On Thu, 9 Apr 2015 09:43:34 AM Michael Verrenkamp wrote:
" Not sure you can be "a bit" of a libertarian. Either you are, or you aren't. If you support some regulation, then you're probably not a libertarian. Essentially, what you're saying is that you only like the laws that you like. "
Sounds like me :P I like the broad concept of libertarians but I don't actually think it would be a great overall system. We should limit governments powers but libertarians can go a little too far at times. I also could be talking total crap right now.
The purpose of a democracy is to limit the government to doing things that meet the general approval of the citizens. A modern democratic government is a representative democracy because direct democracy would result in wild changes in policy by people who can't consider all the issues (representatives are supposed to make a full time job of understanding legislation that they vote on). The way that some US states allow direct votes about legislation at elections is an example of why direct democracy isn't a good thing. Australia and the US have a state based system where the lower house has representatives for similar numbers of people while the upper house has representatives for each state. This limits the ability of the government to mistreat states with small populations while also giving equal representation to each citizen via votes for the lower house. We have a consititution that can't be easily changed to limit the powers of the government in terms of significant changes to the legal or judicial system. Laws have to be interpreted by the courts and bad laws can by nullified by a jury. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland) Prior to the development of modern democratic governments people's lives were run by wealthy and powerful people. The Irish Potato Famine is an example of what happens when the wealthy get most of the things that the Libertarians want. Government was limited and the middlemen who acted on behalf of absentee landlords literally had the power of life and death over the population. Libertarianism was never about allowing middle-class people to do what they want. It was always about facilitating the rich and sociopathic who want to treat everyone else badly. I'm not going to provide links, but a quick google search will turn up self-diagnosed sociopaths expressing admiration for Ayn Rand for her psychopathic personality traits. The fact that people who boast about their desire to hurt other people and admit to acting in a way that is widely regarded as evil admire Ayn so much says a lot about her and the political movement she inspired. Now if you want a government that doesn't mess with their citizens much then The Netherlands is a good example. In .nl you can use any drug you like as long as you don't cause problems, marriage equality happened earlier than most countries, and generally there aren't many laws stopping you from doing anything that doesn't hurt other people. Gun ownership is restricted because that DOES hurt other people. In spite (or maybe because) of libertarianism the US has lots of very invasive laws, they lead the "war on drugs" and export it to every other country. They are only just starting to legalise marriage equality, and they have more support for giving legal guns to people who are likely to kill innocent civilians than any other country. https://board.freedomainradio.com/topic/26386-rothbard-on-children-not-for- the-squeamish/ Murray Rothbard (the founder of modern "libertarianism") believes that parents should be allowed to starve their children to death. http://thelibertarianrepublic.com/baby-found-starved-nearly-death-lazy- parents-video/ Above is an article on a libertarian site about parents who literally starved their baby almost to death (the doctors initially thought that they couldn't save the baby). Lots of comments about how bad the parents are, stupid libertarians don't even know their own politics. Real libertarians would only object to the prison sentence for neglecting a child. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/