Headline: Libertarians be like Picture of disugested women next to “Tyranny.gov” Picture of intressted women next to “Tyranny.com

  • @megabat@lemm.ee
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    11 months ago

    I’ve never understood the hate for libertarians. It seems to me some of the biggest injustices in the world never could have happened if governments weren’t allowed to have the authority to control those aspects of individuals lives. Such as the legalization of slavery, manifest destiny and illegalization of drug use, gay marriage, gender affirming care, birth control, abortion were all aspects of government controll in our lives that they had no business dictating IMHO. Edit - missed a word

    • @grrgyle@slrpnk.net
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      1111 months ago

      It’s because the good libertarians just call themselves anarchists or maybe even syndicalists.

      Your typical online libertarian is like the stereotype of the “parasitic socialist” who doesn’t want to work and just wants free stuff.

      To continue my gross simplification: libertarians want to be able to boss around poor people using their wealth, but don’t want poor people to be able to band together to stop them from doing so. And they definitely don’t want to share their wealth.

    • @AeonFelis@lemmy.world
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      911 months ago

      I used to consider myself a libertarian because I believe, as you say, that government authority is responsible for all these things and we are better off without it. I never went to the extreme of saying we should get rid of it (I can elaborate, but that’d be digressing). But I still believe in the core values of libertarianism.

      Thing is - in all the libertarian communities I’ve visited/joined online, I’ve noticed that the other libertarians treat these values not as principles but as aesthetics. Half of the activity there (the other half was criticizing everything the government does, whether it’s good or bad) was about using the NAP as a creative limitation - how do we control the populace without technically infringing on individual freedom?

      • Want to censor people, but you can’t because “freedom of speech”? Just take their stage from under their feet (other than the air though which their voice vibrates, everything was considered “public property” which they are not allowed to use for their “personal” agenda) or have their employers fire them (they don’t have to employ them - that would infringe the employer’s liberties)
      • Want to enforce regulations? Just use insurance companies. Make it so it’s impossible to operate without insurance, and then the insurance companies can impose whatever regulation they want or else they won’t insure you.
      • Want brutal law enforcement, but that’s a literal violation of the NAP? Just call it “private security companies” and everything is okay. Actually, the idea here is that the private security companies won’t want to fight each other, so they’ll come to an agreement between them and force that agreement on their customers. And if that sounds like how organized crime families work, then
      • Slavery is a big no no, so how do we get slaves? Debt slavery to the rescue!

      And these are the relatively reasonable things. At some point I had to conclude that either none of them was a true Scotsman libertarian - or that maybe I should just abandon libertarianism itself (though not necessary all its teachings)

    • @Eldritch@lemmy.world
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      911 months ago

      Modern, specifically American libertarians are imposters. Rejecting basic concepts of actual libertarianism like public ownership of natural resources. And are ideologically at least (economic) liberals. Not libertarians. Who chant weird self defeating tautologies that have nothing to do with libertarianism like the Non Aggression Principle.

      Basically they’re Libertarians in the same fashion Marxist Leninist are communist. Not.

    • @Umbrias@beehaw.org
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      311 months ago

      legalization of slavery

      I’m sorry but do you think private commerce had zero interest in the trade of flesh?

      A government is not some magic special construct. Am authoritarian governance system is the same whether it’s enacted by something with a national moniker or a corporate one.

      • @megabat@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        What no I’m not saying that, of course they did. I’m saying slavery was allowed under the authority of the government and backed by state sanctioned violence. Corporations don’t have that same authority over our lives the way governments do. Under an actual libertarian system it’s impossible to to have slavery without violating a persons liberty.

        • @Umbrias@beehaw.org
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          11 months ago

          Under the extremes of libertarianism the logic for why slavery would not happen isn’t that “it wouldn’t be allowed”, remember, they view a government system as bad, there’s not strictly a government to enforce a lack of slavery.

          The extreme libertarian position is that the market will self regulate moral bads, so slavery would only be disallowed inasmuch as it was uneconomical to forcefully enslave people. This, under their reasoning, might be true because you’re under contract with a security company who keeps you from getting enslaved, among other services, and will actively go to corporate war to protect the sanctity of their contracts for fear of losing business in the future.

          This is obviously a fantasy.

          Libertarians generally have no qualms with slavery, not in a strict sense. Some libertarians certainly dislike it, but don’t have a strict philosophical backing for why it wouldn’t be allowed under true zero government systems.

          • @megabat@lemm.ee
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            111 months ago

            I can see why that kind of libertarianism is unpopular. Thanks for the explanation. I’m coming from the “every person has freedom to do all that they will, provided they infringe not the equal freedom of any other person” school of thought where slavery is absolutely not allowed and there’s government to protect people’s liberty and freedom.

            • @Umbrias@beehaw.org
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              211 months ago

              That’s not ancap libertarianism nor effectively even mundane libertarianism, ultimately. In a practical sense that libertarianism is only opposed to strictly chattel slavery (at best! Get many libertarians behind closed doors they may not even go that far!), not things like debt slavery, wage slavery, company scrip, etc.

              Because they ultimately don’t generally care about market freedom, they want the unrestricted power to be feudal lords of their polities.