Go read/listen A Libertarian Runs into a Bear.

It will tell you everything you want to know.

In. Short they are lazy assholes who want to mooch off everyone else.

I don’t think libertarianism works, it relies naively on how the free market is omnipotent, how freedom is everything and how having a small government is somehow good. There are no countries that are entirely libertarian, that also tells a lot about the ideology’s applicability in practice. A brilliant book about why libertarianism doesn’t work is a book “A Libertarian Walks into a Bear”. In the book, a group of libertarians decides to take over the small town of Grafton in New Hampshire en masse as part of their “Free Town Project”. Of course this group cares neither about the town’s original inhabitants nor their rights. What’s the result? They hollow out pretty much everything from the library, to the school, the fire department and the police. No regard is given to any laws on hunting or food disposal, and that lures in bears, who turn so aggressive that they invade people’s homes. In addition to bears, sex offenders and all kinds of criminals are also lured into Grafton. It’s pretty entertaining book, I recommend it.

It’s funny that in the classic Libertarian novel “The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress” the rule free society only works because there are no guns and literally everything is controlled by a single giant computer.

Objectivism creator Ayn Rand ended up on welfare after she lacked the will power to give up smoking.

Need I say more?

Sounds great on paper, in practice it’s almost entirely old white men who want to get rid of age of consent laws or people who want to be able to do insane, dangerous to others shit like feeding bears without anyone being able to stop them.

In summary, the ideology of selfish jackasses at best and pedophiles at worst.

I can only speak for America, but here they’re all a bunch of corporate-sponsored anarchy LARPers.

I think Libertarianism is incompatible with the way that humans operate as a society. Almost all flavors of libertarianism puts an individual’s right to live as they choose as long as that doesn’t violate the rights of others through force or fraud. Humans like to associate themselves into groups, and in almost any group there will be an imbalance in power, whether that’s economic power, physical power (strength), or even something as abstract as eloquence or how outgoing you are. The issue then becomes that someone somewhere has to enforce the right to not be forced into giving up rights. In the classical construction of how libertarians view government, it is very easy to become more powerful than those meant to enforce limits on power. Even in our current political system, you see this when companies will spend more on their anti-trust court cases than the entire FTC spends total in a decade. Libertarianism has no mechanism to keep the enforcer the most powerful party involved

Depends on how it’s defined.

Current libertarianism is just rebranded reactionary conservatism.

Classically though, “libertarian” simply referred to someone who advocated for maximum individual liberty and minimum state intervention. The term first gained popularity in the US in the wake of the New Deal, when the term “liberal,” which had up until then referred to that position of maximum individual liberty and minimum state intervention, was coopted by leftist authoritarians. Since the classical liberals needed a new term, they shifted to “libertarian.” And notably, at that point, libertarians were at least as likely to be left-wing as right, with the two groups merely splitting on which specific government services should be counted among the minimum.

That started to go wrong when the Libertarian party was established, and finished going wrong when the Tea Party was transformed from a series of protests against the Wall Street bailouts to a traveling carnival of hate.

And there’s also the political compass sense of “libertarian” as simply the opposite of authoritarian, by which I’m as “libertarian” as it’s possible to be. It should be noted though that in recent years, mostly through meme communities, even that conception of “libertarian” has been increasingly characterized as more of an alternate authoritarianism.

So there’s a conception back behind each use of the term “libertarian” that is at least close to mine (I’m actually an anarchist). But IMO not coincidentally, the term has been in all cases warped to refer to some form of authoritarianism, which I unequivocally oppose.

Hooray for me, and fuck you!

It’s depends on what you mean…it’s a fraught term, to say the least.

Actual definition of the word…or the Ron Paul (etc) nuts?

In Poland most libertarians are at best petty bougie failchildren thinking they would be billionaires when they grow up, those that do grow up without touching grass (or too dense to feel the grass) are usually turning into unhinged austrian cultists with monarchist and nazist inclinations. Deeply unserious people

I share most of the opinions expressed about it already expressed in this thread, so I’ll add one: whenever I’m exposed to libertarian media (podcasts, articles, etc), I’m really struck by just how surface-level the analysis is. It’s like, for anything going on in the world, they simply try to tie it back to “biG gOvErNmENt” and shoehorn everything into that. I get that once you start applying dialectical materialism to your analysis of the world around you, other analyses can seem vulgar. But tbh even your typical liberal worldview seems more thought out than libertarians.

As any example, a libertarian I know was complaining about how California is going eliminate plastic carrier bags at supermarkets. I just asked “ok, then how else are we going solve the problem of plastic bags everywhere?” They just sorta shrugged off the question and said the government has no business banning bags.

I actually was a libertarian briefly a long time ago. It was the fact that it offers no real solutions for the biggest problems we face as a species was why I eventually abandoned it.

An end result of liberalist idealism. (plus what others have said)

I see it as an unstable economic model; it will either devolve to capitalism with monopolies capturing most if not all sectors; or devolve into communism with a single state-like entity controlling everything. At which point; no matter which way it went; it will collapse under its own weight.

The way it swings will depend on the people who are there at the start.

The modern version of libertarianism that we see most of; is based off some really bad assumptions:

• (1) the market is perfect
• (2) barriers to entry are irrelevant
• (3) monopoly is not bad
• (4) humans are rational actors
• (5) if the market can’t address the issue, it is irrelevant

(1) The market is perfect:
This leads to the assumption that all regulation is bad; and that it merely works to reduce personal freedoms and the ability of the market to produce things in the most efficient way possible.

It completely ignores history and the reason regulatory bodies were created. It also ignores that the market is not a thing unto itself; but is composed of people (see 4).

(2) Barriers to entry are irrelevant:
This follows directly from (1); even the simplest business has some barrier to entry. You have to buy somethings that your business needs to run. These are real costs, and will provide a barrier. Obviously, the bigger the barrier then more entrenched players have an advantage (see 3)

(3) Monopoly is not bad:
This is a subtle acknowledgment that (1 & 2) are completely false. Basically it is a cope, that even if monopolies form; clearly this is the market producing the most efficient production framework.

This ignores history; the major monopolies that were broken up. The crazy shit that went on to protect their monopoly status.

(4) Humans are rational actors:
Most economic models assume that consumers will make rational choices; they will make the most economically rational choices. Libertarians (in my experience) love this.

This ignores so much of reality; it also assumes that the values of all are the same as their own.

There is really too much in this point to cover here. So many things that we actually do make no sense if you were a rational actor, such as brand loyalty.

(5) If the market can’t address the issue, it is irrelevant:
There are many things that the market cannot address; but in the libertarian model these things are ignored.

e.g. fire fighting; this is the classic example where a market solution didn’t work.

But equally; policing; education; major infrastructure; functional health systems. There are so many examples; where if left to a purely market solution, simply would not get done.

It’s a wolf and a flock of sheep all inside a fenced-off meadow, thinking that everyone can do whatever they want and it will all work out to everyone’s favor.

Awesome, let everyone freely enter into any contract they’ll agree to, instead of a government enforcing rules at gunpoint!
Except the contract is written by a multi-billion-dollar conglomerate, and the one “agreeing” to it is a single mom who will lose her income, apartment and access to child care if she “freely” refuses.

Big L, I see. The american Libertarian Party is a combination of 99% of the people who still want to vote but can’t fit in with the dominant two, with 127 reasons per 5 members. Lots of them are just looking for a way to be allowed to do whatever they want that is currently illegal, whether that’s as banal as recreational drugs or as oppositional to society as child slave torture-rape. Whatever their ‘thing’ is, they want to be allowed to do it, the rest of society be damned.