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A Cracked article libertarians should read

Travis

Misanthrope of the Mountains
Travis
Joined
Mar 31, 2007
Messages
24,133
Now this all happens in the world we already have. Now imagine this is a libertarian paradise with no government and you need to shop around for everything from your police, to your school to your fire department. A world where no one verifies that the medicine you take is safe beyond a bunch of reviewers that likely are just marketing hacks for the company that put kerosine in eye drops and declared it a cancer medicine.
 
I got a copy of Penn Jillette's book, "God No" for Xmas. He is, as most know, an avowwed Libertarian.
From reading the book (It's not really very good, IMO) it strikes me that he's primarily a Libertarian on principal; doesn't think anyone has any right to tell other people what to do.

That's OK, but it doesn't address much of human nature. We are acquisitive, self-centered bastards for the most part, and if we have to stomp on a few other folks to get ours... Well, that's OK.
 
Bikewer said:
I got a copy of Penn Jillette's book, "God No" for Xmas. He is, as most know, an avowwed Libertarian.
From reading the book (It's not really very good, IMO) it strikes me that he's primarily a Libertarian on principal; doesn't think anyone has any right to tell other people what to do.

That's OK, but it doesn't address much of human nature. We are acquisitive, self-centered bastards for the most part, and if we have to stomp on a few other folks to get ours... Well, that's OK.
Click to expand...

It may not adress human nature, but it demonstrates it nicely - self-centered bastards do not want anybody to tell them what to do, or not to do, thus they oppose, on principle, telling others what to do or not do.
 
Travis said:
Now this all happens in the world we already have. Now imagine this is a libertarian paradise with no government and you need to shop around for everything from your police, to your school to your fire department. A world where no one verifies that the medicine you take is safe beyond a bunch of reviewers that likely are just marketing hacks for the company that put kerosine in eye drops and declared it a cancer medicine.
Click to expand...

You are seriously misreprenting the position of mainstream libertarianism. Beyond that, I don't see your point. In a libertarian paradise, the government would be wholly unable to regulate speech through claims of copyright infringement. It seems your objection is that there isn't a speech police. That's a feature - not a bug.
 
Travis said:
Now this all happens in the world we already have. Now imagine this is a libertarian paradise with no government and you need to shop around for everything from your police, to your school to your fire department. A world where no one verifies that the medicine you take is safe beyond a bunch of reviewers that likely are just marketing hacks for the company that put kerosine in eye drops and declared it a cancer medicine.
Click to expand...

Burn, straw, burn!
 
Cylinder said:
You are seriously misreprenting the position of mainstream libertarianism. Beyond that, I don't see your point. In a libertarian paradise, the government would be wholly unable to regulate speech through claims of copyright infringement. It seems your objection is that there isn't a speech police. That's a feature - not a bug.
Click to expand...

Except in my LibertarianWorld TM I, as a writer, have paid my fees to the Authors Guild of Gratuitous Gunslingers (AGGG) and, if you copy my work they will come around and blow your head off. So you have better paid your "fees" to the local Protective Society to try to stop them. :bunpan

Aside -- do Libertarians ever think these things through? :boggled:
 
Bikewer said:
I got a copy of Penn Jillette's book, "God No" for Xmas. He is, as most know, an avowwed Libertarian.
From reading the book (It's not really very good, IMO) it strikes me that he's primarily a Libertarian on principal; doesn't think anyone has any right to tell other people what to do.
Click to expand...

That strikes me as a very simplistic way of looking at things. I think on certain issues you have to take it on a case to case basis.
 
What's your point? Everything described in the article is legal, and last I checked we're not living in a libertarian utopia.
 
In a libertarian society it will be legal to make childrens' footie pajamas out of highly flammable materials. The problem with that is when kids fail to stop, drop and roll we're gonna hear a LOT of bellyaching.
 
That's half the fun of reading reviews, playing spot the phonies.

I just did my first Trip Advisor review and it was "pending" for 24 hours. The place I was reviewing was telling me that Trip Advisor had recently stripped them of 8 excellent reviews because those reviews were posted using the outfit's WiFi while the customers were onsite and TA figured something was amiss.

Would I suspect my own review was a phony ? Well, I've only got one review and one forum post so......
 
In Libertaria children can work and prostitution is considered a legitimate job......
 
The other problem with the OP is that it assumes that in a world without government regulation, communities would be witless idiots unable to come up with other solutions.

It completely fails to consider the possibility that if communities didn't feel like they had a nanny state taking care of them, they would be motivated to develop other solutions, and successful in doing so.
 
theprestige said:
The other problem with the OP is that it assumes that in a world without government regulation, communities would be witless idiots unable to come up with other solutions.

It completely fails to consider the possibility that if communities didn't feel like they had a nanny state taking care of them, they would be motivated to develop other solutions, and successful in doing so.
Click to expand...

Has that happened? Has their been counties that run like this?
 
Cylinder said:
You are seriously misreprenting the position of mainstream libertarianism. Beyond that, I don't see your point. In a libertarian paradise, the government would be wholly unable to regulate speech through claims of copyright infringement. It seems your objection is that there isn't a speech police. That's a feature - not a bug.
Click to expand...

Please don't tell me what libertarians think. I attended meetings of libertarians in college (I was kind of pissed off at hippies at the time) and they were pretty explicit in their desire for no government and just some sort of privately funded legal system for lawsuits. If you think they had mislabeled themselves...well that's an issue with them.

ravdin said:
What's your point? Everything described in the article is legal, and last I checked we're not living in a libertarian utopia.
Click to expand...

Um, yeah I was pointing out that when they advocated for abolishing the FDA and relying on nothing but consumer reviews for important things like what cancer drug to use the prevalence of false reviews will sort of muck things up.

I mean when anyone can label themselves a Medical Doctor and offer up their recommendations how do you know what drug is legitimate?

theprestige said:
Cracked.com has plenty of good articles.
Click to expand...

That is a good one. I recommended it to everyone I knew.

theprestige said:
The other problem with the OP is that it assumes that in a world without government regulation, communities would be witless idiots unable to come up with other solutions.

It completely fails to consider the possibility that if communities didn't feel like they had a nanny state taking care of them, they would be motivated to develop other solutions, and successful in doing so.
Click to expand...

Yeah, they might even form a new *gasp* government. This was even addressed in that self labeled libertarian group in college with one person putting out the idea that there needed to be a law to prevent future people from forming a new government if they should desire. Then someone asked "who enforces that law?" and the idea died a quick death.

I stopped attending after that even though I was still kind of pissed off at hippies.
 
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