This reminds me of a quote:
"Democrats want the government to be their mother; republicans want the government to be their father. Libertarians just want to be treated like adults."
from what I see, libertarians can be ones who blame their mother and father for their troubles :)
but in all seriousness, I think out of the three, libertarianism is the only one that claims to be borne out of stable and unchanging "priciples" regarding individual freedom. By doing this, libertarians often invite criticism because of the bold claim that their position is based on principles, which implies it can withstand -- indeed would welcome -- being taken to its logical extreme. But the extreme is pretty much anarchy and is easy to criticize, considering that all developed countries HAVE governments -- typically in some form of republic. Collective action problems such as pollution of a commons or driving on a highway require some enforcement. And thus libertarians, by touting "principles", invite argument about extreme implementations of those principles. When in reality, many people who lean libertarian are probably looking at the other side of the bell curve where there are diminishing returns from regulation.
That said, I want to emphasize that distributed systems on the internet do work better than centralized systems -- and I am passionate about that, so in some sense I am a libertarian myself! But internet servers typically coexist peacefully and thus do not require centralized enforcement of laws to protect them from each other.
What separates Libertarians from Anarchists is that they are not anti-government, they are anti-"large government"; in other words, they want only a necessary framework to maintain peace and stability, and nothing more (whatever can be privatized, in their opinion, should be). Whether this is a correct view or not is the subject of much debate, as there are both benefits and drawbacks to government-run organizations, and not all can be put in the same bucket (for example, the Department of Transportation might be more justified as a govt. organization than, say, the dept. of Education). (Don't get me wrong, I am all for public education, but the price we pay in taxes goes towards a lot of bureaucratic overhead, and public teachers get the short-end of the stick when it comes to salary).
A single payer system for public education is different than, for example, than an education system run entirely by the public sector. Typically there is quite a bit of outsourcing to the private sector anyway (in construction and maintenance of schools, etc.) But primary school education is paid for with public money in pretty much all developed countries around the world. The reason for that is:
Every developed country also has a single payer healthcare system (and now the US is joining them). The reason is that the public wants EVERYONE to have access to basic education and EVERYONE to have access to basic healthcare, regardless of income level. And they can collectively bargain better when there is a single payer. A free market actually results in higher prices. To be fair, by having so much power when negotiating with healthcare/education providers, the public needs to take care lest they stifle investment and innovation in those sectors. There is some central planning (with respect to budgets and allocation) that takes place now. But on the whole, having these services be cheaper for the public is a big advantage when needed, such as when there are more poor people.
As a result, there are certain regulations for schools that are paid for by public money. There has been a lot of action in our area (and I suspect around the US) about opening charter schools. These are schools that are funded with public money but are not subject to all the regulations that public schools are, and can take innovative approaches. For obvious reasons, they are different from private schools.
This is where you could use vouchers to send your kids. They still have to do things like have adequate transportation, serve certain groups of minorities, help underprivileged kids, and so forth.
However, I do agree with you in that I don't think there is much support in the US Constitution for a Federal Department of Education.
Well, there's quite a bit of overlap. Even "big-L Libertarians", meaning those who belong to the Libertarian Party in the US, are not infrequently actually free-market anarchists.
If we had a small government what would stop the rich from spending money to make it large? Some might argue that's exactly what happened in the US. I think the US' behavior as of late demonstrates that writing something in a "constitution" won't stop it from happening.
I think we've seen what Libertarianism leads to (the Gilded Age, the late 19th Century in general, really) and "treated like adults" only holds if you think an "adult" has an outright hostile work environment and no hope for advancement.
Couple that with the Libertarian love of gold as a currency and you have even more of the worst of the 19th Century in that political ideology.
Yes, libertarianism does lead to the rapid advancement of a society from third world conditions to first world conditions, including a rapid and significant improvement in the standard of living for the poorest people in the society, and in fact, in the US, until it was derailed by socialists, much progress in the elimination of poverty itself. It really is a shame that some people are so jealous of others that they would prefer that an entire society be kept in poverty than risk broadly distributed wealth and some people being obscenely rich.
As for gold, I suggest you study the history of money, and economics while you're at it, and pay particularly close attention to the predictions and results of those "libertarian economists", the austrians. It was Mises himself who was laughed at by his fellow austrians when he predicted the Nazis would occupy the country a year hence, only to be proven right. It was also Mises who predicted the great depression and its cause, prior to it happening. Personally, I made out like a bandit during the housing boom, and bubble, and bursting, all due to being tipped off by the Mises Institute that one was coming, as far back as 2001. So, go ahead and be smug about gold while the monetary base has gone vertical. What threat can you be to libertarians when the market has proven us right (and continues to do so)?
Seriously, though, your comment is a bunch of assertions, much like mine above. Alas, in the end I made an argument because I'm seemingly incapable of responding without making an argument.
There really is no point to posting the things you did about libertarianism. Libertarians have heard these claims before, and since they're not really honest (and can't be, because reality is far more complex than that) the only real point to them is either to start conflict or to signal to others.
Libertarians believe in the non-aggression principle. (In fact this defines libertarianism.) The NAP. This is what they mean by "treating people like adults."
The initiation of force is immoral. IF you want to argue against libertarianism, show how it is moral to initiate force. IF you want to argue against a libertarian policy position, show how it violates the NAP.
Don't just vaguely name things that you imagine are scary ("Gilded Age" for instance) and then assert they are examples of libertarianism. (Shall I lay slavery at your feet? Would it be productive if I did?)
I don't suppose I could convince you to point to a link/paper/whatever that describes exactly what you mean here? Because, no offense, but so far this sounds like Rush Limbaugh-style labeling.
I'd also like to see an example, if you have one of Libertarianism working anywhere at a reasonable scale. Having no safety net (assuming Libertarianism implies that) means some peoples' very survival falls to the charity of others.
Personally I think the US already had its Libertarian utopia and the current state is the result. Innovation is terribly difficult and expensive and will simply be ripped off if it even works, so Game theory tells me that any big company will be doing what ever they can to avoid it. A simple choice is investing money in growing the government to erect barriers to entry in your market.
>As for gold, I suggest you study the history of money, and economics while you're at it, and pay particularly close attention to the predictions and results of those "libertarian economists", the austrians.
Well, to me the issue is "currency shared across multiple autonomous economic systems" vs each system having its own currency. Gold is just another entity that has an expectations-based value like fiat currency is. Tying ones currency to it seems to me little different than tying one currency to another currency (e.g. China -> USD). This is why I've, so far, written off the argument of going back to a gold standard. What if you need to depress your currency for international competitive reasons?
Finally, the gold standard would still be fiat currency. Governments only stay on it when it benefits them, or when they think it does, and can go off it at any time.
> libertarianism does lead to the rapid advancement of a society from third world conditions to first world conditions
Only by allowing companies to optimize for profit and advancement at the expense of everything else.
That's it, really: The Libertarian ideal of free markets deciding practically everything means that whoever gets ahead in the free market can write their own laws, effectively, and not have to worry about any externalities (like pollution, or injured workers, or so on) they create.
You also haven't made the case for it helping a country that's already in the First World.
> Libertarians believe in the non-aggression principle.
Which is simplistic in that it deliberately ignores all of the ways to initiate force that companies actually engage in (union-busting, polluting, legislation-purchasing) and focuses on the crap they don't do, like breaking-and-entering or outright homicide.
> IF you want to argue against libertarianism, show how it is moral to initiate force.
No. Not valid. I must merely show that Libertarianism is a sub-optimal way to prevent the initiation of force, which I have above.
> you imagine are scary ("Gilded Age" for instance)
You really don't know how bad the Gilded Age was, do you?
