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Comment by bradleyjg | Hacker News Reader

I could live with the libertarian ideal of “regulation” via consequences imposed by market forces and I could live with the New Left ideal of regulation via, well, regulation. But no consequences and no regulations is insane.

Our entire economy is like a mining company that steadily mines a gold seam, paying out healthy dividends and executive bonuses all the while and then as soon as the seam is mined out declares bankruptcy leaving toxic waste cleanup and employee pensions for the government to take care of. We don’t just allow ourselves to be exploited by sociopaths, we actively seek it out.

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Privatize profits and socialize costs

I think what you're seeing is the implementation of the libertarian ideal. No regulation when companies are doing well, but no stomach to suffer losses when they aren't.

Why would this be anyone’s ideal? You are not being charitable towards libertarians.

I'm not saying what's happening is the libertarian ideal, I'm saying what's happening is what happens when the libertarian ideal is implemented. A libertarian may want to not bail out big businesses when times are bad - they may truly believe that ideally you just let the bad businesses fail and the market is stronger for it. The problem is that in reality, you're talking about letting voters take a huge amount of pain a few months before an election. So as a result you end up in a situation where you can have a laissez faire approach to regulations when the economy is booming, but you can't actually allow all the people who vote for you to lose their jobs.

That's fair but also fair to consider what practically happens when big government philosophy is implemented.

People get good quality healthcare and spend less doing it?

We could just study any other wealthy country, no?

> You are not being charitable towards libertarians.

Why would anyone, including other libertarians, be charitable toward them?

Then they're being treated exactly as they prefer--no charity all bootstraps baby! :P

Libertarians have no problem with voluntary charity, just with compulsory charity.

That's cronyism, and has no relation to Libertarianism whatsoever. Libertarians will never support government bailouts, as the only way they are possible is by taking money from someone more productive to give to someone less productive, backed by the threat of force. Nothing Libertarian about that.

Libertarianism is the free market version of Communism. Maybe it will be good if it reaches a pure implementation but in reality it has never been achieved and probably never will be.

If Libertarianism isn’t implemented fully then it will almost for sure devolve into cronyism. It can only work if there is no way to influence government or courts to do things your way. It also can’t really deal with things like pandemics or probably even war. In a pandemic you would have a lot of people die before the truly free market figures out which treatments work and which are scam.

In the US, it was the catastrophic failure of government that led to inadequate testing and fears of ventilator shortages. Businesses stepped up with tests that work and factories shifted production to ventilators and PPE to rapidly make up the shortfall.

Do you think business would have planned for this? I agree that government has failed but I doubt business would have done any better. Who would pay for stockpiling supplies?

The ones that did plan for this would have made an obscene profit, so that would lead me to believe that some businesses would indeed plan for this. But I'll admit I have no way of knowing.

It’s hard to prepare for a black swan event. Most likely you will run out of money before the event. As a company it would be irresponsible to bet on an event that may happen or may not happen for a very long time.

So Libertarianism cannot exist in a pluralist democracy?

Bailouts aren't Libertarian. That's what I'm saying.

Bailouts are effectively a constant in pluralist democracies. That's what I'm saying.

I would retort that real libertarians would be very much in favor of consequences, but of course that would be to fall victim to the No True Scotsman fallacy. I think the best we can say in the current environment is that libertarianism is a philosophy that a large number of elected officials promote for the purposes of getting votes, but also a philosophy that most don't really have the stomach for when the excrement hits the fan. Maybe there really are no libertarians in foxholes?

If you look at the actions of the elected officials you will see a pattern.

libertarianism for YOU

socialism for ME

No elected official is libertarian. So I don't know why you would think that.

What we have is, those in power take from those that aren't.

What you've described is the antithesis of libertarianism.

Nothing in modern US politics comes even close to libertarianism. Libertarianism opposes all regulation of business unless it is in concert with the non-aggression principle (i.e. don't kill, steal, commit fraud, etc.).

Libertarian thinking on antitrust is that it's unnecessary because there is no such thing as a natural monopoly; monopolies are the result of government regulation. Eliminate the regulations that privilege certain businesses over others, and competition will ensure an efficient market.

In reality what we have in the US is a political class which constantly molds regulation to further benefit the shareholders of big businesses. Sometimes they remove regulations to this end, but much more frequently they create or alter them. There's no philosophical bent behind this at all, it's just the strong using government as a tool to oppress the weak (exactly what libertarianism warns us about).

Nobody has ever pandered to libertarians when trying to justify their policies, so I have no idea why people like to blame them.

To me a sign that the libertarians are on to something is that no government has ever dared to try it. Governments are comprised of powerful people and if they did they would lose all that power...

> In reality what we have in the US is a political class which constantly molds regulation to further benefit the shareholders of big businesses.

The political class you are talking about serves specific masters. They also mold ideological discourse which is where modern libertarianism comes from in the first place. Go check who's funding all of these libertarian speakers and institutes.

So libertarian are in power? Libertarians are non-interventionists, so clearly not effecting foreign policy. Against gov spending and gov debt, clearly not winning there. We are making progress on civil rights, gay marriage, ending the drug war.

The size and scope of government continues to increase every year, so I don't see how anyone could call that libertarian.

The role of modern libertarians is not to hold power. It is to foment confusion and conflict around any initiatives that would limit the power of private capital (e.g., anything that would address the climate crisis in a meaningful way).

Libertarians get picked on for being a constant "other". Grassroots blue and red teams each start with a desire for freedom, but are then led by the professional politicians into supporting authoritarian policies to attack the other team and benefit those politicians' true employers. Libertarians don't subscribe to the ensuing narratives, thereby appearing directly opposed to each of the two popular teams.

Furthermore, libertarianism ends up being quite left-brained which makes for a quick short circuit to authoritarianism via logical contradiction. The Party entertains these to gain sponsors the same way the reds and blues do, and there is little doubt it would take on the same corrupt role as the other teams if given a whiff of power.

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