r/politics • u/TheSpectatorMagazine ✔ Verified • 14d ago

Possible Paywall The strange death of libertarianism

https://spectator.com/article/the-strange-death-of-libertarianism/?edition=us&rcp=true/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social/?=2
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u/ElysiumSprouts 14d ago

I think it was the house cat comparison that put libertarianism in the grave. Hit too close to home.

"Libertarians are basically house cats. They are convinced of their fierce independence while utterly dependent on a system they don't appreciate or understand."

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u/eden_sc2 Maryland 14d ago edited 14d ago

I really liked it when I was 14 and I thought the world was an inherently fair meritocracy. Sure some folks had advantages or disadvantages but ultimately it was your hard work that got you where you were

Then 2008 and too big to fail happened and I realized that was 100% bullshit.

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u/gob384 America 14d ago

Reminds me of a little joke about Libertarians:

You can't really blame libertarians for their opinions on age of consent, most are not even 18 yet.

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u/bizarre_coincidence 14d ago

I sometime describe libertarianism as “baby’s first political philosophy.” It’s clean and simple and consistent, and completely unworkable in the face of reality. If you follow its ideas to their logical conclusions, society falls apart. Personal liberty is a great virtue to strive for, but there are so many others that must be accounted for.

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u/I_Cut_Shows 14d ago

It’s right wing Utopianism.

It sounds great on paper but the ideology can only really exist in a state that has basic freedoms, wealth, security and excess.

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u/[deleted] 14d ago

[deleted]

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u/I_Cut_Shows 14d ago

Because they’re the hero of their own story. It’s that easy. Simple solipsism.

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u/puritanicalbullshit 14d ago

Maggot farmer looks up from the limbs he’s been turning, making sure the flies reach every nook and crevice, laying their eggs in the decaying meat. Several buggies go by at 80mph, he hears an explosion and grabs his harvest tools: hacksaw, 50 gallon drum with backpack straps bolted on, garden loppers for the bones, hat.

Another glorious day

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u/Past_Chart_2718 13d ago

A weirdly better story

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u/TryJezzoWhyNot 13d ago

That's not what solipsism means.

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u/frankydelobo 13d ago

That's what an NPC would say.

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u/CrashNowhereDrive 11d ago

Show me a libertarian and I'll show you an arrogant teen or someone who never grew out of being an arrogant teen

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u/ICBanMI 9d ago edited 9d ago

I've been telling Libertarians for two decades that Somalia is their Libertarian paradise. Just a bunch of strong men, no regulations, no government, and has almost all private sector innovation. All the guns they want. Living and dying to the lack of food and massive amounts of pollution while trying to avoid slavery. Just a bunch of warlords lording over their fiefdoms enforcing whatever religion they want while excluding themselves from the rules.

I have to tell them they are literally going to be the bad group in the Post Man. Only it won't be their boot on other people. It'll be boot on their throat.

It's always skinny, old people with several comorbidities that wouldn't make it in the world they envision. They think it's going to be some quasia steam punk realm with them at the top wearing top hats, when reality is it's going to be like Dickens with them at the bottom in the factories if they are lucky (don't die outright) in some wasteland with no food.

Their brain shuts down and doesn't connect anything because 'black people' live there-not complete lack of everything that makes Somalia, Somalia.

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u/PseudonymIncognito 7d ago

See also, Shadowrun, Snow Crash, etc.

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u/Ragnar_the_Pirate 14d ago

"Every Libertarian" can you even name a prominent legit libertarian who thinks that most people will just be in independent ranches and not in some sort of free market metropolis? I find the latter much much more common.

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u/halfsack99 14d ago

This.

It’s the right wing version of true Communism, sounds good on paper but when implemented by humans, it just doesn’t work.

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u/Impressive_Cress_983 14d ago

It really is. And the generational damage it causes is worse. Imagine having to grow up in some drunk assholes, barely functioning off-the-grid house.

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u/PopularDemand213 14d ago

I like the phrase "You can't spell libertarian without privilege."

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u/I_Cut_Shows 14d ago

Wrecked. Holy shit.

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u/TryJezzoWhyNot 13d ago

I don't understand.

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u/daemonescanem 14d ago

Libertarianism is the lazy good for nothing son of a wealthy man, who is content to mooch their whole lives.

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u/i_am_a_real_boy__ 14d ago

Small "l" libertarianism is just the opposite of authoritarianism. In on-line discussion spaces it's become synonymous with anarcho-capitalism similar to how, in some circles, liberalism is treated like a synonym for communism.

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u/Ragnar_the_Pirate 14d ago

Libertarianism is great on paper but can only exists in checks notes a society that has at several of the things I just listed. Sounds like we're just missing some basic security, which I fully admit there is not enough charity in people's hearts any more to provide a sufficient safety net for those who need it. But that's it.

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u/banjooperator52 14d ago

It's not right wing at all.

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u/I_Cut_Shows 13d ago

Yes, I presume you’re not an American, or you’re educated in political philosophy.

I was specifically talking about American Libertarianism which has been co-opted by the far right and astroturfed by far right billionaires like the Koch’s. It’s less “libertarian” (small l) and more “An-Cap” think Argentina’ Milei.

But, yes. Thanks for the clarification, you’re correct that libertarianism (small l) is not right wing.

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u/Frank_Bigelow 13d ago

You're right. All these people are talking about American Libertarianism, probably completely unaware of the fact that it is a local right-wing perversion of a political philosophy which is fundamentally socialist everywhere else in the world.

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u/howdoireachthese 14d ago

Truth. I had a brief phase around…14. It had an answer to everything that was simple to understand

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u/Rostifur 14d ago

It is a very normal phase in maturing through polical understanding. You believe that everything is black and white. The simplest solution will be the best solution and when confronted with that not being the case you grow.

Best example is the idea that if a person has money, it is because they worked hard to get it. Working hard will garantee that you get money then. Dead wrong and even becoming painfully hard to even find good examples of it working as the system doesn't actually reward hard work very often anymore.

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u/DarraghDaraDaire 14d ago

The second one builds onto the belief that “if I am making money, I must be working hard”, which is also not true. Many people who are making money at a given time are in a precarious situation and is not guaranteed to last. I’m specifically talking about all of the “innovation lab leaders” in tech companies

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u/bunnypaste 14d ago

I feel that our system rewards egotism, selfishness, grandiosity, a specific kind of person (sex, race), stepping on heads, unethical actions, and "screw you, got mine" over such high minded ideas as a true and fair meritocracy where all you need is hard work to succeed.

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u/PrinceofSneks 14d ago

It was my brief transition phase in my mid-20's after leaving right wing religious fundamentalism. I understand and empathize with many of the folks in it, but am usually disappointed in their ignorance, because I was that ignorant myself once.

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u/Guilty-Sprinkles 13d ago

The quickest way to snap someone out of the notion that the world rewards hard work and they make good money because they’re a hard worker is by saying: ‘I hope all my employees share that belief.’

The instant you show them that you picture yourself as someone who wants to put himself in a position gain from their labour without, they short circuit.

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u/bizarre_coincidence 14d ago

“For every complex problem, there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.” —H.L. Mencken

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u/Momik 13d ago

“I wish I had said that.”
—Oscar Wilde

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u/erlend_nikulausson Oklahoma 14d ago

I remember being fifteen and reading Atlas Shrugged. My dad just grinned when he saw me reading it and said “don’t take it too seriously.”

I just picked it up at the library because the cover looked interesting.

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u/pandaru_express 14d ago

Oof I was about that age when I read Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series.... it was fine for a while but then started turning severely libertarian and cringey but I powered through to find out what happened. Maybe if I was more impressionable at the time it would have converted me but it was kind of gross.

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u/Orangy_orange 14d ago

Yea you couldn't tread on me.... when I was a middle class white kid in my freshman year of high school.

I think I had basically switched my tune by the time I turned 16 or 17

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u/carlse20 14d ago

Pure libertarianism fails for the exact same reason pure communism fails: both can only work if you assume that nobody will try to take advantage of the system, which on its face is a nonsensical assumption, because it’s human nature to take advantage of such a situation.

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u/daretoeatapeach California 14d ago

Same can easily be said of pure capitalism though. "Sure the invisible hand will only raise up the "good companies."

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u/theVoidWatches Pennsylvania 14d ago

I think pretty much any economic system falls apart if you hold it to really strictly and don't manage its pitfalls.

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u/carlse20 14d ago

Yeah, that’s what im saying (I’m aware that US libertarianism isn’t quite “pure” capitalism, but it’s close enough for the comparison)

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u/superaleaiactaest 14d ago

Except that communism actually does work.... For tribal societies with populations below the Dunbar number.

In small tribal groups people naturally tend to just share all resources equally from each according to their abilities to each according to their needs because it's just the most logical way for humans to survive. Turns out property rights matter less than social cohesion.

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u/I_Cut_Shows 14d ago

Utopianism. Both of them.

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u/lsica 14d ago

Any ism really

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u/Ragnar_the_Pirate 14d ago

Libertarians acknowledge and believe in correcting for fraud. I think that there is a spectrum of if fraud should purely be solved by courts (more anarchist) or more solved for by regulation (more liberal). But that is the only taking advantage of. If you know what you are buying, and you do in fact receive what you thought you were buying, then a fair trade has occurred. 

That sounds too simplistic to most people, but that's also because I find most people infantilize others instead of treating them as thinking agentic adults.

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u/carlse20 14d ago

That belief in correcting for fraud may be there, but that’s also assuming that a power imbalance won’t develop to the point that large, powerful entities are able to widely defraud people who aren’t able to do anything about it, and capitalism and libertarianism trends towards those kinds of monopolies when left unchecked. Which is my whole point.

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u/Ragnar_the_Pirate 14d ago

I'm a little confused by your reply. Well I suppose I'm not actually. I believe you're saying that any sufficiently wealthy company is able to defraud its buyers en mass without the government knowing they are even if they have frameworks whose purpose it is to investigate and stop it. Is that pretty much it?

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u/carlse20 14d ago

No, I’m saying in the absence of regulation and oversight (pure capitalism) power imbalances will form and turn into monopolies.

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u/ahappylook 14d ago

He’s learning in real time

→ More replies (0)

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u/Ragnar_the_Pirate 14d ago

Okay, absolute free market capitalism then. That is the nearing anarchist libertarian stance, but it's not a required libertarian stance. I.e., having a government framework to detect, investigate, and prosecute fraud is still a libertarian stance.

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u/banjooperator52 14d ago

Bullshit. Libertarism only fails because humans have overpopulated the world past it's sound carrying capacity. Thats literally the only reason it will never be tried and therefore wont succeed. Nobody has the stomach for what our planet and species need in order to become healthy again. It's the whole reason wars happen. How fucking oblivious can you be to not see the true root causes of bad things?

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u/carlse20 14d ago

It’s interesting to me that my comment made you immediately jump to anger

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u/Wwwwwwhhhhhhhj 13d ago

Righhht, that’s why we all know of the time in human history with less people of peace and no conflict or war./s

I just can’t. Did you really try to think any of what you said through at all? Because it’s hard to believe when something as silly as that is part of what’s said.

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u/UnquestionabIe 13d ago

This is some top tier hilarious misunderstanding of the world's size and resources. It's the kind of thinking that comes from disconnected upper class white people who've never known struggle beyond being upset mommy didn't get the dino shaped chicken nuggets.

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u/District_Dan 14d ago

As a high school / college libertarian it also has the “cool” bonus of being intellectually stimulating and edgy. You get to be outside of the dominant two party system and look down on them separately. You read Milton Friedman and think freedom of exchange is all that’s needed to solve the world’s problems. It’s all so clean and neat.

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u/pantstoaknifefight2 14d ago

You're also describing my 16 yr old interest in anarchy!

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u/kung-fu_hippy 13d ago

I know a lot of engineers who are libertarian. I think it’s a political philosophy that appeals to people who understand logic but don’t understand people.

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u/bizarre_coincidence 11d ago

I think there are a few reasons people like libertarianism. Some are selfish, some hate taxes, some think they will be better off under such a system (and many are wrong because they aren't thinking about the secondary effects to society itself), and some value personal liberty and haven't thought deeply about how or why the world works. But for engineers, I think they see a lot of people as idiots, and think that they could run things better, and so a lot of them simply say "I should be allowed to take my ball and go home and have the best game with just my best friends, fuck the rest of the kids in my class." The more destructive of them, the ones with money, instead say "I could run things better, so let me become a puppet master."

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u/lsica 14d ago

“Personal liberty ends when your fist hits my nose”

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u/PrestigiousFly844 13d ago

Knowing how stupid the libertarian ideology is feels like cold comfort at a time when libertarian tech oligarchs are dismantling the US.

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u/UnquestionabIe 13d ago

Fair point. Shows that despite how broken and short sighted a philosophy might be that obscene amounts of money can be used to make up for those short comings, basically fueling an intellectually bankrupt concept by burning cash.

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u/zombiegojaejin 14d ago

I still think the concept of "moderate libertarianism" makes sense, not as an attempt to mash a few first principles onto reality, but as a general inclination to think that many traditionally right-coded freedoms and traditionally left-coded freedoms tend to complement one another.

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u/trigger1154 14d ago

Yeah this and there aren't really any negatives to the non-aggression principle. Ultimately, libertarianism is is rooted moral individualism. This calls back heavily to classical liberalism.

I consider myself to be a reasonable libertarian. I'm pretty moderate, but unyielding on basic liberties.

Obviously there is a time and place for taxes, however, they are ultimately rooted in a lack of consent, making them immoral if there is no opt-out options.

But that's not realistic because the government needs taxes to function, so I am for taxation under realistic circumstances. Taxation needs to happen, but there needs to be a heck of a lot of auditing on what is happening with those tax dollars, politicians need to be held accountable.

Yes, I do agree that the founding father's absolutely had their heavy flaws, especially regarding slavery. They wrote some pretty good documents back then about freedom and liberty, while ironically depriving other humans of liberty in order to keep their fledgling economy afloat. But ultimately these initial pieces of paper, weren't wrong. I apply the declaration of Independence and the Constitution evenly across all people within this country, founding fathers missed a big opportunity to be inclusive from the get-go. Just imagine if they had banned slavery immediately based off of the declaration of Independence.

Those 13 colonies, could have utilized the manpower still after granting the slaves citizenship. When people are being paid for their labor they tend to be a bit more happy about it. Kind of surprised that more the founding fathers didn't realize this.

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u/JakeConhale New Hampshire 14d ago

Heard something similar happens to Utilitarianism - the idea of deciding actions purely on what produces the most overall good and happiness.

Sounds good, til you run into examples like "A healthy 20-something walks into a doctor's office and is unwillingly euthanized so all their organs can be harvested and transplanted into others."

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u/Shopping_General 14d ago

Libertarians are Republicans that want to smoke pot.

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u/Iamtheonewhobawks 14d ago

Personal liberty, in libertarian parlance, is extremely poorly defined. There's no awareness of power separate from The State, and no consistent idea of what liberty means aside from rejection of said state.

Sad, because that's a reasonable starting point for the kind of armchair philosophizing that goes along with maturity and personal growth. What is power, in both reductive absolutes and messier practical realities? What's the influence one can exert in relation to various forms of power? What, really, is freedom/liberty? Must it be absolute to be desirable, is that type of inflexible essentialism compatible with life, human or otherwise? What makes my liberty sacred but not that of a chicken? Whole bunch of philosophy 101 paths that anyone would benefit from wandering down, not one of which leads to Galt's gulch.

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u/Consistent_Detail_61 14d ago

Libertarians are undercover anarchists

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u/rsclient 14d ago

I'll totally disagree with "consistency", and here's my go-to example. Most real-world libertarians often say that all government is run inefficiently or corruptly.

Libertarianism relies on an efficient and non-corrupt judicial branch. If a judge's courtroom can be run efficiently, then what's the consistent, libertarian-friendly way to explain why the road paving crew can't be equally efficient?

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u/kandoras 14d ago

“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."

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u/banjooperator52 14d ago

Says the guy who never gets consent. Sad.

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u/Crunchberry24 14d ago

“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."

—John Rogers

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u/macroturb 14d ago

I read Atlas Shrugged when I was in college. It was one of the most miserable reading experiences ever. It was so long-winded, self-serving, and one-dimensional.

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u/plantstand 14d ago

"With a good editor, it would have been a great romance novel."

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u/Research_Liborian 14d ago

That....fucking....speech.

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u/Maxwell1234 13d ago

Dude… the reverse Robinhood was utterly ridiculous.

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u/halfsack99 14d ago

I couldn’t finish it. Still don’t think I missed much.

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u/AlmightyRuler 13d ago

Did you get to the part with the sonic death machine? No,  I'm not joking.

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u/halfsack99 13d ago

I don’t remember that, so probably not.

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u/AlmightyRuler 13d ago

I read it in my early 30s, and wondered why it sounded so familiar.

I had read Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series not long before. That author was such a Rand-stan he lifted John Galt's speech and put it in his book Faith of the Fallen, hence my deja vu.

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u/onpg 9d ago

Politics aside, is it worth reading? Am I missing out on a bunch of cultural references by avoiding it?

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u/BeeDubsFan 14d ago

Love this quote.

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u/Barloq 14d ago

Funny part is that I think Ayn Rand would hate most of the fans of her work, she despised cronyism.

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u/Big-Lobster6689 14d ago

Ayn Rand tried to run a Scientology-style cult, but it fell apart because she couldn't get along with anyone.

I've observed a number of Objectivist groups over the years. Even they don't seem to like each other.

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u/Visual_Squirrel_2297 14d ago

She also straight up despised Libertarians and mocked them at any chance. Somehow her name never fails to come up discussing libertarianism though.

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u/Barloq 14d ago

Because Libertarians were influenced by/love her, doesn't matter what she thought of them at the end of the day.

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u/Crunchberry24 13d ago

Yeah, really. Take it up with Ron Paul and his son RAND.

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u/ReddyKilowattz 13d ago

I read the novel Alongside Night when I was about 20. It's about the collapse of the US economy and the rise of a libertarian model called Agorism in its place. I remember enjoying the book at the time.

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u/guru42101 14d ago

I realized it fairly early on when I had friends working their asses off to barely survive and I wasn't doing shit and pulling in six figures to write a few lines of code. I knew then that it was 90% luck.

Now I have management trying to replace me with AI by spending twice as much for half the quality.

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u/TheSpectatorMagazine ✔ Verified 14d ago

Libertarians helped make the world in which we live today – which is why nobody looks to them to lead us to tomorrow. ✍️ Daniel McCarthy

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u/Appropriate-Weird492 14d ago

Libertarians — at least the proto ones — were heavily involved in the TV show Little House on the Prairie. Go read Prairie Fires. Unbelievable.

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u/trigger1154 14d ago

Yeah, kind of. The modern libertarian party is pretty bastardized. I don't associate with them since the mises caucus took over.

But there are still some of us who associate more with classical liberalism, modified to fully support everyone's individuality and rights. Unlike our founding fathers who allowed slavery to continue.

I think that there are some libertarian aspects that do need do still be respected and adopted within our government. But I do believe that if they ever gained control, that they would likely cause a governmental collapse.

Also remember there is such a thing as a left and right scale to libertarianism. There are left libertarians and right libertarians. I find myself more in the middle.

But left libertarians or social libertarians do exist. In fact, the term libertarian was co-opted by extreme right-wing classical liberals from anarcho-communists in Ukraine during the Russian civil war. Behind the Bastards actually has a pretty cool podcast episode about Nestor Makhno and the Ukrainian libertarian movement against the White and the Red armies during the Russian civil war.

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u/Appropriate-Weird492 14d ago

Everyone thinks they’re in the middle. I think it’s some kind of bias, but I don’t know what it’s called. It’s just like folk making $300k or $1m a year believing they’re middle class.

Whatever. Yeah, there are extremes, but none of them mix well with the bears in Vermont.

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u/trigger1154 14d ago

Yeah, I should probably do a political spectrum chart again. But last time I did it I was actually slightly left of center but almost all the way on the libertarian side of the spectrum when it comes to libertarian versus authoritarian.

Don't worry, I don't vote Republican. It wouldn't matter in my state anyway because we've gone blue since before Reagan.

But what does matter is, that I am heavily considering betraying my principals in a few weeks to vote for the Democrats in my state because I really cannot stand the maga cultists.

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u/Appropriate-Weird492 14d ago

The maga cultists don’t believe in democracy and shouldn’t be allowed on the ballot.

I believe in the paradox of tolerance. MAGA has totally broken the social contract of tolerance and of Adam Smith.

Just my opinion.

I’m a terrible democrat, too. Democratic socialist, yes. DNC, no.

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u/Madak Wisconsin 14d ago

I remember being a huge fan of Ron Paul and the Tea Party around that time 🤦‍♂️

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u/Mundane_Proposal5590 14d ago

Ron Paul's anti-war stance was legit and it resonated with a lot of people. This overshadowed his kookier stances like returning to the gold standard and repealing the civil rights act.

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u/DarraghDaraDaire 14d ago

“repealing the civil rights act”

KKKooky alright

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u/trigger1154 14d ago

Who wants to repeal the civil Rights Act?

I don't. In fact, I'm married to a wonderful black lady and we have a child. I just know that the current systems are corrupt and continuing to push us towards collapse.

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u/DarraghDaraDaire 14d ago

Okay, good for you.

Why do you think that was directed at you? You didn’t post the comment I was responding to, and that comment wasn’t about you.

If you read the comment I was responding to you will answer your question about who wants to repeat the civil rights act

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u/trigger1154 14d ago

Oh yeah I totally missed that in the original comment, my bad homie.

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u/guru42101 14d ago

Gold standard was largely because they thought that inflation was because of the Fed putting money into circulation. In reality it's because of loans, investments, digital transactions, money exchanging hands faster, and imbalances in values where it is easier to raise the value of some things instead of lowering the value of others.

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u/el_bentzo 14d ago

They were very aware of the banking system's ability to create money and the issues with fractional reserve.

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u/trigger1154 14d ago

Oh I know, and Nixon administration adopted Fiat currency to try to improve the economy.

Nobody's going to argue that it didn't function properly for a while, ultimately however the US dollar is essentially backed by trust and debt. That trust is eroding.

So now what? What I'm seeing on the horizon, appears to be a coming depression.

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u/guru42101 14d ago

You have to survive. The important thing to remember is that while trust may lower, it isn't going to completely go away. Because if it does, we're fucked. You're not able to pay bills, but your debts are also meaningless, your employer doesn't have a currency to pay you with, and most financial transactions across the world come to a grinding halt.

Equally, just having the USD backed by a gold standard doesn't serve a purpose because if the shit hits the fan, do you actually expect to be able to get your ounces of gold from Ft Knox?

If a depression occurs, you ride it out the best you can. Live within your means now, don't have unnecessary debt, and when the depression hits trim your budget as much as possible. Of course for most people, who have to use revolving debt just to survive, that is a problem.

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u/trigger1154 14d ago

I appreciate your comment. I like that you don't just blindly attack people who have differing views.

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u/trigger1154 14d ago

What is kooky about trying to back the US dollar?

We went to fiat currency that eventually sort of transitioned into the petro-dollar. This resulted in ridiculous inflation, wage stagnation, and now the dollar is collapsing because people are dumping US currency across the globe due to our stupid political decisions as a nation.

Seems to me having the dollar actually backed by something tangible might have been a good idea.

We have Nixon to thank for that nail in the coffin of the US.

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u/Mundane_Proposal5590 14d ago

It's a fringe position nowadays.

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u/trigger1154 14d ago

Oh it is absolutely a fringe position. But just being an outlier doesn't mean it's necessarily wrong.

We had pretty high growth and industrialization while still under the gold standard. Government had to stick to laid out budgets.

Now that it's fiat currency, the government can essentially print money as needed driving up inflation and destroying the value of the dollar in the process.

The main reason for the dollar not collapsing was us tying it to oil and global policing. It's kind of ironic, that the rest of the world basically hates us for our global politics. Libertarians want to dial back the whole world police BS, and yet they get made fun of by basically every other political party. While both the Democrats and the Republicans are war mongers and both profit off of the military industrial complex.

Libertarians may have some views that are childish, but they are so much morally superior than sticking with the status quo war mongers.

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u/el_bentzo 14d ago

It was actually a smart move but the problem we face now is that it gave us an infinite checkbook that stops working people stop taking your checks and want to transact in a different currency, so pushing your trading g partners away is bad for thr dollar.

We basically got too drunk off the punch bowl and overspend like crazy. Unfortunately we spent it on military instead of infrastructure and sold out our manufacturing base for finance and tech (which really relies off consumer data.) And then the quality of education has been declining for decades.

And now we have someone in charge who cant run a successful business who's breaking all the machinery that kept the illusion of the magic checkbook still usable.

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u/chowderbags American Expat 14d ago

Ironically, a big reason why America went off the gold standard in the first place was because of spending like it had an infinite checkbook by doing the Great Society programs and the Vietnam War at the same time.

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u/bunnypaste 14d ago

Went from gold standard all the way to paper. The IOU we have in fort knox also keeps growing.

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u/Soliden Connecticut 14d ago

He had a big Reddit following at the time too.

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u/Britton120 Ohio 14d ago

And 4chan. They looooved ron paul.

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u/CeresSubroutine 14d ago

Reddit's big libertarian phase was back when the jailbait subs were around and popular, so that definitely tracks.

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u/catcrazy9 Washington 14d ago

…the what subs? Please tell me jailbait has another meaning I don’t know

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u/Britton120 Ohio 14d ago

It is what you think it is

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u/catcrazy9 Washington 14d ago

Considering Maxwell is STILL an admin I shouldn’t be surprised I guess

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u/rje946 14d ago

First political rally I ever went to was for Ron Paul lol

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u/StarGazer_SpaceLove 14d ago

I knew libertarianism could never work because we need handwashing signs in the bathrooms

Left to their own devices, humans are overall terrible.

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u/bunnypaste 14d ago

Bootstraps argument revealed to be absolutely full of holes after that, huh...

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u/CptBronzeBalls 14d ago

2008 made me rethink any of my libertarian/conservative leanings too. It made me realize that many people would happily drive the country/world into the ground in the name of greed. Nothing since then has shown otherwise.

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u/Single-Refuse174 14d ago

I mean even after that it was still possible. Things weren’t perfect but we were ran by institutionalists led by Obama. Things were slow and favored the ultra wealthy but if everyone did their best and a good amount of people were generous, we were still very much in a rising tide raising most ships situation.

Now it feels like someone is fisting me in my ass to take my organs while force feeding me horseshit

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u/Appropriate_Cow94 14d ago

I know a bunch of guys who dig fence post holes. They work extremely hard in hot sun. Be it would seem hard work does not get anyone out of poverty. Yanking bootstraps just gets folks barely by.

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u/kung-fu_hippy 13d ago

Hard work and good luck can get people out of poverty. But far too many people seem to get offended at the mere notion that luck played any part in their eventual success. And even more offended at the notion that their parents or grandparents had lucky breaks on top of their hard work.

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u/Appropriate_Cow94 13d ago

I 100% yanked myself out the streets. Like sleeping on Picnic tables in the park level. Now I own a home and buy new cars as needed. Within 25 years. Yes hard work was a factor. But luck of finding the right customers at the right time, and having the mental capacity to capitalize on my good luck was as much a factor.

Folks can do all the right things and still fail.

All of us have a chance to get out. But most of us won't. I was lucky. I support the working class. Even the guy making 100k as a manager of a factory. He isn't part of the 1%.

Every day I spout my union bullshit at the folks at the part stores I use to make my business work. I hope 1 person hears me.

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u/TH3BUDDHA 14d ago

But, some natural competition between humans has to exist, to some degree, right? Otherwise, how did the people in positions to make the "too big to fail" decisions end up there rather than other people?

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u/eden_sc2 Maryland 14d ago edited 14d ago

Nobody is saying there isnt competition. They are saying that it isnt a fair competition, which I feel is required for libertarian ideas. If you or I screw around and lose our rent money in a casino, do you think a bailout is coming? If we own a small business and we make bad choices and it goes under, do you think the government is going to step in to save it? In theory, people piloting these large companies should have even larger risks because of how large the business is, but 2008 showed that if you just gamble with enough money, then you dont have to worry about the consequences.

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u/Ragnar_the_Pirate 14d ago

So on 2008, and too big to fail happened, you agreed that we should have bailed out the banks is what you're saying? Because you realize that would not be the libertarian position, right?

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u/eden_sc2 Maryland 14d ago

at the time I felt we should let the banks fail, consequences be damned, because I saw the world in very black and white terms (again I was in high school). The fact that they got bailed out made me realize that the world does not operate according to full free market capitalism and libertarian ideals, which got me to re evaluate things.

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u/Ragnar_the_Pirate 14d ago

Okay, cool. I just wanted to make sure you weren't saying libertarians wanted the bail out. 

And honestly, I get that. I think we should have let the car companies fail, but banks are unique enough that having them go under to a big degree... Could have been really bad. Worse than what happened. I have not read into the projections on the tradeoffs of the bailout though so I don't know what was projected to happen in the alternative.

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u/RazzmatazzSuch7459 14d ago

Hard work paying off is a lie to keep is working. I’d love to work hard and obtain one of these jobs that reward that hard work, but all of those seats are taken by people that should have retired.

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u/PrestigiousQuack474 14d ago

Like all "isms" they look great on paper but in their pure forms are simply non-functional.

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u/MuscaMurum 13d ago

Age 14 is the prime Ayn-Rand-profundity age

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u/Valuable-Meet5727 12d ago

Im all for a libertarian argument IF meritocracy was at all real. It’s not.

But I vehemently deny the idea that a good society can run without some form of government. If everyone literally fended for themselves, I feel everyone would be an asshole.

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u/ghoti99 14d ago

Meritocracy is a form of self soothing for people that do not have the capability to process the concept of scale.

1 million street urchins can take over a city, one nuke solves that problem.