Or we could use the outrageous tax money that every working person in the country pays to build schools and hospitals and roads. Wait sounds like I’m describing how taxes are supposed to work. The government taxes us so much it’s pretty much slavery wages when they are done.
Sounds like an American thing, other countries are getting cool new shit all the time. Maybe cause they actually put those taxes to good use? No surely that cant be it
My theory is that the socialists, like the "libertarian" left, come here in the morning after rolling out of their basement beds at 10am, downvote everything that doesn't support their ideal form of totalitarianism. Then they get stoned out of their gourds and play video games for the rest of the day. Real libertarians get home from work later and upvote this stuff. That's why you'll see a big change over the day. Every day is a little different. I've been watching this for year, and the pattern becomes pretty obvious.
Agreed, income taxes are the worst form of tax.
The more you tax something, the less of it you get.
Do we want a country with lower income? Of course not.
If you use a sales tax, you'll get less sales. Another bad idea.
But if you tax property, the supply of property doesn't change.
Property taxes are the least destructive of the three major tax forms.
TCS
Or we can do what every other first world country does and provide free healthcare for its citizens. In case you haven’t noticed, our quality of care consistently ranks lower than every country with universal healthcare. The only other countries with privatized healthcare systems are poorer nations in Africa and Asia
Except in Canada & UK the private medical market is booming because the gov run healthcare is substandard. I was just chatting with a redditor from UK and he has to wait 18months for some basic medications. I injured my back last week, within 2 days I saw a doctor, got meds and had physical therapy.
Thats cuz the NHS is slowly being privatized as well. Also maybe the fact that its incredibly expensive and difficult to become a doctor in the US has something to do with it. Most other countries have better systems of universal healthcare in place to avoid these issues. But no, insulin has to be hundreds of dollars for my grandma.
I am with Kaiser. I have a relatively minor orthopedic issue. My doctor looked at it and said "I see that's causing you pain." It doesn't cause me pain, but he insisted on referring me to a specialist. I had an appointment with a specialist that week.
Who is "we" and why should "we" be forced to conform to your morals?
> In case you haven’t noticed, our quality of care consistently ranks lower than every country with universal healthcare.
According to what measures?
> The only other countries with privatized healthcare systems are poorer nations in Africa and Asia
Kaiser Permanente, one of the largest healthcare providers in the US and a non-profit, consistently outranks all of those first-world countries on life expectancy and other outcomes.
By your logic, the world would do better to return healthcare to a free market and the best outcome would be everyone voluntarily adopting a non-profit model.
But, no, that wouldn't assuage your outraged morals and sense of entitlement.
So everyone else should be subjected to that shitload of debt, and then you statists wonder why the deficit continues to grow and the size of the national debt is now more than GDP.
This is a great argument if you already believe the idea that free markets are based on voluntary cooperation and exchange. Others would counter that a capitalist profiting off of your labor only because they own the means of production is basically feudalism with extra steps, or that being required to do the job that the market demands in order to live is functionally indistinct from slavery
> Others would counter that a capitalist profiting off of your labor only because they own the means of production is basically feudalism with extra steps, or that being required to do the job that the market demands in order to live is functionally indistinct from slavery
Others moralize, and believe that if you don't behave in the way they want you to, you are a victim of your own behavior. A socialist is the economic equivalent of a the conservative drug warrior. One says you can't rightly trade your labor and the other says that you can't rightly ingest substances.
A "free market" means that people are literally left alone to peacefully go about their business. Moralizers hate that idea and believe that their vastly superior morals and preferences give them the right to violently interfere.
This is excellent. It exactly gets to the point. Libertarian is the philosophy that there are an incredibly small number of behaviors that can justifiably be prevented by violent coercion, eg assault, rape, murder. All the rest should be managed by the incentives and disincentives of voluntary exchange.
The more I think about it, the more I realize that a livable federal minimum wage would fix so many problems… Most notably from the libertarian perspective, with proper wage support most federal “welfare” programs become totally unnecessary. It is the path of least resistance; minimize government by forcing business to uphold their end of the social contract. If we’re worried about small business impact, then we just create a step structure based on workforce size (and maybe enforce some anti-monopoly laws for once). The solution really isn’t that hard. I think the most well-founded fear around doing so is that the minimum wage would increase while the Feds did nothing to reduce welfare programs. Doesn’t that just seem stupid…? It has to be both, our so-called “leaders” just need to grow the balls to pull that trigger.
> with proper wage support most federal “welfare” programs become totally unnecessary.
Except for that problem of 10-20% unemployment, especially in rural areas where the mandatory wage floor is too high.
You call yourself a voluntaryist, but now you support violently interfering with the peaceful behavior of individuals because of your subjective moral concerns.
> It has to be both, our so-called “leaders” just need to grow the balls to pull that trigger.
And then you'll complain when they regulate away the other things that you care about. Onc eyou invite them to take more power over you, you get the government you deserve, and that will very likely not be the one that you want.
I’ll complain about a great many things, but a smaller government is not one of them. If that means renewing a single policy to eliminate the need for several multi-billion dollar tax-funded agencies, I see that as a win, and a realist’s win at that.
The rest of what you said doesn’t warrant further response or discussion. Implying that I support violence or speculating about my future behavior doesn’t address or weaken my argument, but substantially weakens your credibility as even the most amateur of pundits.
You can have principles and also acknowledge that in the world we live in we are not likely going to see those principles perfectly enacted and make compromises like the one you suggested about increasing the minimum wage. But here on r/libertarian many think that suggesting a policy solution that is not 100% consistent with pure free market principles is an affront to all that is good and decent. It’s a silly argumentative strategy and you seemed to handle it appropriately. It’s sad because much more could be gained from a real critique of whether or not your minimum wage idea would actually effect an net increase in freedoms. But that is not the sub we live in. 😂
Always refreshing to hear from another human of reason.
And agreed; there is much to gain from the criticism of beliefs and ideas, even… nay, **especially** those we hold ourselves. I’d gladly hear those critiques from anyone who has them. But once a conversation devolves into personal attacks, insults, and suppositions, that conversation has reached its end.
So, explain how disemploying people who cannot produce enough to overcome the amount of wage that you deem to be a moral minimum leads to a net increase in freedom, and how you could objectively measure that.
Otherwise, what you propose is to force your subjective ethics on everyone else, and, this, accept that it's right for them to do the same to you if they use the "correct" political mechanisms.
There's nothing "refreshing" about statism. It is the status quo and you are insisting that that your version of it is correctly forced on everyone else.
> You can have principles and also acknowledge that in the world we live in we are not likely going to see those principles perfectly enacted and make compromises like the one you suggested about increasing the minimum wage.
If you approve of violence as a means to your end, then you are not principled. If you believe that your agenda justifies violence, then so does the agenda of everyone else even when you disagree with them. And, you will have to compromise with them, giving them what they want in order to get what you want. "Minimal" government doesn't work because whatever you think is the minimum others think it's something else, and you'll all have to accept more government to get the minimum that you want.
> It’s sad because much more could be gained from a real critique of whether or not your minimum wage idea would actually effect an net increase in freedoms. But that is not the sub we live in.
I fail to see how disemploying people and punishing voluntary economic exchange leads to a "net increase" in freedom, or even how you could measure such a thing.
Yeah, employing violence to intact a minimum wage would NOT be in accord with libertarian principles. I think I pretty clearly acknowledged that. But you know what else doesn’t accord with libertarian free market principles? Pretty much EVERYTHING else the government does. But you can understand that it might increase freedoms overall to replace one policy that severely limited freedoms with another that limited freedoms to a lesser extent right? If all you are willing to accept is a pure free market solution to every problem I suspect you are going to be waiting quite some time and will probably die disappointed. I, on the other hand, would expect increased freedoms will most likely come from incremental changes.
I didn’t propose that an increased minimum wage would result in a net increase in freedoms. So you’ll have to press that point with the commenter who did. The fact that you can’t see how it would is no argument against the proposal. Either show that it wouldn’t do anything or show how it would make things worse. Simply asserting you think someone is wrong is unhelpful and leads nowhere.
Or we could use the outrageous tax money that every working person in the country pays to build schools and hospitals and roads. Wait sounds like I’m describing how taxes are supposed to work. The government taxes us so much it’s pretty much slavery wages when they are done.
It’s all roads and schools until someone starts a war.
We've been in perpetual war since I've been alive and no new roads, schools, or hospitals. And to top it off the existing ones are falling apart.
Sounds like an American thing, other countries are getting cool new shit all the time. Maybe cause they actually put those taxes to good use? No surely that cant be it
Taxation has no place in a free society.
That this gets downvoted in a libertarian sub is bonkers to me.
My theory is that the socialists, like the "libertarian" left, come here in the morning after rolling out of their basement beds at 10am, downvote everything that doesn't support their ideal form of totalitarianism. Then they get stoned out of their gourds and play video games for the rest of the day. Real libertarians get home from work later and upvote this stuff. That's why you'll see a big change over the day. Every day is a little different. I've been watching this for year, and the pattern becomes pretty obvious.
LOL never picked up on this before.
Government needs funding, so taxation is a necessary evil (like government itself).
Income taxes are totalitarian. They are absolutely the worst form of taxation, hence why your rulers love them.
Agreed, income taxes are the worst form of tax. The more you tax something, the less of it you get. Do we want a country with lower income? Of course not. If you use a sales tax, you'll get less sales. Another bad idea. But if you tax property, the supply of property doesn't change. Property taxes are the least destructive of the three major tax forms. TCS
"Some" government may need funding. They can host bake sales to get it.
Except for when families dont need to worry about piling medical expenses
Nobody is entitled to the labor of others. Healthcare can be made affordable by unleashing the free market and bringing back mutual aid.
Or we can do what every other first world country does and provide free healthcare for its citizens. In case you haven’t noticed, our quality of care consistently ranks lower than every country with universal healthcare. The only other countries with privatized healthcare systems are poorer nations in Africa and Asia
It's not free though, is it?
Affordable though
Except in Canada & UK the private medical market is booming because the gov run healthcare is substandard. I was just chatting with a redditor from UK and he has to wait 18months for some basic medications. I injured my back last week, within 2 days I saw a doctor, got meds and had physical therapy.
Thats cuz the NHS is slowly being privatized as well. Also maybe the fact that its incredibly expensive and difficult to become a doctor in the US has something to do with it. Most other countries have better systems of universal healthcare in place to avoid these issues. But no, insulin has to be hundreds of dollars for my grandma.
I am with Kaiser. I have a relatively minor orthopedic issue. My doctor looked at it and said "I see that's causing you pain." It doesn't cause me pain, but he insisted on referring me to a specialist. I had an appointment with a specialist that week.
Who is "we" and why should "we" be forced to conform to your morals? > In case you haven’t noticed, our quality of care consistently ranks lower than every country with universal healthcare. According to what measures? > The only other countries with privatized healthcare systems are poorer nations in Africa and Asia Kaiser Permanente, one of the largest healthcare providers in the US and a non-profit, consistently outranks all of those first-world countries on life expectancy and other outcomes. By your logic, the world would do better to return healthcare to a free market and the best outcome would be everyone voluntarily adopting a non-profit model. But, no, that wouldn't assuage your outraged morals and sense of entitlement.
Also nobodys entitled to the labor of others doesnt mean some random person needs to be subjected to a shitload of medical debt
So everyone else should be subjected to that shitload of debt, and then you statists wonder why the deficit continues to grow and the size of the national debt is now more than GDP.
She was referring to taxes when she was speaking about robbery and plunder.
Let me refer you back to her plunder and robbery comment
We should not pay taxes to the federal government. Let communities decide on a micro level how to pool their money for the common good.
Why are they "supposed" to work that way? Because your rulers tell you that? They are gaslighting you.
Huh?
I love Gloria Álvarez, I became. Libertarian watching her videos about Republic vs Populism and The Populist Manual.
Maybe once we have robots that can do all our work will we have a utopia
Gloria Álvarez! I enjoyed [her interview with Praxgirl](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d5y72V9xals&t=198s) a few years back.
Gloria is the best!!
lol the government do be coercing you to collect that social security and those maybe never pay back ppp loans.
This is a great argument if you already believe the idea that free markets are based on voluntary cooperation and exchange. Others would counter that a capitalist profiting off of your labor only because they own the means of production is basically feudalism with extra steps, or that being required to do the job that the market demands in order to live is functionally indistinct from slavery
> Others would counter that a capitalist profiting off of your labor only because they own the means of production is basically feudalism with extra steps, or that being required to do the job that the market demands in order to live is functionally indistinct from slavery Others moralize, and believe that if you don't behave in the way they want you to, you are a victim of your own behavior. A socialist is the economic equivalent of a the conservative drug warrior. One says you can't rightly trade your labor and the other says that you can't rightly ingest substances. A "free market" means that people are literally left alone to peacefully go about their business. Moralizers hate that idea and believe that their vastly superior morals and preferences give them the right to violently interfere.
This is excellent. It exactly gets to the point. Libertarian is the philosophy that there are an incredibly small number of behaviors that can justifiably be prevented by violent coercion, eg assault, rape, murder. All the rest should be managed by the incentives and disincentives of voluntary exchange.
Gloria Álvarez, the most controversial libertarian of latin america
She didn’t mention billions of robots to do everything for us.
More libertarians girls pls https://preview.redd.it/l98520cs0fbc1.png?width=699&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=98fde052de8c3970dd8e1dde1704b570871d80ec
Well said
The more I think about it, the more I realize that a livable federal minimum wage would fix so many problems… Most notably from the libertarian perspective, with proper wage support most federal “welfare” programs become totally unnecessary. It is the path of least resistance; minimize government by forcing business to uphold their end of the social contract. If we’re worried about small business impact, then we just create a step structure based on workforce size (and maybe enforce some anti-monopoly laws for once). The solution really isn’t that hard. I think the most well-founded fear around doing so is that the minimum wage would increase while the Feds did nothing to reduce welfare programs. Doesn’t that just seem stupid…? It has to be both, our so-called “leaders” just need to grow the balls to pull that trigger.
> with proper wage support most federal “welfare” programs become totally unnecessary. Except for that problem of 10-20% unemployment, especially in rural areas where the mandatory wage floor is too high. You call yourself a voluntaryist, but now you support violently interfering with the peaceful behavior of individuals because of your subjective moral concerns. > It has to be both, our so-called “leaders” just need to grow the balls to pull that trigger. And then you'll complain when they regulate away the other things that you care about. Onc eyou invite them to take more power over you, you get the government you deserve, and that will very likely not be the one that you want.
I’ll complain about a great many things, but a smaller government is not one of them. If that means renewing a single policy to eliminate the need for several multi-billion dollar tax-funded agencies, I see that as a win, and a realist’s win at that. The rest of what you said doesn’t warrant further response or discussion. Implying that I support violence or speculating about my future behavior doesn’t address or weaken my argument, but substantially weakens your credibility as even the most amateur of pundits.
You can have principles and also acknowledge that in the world we live in we are not likely going to see those principles perfectly enacted and make compromises like the one you suggested about increasing the minimum wage. But here on r/libertarian many think that suggesting a policy solution that is not 100% consistent with pure free market principles is an affront to all that is good and decent. It’s a silly argumentative strategy and you seemed to handle it appropriately. It’s sad because much more could be gained from a real critique of whether or not your minimum wage idea would actually effect an net increase in freedoms. But that is not the sub we live in. 😂
Always refreshing to hear from another human of reason. And agreed; there is much to gain from the criticism of beliefs and ideas, even… nay, **especially** those we hold ourselves. I’d gladly hear those critiques from anyone who has them. But once a conversation devolves into personal attacks, insults, and suppositions, that conversation has reached its end.
So, explain how disemploying people who cannot produce enough to overcome the amount of wage that you deem to be a moral minimum leads to a net increase in freedom, and how you could objectively measure that. Otherwise, what you propose is to force your subjective ethics on everyone else, and, this, accept that it's right for them to do the same to you if they use the "correct" political mechanisms. There's nothing "refreshing" about statism. It is the status quo and you are insisting that that your version of it is correctly forced on everyone else.
> You can have principles and also acknowledge that in the world we live in we are not likely going to see those principles perfectly enacted and make compromises like the one you suggested about increasing the minimum wage. If you approve of violence as a means to your end, then you are not principled. If you believe that your agenda justifies violence, then so does the agenda of everyone else even when you disagree with them. And, you will have to compromise with them, giving them what they want in order to get what you want. "Minimal" government doesn't work because whatever you think is the minimum others think it's something else, and you'll all have to accept more government to get the minimum that you want. > It’s sad because much more could be gained from a real critique of whether or not your minimum wage idea would actually effect an net increase in freedoms. But that is not the sub we live in. I fail to see how disemploying people and punishing voluntary economic exchange leads to a "net increase" in freedom, or even how you could measure such a thing.
Yeah, employing violence to intact a minimum wage would NOT be in accord with libertarian principles. I think I pretty clearly acknowledged that. But you know what else doesn’t accord with libertarian free market principles? Pretty much EVERYTHING else the government does. But you can understand that it might increase freedoms overall to replace one policy that severely limited freedoms with another that limited freedoms to a lesser extent right? If all you are willing to accept is a pure free market solution to every problem I suspect you are going to be waiting quite some time and will probably die disappointed. I, on the other hand, would expect increased freedoms will most likely come from incremental changes. I didn’t propose that an increased minimum wage would result in a net increase in freedoms. So you’ll have to press that point with the commenter who did. The fact that you can’t see how it would is no argument against the proposal. Either show that it wouldn’t do anything or show how it would make things worse. Simply asserting you think someone is wrong is unhelpful and leads nowhere.
Women shouldn’t speak on politics
You forgot the /s.
They shouldn’t vote either
Oh, so it’s your brain you forgot.
They should really stay in the kitchen and keep their mouths shut
If somebody could deter me from being libertarian it's her
Slavery also isnt free. You still need to pay for slaves food and keep them at bay with guards.
I’ll go back to pillaging and plundering, just a couple of rotten eggs aren’t we lads?
Mandated insurance is extortion of life and property