the same quality of life that today’s heavily-governed rich nations enjoy, with lower taxes and less regulation. The vision is so seductive, in fact, that we are forced to return to the question with which we began: if libertarianism is not only appealing but plausible, why hasn’t any country anywhere in the world ever tried it?

Surrendering territory to drug cartels, for one thing.

https://ktla.com/news/nexstar-media...ent-has-surrendered-in-fight-against-cartels/

No, that's the half-truth strawman again. Wanting drugs legalized is not tacit endorsement of drug cartels running your country. Wanting the least possible meddling in your affairs is not support total chaos and lawlessness. If you equate libertarianism with anarchism or the total absence of consequence for harming others, you do not know what the fuck you are talking about. Or worse, you're being intentionally dishonest to condemn a point of view you dislike for personal reasons. Maybe you enjoy imposing your will on other people, and resent any opposition to that state of affairs.

It offers no guarantees, and I never said otherwise. True freedom must include the freedom to die of failure. If you want guarantees, you want a playpen.

You can't know that. You can only speculate, and paint yourself into an all-or-nothing corner where I must either endorse or reject government meddling as a singular concept with no regard for situational nuance.

"Socialists" get to play it fast and loose with their terms. Play a bit of lunch buffet where they take a bit of capitalism here, a bit of central authoritarianism there,maybe some free trade with less "progressive" nations to make up for any shortfalls. All good if achieves the desired result, right? You don't get to hold me to a stricter standard than that when you cannot identify a "purely" socialist (or any other "ist") nation.

So what is the goal? How do you define success? The greatest amount of comfort and prosperity for the largest portion of your population no matter what the cost? Not my priority, and if it dismisses the rights of the individual along this march to prosperity, it is contrary to my priority. Which is, the greatest amount of individual freedom possible without allowing you to interfere with your neighbors' ability to do the same. Whether you and your neighbors work towards a mutually-beneficial goal is a matter of free will. There is no virtue in it if you didn't choose it. If your benevolence was extracted at the point of a gun.

...and then UA said this is what socialists do.
Amazing.

exactly... and we've seen what happens when we even get close to libertopia.
economies collapse (see 1870s bank panics) and society devolves into violence/might makes right.

of course, we've seen some success in parallel philosophies like blends of socialism and libertarian aspirations to individual freedom... the liberty to express oneself/gender identity in relative safety, for instance. or the free association of workers to set the value of their efforts through unions....

Because people are mostly shit, and make bad decisions that harm themselves and others.

Where you lose me is the "solution" of empowering people to run my life. My preference would always be confining the damage an individual can cause to that individual.

Provided your "safety" does not include "protection from mean words in all settings public or private," we agree.

No problem there, either, provided nobody is unconditionally entitled to a job and your employer is not barred from firing you for refusing to work. Also, you may not block access to private property.

Because they do and you know it, which is why you make no effort to refute.

Back to your fart jokes, clown.

Which is why they're willing to pay extra taxes for social services.


*Broompt!*

see, it's when you add in the straw men that you lose any chance of not being seen as an idiot.

Nowhere is it implied anyone is empowered to run your life.. but you have to drop that little bit of poison into the well anyways because... I dunno? why do you feel that knee jerk need anyways? you do it often.

same with the safety... obviously"protection from mean words" is a far cry from verbal harassment, but I was referring more to physical safety anyways, along with legal enfranchisements.

again with the straw argument set ups over labour rights, huh?

why shouldn't strikers block the property if the owners are acting in bad faith? I know you default to might is right and all, but the only conclusion here is that you'd support scabs...

Basically, it comes down to "As long as I've got mine, fuck everybody else".

lmao

Friendly reminder that he also thinks Portland and Seattle no longer exist because of BLM protests. Not exactly the smartest guy.

Well, for UA and most libertarians, it's "fuck everybody else, especially those who aren't white, cis -men."

Happy for you to define success and point to the country that is closest to how you think things should be run.

I’m assuming Turd Limpdick is trotting out his usual Mexico is a libertarian paradise straw man again. Apparently he hasn’t seen The Anarchists on HBO Max where in fact a group of people did establish a community in Mexico that for better or worse did their own thing and acknowledged the risk of moving to a narco state. They accepted the risk, rolled the dice and dealt with the consequences or lack thereof. No libertarian state has been actually tried as a country, but we certainly have plenty of examples of whole countries that have tried communism and/ or socialism and they failed miserably. The question that hasn’t been asked is whether libertarians think that a libertarian society would be perfect.

you're missing the point that not only is economic freedom not the only measure of how "libertarian" a society is, it's not even an important measure.

if anything history has shown that an unregulated economy and a toothless government is contrary to the freedom of most.

meanwhile, socialized programs around the developed world continue to maintain themselves and a higher standard of living for their citizens

There's no need to; if it's such a shithole that keyboard libertarians won't set foot there, that tells us everything.

Yep. Nothing but a smoldering crater here.

Oh wait, that's just Teargas Teddy's vapours.

Tell me, when was the last time you visited Venezuela, Cuba or North Korea?

The same North Korea whose name apparently proves democracy doesn't work?

I went to Canada instead.
*Mic drop*

FF has NEVER pulled off a "gotcha!".
He's like Wile E. Coyote. Why does he keep trying?

my neighbour is going to Cuba this week. It's his fifth trip there.

granted, they've taken a step back in gay rights so that it's almost as bad there as say, 2008 here...

Now if you're going to use NK as an example of "socialism" then you'd have to accept Somalia as a fine example of deregulation, or perhaps Yugoslavia since the 90s as a bastion of free association. Certainly Saudi is a model of bootstraps in a free market?

or republics...

Just once I'd like someone to address what's actually being said by me and not the absolute bullshit pulled out of your collective asses. I know you can't because that would mean admitting you might be wrong and we all know that most of you on WF can never admit you're wrong about anything.