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Sunday, July 6, 2014

What do nonlibertarians seem not to grasp about libertarianism?

Because I am a (somewhat) normal person, I have noticed that a lot of my nonlibertarian friends, no matter how smart they are, cannot grasp the ideas of libertarianism.

What concepts and ideas have you libertarians notice nonlibertarians stumble over?

Nonlibertarians, which aspects of libertarianism do you have trouble understanding?

(We are talking about ideas, concepts, theories, etc., not "LIBERTARIANS ARE ASSHOLES." If you want to critique [badmouth] libertarians and libertarian thought, please visit this.)

Examples:

Non-aggression Principle (NAP)
Natural rights
Free-market capitalism
Minarchism



So I found this...

3 comments:

  1. Excellent question! I would say, the concept of what actually is aggression. Most of my friends agree with the NAP in theory, "Yeah, sure nobody should initiate violence." But they disagree on what IS violence... LAWS and REGULATIONS - to me, I see men with guns coming to put you into a cage if you do not comply; to others, they see a benevolent set of helpful guidelines which we all agreed upon.

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  2. Well, privatized healthcare has been tried and proven to be ineffective. Healthcare is a basic human right. You mentioned that people who think police should be privatized are in the extremist wing, which is absolutely true, but so is saying healthcare should be privatized.

    After all, that's the point of taxes, as you yourself pointed out: we all chip in for the common good. Well, I don't know about you, but I go to the doctor. I've been many times in my life. In fact, everyone I know has been to the doctor a great deal of times. However, many of my friends don't have insurance. I, personally, don't have dental, which sucks for me since I still need braces, heh. But why should we need insurance for a basic human right? I mean, I don't need to pay for police insurance; I pay for cops out of my taxes. I don't need to pay for library insurance; I pay for libraries out of my taxes. I don't need to pay for mail insurance. You get my point.

    And yes, I could see how people would side with a more "middle" candidate, certainly, because a lot of people are, indeed, centrists, or left/right-leaning centrists, in the end.


    Still, that only bolsters my point of just eliminating political affiliation all together, and just voting for the best qualified candidate.


    But because that's nothing more than a fantasy of mine, I'll stick to the reality of understanding parties.

    I don't know about Gary Johnson's views, but I do know about Obama's and Romney's, and what I can say is that while I did vote for Obama, he isn't my ideal candidate at all. In fact, I feel that he represents a very, very left-leaning centrist sect of the Democratic party.

    In the same way that you have what are called "establishment" Republicans and "Tea Party" Republicans (who often try to conceal this by calling themselves "Conservatives"), you have your kind old school, left-of-center Dems like Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, etc, and then you have your much more progressive Dems, who I call "Liberals", like Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and so on.

    I bring all this up because I don't think there are 2 parties; I think there are 5: Tea Party, Establishment Republicans, Libertarians, Democrats, and Liberals.

    Ultimately, I tend to side with what is for the best of most people, and for what is progressive. Privatized health insurance is both unethical and outdated. It's always important to look outside of America for inspiration, to understand what the rest of the planet around us is doing, and to take from their good examples and build on it. One of said good examples is paying for healthcare through taxes, just like we do so many other things.

    In any case, I appreciate the links and maybe I'll have more things to ask about after perusing them. Glad you were willing to address my concerns as fringe elements.

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  3. I definitely agree with you no party affiliations - George Washington saw our chaos today from centuries before. However, from sociological standpoint, I am not sure how no political affiliations would play out in real-life. What I could see in real-life happening is that private organizations form "party-like" groups, contributing to the same problems we have today. That is something I want to look more into though.

    As for privatized healthcare, libertarians generally believe that government legislation in the past and present have not allowed for proper free market transaction to occur, which would contribute to lower healthcare costs due to competition. There is a lot of economic chaos to acknowledge when it comes to this industry, with whichever side(s) you agree with.

    I'm not exactly an expert in this, but here are some things that may explain it better:

    http://youtu.be/lmmw5f0cGE4

    http://www.libertarianism.org/media/free-thoughts-podcast/how-fix-health-care

    I'm glad you're open to exploring these kinds of ideas, even if you do not agree with them. I greatly-appreciate your perspectives and what you have to say.

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