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How prevalent is libertarianism among skeptics?

psionl0 said:
You don't see any difference between laws that (say) prohibit murder and laws that prevent someone from using marijuana (or criticizing the government)?
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No. They all restrict freedom (at different degrees), for the ostensible purpose of maintaining order.
 
psionl0 said:
So as far as you are concerned, it is a pure dichotomy between government and no government.

Fair enough.
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I don't know if you understand me. I understand that there are different degrees of government, but I don't think there's a difference between controlling people's lives and making laws.

Even if the only law is 'Do not kill', that's still government oppression.
 
Wudang said:
Yes, the truly good people of the US groan under the iron heel of the oppressor who doesn't let them kill anyone they happen to feel like killing. Look at what they did to that nice Dahmer boy.
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I don't think being oppressed makes them good.

And I'm not using oppression in the 'bad thing that must be stopped' sense, I'm using it in the 'literal meaning' sense.
 
Twiler said:
I don't know if you understand me.
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That makes two of us.

Most people would argue that the government has a right - even a duty- to make laws that restrict some human activities - especially those activities that leave victims in their wake. Fewer people would make the same argument regarding "victimless" activities.

Either you don't support this point of view or you are trying to start an argument over the meaning of words.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
FWIW, if you look at the Libertarian Party platform it's pretty loopy.There's a lot in the platform that is totally unrealistic. Are roads supposed to zig zag around property owners wouldn't sell? And when there is a contract dispute, how are the parties supposed to resolve the problem if no government can intervene?

It's loopy extremism.
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Yup - still haven't found a description of 'libertarianism' I could get behind. Guess I'll have to form my own party.:boggled:
 
psionl0 said:
That makes two of us.

Most people would argue that the government has a right - even a duty- to make laws that restrict some human activities - especially those activities that leave victims in their wake. Fewer people would make the same argument regarding "victimless" activities.

Either you don't support this point of view or you are trying to start an argument over the meaning of words.
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I would agree that the government has a duty to restrict human activities, but I don't think you can make a clear division between laws that leave victims, and those that don't. Any activity that anyone undertakes can potentially create victims. While there seems to be a distinction, this breaks down when you consider more complex cases, such as abortions, and the 'ripples' that any activity creates through society.

Myself, I agree with some laws, and I disagree with others, but this a subjective position based on my judgement rather than a semantic principle.
 
psionl0 said:
That makes two of us.

Most people would argue that the government has a right - even a duty- to make laws that restrict some human activities - especially those activities that leave victims in their wake. Fewer people would make the same argument regarding "victimless" activities.

Either you don't support this point of view or you are trying to start an argument over the meaning of words.
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No.

Rights are created by a society, how a society chooses to see that those rights are respected varies and can include everything from peer pressure to governments.

Representative governments are "us". To me many of the USA libertarian posters often seem to consider that the government is not part of society, that it is not created by society, that it is some great big alien thing that has landed and imposed itself on people. In the USA (like the UK) that is getting the cause and effect the wrong way round. Society (which is just shorthand for saying the emergent property of humans interacting) has decided to create a government or governments to handle X, Y and Z. What X, Y and Z is at any point of time will vary and how X, Y and Z is achieved will vary.
 
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Twiler said:
I don't think being oppressed makes them good.

And I'm not using oppression in the 'bad thing that must be stopped' sense, I'm using it in the 'literal meaning' sense.
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Oppression n. prolonged cruel or unjust treatment or exercise of authority.

So infringing on Dahmer's rights to kill people was a cruel or unjust exercise of authority?
 
Wudang said:
Oppression n. prolonged cruel or unjust treatment or exercise of authority.

So infringing on Dahmer's rights to kill people was a cruel or unjust exercise of authority?
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Oh.

I didn't realise that was the dictionary definition. I'll have to find a better word.

Restriction? Does that work?

Apologies to any I have offended.
 
AvalonXQ said:
I would have assumed that liberalism, rather than libertarianism, was most closely associated with skepticism.
That's certainly the vibe I get on this board.
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That's mine as well. Hence my surprise over singling out libertarianism as too closely associated with skepticism.
 
Humes fork said:
That's mine as well. Hence my surprise over singling out libertarianism as too closely associated with skepticism.
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I think the problem with the identification with "liberal" is how the word has been denigrated, mauled and fed through the shredder in the USA! In the rest of the world it doesn't mean "pinko-commie-facist-child-murderer"
 
As others have alluded to upthread, the odd thing about online libertarianism is the way it seems to be dominated by the extreme wing. The "abolish all government" types are very vocal and persistent, and seem to drown out what I think of as the "moderate libertarian" types who may want to end the drug war and certain social programs but not privatize the court system, etc.

I'm curious about why that should be the case. I think perhaps it's that libertarians have a tendency to want to build a political philosophy from universal ironclad principles, whether Ayn Rand's or somebody else's, and so it pushes them into reasoning like "all taxation is theft, theft is wrong, government requires taxation, therefore government is wrong." Whereas people who identify themselves more on the traditional left-right spectrum seem more accepting of the notion of grey areas and balancing the benefits of government with the costs. But then I suppose that just invites the question of why libertarians have that fondness for universal ironclad principles.
 
randman said:
But one could argue protecting life is a libertarian stance.
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Hahaha yeah. It’s a-OK to let people starve because social security/taxation is evil, but we’ll use the all-powerful force of the coercive state to limit the ability for women to control their own bodies. Now that’s freedom!
 
Humes fork said:
But libertarianism? Sure, there are some famous skeptics who are libertarians, like Michael Shermer, Penn Jillette and Robert Sheaffer. But it seems rather rare among "grassroots". Michael Shermer's libertarian posts on Skepticblog recieved mostly negative responses, and it seems to me that many (liberal) skeptics dislike libertarians even more than they dislike conservatives.

But I may be mistaken. How prevalent do you think libertarianism is among skeptics? Judging by Loxton's comparison, the majority (or at least about half) of skeptics would be libertarians.
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Well not that high but probably higher than the general population. Not unexpected. There are some very smart PR people pushing libertarianism as part of a low tax agender for those cases where god and guns doesn't work.
 
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