What Makes People Become Libertarians?

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Most libertarians are opposed to governmental intervention, thus they oppose making their own contribution when something is bad.


Just so long as you aren't attacking my character.


And here I thought it was a political ideology.


Man, I really feel the warmth.


Would the contents of any of these books, or of the ideas of any of these people, matter?? Ideologies that solely look backwards are dead anyway. Frankly, the Wealth of Nations isn't a fun read, and the only value I can see it having is as an early reference to the Invisible Hand, but more explicitly libertarian references exist for use.

That being said..... saying "some libertarians misrepresent certain books" doesn't prove anything about the ideology.


Well, so long as I am stupid and know-nothing, I suppose I have nothing more I really need to say, do I? That being said, I have difficulty imagining anything more pompous than declaring everybody who holds to an ideology to be a complete idiot if I disagree with that ideology.

In any case, do you actually have a substantive remark? I only ask because while your vehemence is clear, this is entirely a rant lacking in all depth and meaning. Literally everything stated was just an insult, without a real criticism of the ideology. Now, one could argue that the ideology is entirely a false screen, however, even too many academics have libertarian views to justify being so dismissive. I'd almost have to suspect that libertarian tendencies are considered more intellectually justifiable than conservative ones.

Just reflecting my experiences here in the real world with the illiterate dolts out there who call themselves "libertarians," and quite frankly the responses I have gotten here haven't really done much to improve my outlook.

I think your problem is actually just talking to dogmatic morons. I mean.... seriously, Republicans often sell the same kind of bs in terms of how democrats are "socialist" even though this is just nonsense given that both parties accept a good amount of market action.

That being said, you really can't blame EVERYBODY because a few people are outspoken morons. After all, while it is true that even on this forum, we have idiotic libertarians, it isn't as if every libertarian here is a buffoon.

Just the facts and logic topic

The artist Chester Brown and his Porn for It comic book advocating paid sex comes to mind as the essence of libertarianism.

May his tribe not increase, even if he got any of those (female) protitutes pregnant with little Chesters.

Ok, that's nice. Don't really care. My goal in life has never been to "improve your outlook". Besides, it is not the right thread to do that anyway, you'd really be better off with a thread more directly oriented towards the criticism of political ideology in order to do something like that. My experience is that there are nutjobs and there are sane people, and nutjobs often are louder than sane people.

I can see where you're coming from here.

Quite frankly, my views on economics are primarily thus:

1) I don't have a perfect understanding of the true complexities of economics;

2) The system that we have can be cranky and cumbersome, but it seems to work pretty well largely;

3) I am reflexively distrustful of someone who presents a sketchy and simple-minded ideology and attempts to represent it as a complete and tested economic system;

4) I am also automatically against any idea that is based on the aesthetic attractiveness of the idea itself rather than what it can do for us here in the real world. I am a nuts and bolts kind of guy.

Last edited by WilliamWDelaney on 02 May 2011, 12:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Oh, Jesus Christ, tell me about it.

+1 simple solutions come from simple minds.

QFT

this should be thought in first grade, before anything else.
would help to put humans in perspective.

I hereby ditto just about anything you might say on this topic and retract anything I might have said or might say to contradict it. This is genius, people.

i know this is cliche but i feel there is some truth to the statement

"everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler" albert einstein

The theory of relativity is exceedingly simple. That would make Einstein a simple mind, I guess?

general or special?
there is some irony laden in my statement (it is overly simple)
but we should be on the watch for easy answers to complex problems.
often times market-libertarians are like medieval doctors proscribing leeches for everything.

I am a libertarian in values, in that I prefer the decentrelazation of power and rejection of force.
but agnostic in theory, I don't thrust the market to fix everything.
so maybe simple is the wrong wording.
"easy answers come from hucksters" might be better.

So libertarian lack of emotions. Would it not make them close of sociopaths!? And then, using a twisted view of "liberty" to rationalise they lack of compassion.

Though logic is the means to an emotional end, that does not mean that emotion should have any place in the decision making process. Who among us has never made a rash decision in an overly emotional state? Acting on blind emotion can often lead you to take an action that actually sets you back further from your original emotional goal.

In my experience, a randomly selected liberal or social conservative is more likely to have political opinions based on simple emotional impulses than a randomly selected libertarian (not that this invalidates liberalism or social conservatism).

Compassion rots and pity kills. Mean and lean is the right way to be. Better to be Just than Merciful.

ruveyn