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Comment by Traster | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

What you've described is the antithesis of libertarianism.

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.

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