Libertarians; Useful Idiots?

[Phantasmal]

Yeah, but that doesn't make a very good bumper sticker. It's better to just say Liberals are bad, Conservatives too, but Libertarians are the shizmet! It makes everything easier...

Do you know where I can get one?

 

[Billy the Great Khan]

I think Dung said it best about Libertarians when he stated, and I'm paraphrasing, "they have a few good ideas and a whole lot of bad ones."

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see the failings of Libertarianism as both a political ideology and a political movement.

To address criticism as a political movement is just to easy. As a political movement they are inept, ineffective, not unified and, as a result, inconsequential. Libertarians, until recently, have shown an amazing inability and ineptitude to build political coalitions that are the life blood of any political movement.

Right here Mott exposes his idiocy. Not for the first time in this thread, or on the subject however. How are the both irrelevant and yet somehow very relevant recently? That's called a contradiction and there are plenty more of them. Such as...

There are two primary reasons for this. The first is ideological infexibility, that is, the inability to compromise on some aspects of ideology, in order to build common ground with other polities.

Didn't you just say Libertarians aren't united? How can they not compromise on their ideology and yet not be unified in it at the same time?
The truth of the matter is that Libertarians are unified on general principle, and support each other as such. Specific applications on specific matters, as with ALL political parties, are much debated. Democrats do not all universally agree on any particular issue, but Mott won't call them disorganized or politically irrelevant. It's because Libertarianism is an active threat to his political identity. But let's move on.

The second is their abysmal leadership. Their insistence on decentralization as a political movement is not only impractical but is also self defeating as it prevents the development of leaders around which a constituency can rally behind a consistent central theme or message. That also gives a real big clue as to what kind of governance one could expect from Libertarians.

So the basic premise of delegation of authority to the lowest required unit/group/entity is self defeating? Then the opposite, which Mott is currently advocating, would ultimately be fascism.

None of which has anything to do per se with Libertarianism as a political philosophy

A rare nugget of truth.

As a political philosophy Libertarianism has a host of problems.

Probably the biggest is that Libertarianism reject utilitarianism as a central ethic for governance. They believe their philosophy is superior, with out any substatiation to that affect. Now considering all governments of the world, that are not despotic, use utilitarianism (both act and rule utilitarianism) as their central ethic of governance why should any politie or constituency trust a political ideology that has a completely different central ethic of governance that has never been demonstrated or substantiated to actually work? So the central ethics of Libertarian governance is deeply suspect and it is up to Libertarians to prove their case for their ideology and not the other way around.

You are assuming of course that Libertarians are opposed to a utilitarian government, when the exact opposite is true. Simply arguing that government should be limited to areas in which it actually has a USE (the basis for utilitarianism) and that said use should be when it is the BEST use of resources available (as is often not the case) does not in any way signify that Libertarians are opposed to useful government. WE simply advocate the uses be limited, because the greatest atrocities have always been designed by governments with the intent, and power, to 'help' their citizens.

Then there are moral issues with Libertarianism. Their justification for the primacy of property is incoherent. For example if the liberty of a human to own another human is trumped by equal human rights then shouldn't the rights of others to own large amounts of property, at the expense of others, also be trumped by equal human rights? I mean this right here discredits Libertarianism as a philosophy. It sanctifies relativism, that is, it creates an arbitrary authority for the individuals right to do wrong.

Then there is the fact that Libertarians advocates Laissez-Faire Capitalism. This alone disqualifies libertarianism as a political philosophy for me. Lassiez-Faire Capitalism was tried in this nation and it failed! Only an idiot would argue that market failures do not reqauire government intervention in the economy. Non-interventionleads to monopoly capitalism which in turn leads to lack of competition, stiffled inovation not to mention the cold hard fact that unregulated markets are economically unstable (as we've just recently experience with the recent housing bubble fiasco). Libertarians argue that markets always produce the best and most efficient outcomes despite the overwhelming evidence that peoples actions are not always rational. So Libertarianism advocacy of Laissez-Faire Capitalism alone is reason to reject their ideology.

Where has true laissez-faire capitialism been tried? You argue that it has been and proven false, and coincidentally argue that Libertarian tenents cannot be argued since they have not been implemented. Again you contradict yourself.
But more to the point, again the Libertarian perspective is one of delegation of authority. In short it can espoused as "as little regulation as needed to produce the best results". Laissez-faire it is not.

But it doesn't stop there. Another major failing is that Libertarians have no method to deal with collecitve issues or problems because of their rejection of collective regulation and control. This means they would be completely unable to deal with issues like environmental degradation, resource depletion, disaster response, work place safety, food and drug safety, transportation safety, infrastructure development and maintenance, etc, etc.

*sigh* I really do get tired of repeating myself. See the above response.

What may be most damning about Libertarianism as a political philosophy is that their demand to decentralize government shifts far to much power to local authorities where parochial interest will prevail over the whole. We have a large history of what asinine things parochial interest will do to the detriment of our society. Slavery and Jim Crow come to mind. So does the inability to economically develop depressed areas cause it may counter the parochial interest of a minority in a particular region. That's just plain lunacy.

Your first error is assuming that power is akin to physical matter, in that it cannot be destroyed or limited. Very easily it can. But you seem to forget that just as easily, and far more inescapably, the FEDERAL government can (and has) committed great injustices. Both slavery and Jim Crow laws continued not because the courts said the federal government did not have the power to change those situation but rather because the federal government DID have the power to intervene and decidedly did so on the side of oppression.

 

[Cancel 2016.2]

Mutt does the exact same thing every moron who wants to bash Libertarian philosophy does... he pretends that a Libertarians position of limited federal government (and state for that matter) = NO federal or state government. In other words, Mutt wants to perpetuate the myth that Libertarianism = anarchy