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For what it's worth as a Libertarian, I think the definition of libertarian is worthless. Very few people who call themselves libertarian really believe in no government. Most of us accept that there needs to be a limited government that provides a very basic safety net, environmental regulations, some public education, infastructure, military defense, etc. The big difference between me and most conservatives is I apply this thought to social laws as well.
Estimated 262 million people murdered by their own governments just in the last century. Not even including war or death by foreign governments...just from 1900-2000 alone.
This thread is about the American Libertarian party, not world states. If he was referring to worldwide deaths OK, but it wasn't mentioned as such.
I thought it was about libertarians (small l).
The United States government has killed at least 10 million people since WWII. That's not including domestically which is probably only in the thousands.
I'm partial to some libertarian ideas, but I believe libertarianism taken to this level would just result in private aggression/coercion supplanting government aggression/coercion.
You actually have it completely wrong. The problem with libertarianism isn't that private aggression replaces government aggression. The real problem is that libertarianism would necessarily lead to disunion.
Why is it that all governments cannot exist without coercion? That is simple, because men have never come together except by force.
As soon as you take away government force, society would fall apart into a near-unlimited number of individuals and groups.
Take a moment to think about what would actually happen if you just removed the public-education system and the welfare system. Where then would the people go?
Unlike what many would like you to believe, these people wouldn't die, nor would they suddenly become ignorant. No, by and large, they would just run to religion, to the churches. And Catholic charities and Catholic schools would fill the role that was the government, at least for its adherents. And likewise with Lutherans, and Mormons, and Muslims, etc.
Why do you think the Muslim brotherhood is so relevant in the Middle-East? Because it is providing the social services which aren't able to be delivered by governments(because of war/instability/etc).
Without government, the people would again have to rely on their families, and their communities. And as a result, people would become increasingly isolated in those communities, and separate from all others.
Big-government is necessary to integrate large groups of diverse people, period.
Secondly, the people who declare that without government, corporations would take over, don't understand that corporations are actually an invention of government. They are called "limited-liability", and without that limited-liability, protected by government, there could not be such a thing as a corporation, only a partnership, which would be extremely limited in size, and could not attract thousands or millions of investors from all over the world.
That doesn't even include the effect that things like the Federal Reserve has on the banking industry, which can produce unlimited capital for large-scale investment(especially infrastructure development), all over the world. Libertarianism would gut the investment industry, and its grip of international finance, which is just an arm of American imperialism.
Without the bank, American hegemony would evaporate, and ultimately, that would weaken, and then destroy America. All the major industrial and financial elites would abandon ship. And merely rebuild their empires somewhere else, then use that against us.
Big-business requires big-government.
Imagine for a minute those "roads" that critics of libertarianism always rant about. Let us pretend that the statists are correct, and that there wouldn't be roads without government. Well then, how many businesses could possibly exist without them? How could Wal-mart survive if the government wasn't paying for all of these roads?
The size of business grows with the size, number, and speed of the roads. Wal-mart couldn't exist until it was practical for people to drive long distances to go to one centralized location for all their shopping needs. Many people drive 20-60 miles to go to a Wal-mart. That would be impossible without high-speed roads. Which doesn't address the supply-line problem, whereby Wal-mart requires massive road networks to get the goods into their stores in the first place.
If we woke up tomorrow and all the roads were gone, all businesses would become local, practically overnight.
If you want to criticize libertarians, at least understand the problem with libertarianism. Which is that it is a utopian ideology, which would lead to anarchy, not because it intends to, but because people are imperfect. And without some mechanism to hold people together, society would naturally fall apart.
I said Libertarian-ism isnt as simple as non aggression and property rights, you said it is.
Still waiting to hear your version of libertarianism
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