he isn't a Libertarian in 2025
how can anyone consider themselves as a true-blooded freedom-loving American Conservative if they don't identify as a Libertarian? explain yourselves
He isn't a Libertarian in 2025
Unless Libertarianism will put DOGE in a Gulag and take all of Elon's money it can fuck off.
Corporations would charge you tolls on every road if Libertarians got their way.
explain yourselves?
unrestricted freedom is what got us into this hyper-degenerate culture
People need less freedom, not more.
Milton Friedman gave an interview
youtube.com
He explains that jews historically survived and thrived by earning money, and then bribing kings and nobles to do their bidding. This allowed the jews to survive and thrive. The capitalist system makes this process even easier. They can openly rule the system through money power.
He implies strongly that this is the real reason he supports capitalism. Basically, because it's a "path to power" for the jews.
When money rules, jews rule.
It's not a coincidence almost all the prominent libertarian thinkers are jews. Milton Friedman, Murray Rothbard, Ayn Rand, Ludwig von Mises, they're all jews. Hayek was related to jews by blood and consorted so frequently with jewish intellectuals they all thought he was one of them.
Is the mandatory subscription fee government charges better?
Yes, because there's relatively less of them. If corporations are able to vie amongst one another for ensuring there's fees attached to each and every aspect of a citizen's day-to-day life, they will. The only thing stopping that now is government regulations.
This. The only check on corporate exploitation is state power. It is incumbent upon us to make sure that the state remains a countervailing force to private oppression.
It may be one tax bill you have that pays for nebulous things and generally doesn't help all that much with road repair but that doesn't mean government is actually cheaper or more efficient at anything.
Here's a test for you
Corporations, by virtue of their intrinsic character, owe nothing to citizens and everything to their shareholders. The idea that if we just let public services become privatized everything would turn out cheaper is pure fantasy. If that was the case, CEOs would have to be betraying their obligations to shareholders en masse. They'd wring Americans for all their worth (because if they don't, their competitors will eat their lunch) and you know it.
ok but you can't just say that, you do have to describe why in a systematic and logical way. Especially when talking to libertarians
I assume every single road costs more or less the same in this scenario but that's what makes it a bad hypothetical.
how can you be a conservative if you're not a liberal!?
You're gay, even by memeflag standards.
Libertarians will never actually listen to that argument anyway because their entire philosophy hinges on the naive belief that mega-corporations aren't actually innately exploitative. They're not serious political actors to begin with.
Is it more efficient in terms of resources to have 1 road, or to build 5+ roads just to provide "competition"?
Pic related, this explains it a bit mroe
I'm guessing you'd agree that a government takeover over any and every industry, for example waffles, wouldn't necessarily make waffles cheaper. Why are roads different, or why don't we nationalize everything?
Whoever owned the bridge could charge extortionist prices
And the market would never supply more than one bridge in a place of low demand
That's nonsense. Why wouldn't you want a cheaper bridge?
There's a healthy middle ground between a full blown Communist/Fascist state where the government has nationalized every business and one where every public service is privatized and run by exploitative transnational corporations and it's called "our current system."
In a bustling city, of course there's enough demand to supply multiple bridges. These bridges are still local monopolies, since you have to go way out of your way to take a different one.
But in a place of low demand, like a little rural road, you don't need 3 bridges. You just need 1.
In a case like this, there will be no competition. It'll just be a monopoly.
The problem is that the market without competition is pretty rough. The person who owns the monopoly can charge, basically extortionist prices. He also has no motivation to innovate or maintain anything.
The issue is that plenty of industries in society can be thought of this way.
Like, a classic example, is it really more efficient to lay two duplicate sets of water pipes to everyone's houses, just to provide "competition"? No, in reality, the most efficient way is for the water pipes to be owned/maintained by the city, and then contractors are brought in to do work on it. That's actually more efficient in terms of resources, prices, and labor.
Yeah it's got issues, because doing anything through the government is going to be inefficient. But still, that's the way it needs to be done.
If you ask me there are a ton of problems with our current system.
But again, why assume that competing business interests will create more expensive roads than government does?
how can anyone consider themselves as a true-blooded freedom-loving American Conservative if they don't identify as a Libertarian? explain yourselves
Aside from being over the age of 30, "Conservatives" are massive faggots.
Because corporations are obligated to their shareholders to maximize the value of their investment in the company stock, unlike the government which is meant to maximize the value of taxpayer investment by actually facilitating public service works (without its primary concern being, how do we ensure this service is monetized).
A good reason as to why the person in charge of the single bridge would want to keep prices down would be to avoid creating competition.
Take the extreme example and say that it'll cost your life savings to go over the bridge once. Wouldn't you say that's plenty of incentive for some other bridgebuilder to come in and build a cheaper bridge, since he'd obviously steal all the other guy's customers?
lolbertism is the failed ideology of out time. It persists through the absolute ravaging that half a century neoliberalism (yes, neoliberalism is just lolbert principles put to practical application) has wrought, but everyone fucking hates it now. The left for obvious reasons, but even the right can see how it has undermined their own values like traditionalism, ethnic homogeneity, gender norms, ect. You little freaks will have no home. You'll have to hide your shitty little beliefs from everyone lest someone gives the punishment you deserve.
Ideals are worthless if you don't have power. I was a libertarian but libertarians always lose so I joined the winning team.
That doesn't explain anything. I think you're maybe too hung up on terms like corporation (government designation BTW little known fact) shareholder and stock.
counter-argument to bridge monopoly: boats. private ferry services.
If you've ever taken an econ class, there's a particular pricepoint that monopolists use.
A competitive business will charge the price where marginal cost meets demand. While the monopolist has the luxury of charging where marginal revenue meets marginal cost. This greatly enhances their profit, while still keeping a customerbase. Although the customerbase will be smaller. So less people are getting the product for a higher price, and the monopolist gets a massive extra-profit that's way above what a competitive business could dream of.
This is where billionaires come from. Almost every billionaire in society is taking advantage of this to some degree
Why do you need that....when all you need is a bridge? Why not just have a bridge, isn't that way easier and way more efficient?
It only doesn't explain anything because you refuse to face the reality that the kind of "benevolent corporations" you might imagine who would lower costs of privatized services don't actually exist (because it would be antithetical to their modus operandi).
A business incorporates because they want more access to the market and investsor potential.
A non incorporated business just simply fills a demand or provides a basic service. A corporation goes beyond that. It becomes a a many armed legal entity separate from its initial owner or stakeholders.
So if let's say bobs road works gets contracts to build a few public roads, it would be direct, job gets done, Bob and his crew get paid, and the city or town own the road. A corporation has the potential to get all sorts of legal rights to partially own the road, or if it was allowed to own the road and toll it because it has the legal avenues to gain huge investment and become a publicly traded company. Bob's road works can't compete with that.
What makes the bridge a monopoly? The fact that there's only 1 currently? How then does any competition arise in any situation?
I'm not assuming benevolence of anyone. The whole point is that people working for their own interests can benefit each other.
I'd say you're inappropriately assuming benevolence of government.
He'll just lie and say governments are the only reason you would ever get price gouged and if we just got rid of government the Holy Market (pbui) would self-correct into perfect harmonious equilibrium.
The truth is any profit-seeking private enterprise is going to do whatever it can to exploit (you) to enrich itself, but that sounds bad and then people might question the need to ensure there is some private grifter is skimming off the top of everything we do.
isn't that way easier and way more efficient
Not if the bridge is way too expensive.
What makes amazon a monopoly? The fact that it's not efficient to have a massive distribution network to everyone's house, with warehouses, trucks, and supply chains. It's most efficient to only have 1. So the market only supplies 1.
This enables the founder to become a $100 billion man. A wealth so vast, that he could live for 100,000 years spending a million dollars a year. His descendants will be wealthy for a hundred generations
Amazon's not a monopoly. There are plenty of online shops and shipping businesses. Amazon's just very successful.
If you view that as a bad thing then it might be best to for governments to stop granting corporate charters.
Libertarianism=Liberalism
They're both the same. Thinking otherwise is a modern cope. Nobody in the past believed they were any different.
It's a good and bad thing... it allows company's to have basically governmental power, but what happens when the corporations start colluding and greasing the palms of government?
Isn't that an issue in the US?
The distribution network it has is a monopoly. Those other suppliers don't have the same type of network.
By the way, that network becomes more efficient the more people are signed onto it. It's more efficient to drive down a street once and deliver 10 packages, than to only deliver 1.
So the efficiency stacks the bigger it grows. Bezos even talked about this. He said it was a "linear cost business with exponential profits", and as long as he passed a certain point of critical-mass, he could become a runaway billionaire. Which is exactly what happened.
Ironically those other businesses are using stuff like, FedEx and the US mail system. One of which is a government-run institution, and the other might as well be. If that public infrastructure didn't exist, those businesses couldn't exist either.
That's a big issue in the US. That's part of why I think governmental power should be reduced to the extent that it would be of very little benefit to attempt to control government through things like bribery.
Ironically that's a good example of how government run institutions are inefficient compared to private.
But you know Amazon didn't always have a network, they didn't even have their own trucks not too long ago. They just handled business better than a lot of others.
in 2025 it is obvious that corporations pose just as large a threat to individual freedoms as the state. therefore I believe the purpose of government should be to regulate corporations whilst staying out of the lives of citizens.
libertarian for the individual, authoritarian for the corporation. that's true liberty.
Amazon is basically a government institution in private hands. The result being, some people grow fabulously, outrageously wealthy.
It would be like if your water network was owned by private hands. The people who possessed it could grow immensely wealthy.
Yeah it's great that he developed this, but the kind of profit he's getting is unnatural. Abnormal. This is the power of a monopolist.
Do you really think Bezos has worked 100,000 times harder than the average man? Is he literally superman? Why is the system justifying this sort of thing. He should by rights be worth millions. But not billions.
Pretty much all billionaires are exploiting some type of "hack" in the system. Usually some monopoly.
What monopoly exactly do you think Amazon had back when they simply shipped books, without their own means of shipping?
I feel like we're getting into witchcraft when we start denouncing things as unnatural.
This is a network-monopoly.
This applied to the old telecom companies. Everyone wanted to sign up with the network that could connect them to the most people. The end result? Monopoly. The companies would refuse to put through calls to other providers, to starve them out of business. The also often literally owned the telephone wires going to your house.
The goverment passed the telecommunications act. Which broke up the monopolies, forced them to put through calls to competing carriers, and ensured they didn't literally own your telephone lines.
An example of a network-monopoly is, facebook. Anyone can create facebook, it's easy as hell. In fact, one common task that programming students have is to create a facebook-clone. It's trivially easy.
So why do people use it? Because, it's the biggest, and connects you to the most people. So nobody will ever use a competitor. Why would you? Even if their service is better.
Plus, Facebook has more resources, so if something better comes along, they can just copy it, or buy them out, growing even more.
This is a network monopoly. Amazon is the same type of thing. The more people sign up, the more valuable the service is, so it just snowballs into a huge monopoly.
Facebook is an interesting example because I don't use it and I don't know anyone who does. I did once upon a time and so did almost everyone else and now we've all stopped, some of us in favor of competitors like Twitter.
How many Facebook threads do you see on this board? How many Twitter threads?
You can't deny how it snowballed. However, Twitter could connect them to celebrities and media personalities, so it had a huge appeal that facebook couldn't match.
But notice how it isn't 100 different facebooks competing for business? It isn't 100 twitters. There is 1 of each, and each is like an unstoppable snowball.
The value of their service depends on the number of people using the service, so it's a network monopoly.
jews rule not because of their magical yid economic genius but because christcucks gave them monopolies and charters on banking, giving them a jumpstart over everyone else on one of the most broken ways to acquire wealth
I used to be heavily invested in libertarianism.
Then the invasion of Ukraine happened and guess what? The "anti-war" libertarians suddenly had nothing truly bad to say about the invasion. They left russian libertarians to be persecuted by the russian government and after a year I was sure that it wasn't a coincidence and libertarians are actually in the hands of Russia.
I can't deny that Facebook was absolutely huge. Everyone I knew used it all the time for everything. Now not a single person I know uses it for anything. Despite that seemingly unstoppable cultural momentum it's all but irrelevant now. You may remember Myspace was similar. These monopolies aren't so permanent as you think.
The whole point is that people working for their own interests can benefit each other.
Except the interests of a corporation =/= the interests of an average citizen. The former is concerned with maximizing shareholder value, the latter is concerned with not paying exorbitant fees for everything just to survive.
Except the interests of a corporation =/= the interests of an average citizen.
That's whole point to what I said. You don't need your interests to exactly align with another party's to benefit from a transaction.
In my case, I watched how these leftie libertarians seemed to have nothing to say about the property-destruction in the George Floyd riots. You watched businesses go up in flames and these dyed-hair people were making excuses for it.
The fundamental problem that libertarians are making is, a misunderstanding of human nature.
I learned this in physics. If you make the incorrect assumptions in your model, it doesn't matter how good your calculations are, you will get the wrong answer. You will pour over your calculations thinking you made some mistake, and it's all perfect. Only when you realize you made a poor initial-assumption, do you see the error.
It's the same case here. Libertarians start with an assumption, which comes from nothing. Then draw out an entire chain of logic from that assumption, and can't understand why they're getting the wrong answer.
Like the truth is, human beings are not perfect rational caclulators. They are tribalistic. They evolved for small tribes. That's their natural state, that's what they are.
They are stupid, they need leaders to guide them. They need culture. They need to be protected against vice. Otherwise they are easily exploited.
And you don't see the obvious large issue with that?
Who will keep the corporations in check?
Congress, or some form of congressional formation is supposed to do that. But the fix isn't in allowing corporations to privatize everything abd shrink government, it's to put more checks and on the elected officials, ie. Term limits, capped salaries, barring from public trading, and perhaps even forcing them to actually have a budget goal or else they lose their job.
I'm not worried about corporations as much as government. Corporations ask for payment, government demands it, with the latter delivering no promises that it will return any value.
No but if you put your own interests (citizen) in the hands of those with opposite interests (corporation) you can't be surprised when your interests aren't exactly catered to.
I mean look no further than the gacha game industry. This is a multi-billion dollar industry which revolves around scientifically creating addictions in people and then bilking them for their cash. It's raking in billions.
These games are supported by a dozen or so "whales" who completely lose their minds and go all-in on the game. Sometimes dropping hundreds of thousands of dollars on it.
So you don't believe in democracy?
How is government demanding payment? People for the most part accept taxes, as long as it benefits them.
Corporations have no obligation to transfer any sort of good service or product beyond the bare minimum, unless people pay up.
I've lived in a society that operated in a similar way, hardly anything got done to public infrastructure, but the resorts and roads that the larger company's used were all nice and maintained.
Every transaction involves opposite interests.
If I buy a sandwich it's not in the sandwich maker's interest to give me a sandwich it's in his interest to make money. That's why I have to give him money to get the sandwich and why I won't give him money if I don't get it. Our transaction isn't for one another's benefit but for our own.
Democracy isn't virtuous. If 10 people take a vote and 6 decide to kill the other 4 that's democratic but it's morally wrong. That's why we have things like constitutions to limit democracy.
The difference is that taxes, as a transaction between taxpayer and the federal government, aren't designed to maximize the cost of public services for the benefit of the corporation/government carrying out those projects. That's where your argument falls apart.
That's your view of democracy? Strictly voting?
That's not how modern democratic processes work.
Taxes are theft. The reason they need to be taken by force or extortion is because people wouldn't pay them otherwise, because most people don't believe they get enough benefit for it to be worth it.
The number of people who did would probably increase if government were smaller and more transparent so that you could more easily evaluate if you're getting your money's worth.
That's what democracy's all about. If you're referring to the various protocols and procedure that leads up to voting then I don't care because it's beside the point.
because most people don't believe they get enough benefit for it to be worth it
And yet, those same people would bitch endlessly if there was a toll on every street (which just privatizing all road building / maintenance would pretty much guarantee).
Democracy is when peoples voices are heard and people share their ideas. The voting part is a byproduct of that.
That's the base for freedom of speech and such, the market of ideas, etc.
No modern "democracy" has majority takes all voting practices.
Sure, it's a near universal phenomenon to complain about any prices. Even if you pay a price you still somehow feel that it's too high, and if you're selling then the price is too low. But that's just because people like to complain.
No modern "democracy" has majority takes all voting practices.
Most votes for candidates are. Most votes in Congress are. Regardless, I've already acknowledged that we place limits on democracy.
That's the base for freedom of speech
No, freedom of speech is natural. Governments can attempt to protect it from people who would take away this freedom or just take it themselves but it exists absent any interference.
nigga Heil Hitler
Democracy is just a word for what humans do, congregate and express our thoughts and feelings, we are a communicative species, that's the base of freedom of speech.