An Irish Libertarian Party

This post has been deleted.

This post has been deleted.

I'm curious about libertarianism after getting into a couple debates about it on threads over on After Hours; just noticed this here now, so read through it all.
From what I can see, libertarian principles can apply well in certain circumstances, and not so well in others, thus would best be implemented selectively.

Just to gauge the extremes of peoples libertarian views (using the center of debate from the AH topics), what would libertarians here do with the regulation of banks and the financial markets?


The principle problem I could see with this, was that if you deregulate the banks and financial markets, and (rightly) insist on not bailing out banks that fail, you get a scenario where customers of banks get unfairly harmed, through no fault of their own.

It would happen like this:
In an unregulated market, banks will be opaque about their business practices (how they invest customers/shareholders money), leaving customers with no way to gauge the risk of putting their money in a particular bank, whereas shareholders can demand some level of information and can make a more informed risk.

In an unregulated market with opaque business practices, it is easier for the owners of a bank to undertake risky practices with other peoples money and get away with it, leading to the inevitability that some bank will eventually collapse through fraud or mismanagement.

When a bank collapses, the shareholders will lose their money (they had opportunity to ascertain the risks, fine), but the customers of the bank will lose their money too (they had no way to determine risk, or determine which bank is better/worse than any other, so you can't put fault on the customers).


This seems inherently unfair on the customers of the bank, and could potentially ruin the lives of many customers, or at least effectively wipe out the 'x' years of their lives they spent earning that money. To me, that seems totally unacceptable.

Is there a solution to this issue, which is not inherently unfair on banks customers, and which still sticks to libertarian principles? To me, the solution to this (though not compatible with strict libertarianism) is to regulate the banks adequately and enforce transparency.


Other Issues:
Thinking on this some more, I don't know if there really is much a point talking about libertarianism unless people specifically point on where they would and (more importantly) where they wouldn't apply it, because that defines how extreme their views are on libertarianism, and you have a very generalized discussion otherwise.

The best way I can see of digging down into it onto a deeper level, is to analyze it and pick out practical issues with it, such as the one with banks I pointed out above, and other industries where governments intervene.

---

Also (sorry, there will be a lot of rambling am typing as I'm reading), a lot of the argument in favour of libertarianism seems to be pointing out how screwed up, mismanaged and corrupt our government is.

Fair enough on those points, but advocating a wholesale switch to libertarianism is kind of baby out with the bathwater territory; why not work on sorting out the mess in government instead of wholesale getting rid of parts of it?
There is an enormous amount that can be improved without necessitating complete obsolescence of and cutting loose certain aspects of government, where they still have a purpose.

Ireland has a hideously subservient news media, and piss poor investigative journalism; I would start there first, with enacting reform, and trying to get some decent journalism going on in this country so government can be more easily held accountable.

Next up I'd look to enforce much stricter transparency and anti-corruption laws, with actual consequences for political corruption and bribes.

---

Additionally, while there is a societal influence that allows much of this mismanagement and corruption in government, it is completely disingenuous to say or imply that this is the fault of the Irish people.

Without a functioning source of unrestrained information and decent investigative journalism, the population can't be kept informed, and can't really do a whole lot about government corruption they're unaware of.
Reports of backhanders, property rezoning fraud, nepotism etc. etc. are confined to anecdotal, unsubstantiated pub talk, and not being broadcast to the population at large like they should be.

That is not the fault of the populous, and blaming it on the Irish people without opposition, opens up a lot of other disingenuous arguments that e.g. Irish people deserve what they get, are at fault for their own suffering, and various other ridiculous arguments like that.

It's a very peculiar thing to be honest, that there is that kind of accepted nationalistic self-loathing in Ireland; I don't understand that at all, and it is highly in the governments interest to promote that (can't think of anyone else who can gain from it), so it kind of baffles me how it is accepted uncritically.

---

Another random point: What are libertarians views as to corporate corruption and anti-competitiveness? I'm talking about issues with corporations, where the issues do not have a government connection.
What is different with the libertarian approach to mitigating this, and how is that better, and (not the same question) how is it less worse?

Regarding monopolies, when you have a gigantic multinational company which attains a monopoly in your country, how do you start your own business and compete with it when they have the enormous benefits of economies of scale?
Lets say you provide better quality products, they can just increase quality of their products to match yours and at a better price, until you go out of business and they start putting out lower quality products again when you're gone.

Altering government may prevent government-assisted monopolies, but it most definitely will not protect against international monopolies, which will remain a disproportionate influence, even in a libertarian world.

---

On education in India: You can't really take the example of private education in India and tout it as proof of private education being better than public overall; that may be the case in India, but they obviously have a monumentally screwed up education system.

By the way, a 'mere' $2 a month cost of private education in India, adjusted based on average wage compared to Ireland, equates to $635 or €477 a year; not huge by any means, but $2 is extremely misleading.

Also, lets not forget that with private education, the cost automatically affects the poor disproportionately, because the cost does not scale with income.

---

Anyway, to end this enormous post: I'm not against libertarianism (there are many aspects I do not oppose, regarding rolling back government interference), as I don't know enough about it yet, there just seem to be some pretty big issues that I haven't heard a good argument for yet

A big problem I see in the discussion here is it often fails to get below surface-level discussion of libertarianism, which allows people to stay seated in ideological positions without discussing the consequences of implementing their views in a practical way.

Even when it does scrape below the surface a bit, it often seems to be kind of anecdotal and covers niche cases; would be interesting to get more depth.

This post has been deleted.

Perhaps the best place to start might be in the retirement homes.

If the Tea Party is anything to go by, that is.

One in every three members of the tea party are retired, according to an article in the Financial Times recently. 75% are over the age of 45.