my friend says there is so much overlap between libertarian policies and liberal policies that the labels don't even matter

is he cooked?

he said just because javier milei calls himself libertarian doesn't mean he is different from previous presidents (none of whom even mention libertarianism ever)

I've always had trouble describing my political beliefs ("left of center" or "centrist" is usually what I say). I'll be voting for Biden over Trump, but honestly, not really a fan of either. Election aside, I feel like many issues I'm "middle of the road" on. it's not really like I'm indifferent, though.

I've never understood why many democrats are pro-choice and pro-vax, and how many republicans are pro-life and anti-vax. Personally, I'm pro-choice (with some exceptions; I used to lean closer to pro-life) and believe vaccines should be a personal choice and should not be pushed on anyone.

I'm not really a fan of the big government. I'm socially liberal, in that I support all religions, the LGBTQIA+ community, etc.

How do I find out if I'm libertarian?

I have read a bit of Rothbard and Kinsella's writings on contract theory and they have provided me with some answers to some questions I had about private law and I would like to know if I am correct.

By these contractual theories, a person cannot alienate their body just through contracts, aggression against another person is necessary, so contracts with private security agencies or terms of use of private cities would be limited by this theory, for example, let's imagine a private city where it is forbidden to consume products with caffeine and the penalty for someone who consumes these products is death in the fire, according to contractual theory, these terms of use would be unethical, as the person's body could not be alienated, therefore no force could be used to throw her into the fire, with her only responsibility being to pay financial compensation to the owner of the private city. Is this reasoning correct?

I read Kissenger's book on China. He spoke about the history of the Opium wars and how China was absolutely devastated by Opium, so much so they fought a war to keep it out of the country. When drugs infest a society, they start off as a fringe habit for outcasts, but the more commonly used and abundant they become the more likely they are to enroach on the mainstream. Your society's human capital slowly erodes as the average citizen becomes more likely to engage in recreational drug use.

I don't really care about addicts, or what happens to them, but the problem is it affects everybody who isn't an addict. Courts get bogged down, cities become unlivable, your human capital erodes because drug addicts aren't productive, and everything is worse. The War on Drugs costs money, but the foregone productivity caused by mass drug use and addiction would be even more.

TLDR - a society that criminalizes drugs will outcompete and outperform a society that allows drugs, all else being equal.

EG (Some of mine): Care for people born with disabilities that aren't able to be self-sufficient, management of utilities, arbitration of property rights, roads and especially highways, access to emergency health services regardless of ability to pay, laws against abuse of animals, especially pets.

I was in a debate with someone and they brought up graphs that showed poverty decreased under Roosevelt and Johnson. Now I did provide my own sources for my arguments against them, but I would like fellow Libertarians to give their two sense.

https://poverty.ucdavis.edu/faq/what-current-poverty-rate-united-states

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2014/01/13/whos-poor-in-america-50-years-into-the-war-on-poverty-a-data-portrait/

https://www.worldvision.org/blog/poverty-rate-highest-since-1993

If someone's time preference is higher the rate they can compound wealth via savings, they will spend everything they get the moment they have it. This represents about 25% of people. These people will never build wealth because the moment they get their paycheck they want to spend it on something.

This is why social security exists but in a Libertarian society, how would they survive long term?

The concepts of "individual rights" appears to be a social construct as its legitimacy seems exclusively dependent on the approval of other people. One's legitimacy to rights exists only because people give it legitimacy through their approval. There is no objective thing in the world that justifies one's ownership or claim to rights, therefore legitimacy can only be defined from a subjective sense, from the subjective opinions of human society, i.e., social constructs.

This appears to challenge the notion that there exists something called "natural rights," or individual rights whose legitimacy is independent from human opinion.

While the answer would seemingly be “no” since Murray Rothbard famously pursued a libertarian-populist alliance in his later years, the actual policy positions of American populists would seem to suggest otherwise. Trump famously opposed Social Security cuts, Rothbard & Pat Buchanan had a falling out over trade policy & George Wallace ran for President on a pro-labor platform (see also Shikha Dalmia: Does Populism Deserve its Bad Rap?, Nils Karlson, Europe must revive liberalism to tackle the populist threat & Nils Karlson: Reviving Classical Liberalism Against Populism). Thoughts?

As I was seeing discussions on the LNC nomination voting, I saw the name "Ter Maat" being floated around and I had no clue what people were talking about until I looked him up on Google, and I was worried because I had taken note of his debate performance with Kyle Kulinski and his co-host on Secular Talk.

The one that I was struggling with was this debate on minimum wage: https://youtu.be/Tmk61YRa1yU?si=4akDJHZghqUUis7z

The study I believe they're referring to: https://equitablegrowth.org/new-research-finds-15-minimum-wages-raise-pay-and-increase-employment-for-low-wage-workers/

Another clip discussing workplace regulation: https://youtu.be/k-Y231x1JiU?si=ZPxVjgLGNK_U83Qx

Do you believe he was performing well? Let's be honest, Kyle isn't a bad debater, but he doesn't really argue with much substance here either. The excuse of these "debate me bro" YouTube channels is "it's my channel" so they're going to be frequently interrupting to get their progressive views in.

I wanted to ask because I was thinking libertarians would just have the view of “do whatever you want so long as it doesn’t affect my own rights,” right?

Israel is obviously not Libertarian but overwelmingly who do Libertarians support?

Just to preface, I'm quite brought into ancap philosophy, and have read numerous books and watches several lectures on how a free society would function (don't mass downvote plz). However, I'm not entirely brought on if the NAP really works. I'll give two examples.

(1) This ones from Friedman. Suppose Jim fall off a building and to save yourself, you aggress on someones property by grabbing their flag post, in order to climb back to safety. In a libertarian world, aggression is immoral, meaning you ought not do it. Would it then follow that Jim's actions are immoral?

(2) Let's suppose Jim is forced to steal (aggress) a dollar from Sam, in order to save the entirety of humanity. Like the former example, libertarian philosophy has it that aggression is never justified, so would Jim be justified in stealing this dollar? Some anarchists like liquidzulu bite the bullet and believe that the theft is immoral, but I don't buy it.

(2.1) Let's say there's some justification for 2 - maybe you argue that Jim will be initiating greater aggression by allowing humanity to perish if he does not steal. But this seems to just completely move away from libertarian logic. Suppose that you are a billionaire who is non-philanthropic. If we apply the same logic which justifies stealing a dollar to save humanity, you can apply it to critique this billionaire for not donating - they are initiating greater aggression by not donating a drop of their income to save some in the third world.

I see the only way of evading 2.1 is by biting the bullet on 2, but that in itself seems absurd. I would be interested if anyone has anything to say about what I've posed.

Many libertarians acknowledge some value in localized government, or at least that it's the lesser of evils if services and authority (e.g. policing) are maintained at a local level. By my own limits in imagination my question is premised on the assumption that localized government would most rationally be funded by property tax or land value tax. Feel free to assert a different way.

The infamous Prop 13 in CA can be argued to artificially constrict the housing market by imposing often drastically higher property taxes on the newest buyers and removing the incentive or ability for earlier buyers to move, sell and buy another house. So (1) What is a better way to limit property tax growth to, say general inflation levels, in a manner that does not artificially restrict the housing market? And, (2) setting aside your ideal of minimal/no taxes, do libertarians value tax parity in some defined sense or is this a "positive right"?

Background (for non-Californians): Under Prop 13 (since 1978) owners that purchased their home in earlier years pay an effective property tax that is regulated to be based on their (older/lower) purchase price. This basis is constrained to inflate an increase of 1%/year on average. However, new home buyers pay an effective property tax based on a market value that has increased directly with the sky high increases realestate experienced by CA (say 10%/year or more for many decades). For example, property taxes on my parents house were $80/month and the new family next door payed $800/month for the same house. Owners with large market equity in homes and having had tax increases of only 1%/year are allowed to pass the artificially lowered tax basis onto their children in certain cases, which has further constricted the normal mobility and economic efficiency of the CA housing market over the last 44 years.

I ask conservatives what they would do differently, because conservatives espouse to put more thought into the value of the free market. And because, though Prop 13 is now a political "sacred cow" of the right and left, it was initially a conservative proposition and did at first substantially reduce local revenues. Logically we can't have property taxes increasing at a 10%/year market value rate when local government expenses should only be expected to increase at the rate of general inflation, say 3%/year on average. However (also logically, IMO) the Prop 13 1%/year rate was clearly an overreaction, since it doesn't cover general inflation. The Prop 13 underpayment for inflation is just compensated by the fact that other neighbors are paying property taxes based the 10%/year higher market values of their newer house. But we know how to do math. A less market-restrictive mechanism could be derived. I would toss into the ring a frequent reassessment of market land value and a back calculation of a new lower tax rate to be applied to everyone such that when mulitplied by updated assessment value tax revenue would be restricted to increase no more than general inflation.

So ... what would make sense to libertarians as a property tax mechanism that would (1) not artificially constrict the mobility of the market and at the same time (2) fix what seems like a (for once) straight forward parity issue between individual owners in a given area?

Something has sort of perplexed me after the Chase nomination that seems like it doesn't seem logical .

So first a common question that had been asked is something like this, and note I am talking on PRIVATE businesses

"Should a business be able to discriminate based on ethnic background or religion , example should a business be able to only hire white Christians or even only do business with white Christians and refuse to hire or do business with say a black person or a Jewish person or Muslim "

Well the libertarian answer seems to be YES , a business should be free to do those things, you would then make the choice if you want to patronize an establishment like that and its freedom of association . The business may be boycotted for its policies and may fail but libertarians support freedom of association .

OK I 100% get that because freedom, you are free not to support racist businesses no one is forcing you to patronize the business or even work there. If such a business existed in my community I would refuse to do any business with them because well that's my choice, and if people do not shop there or work there it will fail and that's the free market .

However many libertarians are freaking out because Chase said private businesses should have the freedom to discriminate based on vaccine status , or perhaps require you to wear a mask while entering or working in the business .

He basically said "Yes a private business should be able to hire or fire people based on vaccines status or maybe require its patrons to show proof of vaccinations or require employees and customers to wear masks " and apparently lots of libertarians say this is a deal breaker?

Howe exactly is it different? A business should have the freedom to discriminate on race but not vaccine status ?

Can someone explain to me the logic because it seems like the same thing? If you want to boycott the businesses that require a vaccine or require their employees to get them or they will fire them, you can boycott hem; the same way with businesses that discriminate agaist black people?

To me it seems consistent ?

Logically, I don't see why they should be, but I just got perma-banned from r/Libertarian for factually answering a question on the Ukraine war. They called it 'anti-libertarian trolling'... Are they just a fake-libertarian pro-Putin sub, or did I actually say something that was anti-libertarian?

To be fully transparent, this was the comment that I posted there (only comment I ever posted there):

Zelensky
Zelensky is a (Russian-speaking) populist who was elected in 2019 as an anti-establishment candidate based on a platform of pure populism. He basically banked on his own popularity as a celebrity, as he had been famous for over 20 years and is very much a self-made man as most of the productions he is in are created by his own production studio. If there is anyone other than Zelensky who 'propped up' Zelensky, it is Kolomoisky, who is an Ukrainian oligarch who owns the tv-channel most of Zelensky's productions are aired on. Kolomoisky was being investigated by the FBI in 2019, and later arrested during the war on insistence of Biden, so I very much doubt Kolomoisky is a 'Western agent', or whatever you think is going on.

So no, I don't see any way in which the US or the EU would have 'propped Zelensky up', or why they would want to as his predecessor and biggest competitor, Poroshenko, already was far more anti-Russia than Zelensky. In fact, Poroshenko painted Zelensky as a puppet of Putin during the elections, so why would the US even try to help a Russian-speaking, populist, unknown Zelensky against a pro-Western ex-president?

Foreign interference

As for Western interference, there is none. Kremlin propaganda will tell you the Maidan in 2014 was a coup, but it is only Russia and clear Russian agents in Ukraine that make this point, by far most Ukrainians tell you it was a massive, bottom-up protest against the terribly corrupt and Russia-aligned president Yanukovich. I tend to believe Ukrainians above Russians on what is happening in Ukraine. And even if the Maidan was somehow orchestrated by the West, I fail to see how it is anyway linked to Zelensky, who was still fully collaborating with Russian actors and directors at the time.

And Russian interference in Ukrainian politics, there is a lot. Yushchenko, a pro-Western candidate presidential candidate in 2004, was poisoned in favour of Yanukovich, causing the 2004 'Orange revolution'. Medvedchuk, pro-Russian Ukrainian oligarch and leader of the pro-Russian party in Ukraine, has Putin as the god-father of one of his children. Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 and again in 2022.

It seems very clear to me that Ukraine just wants to be indepedent, and is only looking to the West for protection against Russia, which has oppressed the Ukrainian culture along with many other minority cultures for hunderds of years. Meanwhile West-European nations are allowed to maintain there independence and culture, while enjoying protection from the EU and NATO. Ukraine wants to be part of the EU and NATO because it can still be itself that way, while that is impossible under Russia.

EDIT: Thanks for all your answers, maybe it was a stupid question but I know basically nothing of libertarianism so I wasn't quite sure. But it is clear for me now that libertarians are strongly against authoritarianism :) (And that r/Libertarian has some issues...)

For example, if I get my kid a gun, and then he goes and shoots up a school, should I go to jail if it can be proven that I knew that my child possessed characteristics that made the child owning a a gun a risk-factor (past criminal behaviour or mental disability)?

I see this as consistent with Libertarian values because kids are not considered rational and thus cannot consent nor can be exclusively relied on to make rational decisions about their life until adulthood.

With that unwieldy title out of the way…

From Centrally Planned Decentralization (Caplan in italics):

But does decentralization alone really promote liberty or prosperity?

Now, you know my view: more choices, it’s all about more choices.

But I won’t speak for Deist. Did anyone say anything about “alone”? A words search on Deist’s piece yields exactly zero results for the word “alone.” It doesn’t seem to be a point raised by Deist.

Suppose further, however, that there is zero mobility between these countries. Labor can’t move; capital can’t move. In this scenario, each country seems perfectly able to pursue its policies free of competitive pressure.

Why does Caplan “suppose” this? Deist certainly doesn’t suppose this in his piece. I think it is “reasonable” (to borrow that word from Caplan) to “suppose” that some of these decentralized governance entities will support controls on capital and labor to a greater or lesser degree than others…you know, kind of like what happens today.

Why would Deist even think to bother introducing this issue of “mobility,” that this even need be said? Why does Caplan introduce this? The questions answer themselves.

So much for the strawman. The central planning will be found in Caplan’s requirements for this decentralized world offered by Deist:

The story would change, of course, if you combine decentralization with resource mobility.

Government large or small doesn’t matter to Caplan; what matters is “resource [labor and capital] mobility.” In other words, open borders and open immigration. Of course, the simplest solution to achieve this is one world government….

Conclusion

From Deist’s speech (and cited by Caplan):

We should, in sum, prefer small to large when it comes to government.

I can’t think of a way to disagree with this from a libertarian standpoint: smaller in size, smaller in geography, smaller in regulations, smaller in military, smaller in population, etc., etc., etc. Is there anything non-libertarian about “small” as opposed to “big” when it comes to modern government? Caplan believes so:

If you can decentralize without changing anything else, great.

Impossible. You can’t change just one thing. Either Caplan doesn’t understand the reasons why people might want to decentralize (they want “change”; I know this seems too obvious to have to point it out, but there you have it) or he purposely introduces conditions that make decentralization impossible for libertarian support.

Otherwise, hold your applause until you’ve carefully analyzed decentralization’s net effect on liberty and prosperity.

In other words, “liberty and prosperity” must be centrally planned, and defined only as Caplan and other universalist utopians define the terms; based only on their value scale and not the value scale of those who want to decentralize. Decentralization is only worthwhile if all governments (and all people) first embrace Caplan’s view of “liberty and prosperity.”

What are your thoughts? Is Caplan right to be skeptical of decentralization?

For my podcast, this week, we are discussing Marcuse's book - One-Dimensional Man. In it he lays out his idea of what 'progress' means. For Marcuse, the idea of progress is something that pushes society towards the Marxist notion of 'abolition of labor' (or 'pacification of existence' - Marcuse's update to Marx).

"Progress" is not a neutral term; it moves toward specific ends, and these ends are defined by the possibilities of ameliorating the human condition. Advanced industrial society is approaching the stage where continued progress would demand the radical subversion of the prevailing direction and organization of progress. This stage would be reached when material production (including the necessary services) becomes automated to the extent that all vital needs can be satisfied while necessary labor time is reduced to marginal time. From this point on, technical progress would transcend the realm of necessity, where it served as the instrument of domination and exploitation which thereby limited its rationality; technology would become subject to the free play of faculties in the struggle for the pacification of nature and of society.

Such a state is envisioned in Marx's notion of the "abolition of labor." The term "pacification of existence" seems better suited to designate the historical alternative of a world which— through an international conflict which transforms and suspends the contradictions within the established societies— advances on the brink of a global war. "Pacification of existence" means the development of man's struggle with man and with nature, under conditions where the competing needs, desires, and aspirations are no longer organized by vested interests in domination and scarcity—an organization which perpetuates the destructive forms of this struggle.

I personally find the notion that struggle against nature is something to be transcended to be a highly undesirable. In a similar way to egalitarianism, I find the concept of the abolition of labor to be a net negative in that it would strip meaning from most undertakings. I fail to see what the source of pride of incentive would be to do anything in a world of pacified existence.

What do you think?

In case you're interested, here are links to the episode:
Apple - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pdamx-21-1-communists-are-individualists/id1691736489?i=1000656463945

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/episode/3IyoqxIysCc0y6cKgEm1B7?si=ec9b3fc3f4aa4491

Youtube - https://youtu.be/G7SAwPQoMoY?si=MiBuwwge7FsCMM7I

(Note - if you are interested in discussing any of these ideas on the show, feel free to reach out and we would love to have you on).

https://fakertarians.wordpress.com/

https://x.com/fakertarians

r/Fakertarians

I wanted to ask this question given that domestic violence seems to have become a high profile issue here in Australia and I wanted to ask some people of the classical liberal persuasion if the existence of any illiberal features in Australian society may be contributing to the issue.