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The Rise of the “Liberaltarian”

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Re: The Rise of the “Liberaltarian”

#101

Post by koheripbal »

nickpp wrote: post #37

Isn’t it kind of ridiculous when you have to make up such words ‘cause you insist describing people’s complex preference and belief system on a single damn dimension?! I am both left and right, depending what issue we are talking about. And sometime I am center as well. Yet when it’s time to vote... I have exactly 2 real choices.

The chaos we see today is a reaction between our First-Past-The-Post voting system and high engagement social media.

It's like mixing vinegar and baking soda.

The voting system encourages extremist candidates, and the social media platforms engage the least nuanced voters to primary (something that they never did before).

The main stream media follows ratings and legitimizes these extremist views.

The ultimate outcome is a political discourse that is gradually promoting zero-tolerance, zero-discourse, and a slow march to the normalization of political violence.

I'm not sure people recognize the danger escalating polarization is causing. The mere mention of it as a systemic issue is usually met with a "both sides" dismissal, which is very discouraging.

We need to reformat social media and/or change the voting system, or there will be violence. The purpose of democracy is to obviate political violence by forcing different views to the table to discuss and compromise. Social media is silences those who even suggest that path - making violence inevitable.

Compromise has become the eighth deadly sin.

Re: The Rise of the “Liberaltarian”

#102

Post by thomasahle »

Lazare wrote: post #3

> So their overall approach is unique: Let the markets operate how they should and redistribute income after the fact. Some people have called this new type of political animal the “liberaltarian.” That is, of course, the model that Nordic social democracies have followed for many years now. Denmark is by many measures significantly more free-market than the US; note their absence of minimum wage, mostly privatised f…

> Letting the markets be relatively free to generate money, capturing it via efficient flat taxes (first and foremost, a consumption tax)

Danish income tax is certainly progressive rather than flat [1]. That's important for keeping inequality low, which again promotes social mobility and trust--crucial for an efficient free market.

[1]: https://skat.dk/skat.aspx?oid=2244281

Re: The Rise of the “Liberaltarian”

#103

Post by zozbot234 »

leereeves wrote: post #96
zozbot234 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what we're seeing is that political activism on social media skews to the left. Left-wing politics has always been more activism-minded and right-wing activism has always tended to the extreme, so this is not exactly news. What's news is that social media platforms like Twitter (and even Facebook, due to "real names" and a focus on close social relationships) are more favorable to mindless activism than to ca…

That doesn't explain events like Apple, Google, Visa, and Mastercard all banning Gab. Reportedly, Visa and Mastercard even refuse to do business with Gab's founder's family. Things like that aren't being driven by grassroots activism. These are decisions made by billionaires.

Gab literally went out of their way to market their service and platform towards the most disreputable. I'm not saying that what happened to them was acceptable, but there's a reason why it's hard to make people care about this stuff. And if nobody cares, it doesn't take much of a "movement" for activists to get their way.

Re: The Rise of the “Liberaltarian”

#105

Post by mjburgess »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #79
mjburgess wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To have something taken which you owe is not an infringement on freedom. "What we owe to others" is not settled by the question of freedom, and therefore it is perfectly logically consistent to be a libertarian proponent of redistribution.

You don't "owe to others". This kind of entitlement is a fallacy.

Which "entitlement"? The one expressed in the idea that you owe nothing to others, or the one where others should expect something of you?

Why is one "entitlement" and not the other?

In either case, there is no logical fallacy present. And the question is independent to the question of freedom which is secondary to the question of moral constraint.

Ie., establishing what is moral in our interactions with others (murder, theft, etc.) is prior to the question of freedom -- freedom is whatever remains to be maximised when moral constraints are in place.

The cause of "freedom" is therefore often rather a meaningless one. Everyone is pro-freedom except the "freedom to do what is immoral". And so the question is only ever really, "what is moral?"

Ie., what we owe to others, and what they owe us supersedes any particular political programme.

Re: The Rise of the “Liberaltarian”

#106

Post by Kbelicius »

alxmng wrote: post #97
Kbelicius wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yep, there is indeed such a thing as left-libertarianism. Last time I checked, its proponents were trying pretty hard to argue that it's not an outright contradiction. How is it a contradiction?

Libertarianism is essentially built on a single ethic, the non-aggression principle, which is simply that interfering with someone’s property by force is wrong. And that property is what one mixes their labor with. In other words people own the fruits of their labor, and consequently voluntary exchange or gift is the only ethical way to acquire property. In simpler words, libertarians believe stealing is wrong and se…

It is only natural that the right and left contradict each other. Since NAP is totally dependent on how you define property and the first people called libertarians were anarchists and socialist it would be more apt to say that right libertarians are still trying to argue that it isn't an outright contradiction. I tough that there was something more to this "contradiction".

Re: The Rise of the “Liberaltarian”

#107

Post by luckylion »

unpolloloco wrote: post #83
luckylion wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> putting a lot of undue and costly burden on those who work, while not doing all that much for those whom we might want to benefit I suppose "all that much" is the key term. Is European style redistribution (aka a nice flat, utilities, TV and smartphone, clothing, health insurance, food and cash money to spend on whatever you please) not all that much? It's not like we're wasting 90% of taxes on administrative overh…

The thing is...we nearly have that dream already in many lcol areas. Take Cleveland, Detroit, or Pittsburgh for example. Wages at the low end are rising to the point where if you're making less than $13-14/hour, you're actively doing something wrong. $800/month for a 2 bed apartment in an ok location (or a 1 bed in a good location), cheap groceries, a not great but passable public transportation system. If you ignore…

> If you ignore healthcare(!), you can actually live on that pretty well and put some cash away for emergencies.

For sure. I didn't understand the comment I replied to to mean those who work though. That (including healthcare) is what you have in Europe if you don't work at all.

I wasn't saying that tax money is wasted, quite the opposite, I was saying that most of the money is not in overhead, that is, it's reaching its intended recipients. As for cutting the defense budget in the US, I'm torn. On the one hand: easy savings. On the other hand: a lot of the US' economic position in the world depends on being a/the super power. I don't know how much and how large the military edge has to be, so it may be possible to cut the spending by half and not lose a lot in economic advantages, but it may also be much closer coupled.

Re: The Rise of the “Liberaltarian”

#108

Post by leereeves »

zozbot234 wrote: post #103
leereeves wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't explain events like Apple, Google, Visa, and Mastercard all banning Gab. Reportedly, Visa and Mastercard even refuse to do business with Gab's founder's family. Things like that aren't being driven by grassroots activism. These are decisions made by billionaires.

Gab literally went out of their way to market their service and platform towards the most disreputable. I'm not saying that what happened to them was acceptable, but there's a reason why it's hard to make people care about this stuff. And if nobody cares, it doesn't take much of a "movement" for activists to get their way.

That's far from the only example of conservatives banned by Visa and Mastercard, and there are plenty of people who care, they've just been disenfranchised. That you think nobody cares indicates the extent to which they already control the flow of information.

Re: The Rise of the “Liberaltarian”

#109

Post by DavidVoid »

Lazare wrote: post #3

> So their overall approach is unique: Let the markets operate how they should and redistribute income after the fact. Some people have called this new type of political animal the “liberaltarian.” That is, of course, the model that Nordic social democracies have followed for many years now. Denmark is by many measures significantly more free-market than the US; note their absence of minimum wage, mostly privatised f…

Here's another relevant comparison between Nordic countries and the U.S.

  Country | Labor union density
  Sweden  | 66.1%
  Norway  | 52.5%
  Denmark | 67.2%
  Finland | 66.4%
  Iceland | 90.4%
  U.S.A.  | 10.3%
Legally mandated minimum wages are needed in the U.S. due to the lack of strong unions.

Re: The Rise of the “Liberaltarian”

#110

Post by zozbot234 »

luckylion wrote: post #107
unpolloloco wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is...we nearly have that dream already in many lcol areas. Take Cleveland, Detroit, or Pittsburgh for example. Wages at the low end are rising to the point where if you're making less than $13-14/hour, you're actively doing something wrong. $800/month for a 2 bed apartment in an ok location (or a 1 bed in a good location), cheap groceries, a not great but passable public transportation system. If you ignore…

> If you ignore healthcare(!), you can actually live on that pretty well and put some cash away for emergencies. For sure. I didn't understand the comment I replied to to mean those who work though. That (including healthcare) is what you have in Europe if you don't work at all. I wasn't saying that tax money is wasted, quite the opposite, I was saying that most of the money is not in overhead, that is, it's reaching…

> That (including healthcare) is what you have in Europe if you don't work at all.

I assume that this refers to unemployment insurance, which is often provided for a limited time, and/or requires you to be actively looking for work. One of the issues with the European model of social insurance is precisely that those who are working at the low-end of the labor market are not included in this kind of redistribution. Enforced unionization and strict labor regulations are then used to make up for this, but that means losing flexibility precisely where it's most needed. You can witness the outcome in places like France, where the poorest and most vulnerable are locked out of the labor market altogether leading to huge society-wide issues.

> As for cutting the defense budget in the US, I'm torn.

You could cut a lot of the defense budget in the US if the US's allies started paying their fair share. Of course, paying for US allies' defense comes with foreign policy advantages for the US so perhaps this arrangement is also "fair" in a way.

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