Libertarianism in One Lesson

Critiques of Libertarianism ^ | 1-4-2003 | Mike Huben

[jmc813]

Introduction

One of the most attractive features of libertarianism is that it is basically a very simple ideology. Maybe even simpler than Marxism, since you don't have to learn foreign words like "proletariat".

This brief outline will give you most of the tools you need to hit the ground running as a freshly indoctrinated libertarian ideologue. Go forth and proselytize!

• Philosophy

  • In the beginning, man dwelt in a state of Nature, until the serpent Government tempted man into Initial Coercion.
  • Government is the Great Satan. All Evil comes from Government, and all Good from the Market, according to the Ayatollah Rand.
  • We must worship the Horatio Alger fantasy that the meritorious few will just happen to have the lucky breaks that make them rich. Libertarians happen to be the meritorious few by ideological correctness. The rest can go hang.
  • Government cannot own things because only individuals can own things. Except for corporations, partnerships, joint ownership, marriage, and anything else we except but government.
  • Parrot these arguments, and you too will be a singular, creative, reasoning individualist.
  • Parents cannot choose a government for their children any more than they can choose language, residence, school, or religion.
  • Taxation is theft because we have a right to squat in the US and benefit from defense, infrastructure, police, courts, etc. without obligation.
  • Magic incantations can overturn society and bring about libertopia. Sovereign citizenry! The 16th Amendment is invalid! States rights!
  • Objectivist/Neo-Tech Advantage #69i : The true measure of fully integrated honesty is whether the sucker has opened his wallet. Thus sayeth the Profit Wallace. Zonpower Rules Nerdspace!
  • The great Zen riddle of libertarianism: minimal government is necessary and unnecessary. The answer is only to be found by individuals.

• Government

  • Libertarians invented outrage over government waste, bureaucracy, injustice, etc. Nobody else thinks they are bad, knows they exist, or works to stop them.
  • Enlightenment comes only through repetition of the sacred mantra "Government does not work" according to Guru Browne.
  • Only government is force, no matter how many Indians were killed by settlers to acquire their property, no matter how many blacks were enslaved and sold by private companies, no matter how many heads of union members are broken by private police.
  • Money that government touches spontaneously combusts, destroying the economy. Money retained by individuals grows the economy, even if literally burnt.
  • Private education works, public education doesn't. The publicly educated masses that have grown the modern economies of the past 150 years are an illusion.
  • Market failures, trusts, and oligopolies are lies spread by the evil economists serving the government as described in the "Protocols of the Elders of Statism".
  • Central planning cannot work. Which is why all businesses internally are run like little markets, with no centralized leadership.
  • Paternalism is the worst thing that can be inflicted upon people, as everyone knows that fathers are the most hated and reviled figures in the world.
  • Government is like fire, a dangerous servant and a fearsome master. Therefore, we should avoid it entirely, as we do all forms of combustion.

• Regulation

• The FDA is solely responsible for any death or sickness where it might have prevented treatment by the latest unproven fad.
• Children, criminals, death cultists, and you all have the same inalienable right to own any weaponry: conventional, chemical, biological, or nuclear.
• All food, drugs, and medical treatments should be entirely unregulated: every industry should be able to kill 300,000 per year in the US like the tobacco industry.
• If you don't have a gun, you are not a libertarian. If you do have a gun, why don't you have even more powerful armament?
• Better to abolish all regulations, consider everything as property, and solve all controversy by civil lawsuit over damages. The US doesn't have enough lawyers, and people who can't afford to invest many thousands of dollars in lawsuits should shut up.

• Libertarian Party

  • The Libertarian Party is well on its way to dominating the political landscape, judging from its power base of 100+ elected dogcatchers and other important officials after 25 years of effort.
  • The "Party of Oxymoron": "Individualists unite!"
  • Flip answers are more powerful than the best reasoned arguments, which is why so many libertarians are in important government positions.
  • It's time the new pro-freedom libertarian platform was implemented; child labor, orphanages, sweatshops, poorhouses, company towns, monopolies, trusts, cartels, blacklists, private goons, slumlords, etc.
  • Libertarianism "rules" Internet political debate the same way US Communism "ruled" pamphleteering.
  • No compromise from the "Party of Principle". Justice, happiness, liberty, guns, and other good stuff come only from rigidly adhering to inflexible dogmas.
  • Minimal government is whatever we say it is, and we don't agree.
  • Government is "moving steadily in a libertarian direction" with every change libertarians approve of; no matter if it takes one step forward and two steps backwards.
  • Yes, the symbol of the Libertarian Party is a Big Government Statue. It's not supposed to be funny or ironic!

• Political Debate Strategy

  • Count only the benefits of libertarianism, count only the costs of government.
  • Five of a factoid beats a full argument.
  • All historical examples are tainted by statism, except when they favor libertarian claims.
  • Spiritually baptize the deceased as libertarians because they cannot protest the anachronism: Locke, Smith, Paine, Jefferson, Spooner, etc.
  • The most heavily armed libertarian has the biggest dick and thus the best argument.
  • The best multi-party democratic republics should be equated to the worst dictatorships for the purposes of denouncing statism. It's only a matter of degree.
  • Inviolate private property is the only true measure of freedom. Those without property have the freedom to try to acquire it. If they can't, let them find somebody else's property to complain on.
  • Private ownership is the cure for all problems, despite the historical record of privately owned states such as Nazi Germany, Czarist and Stalinist Russia, and Maoist China.
  • Require perfection as the only applicable standard to judge government: libertarianism, being imaginary, cannot be fairly judged to have flaws.
  • Only libertarian economists' Nobel Prizes count: the other economists and Nobel Prize Committee are mistaken.
  • Any exceptional case of private production proves that government ought not to be involved.

[cinFLA]

You left out the transportation costs in your "23 fold" markup. Considerable amount.

[Sweet Land]

You left out the transportation costs

As have you from every discussion of bottled water.

in your "23 fold" markup. Considerable amount.

Considerable, my left cheek; how much would FedEx charge to ship that brick of heroin from SE Asia to New York? Anywhere remotely close to the $67,000 by which its price goes up?

[cinFLA]

Considerable, my left cheek; how much would FedEx charge to ship that brick of heroin from SE Asia to New York? Anywhere remotely close to the $67,000 by which its price goes up?

Part of the considerable amount is listed in your source. Do your own homework.

[Sweet Land]

Considerable, my left cheek; how much would FedEx charge to ship that brick of heroin from SE Asia to New York? Anywhere remotely close to the $67,000 by which its price goes up?

Part of the considerable amount is listed in your source. Do your own homework.

Do you mean this?

"A typical smuggling fee of $37,500 is commonly charged by heroin smugglers to transport heroin of any amount from the Gulf of Thailand to Hong Kong by ship or fishing trawler, and delivery is made within 8 to 10 days.

"The fee for smuggling heroin from Bangkok to New York can go as high as $5,000 to $10,000 per unit, according to DEA intelligence reports."

That doesn't address my question, which is about legal shipment of heroin. (You are aware that FedEx is not a smuggling operation, I hope?) The grossly inflated shipping costs support my point that heroin prices would plummet if it were legal.

[robertpaulsen]

Cholmondley Frampton-Blythe was a W.C. Fields' character. Some others included Filthy McNasty, J. Pinkerton Snoopington, Sir Mortimer Fortescue, Eustace McGargle, and about 50 others.

[robertpaulsen]

jmc813 -- Those two going at it remind me of Bele and Lokai in the Star Trek episode, "Let that be your last battlefield".

[GoLightly]

IOW, you & I seem to be talking at cross purposes. It happens.

[Sweet Land]

I look much better in a snug gray sleeper than either of those guys.

[cinFLA]

Posted by Sweet Land: 2004 9:25:54 AM Delta = 166 Seconds 0:2:164
Posted by Sweet Land: 2004 9:23:08 AM Delta = 327 Seconds 0:5:322
Posted by Sweet Land: 2004 9:17:41 AM Delta = 1110 Seconds 0:18:1092
Posted by Sweet Land: 2004 8:59:11 AM Delta = 182 Seconds 0:3:179
Posted by Sweet Land: 2004 8:56:09 AM Delta = 296 Seconds 0:4:292
Posted by Sweet Land: 2004 8:51:13 AM Delta = 2456 Seconds 0:40:2416
Posted by Sweet Land: 2004 8:10:17 AM Delta = 1206 Seconds 0:20:1186
Posted by Sweet Land: 2004 7:50:11 AM Delta = 207 Seconds 0:3:204
Posted by Sweet Land: 2004 7:46:44 AM Delta = 263 Seconds 0:4:259
Posted by Sweet Land: 2004 7:42:21 AM Delta = 255 Seconds 0:4:251
Posted by Sweet Land: 2004 7:38:06 AM Delta = 193 Seconds 0:3:190
Posted by Sweet Land: 2004 7:34:53 AM Delta = 80 Seconds 0:1:79
Posted by Sweet Land: 2004 7:33:33 AM Delta = 235 Seconds 0:3:232
Posted by Sweet Land: 2004 7:29:38 AM Delta = 440 Seconds 0:7:433
Posted by Sweet Land: 2004 7:22:18 AM Delta = 145 Seconds 0:2:143
Posted by Sweet Land: 2004 7:19:53 AM Delta = 448 Seconds 0:7:441
Posted by Sweet Land: 2004 7:12:25 AM Delta = 298 Seconds 0:4:294
Posted by Sweet Land: 2004 7:07:27 AM Delta = 753 Seconds 0:12:741
Posted by Sweet Land: 2004 6:54:54 AM Delta = 1977 Seconds 0:32:1945
Posted by Sweet Land: 2004 6:21:57 AM Delta = 592 Seconds 0:9:583
Posted by Sweet Land: 2004 6:12:05 AM Delta = 142 Seconds 0:2:140
Posted by Sweet Land: 2004 6:09:43 AM Delta = 103 Seconds 0:1:102
Posted by Sweet Land: 2004 6:08:00 AM Delta = 82 Seconds 0:1:81
Posted by Sweet Land: 2004 6:06:38 AM Delta = 78 Seconds 0:1:77
Posted by Sweet Land: 2004 6:05:20 AM Delta = 64 Seconds 0:1:63
Posted by Sweet Land: 2004 6:04:16 AM Delta = 83 Seconds 0:1:82

[Sweet Land]

Thanks for your implicit admission that I've won the debate.

[cinFLA]

Thanks for your implicit admission that I've won the debate.

I will post it once more. Bottled water has a higher markup than heroin. If fact, McDonalds marks up their french fries on the order of the markup you mentioned for heroin.

[Sweet Land]

Post those claims as often as you like; as I've shown, they're not true.

[Old Mountain man]

Well, aren't you the idiot.