Support Complete Libertarianism in Ireland?

mprgst78

@RockinRolla

I've been reading Rothbard's manifesto as you suggested. So far so good. He really takes the libertarian principles to their logical conclusion. Could be one of those books!

dpe

RockinRolla wrote: »

Free it up more - get rid of taxes, tariffs, government bailouts, subsidies to the wealthy, legislation and regulation, red-tape and licences, abolish barriers to entry, create competition and allow the market to work - this is the Free Market. And you can see it's work done throughout history in little batches. When government decided not to direct the economy, but instead to honour contracts, out grew the Hong Kong we see today. In Britain, the Libertarian ideology created the Industrial Revolution. There, in the 1700/1800's, we seen the greatest advances in medicine, technology and millions escaping poverty. For a Free Market system today - we can look at the black market, the greatest money making market around the globe. You believe Libertarianism is from another planet - far from the truth. All we wish is that the huge monstrous bureaucracy that has been allowed to form over the centuries, be rolled back to allow civilisation to succeed again. This is nothing new. We are not proposing a new system, nothing that has not already proved itself.

That's all well and good but you're being selective about the free market's benefits, while quietly ignoring the fact that it was the "free market", particularly in the form of laissez faire banking regulation and property speculation, that's got us in the mess we're in now. Capitalism is the "least worst" economic model, but don't present unfettered capitalism as a cure for all of mankind's ills, because it plainly isn't.

Capitalism also tends to fail the infrastructure test; take the example of transport. Europe generally has a better level of infrastructure than the US because governments subsidise for the common good; they don't always get it right, and they can be woefully inefficient in achieving their goals, but they eventually get done. In the US, the more market led approach struggles to develop national infrastructure except in the government-mandate of defence (which is why America has the Interstate network, it was built for military reasons). Libertarian economic models don't scale, and the "market" has difficulty coping with investments that don't pay back within 3-5 years.

Fact is extreme ends of the political and economic spectrum are all flawed; a mix of social planning and free market activity is the compromise that works the best for the most, with constant tuning to get the balance right.

Capt'n Midnight

RockinRolla wrote: »

When government decided not to direct the economy, but instead to honour contracts, out grew the Hong Kong we see today.

Would this be the same Hong Kong with a captive audiance of one billion chinese across the fence providing cheap labour, capital and markets
would this be the same Hong Kong with useless passports so people weren't free to move
would this be the same Hong Kong that benefitted from advantageous tax regulations compare to the rest of the region

Complete Libertarianism would mean the end of corporation tax and such. On a level playing field we'd be sunk as there would be no reason to pick Ireland ahead of any other country that practiced complete Libertarianism.


In Sub Saharan Africa only 10% of people pay income tax and most of those are in South Africa. This means that the vast majority don't have any say in how governments spend money, since they don't have a vested interest. It also means that most of them are in a Libertarian economy because there isn't much governmnet regulation.

In Kenya you can rent a minibus for €30 a day and away you go. If your bus is half empty and there are lots of people on the otherside of the road you can just throw out your passangers and give them back enough of the fare so they can continue their journey on the next bus. Then turn around and pick up the passangers on the other side of the road heading the other way.

Libertarians place a great trust in contracts despite the amount of litegation that goes on in well regulated systems today. Can you imagine how a company like Microsoft would behave if the only limits on it's behaviour were the contracts it signed. How do you police a company that reguliarly pays billion dollar fines out of petty cash ?

If any of ye saw that program on BBC2 last night, they made the point that the commune movement failed because peope who were supposedly equal grabbed power. I fail to see how in a completely open market without regulation how power can't be removed or abused.

Fromthetrees

Libertarianism seems to be more, more, more for me and f**k the sick and needy.

AhSureTisGrand

Fromthetrees wrote: »

Libertarianism seems to be more, more, more for me and f**k the sick and needy.

Yes as we know all charitable organizations are banned in libertarianland

Fukuyama

Jaysus is this thread still going?

AhSureTisGrand

Dean0088 wrote: »

Jaysus is this thread still going?

No but I'm not mature enough to ignore the necromancer

Fromthetrees

are charitable organisations banned anywhere?

Cathaoirleach

Fromthetrees wrote: »

Libertarianism seems to be more, more, more for me and f**k the sick and needy.

Innocent until proven Irish, said Maggie.

Capt'n Midnight

AhSureTisGrand wrote: »

Yes as we know all charitable organizations are banned in libertarianland

They won't be banned.

They will just have to replace the functions provided by HSE / Corporation & Council services / Social welfare etc. And do it without financial support from the goverment.

AhSureTisGrand

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

They won't be banned.

No feckin shìt

KeithAFC

No I wouldn't.