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The Rise of the “Liberaltarian”

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Re: The Rise of the “Liberaltarian”

#31

Post by imafish »

zozbot234 wrote: post #25
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…

European-style redistribution is extremely costly for what it achieves. It means that the government has to take or transfer a sizeable fraction of GDP via taxation, while also burdening the economy as a whole with excess regulation (e.g. the firm size regulations that were mentioned elsewhere in the comments, and many others). It would be very surprising if there was no way of achieving comparable results with less…

It will be very surprising if there is a way to achieve comparable results with significantly less burden on others. European countries have looked for it for 40 years now.

Re: The Rise of the “Liberaltarian”

#32

Post by Kbelicius »

unishark wrote: post #27
zozbot234 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Redistribution is about giving everyone a stake in upholding a free society for everyone else. That's what actually makes for "freedom, as much as possible". The point is that we're doing it in almost the worst possible way; 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. UBI or NIT would be a vast improvement on what most developed co…

> Redistribution is about giving everyone a stake in upholding a free society for everyone else. That's what actually makes for "freedom, as much as possible". I think it's arguments like these (going back to conflict with socialists over such definitions) which lead to libertarians claiming they do not base their philosophy on "freedom" but rather "liberty". Which they more narrowly define as something like the free…

Then what do libertarians think that freedom means in this context? Because in this context it certainly doesn't mean "do whatever the hell you want no matter who it hurts" as you put it.

Re: The Rise of the “Liberaltarian”

#33

Post by paganel »

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…

Scaling what Denmark is doing for its population of ~5 million to the 300+ million people of the US is way harder than it looks at a first sight. To say nothing of the way more diverse human capital of the US.

Re: The Rise of the “Liberaltarian”

#35

Post by 0xy »

omosubi wrote: post #14

It's been odd to see my own reaction and that of my friends to the move of the left towards solely social justice issues in the last few weeks. I've been talking to friends and we all dislike the inane focus on "white fragility", wokeness and performative activism in the form of posting your reading on Instagram. The democratic party's lack of interest in doing anything meaningful is pushing people away - Hopefully l…

If I was voting on social justice lines, I don't think I'd be voting for the party behind the 1994 Crime Bill, massive surveillance expansions and the sale of military weapons and vehicles to police forces [1] [2] [3] [4].

[1] https://www.marketplace.org/2020/06/12/police-departments-10...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_on_mass_surveilla...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violent_Crime_Control_and_Law_...

[4] https://www.insidesources.com/joe-bidens-record-on-privacy-m...

Re: The Rise of the “Liberaltarian”

#37

Post by nickpp »

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.

Re: The Rise of the “Liberaltarian”

#38

Post by amINeolib »

My relationship with politics and economics is complicated like it should be.

I "stay in the center of the circle" as Tao Te Ching advises, but I also cannot deny the superiority of the Free Market. (Not to be confused with whatever the United States does for healthcare).

We have countless examples of competitive markets performing best, and a handful of government controlled markets that are horrible (healthcare, education, real estate, banking)

Some people call this inevitable in capitalism, that government will be used to create inequality. But at least this is not intended, whereas other economic policies make this a feature.

Anyway, can't vote for Republicans, they like big government which seems like an obvious bad idea.

Re: The Rise of the “Liberaltarian”

#39

Post by take_a_breath »

paganel wrote: post #33
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…

Scaling what Denmark is doing for its population of ~5 million to the 300+ million people of the US is way harder than it looks at a first sight. To say nothing of the way more diverse human capital of the US.

==To say nothing of the way more diverse human capital of the US.==

It actually sounds like there is something you want to say about human capital diversity. Why not say it?

Re: The Rise of the “Liberaltarian”

#40

Post by kijin »

zozbot234 wrote: post #7

This is by no means a new political stance: liberaltarians used to be known as "left-wing libertarians" or, somewhat jocularly, "bleeding-heart libertarians" but the gist was pretty much the same.

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.
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