The Libertarian Party
 

Warning: Our Non-US-resident members may be less interested in this. Maybe not.

So, having recently turned 18, I felt compelled to seek a political party suiting my views...

Ok, enough crap. I stumbled onto a link to the libertarian party homepage (http://www.lp.org) through some decidedly geeky page. I'll think of it later.

Anyway, the point is that I almost completely agree with the Libertarian stance on how to run the United States.

Here's the basic idea summed up:

Government is inefficient, and gets corrupted due to it's broad hand, so the less, the better.

I think the US government does a piss-poor job at just about everything it does. Schooling, welfare, law enforcement, etc.

I'll sum each point up, but go to http://www.lp.org/issues/ for a full rundown:

• Corruption:
  Polititians shouldn't have laws specifically protecting themselves, repeal them.
• Crime & Violence:
  Force criminals to pay restitution in addition to any other sentence; Legalize drugs; Enforce jail sentences; Protect the Right to Self-Defense (guns)
• Drug Prohibition:
  Legalize drugs to reduce crime; This will cause drug problems to go down; Alcohol prohibition didn't work, neither does drug prohibition
• Economy & Employment:
  No more subsidies to foreign nations, foreign companies, and foreign citizens; Remove double taxation of corporate profits; Less regulation; End all domestic subsidy programs, trade barriers and tariffs
• Education:
  Privatize schools to prevent the "lock-in" to a bad school; Give tax credits (or such) to allow the choosing of schools; Give financial incentives to businesses/individuals to help fund schools
• Environment:
  Our government is the biggest polluter which will cease with privatization of certain things
• Family Budgets:
  Less taxes means more money for the family
• Foreign Policy:
  No more interference in the rest of the world; Withdraw troops; Reduce/eliminate foreign aid, it prevents countries from developing
• Freedom Of Speech:
  Porn is free speech; Boards (like this one!) are just as deserving of free speech as printing presses or speaking halls; electronic newspapers are valid; Censorship is bad
• Gun Laws:
  Guns are not the problem; Guns are used successfully in self-defense; Gun control only hurts the honest
• Health Care:
  This one's a little big. Follow the link.
• Internet:
  The Internet is protected under the first amendment.
• Immigration:
  Open immigration, but do not allow immigrants or descendants access to government social services.
• National Defense:
  Stop protecting well-off countries like Germany and Japan, and bring troops home. Cut military spending, redirect it to actual defense needs (missile defense, for example).
• Poverty & Welfare:
  Too big to explain quickly, follow link.
• Privacy:
  Encryption A-OK, courts may not force encryption keys, etc.
• Social Security:
  Social security is basically a failed system, see link.
• Taxes:
  The government is inefficient, cut taxes and the total cost goes down by privatizing parts of the government.
• Trade:
  Free trade. See link for more.

The point of this thread is to discuss the views of the libertarian party. Do you think these principals would work? If not, why not?

Join the good fight. I am a libetarian, and (even though they are extreme sometimes) they are very good. What was a selling point was the fact that they believe in freedom of the internet. I am kinda the same way, however, I do believe that it is a parent's duty to censor content for any child under the age of 16. We should not be relying on our government for censorship (cause then they become Nazis). I think you should join it and vote who you think will do the job (and do not vote your party unless you think the canadate can handle the job). That is Democracy at its best and they can't do anything about that.

-Duane

I am a libertarian at heart; as I believe in the potential of man to accomplish and conquer all things- and the smallest governments possible so that man may have the breadth to accomplish these things.

That said, I am a registered republican because I am also a realist: The constitution of America is, by its very construction biased towards a two party system. As it is, there are two parties who cater to very broad spectrums of people. And currently, with the membership of the Democrat party as it is, there is simply no room for the political compass to veer any more towards smaller government.

To this end I vote Republican to steer the country towards a climate where the the Libertarians are the right party and the Republicans are the lefter of the two. A similar mechanic has happened before - the first and only American third party candidate to ever be elected was Abraham Lincoln. When the Republicans were the Third Party.

I applaud your free-thinking, and please vote your conscious. Just be aware that in America, a vote for the third party is nearly always a protest vote.

"libertarian", the word, describes about as far as my actual political leanings really go. i like quite a few of that party's proposed policies (certainly more than i do of the two major ones), and i would probably vote for them, was i american (bear in mind i know very few other american parties).

as for protest votes, if you're going to protest anything, protest the fact that the two major parties have policies that differ by a hair's breadth.

edit: note that although i think that this party is a good party for the US, they have several policies that wouldn't work in the UK - just as you can't carry our parties' policies over to american society.

I think they're over simplifying and completely forgetting that there are other powers that can be just as oppressive as the state, like corporations, a lot of the limitations on free speech in this board aren't caused by state laws but by Time-Warner's commercial interests.

Also corruption is by no means limited to the state (remember Enron?) and in countries where state power is practically non existing corruption definitely doesn't disappear.

Corruption can only be reduced by transparency, public control, and at the moment i'd say that can only be achieved by getting a balance of power and not letting one sector (state or economy) control everything.

In theory of course all power lies with the people... ahem...

PS What is the Libertarian Party's position on DMCA and TCPA?

gaekwad2:
I'd imagine the Libertarian party would be against the DMCA (free speech and all), though I have not seen any official statements about it.

However, I'd think they have no position on the TCPA because it is not associated with the government.

While corruption is not limited to the state, it is surly most rampant in the state, and is the only group that can directly impose laws.

So while Time Warner may be able to "censor" an artist by not carrying him/her/them, the artist is free to seek any other means of distrobution. This is not so with Governmental censorship.


To Xerxes: I understand your position completely, but I wonder how many Americans that would agree with the Libertarian stance have simply never heard of it. So I'm not sure what I'm going to do myself. I'll probably donate some money to them, because I think it's a worthy cause, but I may continue to vote republican in most cases.

Holy Flying fuck, thought it couldn't get any worse than the republicans...

Cutting foreign aid eh? the US only gives bloody point one (0.1) percent of BNP in foreign aid... if anything it should be raised.

Legalize drugs? interresting suggestion, i would love to see this done, to see how it works, but i seriously have my doubt's if it would work though...

Enviromental policy.... hah, that one is outright rediculous...

Foreign policy... hmmm if the alternative is the unilateral policy most republican administrations have followed, then this is a better alternative by far, other than that see point 1

Welfare system, yeah, go ahead make even more people starve in the richest country in the world, way to go :up:

Gun laws.... don't think i need to say what i think about that issue

Free trade, now this one is interresting, this could maybe, just maybe work out very well, for both poor 3rd world countries and america...

well, just my opninion anyways...

According to the view of the Libertarians, government welfare doesn't work, as it tends to prevent those on it from getting another job. They feel that private charity could do a much better job, and would establish a one-to-one tax cut for donations to those types of charity.

This is the same idea with foreign aid. Sending food to a country can, and does, prevent the coutry from developing food production of it's own.

I guess this is a fundamental difference from your view.

You are in the country with the world record for the highest income tax.

While i do not agree or believe in this - what so ever - it is an arguable point. But i've never seen a country without a welfare system, where it works. i firmly believe that the US would turn into another South Africa if this policy was instated...

This however is not, if you don't like to send food to starving people, then atleast you could found education, fight the AIDS epidemic, educate farmers, found development of irrigation. found development of infrastrucure, relieve 3rd world debt... etc etc etc, in other words found stuff that get's the countries running in the long run...

Jup, you sure is right about that :D, luckely the welfare system here enjoys broad support, even from the most right winged parties. So i don't have to fear Denmark turning into another US for a long time to come.

I like most of their points, especially that bit about foreign aid. It is my beleif that all us powerful and rich countries giving out lots of aid causes more problems than it solves.

There would be welfare systems, but they wouldn't be government controlled. You could donate to these charities and get the exact same amount deducted from your taxes. It's not like there wouldn't be welfare.

This is one of the areas where it's hard to debate, I don't think either of us have any real idea of economic impact that foriegn aid causes. Personally, I find this point hard to debate due to my lack of knowledge in it.

Hah. Yeah, Denmark is definately politically not even in the same arena. Something completely different, and that's fine with me. I don't have to agree with it. If it works, hey, that's great. :D

yeah....hmmmm..... we're never going to agree anyway, but i'd still say that something like this wen't through, crime rates would skyrocket and become more violent. Because people would get desperate. Yeah sure, people would donate and people would maybe get food and blankets, but they would have to rob stores to pay the rent (it's not fun living in a shelter). Cause it's impossible to have 100% employment. and that's a well known fact. Especially since the free trade policy would move a lot of non academic industry jobs to countries where sallaries a lower, and there's no workers unions.



ok, so all the relieve organisations working in Africa has less idea what they're doing, than a party that wants the money to stay in the citizens pockets? (not trying to bash you as a person, just making a point)

Most of my ideals lean towards the Libertarian stance, but as in many things, the party falls short on many issues and a lot of people affiliated with the Libertarian Party are just kooks.

I like the libertarian Party.

Everything I had to say has already been said by zxzzxxyyzzxxq so I'll just avoid talking.

I am a registered Libertarian ( I think any and all business men should ) however, my very first election ( a state one here in CA where it was the recall/voting for the Governator ) I voted Republican. Why? Cause I thought we needed some one different in politics. I think Arnold was a good choice and some of his views were in line with the Libertarian. Now, I have friends who saw those elections and are now of age to vote, and they don't want to vote. I feel sorry for this country and it is sad when most of my friends think that it is stupid to vote (of course they haven't started working until now and they pay taxes now. I just tell them that when they vote, they tell the country how to spend the money and who they want to spend it. I haven't even gotten a response back).

-Duane

The party goes too far or not far enough?

Sure, it's impossible to have 100% employment. People wouldn't get desperate, because there would be enough charities to provide for those who needed welfare-type support. The whole point of the party is that government is inefficient, and won't do any job very well, because it's not subject to competition. Yes, even charities compete. They compete for donations.

Furthermore, free immigration would, possibly, in the short term, lower the availability of jobs, but it would balance out in the long run.

The current government apparently isn't doing a very good job with welfare anyway. See "teh Nightwing"'s story, somewhere on the forums.

Furthermore, since a high percentage of crime is drug-related, crime rates would fall a huge amount, and since the huge expendatures of resources on the "war against drugs", they could be spent toward "real" policing.

I didn't say that, but are you part of the relief organizations in Africa? Furthermore, just because someone is doing something, it doesn't mean it's the correct action to do. There are plenty of stupid/ignorant/crazy people in the world that perform irrational, damaging actions in the guise of "helping".

By the way, here's a nice little quiz:

http://www.lp.org/quiz/

The quiz just reminds me of the traditional political quizzes in + shapes. I think the quiz proves nothing. look, zyx, you're not going to prove to ert that he's wrong, and he won't pull you to his side either.

meh. I guess I should take a side.

uuuhh..

I agree with most of what the Libertarian party stands for, and have considered myself a libertarian since I first heard of them which was ~2 years ago.

I think so too. Just kinda intresting.

well, this comes back to the point i made in the edit of my original post. you'd never get americans to believe a political system like that in denmark would help them, and vice versa - it's not that one is intrinsically better than the other absolutely (you could argue their relative merits all day, and get absolutely nowhere), they're just different approaches.

very true Zootm, if you look from an economic perspective they have both been quite succesfull (just take a look at the top ten countries with the higest gdp per capita) they both have their merrits.

As a human being i could just never get myself to support a system like the US, I find it very frightning and inhumane (no offence guys, i just really do)

And, Well, If you're interrested I made a list similar to zxxxzxzxzzxzxzxxzzz's with the party im an active member of, the radical left (no - it's a center party, name is from the old days....)

here

And as a rational human being (:p) I could never support a system like Denmark - it stifles the correct flow of capital, prohibits investment, and decreases the entire population's real income- which in turn stifles job markets, and on and on.

That said, I won't say anything further since your government was rational enough to join the coalition of the willing, in defiance of the crooked countries to the south.

Want me to bomb you with statistics that the Scandinavian countries are doing just aswell, on those issues? :) we do have the 6th highest GDP per capita in the world...

Damn, im going to hear for that until the day i leave this place :p

Heh, for once I'm proud of my government because it didn't join the coalition of killing. :p

Politics are like a McDonald's commercial.

Think about it.
Presentation vs. implementation.

Xerxes summed up my personal views quite nicely. (thank you)

According to the CIA World Factbook:

1. Luxembourg
   $ 48,900
2. United States
   $ 36,300
3. Bermuda
   $ 35,200
4. Cayman Islands
   $ 35,000
5. San Marino
   $ 34,600
6. Norway
   $ 33,000
7. Switzerland
   $ 32,000
8. Iceland
   $ 30,200
9. Canada
   $ 29,300
10. Ireland
    $ 29,300
11. Belgium
    $ 29,200
12. Denmark
    $ 28,900
13. Japan
    $ 28,700
14. Aruba
    $ 28,000
15. Austria
    $ 27,900

I can hear it now:

"Ah-ha! The US doesn't have the highest GDP in the world!"

Well, you'd be right if you said that, but these figures don't account for cross-border workers, which account for 30% of Luxembourg's workforce. I don't know what the US's figure on that is, but I'd imagine it's quite low. So if you reduce it down by that, it becomes only 34,230.

Anyway, it's still clear that Denmark is doing well despite it's socialist measures, and if it can continue to do so, more power to it.

and now the same statistics for debt and trade deficite please :D

Is there a nice overview sheet of the libertarian views somewhere?

That would make it easier to comment.

well, i was going from the undp numbers... cause the WF number's doesn't include PPP

I was going to throw in my two cents, But I just realised that it's pointless. so...yeah.

I am a Libertarian at heart but I am registered as an independent and I usually vote republican.

I do not think that some of the more dangerous drugs should be legalized and I do not think their environmental protection policies are extensive enough. Besides that I agree with most of what they say.

“Cutting foreign aid eh? the US only gives bloody point one (0.1) percent of BNP in foreign aid... if anything it should be raised.

Why should we help out other countries? Giving Egypt two billion every year is a joke.

Legalize drugs? interresting suggestion, i would love to see this done, to see how it works, but i seriously have my doubt's if it would work though...

Anything is better than out current system.

”Welfare system, yeah, go ahead make even more people starve in the richest country in the world, way to go ”

More than half of the federal budget that is put aside for welfare is wasted and squandered. I believe children should receive help but why should a drugy receive a check every month?

”Gun laws.... don't think i need to say what i think about that issue”

I am assuming you are against it. Why? Has gun control EVER worked?

I look at the facts and I make an opinion off of them. In politics facts and numbers are the only true ways of seeing how successful something is or if something needs to be cut off from the budget. Ideals, morality, and even common sense are nowhere near as reliable as facts. Look at the subject of gun control, people who actually are in the field and know the facts are strongly opposed to gun control where as idealist left wingers support gun control.

Also the Libertarian party cannot be looked at with a right-left mentality. It needs to be looked at with a right-left and a authoritarian-anarchist mentality.

i tend to be less radical on social issues such as drug legalization... making something legal doesn't fix the problem, it would just fix the numbers...

however for economic issues, a GREAT and HILARIOUS article explaining the foolishness of financial aide is explained here.
http://www.libertyhaven.com/politics...ywelfare.shtml

i definitely suggest the read. it's not too long.

Cause you're the richest country in the world, if being humanitarian isn't good enough for you, then if we don't do something about 3rd world poverty it's going to get back on us - September 11th proved that in the clearest way possible.

And, well, if giving Egypt two billion a year is rediculus, why not give it to someone else instead?

if you think the money is being spend the wrong way, then why not support a reform of the system?



well, again, you seem cynical, so ill go for the cynical approach. If the poorer gets poor, the poorer get's more desperate, crime is going to skyrocket, and you will not be safe in your own home anymore... unless you want to live like the rich in poor countries, fenced in, paying an armed execution squad to protect you.



that one is simple.... yes.

Besides I never understood why americans don't wonder about WHY they need a gun to feel safe instead... could it maybe have something to do with social security system?

But I thought we stuck our noses in other peoples businesses, and had too many hands in the pot. If what we give and what we do isn't appreciated, fuck em.
It certainly would be nice, but not all americans are as open minded as some. Most americans will vote the way the rest of the people in thier area is voting, without even thinking. It doesn't pay to think for yourself anymore.
This isn't Escape from LA. This is real life. And except for inner city area, most people are stand up citizens who aren't going to try to take whole states by force. Also, if "the richer get richer and the poorer get poorer", then how come it wasn't that way when the Constitution was first enacted in it's truest form (esentially the idea of Libretarians is to go back to the original constitution)? Why weren't there thousands left unemployed?

We don't need guns to feel safe unless we live in urban areas. We've always had guns, and the majority of people who own them do nothing illegal with them. Right, take away my rifle because some moron in San Fransisco blew away his neighbor. Right. O-kay. Who's crazy?


Edited for stupid paragraph/quoting errors, and now with added responces!

I'm not sure how much more compact you can get than my original post.

Fickle: Perhaps you would care to fix that post? I have a hard time understanding it.

ertmann: When did gun control work, exactly?

Gun control works in just about every civilized country. How many people get shot every year in the EU or Japan?

Hm, I can't believe I missed that..
Oh well, I guess it was late.

How many people get shot in Switzerland (where gun ownership per capita is actually higher than in the US)? How do you know that murder would go up in those countries if they had guns? Equating gun ownership to gun deaths is an over-simplification at best. It is true that gun deaths are higher in the US than other countries, however, it's not really a matter of gun control than it is a matter of failed social services.

According to the Department of Justice in the US, approximately 51% of murders are committed by black people (and 47% of victims are black), while accounting for only 12% of the population.

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/hmrt.htm

So whether it's a problem of poor inner city management, racist schools, racist workplaces, or whatever, one can easily see it's not simply a problem of 'gun control', which is an over-simplification and only truly hurts the honest.

removing guns from the US makes about as much sense as introducing them in the UK. it's a different culture.