{"article":{"id":263355,"heading":"Three Things That Make Libertarian Heads Explode","author":"Lynn Stuart Parramore","created":"2014-03-16 21:23:15","modified":"2014-03-26 04:44:10","last_modified":"Wed, 26 Mar 2014 11:44:10","article":"

to read the article by Lynn Stuart Parramore published on www.alternet.orgMarch 10, 2014. click on

http:\/\/www.alternet.org\/print\/economy\/3-things-make-libertarian-heads-ex<\/a>...

Libertarians are proponents of a philosophy that embraces free-market ideology, limited government, and a certain form of individual liberty. They would like to take the government and drown it in the proverbial bathtub. Unfortunately, libertarians tend to ride on theoretical unicorns that don’t take them too far in the real world.

Next time you find yourself in the company of one of these quizzical beings, try bringing up one of the following topics and watch them start galloping off in 10 directions at once.

1. The inequality problem: Why do some people end up with most of the toys? The fact that in a capitalist system, money seems to flow into the hands of the few is a source of big headaches for many libertarians, though not all—some seem to regard any market outcome as the hand of God herself.

Irrefutably, America’s income distribution has become ridiculous, ranked #4 in the world [3] out of 141 countries for inequality, behind Russia, Ukraine and Lebanon, and this rattles many libertarians.

Libertarians usually start by insisting that how much money you have boils down to the choices you make as an individual. Bad, stupid choices = poverty. Good, smart choices = wealth (those clever Russian oligarchs!)<\/p>\n","contact":"marc1seed@yahoo.com","link":"http:\/\/www.freembtranslations.net","address":"","phone":"","parent_id":0,"mime_type":"text\/plain","summary":"The inequality problem, the public goods problem and the regulation problem make libertarian heads explode.","numcomment":7,"fileurl":"\/uploads\/","filesize":null,"article_url":"\/news\/2014\/03\/263355.php"},"attachments":[],"comments":[{"id":263357,"heading":"Wow, you make it so easy.","article":"Problems??? \r\n\r\nIs it really government's job to solve anyone's problems? No, it is not. How do I know this??? easy!!! Because I know that it is not MY job to solve anyone's problems, other than my own problems. \r\n\r\nSocialists think, or rather they feel, that it is the job of government to solve problems. Libertarians think, or rather know because it is written in our country's constitution, that the job of government is to protect the people's lives rights and properties. \r\n\r\nProblems? Oh, like alcoholism. And you get alcohol outlawed. This social enginearing not only failed, but created new problems. Hmmm, new problems, means more government agents paid to stick a gun in people's faces. Bootleggers to stop, and so on.\r\n\r\nProblems? And who gets to decide what is a problem? Oh, that is another problem. Gotta get government involved to figure that one out, don't we? Hmmm, maybe the majority should decide what constitutes a problem. Sure, that would mean that the minority gets left out, but some people don't care about the lives rights and property of the minority. Such people are called socialists.\r\n\r\nLooks like Lynn needs to invent a bogus libertarian to have one who would sink to her invented debate.\r\n\r\nSorry but that fictional libertarian is not me.\r\n\r\nI am sure I left much out but I need to get to sleep. I have to get up early so that I canpay my own bills. That is my problem which I do not run away from or try to use government agents to force other Americans to carry, unlike the socialists tr6y to make a carrear of. \r\n\r\nPay your own bills. Don't use government agents to force me to pay YOUR bills.\r\n\r\nOh yes, inequality "problems". Is it your opinion that inequality is a "problem"? Ok then, why do you keep electing Democrats to run the Senate and the exectutive branch when you see them year after year giving TRILLIONS apon TRILLIONS of dollars to the rich bankers???\r\n\r\nBecause we libertarians support you 100% on that issue. Who ever came up with the idea of the problem being rich bankers don't control enough of the money, sure as helll wasn't a libertarian. Lets see...as I recall, it was Republican controlled house and a Democrat controlled Senate and white house. DUH!!! ","author":"PrionPartyy","parent_id":263355,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2014-03-17 05:12:07","modified":"2014-03-17 05:12:07","fileurl":""},{"id":263363,"heading":"Lemme guess","article":"Lemme guess, PP - your feelings are hurt.\r\n\r\nWhat about the point she made, which is that we have growing income inequality, especially with the super-rich.\r\n\r\nFuck the details about taxes. Obviously, the super-rich have figured out a way around that. What about the effects of a few hundred people basically forming into a kind of capital-cartel?\r\n\r\nYou want to blame the bailouts, but this has been going on for over 20 years.\r\n\r\n","author":"nobody","parent_id":263355,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2014-03-17 11:26:09","modified":"2014-03-17 11:26:09","fileurl":""},{"id":263368,"heading":"thanks for pitching me a fat one","article":"Even Obama has admitted that since he took office as president, that 95% of financial growth went to the top 1%.\r\n\r\nMakes sense seeing as how the government dishes out $85 billion a month only to the rich.\r\n\r\nSo, how exactly is income inequality a problem that needs to be fixed? Is it that some have more than others, OR is it that the people you put into public office keep giving the rich people trillions and trillions of dollars? \r\n\r\nAs a libertarian, I have no problem seeing that what the real problem is that non libertarian politicians (aka, the Democrats and Republicans being voted into office by non libertarian voters) are giving rich people more money than most of us can even imagine, much less believe is actually happening (your comments seems to hint at that).\r\n\r\nThat is the REAL problem. And that fits into what I wrote about above. Who gets to decide what constitutes a problem? Clearly, someone has convinced the people you elected into public office that the problem is that rich people don't have enough cash. So, the people you elected into public office keep heaping more and more cash at the rich people. I think that the people you elected into public office are wrong on that count. \r\n\r\nThat some people have more wealth than others is not a problem to me. I don't really see how much money other people have is any of my business. Unless people who are much richer than I am are convincing political sell outs to give them even more at the expense of others, like the political sell outs you voted into public office are doing, well then, I couldn't care less about how much more they have.\r\n\r\nHurt my feelings. I treasure the opportunities that you and others afford me to showcase how right I am and how vapid other people like to present themselves.\r\n\r\nYep, political sell outs that people like you have voted into public office have been selling out poorer Americans for much more than 20 years. But never to such a massive extent until Obama took office.","author":"PrionPartyy","parent_id":263355,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2014-03-18 01:31:41","modified":"2014-03-18 01:31:41","fileurl":""},{"id":263400,"heading":"during recessions, the rich get richer","article":"You right wing so-called libertarians are delusional.\r\n\r\nIncome inequality is not due to government intervention - though the current government's policies have been generous to the rich - it's due to labor market conditions.\r\n\r\nWhen unemployment was rising, wages declined. Lowered wages and social pressure to work harder caused productivity to rise, and profits rose as well. The stock market has generally done well, because those with money invested in these now-profitable companies. That's why the rich got richer.\r\n\r\nGovernment intervention has been, I think, primarily in three forms. First was the bailouts of the banks, which was started under Bush and carried over to the Obama administration via Ben Bernanke's general policies. \r\n\r\nSecond was the stimulus spending, and money spent to extend unemployment and other labor supports, which went to the workers and unemployed. \r\n\r\nThird was the general protection of private property and investors, by doing things like not pushing for "cram downs" to reduce loan principal, not liberalizing the bankruptcy laws (which were tightened up in 2005), and allowing deals like Detroit's 20% payout to bondholders. \r\n\r\nGenerally, property rights have enjoyed a lot of support from the government. No banks were seized, and no houses and apartments were expropriated on behalf of the people. GM was almost bought, and then given to the shareholders. \r\n\r\nThe rich and super-rich are have been using their increased wealth to buy up property. They buy shares of real estate investment companies, which then make all-cash purchases of rental properties. As more people have started renting, rents have risen, and even rent control laws allow for rent increases that outpace the inflation rate.\r\n\r\nAs for the issue of whether income inequality matters - I'd say it only matters to the preservation of the current "nice" form of capitalism in America. Having a middle class allows for social mobility, and hope and aspiration discourage social unrest. An "upper middle class" particularly supports capitalism, acting as footsoldiers for the rich - as seen in Venezuela, or in the Libertarian Party in the US.\r\n\r\nHowever, if you remove the economic supports and impoverish people, they will become the working class, and their children will not have a material basis to support the preservation of the ideologies which preserve capitalism. Look at the voting patterns of the Cuban American and Vietnamese American communities. For years, they were the strongholds of Republican voters - 70% or more voted Republican because they had an ideological bond with capitalism - but among their younger generations, who have experienced deprivation, they are more likely to vote Democrat, or to go all the way over to "Socialist."\r\n\r\nYou can see the rupture already. There are a lot of young people who spout off a confused mix of ideas, and grasp onto ideas like "end the Fed" and right wing conspiracy theories. They see capitalism failing, and attack the state, but aren't willing to attack capitalism.","author":"nobody","parent_id":263355,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2014-03-21 18:39:53","modified":"2014-03-21 18:39:53","fileurl":""},{"id":263415,"heading":"one word...Tucker","article":"What was the tucker? \r\n\r\nYou have no idea, do you\/\r\n\r\nIt was the most advanced automobile for its time. 1948. Almost 2 decades before I was even born. And it was shut down by the big three and government politicians. \r\n\r\nAnd you want to preach about the evils of capitalism when 80% of the US population has never even seen capitalism.\r\n\r\nWow. \r\n\r\nIf you would like to rant against corperatism, then you would have people who do not see you as a vapid megaphony, who runs away runs away from reality by creating a phony monster to attack. Oh, another windmill to charge is what you offer to us. And we reject your non sence for what it is\r\n\r\nHow stupid do you think\/feel the people who come to the LA imc are??? \r\n\r\nSure, the LA imc is no where near what it used to be. I am talking 10 years ago, mind you. But still, how much more libtarded do you expect the m to become???\r\n\r\nI am damned near 50 and I have never seen capitalism. It simply doea not exist and I challenge you to show us anywhere since world war 2 that it has existed in the USA.\r\n\r\nTrust me, I will not be holding my breath.","author":"PrionPartyy","parent_id":263355,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2014-03-23 06:48:38","modified":"2014-03-23 06:48:38","fileurl":""},{"id":263418,"heading":"I LOL in your direction","article":""Never seen capitalism" LOL.\r\n\r\nYou're as bad as the communists who say that the USSR wasn't true communism.\r\n\r\nCapitalism most certainly does exist. All the government distortions of the market are part of capitalism. Capital seeks to gain influence in the state, changing the laws so that those who have money can continue to have money.\r\n\r\nIt has always been trying to do that.\r\n\r\nDo you think the government would have moved against Tucker if it hadn't been for the big three automakers? Of course not. The big three colluded and got the government to use state power to destroy the competition.\r\n\r\nThat is how capitalism operates.\r\n\r\nIf you go back before WW2, the Depression wasn't a period of capitalism. It was the era that almost pushed the US into socialism. Back before that was the era of the trust busters, and while that was definitely a high-point for smaller firms competing against the big ones, that entire situation was created by government intervention, specifically because there was public pressure from the small businesses as well as considerable residual anger from the working class.\r\n\r\nBefore the trust busting, capitalism was doing to upstarts what the capitalists and government did to Tucker. The Rockefellers and JP Morgans and other barons building the trusts were destroying their competition mercilessly.\r\n\r\nPlay along by the trust's rules, or perish. That was how it was done. That was the modern industrial capitalism, and it's persisted in some form or other since then. I can still buy Standard Oil's gasoline, Nabisco's crackers, and whatever IBM sells now. I just bought something from General Electric. I wish I had money so I could consider investing with Charles Schwab.\r\n\r\nAll these famous names trace themselves back to the high point of rapacious capitalism, the Gilded Age of the 1890s.\r\n\r\nNow, today, in our new Silicon Age, we are seeing more collusion by the capitalists. Pando news put out another story about collusion between tech companies to not recruit each others' talent, which invariably causes salaries to decline.\r\n\r\nMake no mistake, the programmers get paid well, but considering how critical they are to the operation of the huge internet export industry, they could command even higher salaries. And the barons of Google, Apple, and other evil tech companies conspired to suppress programmers wages, and job options.\r\n\r\nThis collusion affected 1 million workers.\r\n\r\nYou're nearly fifty and still believe in teenage fantasies about the purity of capitalism. I have to chuckle.\r\n\r\nSmell the foul shit, and gag:\r\n\r\nhttp:\/\/pando.com\/2014\/03\/22\/revealed-apple-and-googles-wage-fixing-cartel-involved-dozens-more-companies-over-one-million-employees\/\r\n\r\nCapitalism.\r\n","author":"nobody","parent_id":263355,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2014-03-23 09:42:28","modified":"2014-03-23 09:42:28","fileurl":""},{"id":263465,"heading":"victory, more than just a stupid movie","article":"It is nice to see you admit that capitalism can't be blamed because it hasn't existed for much longer than even I suggested.\r\n\r\nPure capitalism? Does that mean capitalism?\r\n\r\nWhy yes, I think it does. And what we both reject as corperatism is government deciding who makes it and who bites it.\r\n\r\n80% or 100%, we are debating percentages. Well, not really, I will gladly accept your supposition that 100% of Americans have NEVER even seen capitalism, and can therefor not blame capitalism for ANY problems that un capitalism has created. \r\n\r\nOWS agrees with us both. The tea party agrees with us both. Libertarians and libtards agree with us both, because it is so much in your faces, that you can not honestly deny it.","author":"PrionPartyy","parent_id":263355,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2014-03-26 04:44:10","modified":"2014-03-26 04:44:10","fileurl":""}]}