[Jimoslimos]

If libertarians want to argue that everybody should take personal responsibility for their own healthcare and the burden shouldn't be carried by the state - I disagree - but can understand the point.

If they want to make the case that universities shouldn't be funded out of the pulic purse - again I disagree - but can see the principle behind the argument.

However in order for any of these to make sense then surely you need to assume that everybody has had equal opportunities in life - not so if you remove free healthcare for children and privatise education fully.

It creates a class system whereby your education/healthcare from a young age is determined by that of your parents.

I say this as a healthy unmarried childless male

[_Gawd_]

Originally Posted by Endless Nameless

How much money would actually be necessary? If a specific constituency was picked, with volunteers given quotas about going from door-to-door to tell people about a candidate, and with some money pooled together for flyers, pamphlets and election posters I'm sure getting one candidate elected would be viable.

At least for a first election to get the party off the ground.

Well you'd have to pick certain talking points relevant to that particular community. While we could get a person elected in Dublin on marijuana legalisation, it would be difficult to convince farmers that their welfare money was going to dry up.

[Blowfish]

Originally Posted by RichieC

So what happens when all the wealth concentrates and our entire lives are dictated by a single mega corporation, or two?

In order to maintain their position, they'd have to produce the best quality goods/services at the lowest price points.

If they weren't and were attempting to buy out all of their competition, naturally enough they'd fail.

Originally Posted by Jimoslimos

It creates a class system whereby your education/healthcare from a young age is determined by that of your parents.

Only if you assume that everything needs to be paid for up front.

[Dirk Gently]

Originally Posted by Permabear

I'm just illustrating how your criticisms of libertarianism require you to resort to hypocrisy and double standards. While warning ominously about the dangers of monopolies, you refuse to acknowledge that the biggest monopolists in existence are governments. If you were actually consistent in your condemnation of monopolies, you'd want to protect us from the state, not from libertarianism.



I know a good way of preserving this elite. How about government-sponsored cronyism?

Actually I want a state to regulate and actively break up monopolies, without that I think we end up with too much power and wealth concentrated in too few institutions. Concentrated wealth is bad for the economy.

Ironically I think I'm more libertarian than you and the other 5 internet libertarians, in that when I follow the logic through I can't help but come to the conclusion that your ideology will eventually create a super state to protect those with concentrated wealth from the rest of society which is now void of any safety nets to pacify them. Society exists whether libertarians chose to acknowledge it or not. I assume libertarians will maintain a police and legal system to protect private property rights? I don't see that police force being anything but colossal considering the entirely predictable trajectory of society v's those accumulating wealth unregulated.

Just as communism was suppose to wither away the state, libertarianism will also fail to whither the state as it will need it to impose the ideology.

[_Gawd_]

Originally Posted by Dirk Gently

Actually I want a state to regulate and actively break up monopolies, without that I think we end up with too much power and wealth concentrated in too few institutions. Concentrated wealth is bad for the economy.

Ironically I think I'm more libertarian than you and the other 5 internet libertarians, in that when I follow the logic through I can't help but come to the conclusion that your ideology will eventually create a super state to protect those with concentrated wealth from the rest of society which is now void of any safety nets to pacify them. Society exists whether libertarians chose to acknowledge it or not. I assume libertarians will maintain a police and legal system to protect private property rights? I don't see that police force being anything but colossal considering the entirely predictable trajectory of society v's those accumulating wealth unregulated.

Just as communism was suppose to wither away the state, libertarianism will also fail to whither the state as it will need it to impose the ideology.

Libertarians differ on how far it should be pushed.

Milton Friedman was a Libertarian but he argued the need for a state monopoly on money (I believe). The Libertarian Party advocates military, courts and police ONLY.

On the more consistent end of Libertarianism, you have Murray Rothbard that said the State is the State and that ALL should be abolished. I'm a Rothbardian in every sense. It's just taking libertarianism to it's logical conclusion. I do admire Friedman though - I loved his lectures.

[Jimoslimos]

Originally Posted by _Gawd_

Now, add in medicine. Most medicine is by prescription only (this is government intervention). You can't get medicine without paying the doctor (someone is paying him either you or the taxpayer). In a libertarian society, there would be no prescriptions because you could buy anything over the counter. So say I have the same complaint as you. I simply cut out all the GP expenses and go straight to buy the appropriate medicine for myself that will help me.

Now, with no government, doctors don't share the money...they fight each other driving down prices. REAL competition in healthcare. We are free to cut deals with doctors and even buy insurance from the deregulated market.

Now I don't know about anyone else, but I'm happy enough with the current system of doctors/pharmacists taking responsibility for the well-being of their patients (not customers).

[_Gawd_]

Originally Posted by Jimoslimos

Now I don't know about anyone else, but I'm happy enough with the current system of doctors/pharmacists taking responsibility for the well-being of their patients (not customers).

Jim, you shouldn't be happy...it's extraordinarily expensive. Government pushed prices UP, private enterprise pushed prices DOWN. Let people have some responsibility for themselves. We shouldn't bow down to a couple of incompetents that want to do harm to themselves.

[karma_]

Originally Posted by _Gawd_

Jim, you shouldn't be happy...it's extraordinarily expensive. Government pushed prices UP, private enterprise pushed prices DOWN. Let people have some responsibility for themselves. We shouldn't bow down to a couple of incompetents that want to do harm to themselves.

How do you expect any of us to take the libertarian argument seriously, when you genuinely advocate nonsense such as that? What you propose for healthcare is so utterly absurd it's almost Monty Pythonesque.

[Dirk Gently]

Originally Posted by _Gawd_

Libertarians differ on how far it should be pushed.

I noticed

[Endless Nameless]

Originally Posted by _Gawd_

Well you'd have to pick certain talking points relevant to that particular community. While we could get a person elected in Dublin on marijuana legalisation, it would be difficult to convince farmers that their welfare money was going to dry up.

Well yeah, it wouldn't be too bright to pick a rural, socially-conservative area.

But the situation doesn't seem as impossible as your first post painted it to be.

[Technique]

While full scale Libertarianism has never been tried, the evidence is there to prove that the more free an economy is, the more well off the citizens of that country are:

http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking

I'd rather be living in a country at the top of that list than at the bottom.

Whatever about full scale Libertarianism, I think that this country would be a better place if we tackled issues and problems from a Libertarian point of view.

[Permabear]

Originally Posted by Jimoslimos

It creates a class system whereby your education/healthcare from a young age is determined by that of your parents.

We effectively already have such a system; it's just not openly acknowledged.

The better hospitals and schools are located in wealthier areas. Private health insurance has suffered so much government intervention, levies, etc., that only middle-class people can afford it. That leaves the most vulnerable patients languishing on long waiting lists, at the mercy of the state and the unions.

PISA 2009 revealed that 23 percent of Irish teenage boys are functionally illiterate. Such children are disproportionately located in areas devastated by unemployment and multi-generational welfare dependency — in other words, they are the victims of government-created problems. How many young people from such areas go to Trinity? Not very many. "Free fees" are effectively a subsidy for the middle-classes.

[Endless Nameless]

Originally Posted by karma_

How do you expect any of us to take the libertarian argument seriously, when you genuinely advocate nonsense such as that? What you propose for healthcare is so utterly absurd it's almost Monty Pythonesque.

The Flying Circus is my favourite tv show but I fail to see how they would make a sketch making fun of people who don't want excessive red tape and Government meddling in their healthcare and want to be able to acquire it more easily and at more affordable prices.

[Permabear]

Originally Posted by Dirk Gently

Actually I want a state to regulate and actively break up monopolies, without that I think we end up with too much power and wealth concentrated in too few institutions.

You argue that we need a large government to regulate monopolies, even though, historically speaking, powerful governments have created way more monopolies than they have ever broken up?

You really can't see the contradiction in this argument?

[Channel Zero]

Originally Posted by _Gawd_

The free market doesn't exist. A lot of people disregard libertarianism because they think everything would continue the way they are today and that everything would remain expensive. If you couldn't work, you'd be foooked without government but that's not the case in the free market.

Leaving everything to the free market and destroying state involvement is obviously complete and utter lunacy. We've seen what happened under the tutelage of your compadre Mr Greenspan. And these types are of course still attempting to grasp the reigns of power by various means.

Complete deregulation/privatisation of healthcare and pharma? A recipe for disaster. It's like leaving the foxes to guard the henhouse.

Thanks but no thanks. I'd run down O'Connell St. naked myself if it means i don't get you guys coming door-to-door.