IAP Political Forum

Please, please, please don’t be a libertarian.


There are 2 types of Libertarians. The “classical” type believes that the mass of people should not be dependant on or subject to the effects of a wealthy elite searching for profit at any cost, or the repressive state that betrays the people it claims to represent and acts only in the interests of the powerful. They believe industry should be democratised to serve the millions not the millionaires, and government should be heavily federalised rather than centralised and controlled by direct, rather than representative, democracy ensuring the government is controlled from the bottom up and is never separate to the people. Nowadays, the above people call themselves “Anarchists” or “Libertarian Socialists.” These guys are alright. I consider myself one.

However, there is another more recent kind of Libertarian that appropriated the name of the anarchists-probably because it sounds rebellious and appeals to the youth. (just look at the amount of people on facebook claiming to be libertarian without actually knowing what it is) These believe that:

-Only private schools can be allowed.
-Only private hospitals are allowed.
-Roads should be privatised, and their owner can charge people who use them as much as he likes.
-Unemployment benefits should be abolished.
-State pensions should be abolished.
-Employers should be allowed to legally discriminate on age, sex, or race as they please.
-Minimum wage should be abolished. Employers can pay as little as they like.
-Employers can fire workers for no reason.
-Legalisation of private mercenaries. (some believe mercenaries should replace the police and military)
-No council housing for the homeless.
-Businesses should not be legally obliged to protect the environment.
-Essential goods which are too expensive for some people to afford should not have their prices lowered by government subsidies.

You might wonder why anyone would possibly think this is a good thing, or anything to do with “freedom.” This is because Libertarians have a very perverted view on freedom; freedom is associated entirely with property, and you can do anything you want with your property providing you don’t do something with anyone else’s property; in their view, if someone has to work in a sweatshop or Dickensian workhouse it’s a mutually beneficial deal between the millionaire employer and the poverty stricken worker and perfectly sound. This ideology sees things purely from the perspective of a wealthy capitalist, and equates a free society only with the freedom of the capitalist; freedom to do what you like with your property is the only freedom, and being free to use healthcare, get an education, have housing and have a job doesn’t register on their view of freedom. They say paying taxes to fund education and healthcare is theft, but what about profit? Ultimately, profit comes from paying the workers less than the value they produce for you. Even if you don’t accept Marx’s Labour Theory of Value, you can see clearly that low wages=high profits and high wages=low profits. In the mind of the Libertarian, this is ok because the worker can choose to work for the capitalist and agrees on the conditions. In reality, the worker must choose between taking the job or starving to death so in practise this theory doesn’t really work. (neither do they mention the violence and coercion that was involved in creating a property-less working class open to exploitation)

Libertarians justify this with an unshakeable religious conviction in the powers of the free market as a natural force, a bit like the Qi of Chinese mythology or the Force in Star Wars, that binds society together in harmony and only disruptions in the mystical power of the market caused by things like legally required minimum wage or paying taxes to fund pensions and healthcare can possibly make anything go wrong in society. If only the government reduced its role to simply defending the property of the wealthy and stopped giving concessions to the poor, a truly free utopia would emerge.

Ha. Ha.

Libertarianism in Action.

I have 2 points to make in this section; first, their faith in the market is silly and secondly the only form a “libertarian” society can take is that of a totalitarian military dictatorship.

Pinochet’s Libertarian Despotism in Chile was brought into power through a coup plotted by commercial and political elites in the USA and in Chile who were concerned that Chile, which had recently elected a socialist as president, would become inhospitable for business interests. This coup also brought to power the sinister “Chicago Boys,” free market economists educated by Milton Friedman himself, the grand old man of Libertarianism who was also an advisor and admirer of Pinochet. Pinochet and the gang of Chicago Libertarians started their work by banning trade unions and rounding up dissidents in the Santiago Stadium, where bags were placed over their heads and floodlights shone upon them perpetually with periodical arbitrary executions, while 28,000 other dissidents were kidnapped and tortured with a further 3000 being executed. All this was necessary to terrorise the population into accepting Chile as a laboratory for Friedman to test out his economic theories, as no sane working man or woman would ever vote for a Libertarian party. With the populace too terrified to resist, they went on to remove the minimum wage, privatised the pension system, state industries and banks, and slashed taxes on income and profits.

So what was the effect? The quadrupling of foreign debt; epidemics of typhoid fever and hepatitis because no-one could afford healthcare; the poverty rate doubled; the GDP dropped to almost a quarter of the Latin American average; unemployment went from 4.3% to 22%; real wages declined by 40%; and those without adequate housing went from 27% to 40%. The only thing that prevented the economy from complete economic collapse was that Pinochet neglected to privatise the copper mines that Allende had previously nationalised and were virtually the only source of steady income.
So how do Libertarians respond to this? There are 2 responses. The first one claims that Pinochet did not privatise enough and taxes were not slashed enough. The second response disassociates itself with Pinochet, saying a dictatorship is incompatible with Libertarianism so it’s nothing to do with them.

Clearly, the first response isn’t worth dealing with and someone who insists that is clearly too deluded to bother arguing with. The second response however is more interesting to discuss; it’s obvious Libertarian claims that a truly free market would give workers higher wages is complete idiocy, so to keep back minimum wages and wage increases (that interfere with the market magic) making trade unions illegal is completely necessary. And to ensure wildcat strikes don’t take place instead, the right to organise is therefore necessarily removed.
Furthermore, Libertarian policies are so insane no-one would want them apart from corporate elites and their military friends who profit. Therefore, they can only ever be enforced by a state made up of an alliance between military and business, with no democracy involved. Not only that, but Libertarian ideology is inherently undemocratic. They believe that capitalists should not be obliged to act in a socially responsible way; any plans to make the rich and powerful act in a way that benefits society is a whole is denounced as “collectivism” and infringing on the individual rights on those poor, oppressed millionaire entrepreneurs. But isn’t democracy an inherently “collectivist” system? The individual must compromise with what the mass of people want, which is exactly what the Libertarians hate.

Their contempt for democracy is even seen in their tactics; Nigel Meek from the think-tank “Libertarian Alliance” discusses at http://www.libertarian.co.uk/lapubs/tactn/tactn022.pdf the failure of Libertarians to perform well at elections and says;

“…the authors of Strategy and Purpose of the Libertarian Alliance surely had it right all those years ago: it will take a great deal of time, direct appeals to the ordinary electorate are wasteful, and we need to concentrate our efforts towards the key opinion-formers in areas such as the media, politics, industry, organised labour, academia, and the arts.”

Essentially, Libertarians know that they will never win substantial support from any sector of society other than the elite; their tactic is to win the support of the elites who are capable of bringing in a Libertarian society without having to win any elections.

And this is why Libertarianism is dangerous; it has a contempt for social responsibility, democracy, and freedom for anyone but the most privileged, but most dangerously it has powerful friends who could bring it into action. It is no more than an expression of the interests of wealthy capitalists who are interested only in increasing profit at any human cost and all notions of “individual freedom” is only a means of the capitalist morally justifying his position to himself.

By the logic of this article, I must be a nutter then.

Nice to know ::)

Well are you going to debate what it says?

Your OP is actually against the rules.  Is it all your writing?

Yeah, all my own writing.

Libertarian Creed, Article 1:

"Thou shall not be held accountable for what thou hath not agreed" :angel:

For some reason do you think people should be held accountable for things they don't agree too?

Then my apologies.  No violation in that.

"Mister Justice, the intentional killing of a human being is an artistic expression. I completely disagree of the ordinary view on the topic"

"Mister Justice, in my country it is very usual to beat the wife if she misbehaves. I don't agree that the law in this country stands above the Holy Book of the Great Pumpkin and his one and only Prophet"

Yes, I somehow feel that people should be held accountable for things even if they don't agree to... ::)

Matty, there are different kinds of libertarians. The things you speak of are more an anarcho-capitalist variety of libertarianism, one which doesn't appeal to me as much as libertarian socialism. I don't really consider myself a libertarian socialist (or a libertarian or an anarcho-capitalist for that matter), but I do agree with many of the principles of libertarian socialism. I like the ideas of dismantling illegitimate authority, a high degree of worker control, and to a large degree decentralizing power. I'm much closer to that than I am to the anarcho-capitalist variety but overall I think you bring up a good point.

The libertarians you speak express their disdain for regulation more in the economic sphere, and overall I think too much lack of regulation (or corruption of regulation more often) can lead to private tyranny.

I'm more inclined to see excessive government control of social issues as more unnecessary and dangerous. I would consider myself a skeptic that leans toward libertarianism when it comes to regulation of business. The arguments and ideas I see as very relevant from the economic form of libertarianism are the law of unintended consequences and capture theory. Regulation isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does more harm than good if the industry under regulation manages to control the regulation.

I'm not familiar with the Libertarian party's platform on most issues, but there are libertarian lines of thinking that address some of the issues you speak of. Personally, I think taxing pollution at a rate that both reflects the negative externality created by the polluter, and encourages companies not to pollute  at inefficient levels is the way to go. By simply passing regulations, you leave too much room for industry to control the oversight, as well as further pave the way for state tyranny.

An unaccountable elite is the mark of a despotism. The powerful should always be held accountable to the mass of people, and if that's "collectivism" then I'm a borg.

YOu both made a HUGE leap based on what I said.  Clasicall Liberalism believe in the rule of law.  Do you both undersdtand?  Nobody is unaccountable. 

Just out of curiousity, how do you envisage a classic liberal society?

Interesting question, one which I don't have time to go into right now, as I need to get out the door to work. 

Just didn't want you to think I was deserting your question.  I will return to it this evening.

Libertarian: a the philosophy of teenagers and teenager-wannabees. Libertarianism can generally be summed up as the "fuck everyone else, I got mine and don't want to pay for what I don't personally use" philosophy.

And your credibility self-destructs with this terrible generalization of libertarianism....

Uh, he had some before?  Don't think so... :-X

Wrong, scoobie doo.  My description was actually accurate. Libertarianism is an ideology of pure greed disguised as an ethic. They attempt to take something with instrumental utilty--freedom--and turn it into something that's good for it's own sake, regardless of the consequences to others ultimately because they don't want to spend money or resources on others if they don't feel like it and are not personally benefiting from it. It's all about the $$ and personal gain either materially or emotionally.

Libertarians try to make their bullshit more palatable by tauting the freedom and charity principles. To hide the fact that they are greedy fuckwits who can't stand having to give up "their property" for someone else, they disguise it appealing to the notion that they will give it to charity anyway.  It's an argument convenience when no such thing will happen, nor is it practical.  The whole point is that they don't want to pay for other people whom they despise as leeches in the first place, so they wouldn't part with their money when they would rather buy something for themselves. 

Under Libertarianism, "property" is the ultimate value...in fact more valuable than causing untold suffering indirectly to others as a result of it's worship alongside freedom for it's own sake.


They want a neo-19th-century free-for-all society because they actually believe they will benefit from it. That's the goal.  That it would cause vast suffering for those not as fortunate as they are is irrelevant.  They don't give a shit, which is why they support an ideology of selfishness. They are Randian-lite. Fuck the poor people! Fuck those welfare bums!Fuck healthcare and people who don't have it. Fuck regulation, companies will, out of the goodness of their hearts, stop doing bad shit to people.  The magic invisible hand of Adam Smith will fix everything as they worship at the alter of the Market.

The fundamental premises behind their religion are false, including the idea that the market fixes all, is always better, freedom is good for it's own sake, property is more important than suffering, the sanctity of individual rights, and the bogus assumption that private everything is good. They also pose a false view of human nature as some isolated individual who is purely responsible for his own welfare, success, thus owns the "fruits of his labour" all by himself and owes society nothing.


Libertarianism is stupid. Period. As I said...a secular religion for teenagers because it appeals to anti-authority, freedom, and self-interest as the ultimate virtues.  Of course like you, most Libertardians don't like the truth, because stripping away the bullshit philosobabble you peddle to obfuscate exposes the poverty of your greedy little secular religion of the market and the self.


As I said, accurately: it's the "ME ME ME ME ME! Fuck em, I got mine" philosophy. If you disagree, you are wrong or lying, period.

Just a note: libertarians don't even support low taxation. Friedman actually advocated a flat tax; so for the vast majority of people, taxation would increase but for millionaires, billionaires, it would decrease to (for them) insignificant amounts.

That man truly was scum.

Libertarianism, as defined from a book I read, is defined as an ideology where the individual has the freedom to live their life and make their own choices as they please, provided they don’t intrude on other’s lives.

Don’t see greed anywhere in that.

So you're just basing all of the libertarianism ideal on this one person?

I don't think Friedman was scum. Libertarianism is about responsibility, a person should be responsible for their own acts and no others. They don't recognize a need to force others to care for their fellow man. They see taxes as a way to fairly distribute the burden for the things that affect us all, not a way to make society run. They have the expectation that every person in society is rational and able to handle responsibility, which I'm not sure in borne out by the data, but I figure its bad form to say someone isn't. I don't mean psychopaths and children, those are dealt with through responsible agents (judges and parents) I mean normal people (including myself) often act so dumb it's difficult to believe they feed themselves.

Friedman was not a libertarian.  Don't muddy his name by claiming he was one. 

That's a load of crap, there's nobody who would disagree with that. The difference is different people say different things infringe on other's autonomy.

What matters is what you're actually advocating, not some vague and poorly defined piece of shit about your ideals. Libertarians need to be de-mystified, and stripped naked to reveal them for the authoritarians they really are.

The influence of Friedman is widespread, and the closest thing to influence Libertarianism will ever have.

More importantly, Libertarian ideology relies an awful lot on the invincibility of unregulated markets, which requires taking an awful lot from Friedman and Von Mises' economic theories.


Enough about how Libertarians see things; what is it they actually want to implement, this is the only important thing.

What? Libertarianism and authoritarianism is at the complete opposite end of the spectrum. Libs advocate total freedom while autos advocate total control.

Just curious, micfranklin... let's say some people wants to start a commune in your neighborhood. All them are volunteer and abide the local, stateal and federal laws -just they are collectivist, living in a collectivist way, under collectivist economic principles. Is it OK with you?

Or, in a more general view, should people be allowed to be collectivist (even within the frame of a free market liberal country) if that's what they want to be? :angel:

Why not Major?  If it doesn't directly impact me, I don't see what the issue is.  If they want that for my government, that is different.

The spectrum is meaningless. It treats political systems as consumer choices and ignores the historical context of them; and "economic freedom" is a freedom that only applies to the powerful, and to the detriment of everyone else. Read the article. It's clear that free market policies make the powerful richer and the powerless poorer, just from looking at it in action. There is a reason why "Classical Liberalism" disappeared when universal suffrage and the right to organise came into being; tell me how you can bring about free market policies without illegalising trade unions and therefore the right to organise.

You can talk about a ideal society all you want, but the real world is more complicated and social engineering of dream societies isn't possible. New political systems come about if they satisfy the interests of some part of society; you can bet economic "freedom" will always be more important to the libertarian movement than social freedom, precisely because people have vested interests in it.

And stop dodging the question. Tell me in detail what you're actually advocating, and how you can feasibly envisage it coming about. I want a real debate here, saying "libertarianism isn't authoritarian because it's the opposite of authoritarianism!" is a useless circular argument. It's about as useful as saying 1=1.

Like I said, since libertarianism is about the general freedom to choose, then yeah people should be allowed to be collectivists. Of course if it causes a seriously harmful problem in the neighborhood, then we have a problem.

Could you actually respond to my posts please? As a completely free market leads to oppression in the workplace, can you please explain how you will bring it about without abolishing democracy and the right to organise? As I've said, the opening demands of the socialist movement started with the demands for universal suffrage and the right to organise. These inevitably interfere with the free market, and to return to "pure" free market requires removing all the achievements of the workers movement in the last 150 years or so.

You're living in a dream world, people say communism can never work in practise but you Libertarian Fascists don't even attempt to imagine how you'd practically implement it without crushing democratic rights!

After reading these posts I think I figured out that you don't understand libertarianism at all. In terms of the workplace, a libertarian society would allow for any job to hire whoever they want. As for the free market, it's not the policies that oppress people it's the people in the market who oppress people and who happen to be greedy and take full advantage of the system. It's this funny little thing call "human input."


Communism makes people complete "equals" in society and completely reliant on the state for everything.

Let me explain this: democratic rights would be something that are found in all democracies, the freedom of speech and freedom to bear arms being just two of those select rights in American society. We "libertarian fascists" would implement laws that forbid anyone from interfering in these rights.

If the government enforces a policy of non-intervention in the economy, and the free market causes mass exploitation, is the government not responsible?

A libertarian government is not at all authoritarian, however it is negligent. Authoritarianism and negligence are two extremes that should be avoided.

Wow, what a great way to illustrate the extremes.  It is obvious that only an effective government can implement policies that lie in the middle.  Authoritarianism failed already.  Negligence I believe will be found in developing Eastern European and Indonesian countries that have lax economic laws to spur investment and will soon move into the middle as infrastructure has been implemented.  Anymore cuts on regulation and America may be faced with the same problem of negligence.

Well if the government says don't intervene, and someone goes the extra mile and causes said exploitation, then its that person or group or whoever who is responsible for that. It's the government's responsibility (or at least the other workers') to correct the problem.

All very true. Southern Asia is a prime example of sate negligence.

What you fail to realize is that a laissez-faire society, by its very nature, is economically unstable. People will be forced to exploit each other to survive if the government does not establish order.

The government has patently and repeatedly shown itself to be incapable of something like this.  You woeful dedication to 'big government' is almost humorous.  All I can say is that if you are going to rely on government, you will be continually disappointed.

Yes, they'd allow any job to hire whoever they want...I'm not sure what your point is. Generally, that isn't really any different to any form of capitalism. The difference is wealthy, powerful elites would also be allowed to fire anybody who they want, to cut costs on safety as much as they want, and to pay as little as they want.

If you think competition to attract a workforce will fix things, you're wrong. Proletarians are more desperate to take any job they can get to avoid starvation (especially as Libertarians want to abolish a jobseekers allowance) so will take merely a subsistence wage if you abolish all the legalisation the workers have fought for the past 100+ years to protect them. Trade unionists fought for suffrage, right to organise, and then once they had been achieved they could use their influence to bring in legislation guaranteeing unemployment benefits, pensions, sick pay, legally required minimum wage, free education and healthcare etc.

Libertarians want to abolish all these; apart from, they claim, suffrage and the right to organise. But suffrage and the right to organise were what gave birth to the other things; despite the sophistry of neo-classical and austrian economists, simply looking at Pinochet's Chile, the effects of IMF policies on the developing world, or Capitalist Europe in the 19th Century and early 20th is evidence that unregulated market makes things worse for the workers; hence, if a Libertarian Party gets elected (very unlikely) or comes to power through a coup (far more likely) the reality of it's policies would instantly either see it getting kicked out and replaced with another party, or in the case of coming into power through a coup would face resistance from workers. In both cases, the Libertarian state either perishes or must abolish the right for people to organise outside of state channels and the right for anyone but the employers who benefit from this system to vote. Essentially, Libertarian ideology wants to regress Capitalism to an unreformed state and can only keep in power through a repressive state apparatus.

The same applies to Classical Liberalism.

And where exactly has unregulated capitalism brought economic stability and an end to exploitation, rather than much more of both?  ::)

Where exactly has unregulated capitalism occurred?

Mexico, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nineteenth century United States.

I can foresee libertarians' next answer: "Oh, but they were not really unregulated, you know? And it was precisely regulation/the government what caused all the problems". ::)

Oh, just you watch.

You guys have all the answers, I don't see why you would need anyone else for this discussion.  So have at it, I'm out.

I guess we spoiled Biker's only line... :angel:

No, just tired of nut bags that are so sure they are superior.  I despise that smugness.  so whatever.  I guess if you need to feel you 'won' to feel better, then yes, you win.

Well, don't take it bad, prolly you're paying the price of JohnL's bigotry...  ;)

On the other hand, I see libertarian as being snoby about liberty and individual, and sincerely, it grows tiresome to listen how they claim to be the only ones with a clue on the issue. I am fiercely individualistic and I am fiercely fond of my liberty, and yet don't see taxes as the ultimate offense and Government as the ultimate enemy... but misery.

I guess we all agree that a degree of regulation, law, taxes and Government is needed for a society to work. Then you libertarian draw the line closer to "what is mine is mine" and others draw it closer to "equal opportunity means assured no misery".

And no offence intended, but libertarianism always haves a child-like smell to it. Life is a bitch and your liberty (as is your wealth) is largely a convention sustained by the collective enterprise we call society. For most people the last time they could seriously asseverate they didn't owed anything back to society was when they were 3. Libertarianism just looks like something that could be healed with a good dose of REAL anarchy, misery and tyranny... which explains why libertarianism is largely an anglo-saxon idea. Probably there would be less libertarian if the UK or the USA had ever been privileged with a full-blown conquest by a superior power, an experience that helps valor liberty in its right price much more than the experience of never have lost it. But, that would be another story... and probably belonging to P&R.

A fantastic statement, Major. The government, if responsible, is able to maximize security and happiness for individuals. One prerequisite of course is democracy and basic social freedoms, which Western society already enjoys.

There's libertarian leftism and libertarian rightism, according to PoliticalCompass.org.






Here is a diagram of where all the major European countries stand.







As for me?  I'm with Sweden.

I'm not an expert on various varieties of anarchism and libertarianism, so I'll leave it to others to quibble the finer points of those issues.  However, I agree with much of what you said about business regulation.  Leaving the workers "free" to the mercies of businesses which can't reasonably be trusted to be beneficent is tyranny too.  One only needs to look at the perverse politics of company towns of the Gilded Age in America to see that.

America during the nineteenth century is one of the best examples of libertarianism in practice, and of course it was an age of mass exploitation and urban poverty.

How can a government maximise happiness for an individual?

If western society enjoys democracy and social freedoms and this is linked to happiness, why are the suicide rates in western societies so high?

maybe so much joy from democracy and social freedoms make a value of life lower or maybe only developed countries with proper social democracy are able (morally and economically) to show the real suicide rates... just exclude US from the list and all will be fine

Wrong question.

People don't usually kill themselves because of their governments.

It was a rhetorical question to Gommi because of his previous post:


I mean, how can a government maximise happiness for individuals? How do they know what makes individuals happy? Would you entrust your happiness to the government?

That was the thrust of my argument  :)

Ahhhhhhhh, I see.

Well, I guess I was only making your point for you... ;)






You're welcome.

By providing essential services and an extensive social safety net.

The government is a servant of the people. Political parties are directly elected by the citizenry to implement policies that benefit the public. If people feel that the current leadership is failing to represent their interests, they can elect a new government that will. Education, healthcare, infrastructure, social security, are all services that individuals depend on throughout their lives. It is therefore the citizen's civic duty to ensure that the government continues to support these basic programs.

A Utopian dream...

At some point what may be the right thing to do is not always the most practical. Helping the poor is reasonable... but sometimes it enables them. And then what?


But my parents are worried about getting there own social security checks. What about me? My generation was fucked before we even got a chance to pull the lever.

Well, if libretarians are like this, then people like you suffer from the "poor me" syndrome. You are so filled with envy and jealousy that you dress it up as an ideology. You spend your whole life blaming other people for your poor life choices. You are filled with so much negativity and self pity, that you are not in a postion to grab opportunities even if they did come along. You have never been self reliant in your life, always looking for other people or the government to assist you. You have never worked an honest day in your life, yet expect everyone else to provide for you, through their taxes.

All in all, you are unhappy and are looking to blame it on as many people as you can, as long as its not yourself.



See how easy it is, to make up ridiculous stereotypes for a particular category of people!!  :)