It seems there is a divide between libertarians who support liberty and libertarians who would like government to be even deeper in the pockets of billionaires.
Libertarianism leads to oligarchies led by the richest.
Billionaires seem to like this idea. I suspect the reason is so they won't have anyone nagging them to pay taxes and could write law without having to spend money funding think tanks and lobbyists.
That's what libertarians want so desperately though. Because in their mind, they'll be the gilded elite in the boom-bust cycle. If it wasn't for the nasty government, all the hard-working brilliant libertarians would be billionaires.
What exactly do you believe libertarians would disagree with in your post? I'm not a libertarian, but that the government privatizes gains and socializes losses, that they grant subsidies and monopolies to businesses, taking the risk out of them, seems perfectly aligned with what I read from libertarian sources.
Libertarians don't disagree that the government funds businesses, they disagree that it should do so.
There's an interesting split in the libertarian movement over these kinds of issues. The "paleolibertarians" associated with folks like Murray Rothbard, Lew Rockwell, Ron Paul, etc., see large businesses, especially in finance, as corruption-ridden entities deeply entangled with the state, rather than any sort of free-market entities, and so see dismantling them and holding them to account as properly part of a libertarian agenda. The "D.C. libertarians" or "business libertarians", associated with folks like Cato, the Koch brothers, Club for Growth, etc., are more likely to see the American business community as essentially on the correct (i.e. libertarian) side of things, and advocate for them to be unfettered more from government regulation as a way of improving things.
I have a very difficult time separating "true" libertarians with members of libertarian parties. Like people don't readily give up how pragmatic they are. On one end, there seem to be people who really yearn for pure individual freedom with no government at all. I'm pretty sure that was tried for the first 50,000 years of humanity and the results are well documented. (spoiler, for populations larger than ~100 people, your chance of ending up a king's subject is >99%) The other end doesn't seem to mean anything concrete, other than a distaste for OSHA or environmental laws.
Anyway, I think most Libertarians would be cool with a handful of ultra-wealthy, because they really think they can conquer the market someday and be one of them.
Yep, that’s another distinction I wish would enter public perception. Much like how socialism vs communism distinction was made to try to separate some of their better ideas from a long legacy of negative baggage.
I think libertarians would benefit from creating a clearer spectrum within their own community between the more practical (and popular) small government/minarchist side and the more extreme anarcho-capitalist privatize everything group. Too often they seem to be happy having these lines blurred. Plus I don’t think there is any contradictions or significant compromises in doing so. If anything pushing for pipe dream imaginary economic systems or half solution public/private stop gaps isn’t helping anyone.
you are conflating libertarians with anarcho-capitalists.
Libertarians see a purpose and function to the government, while the latter does not. There are areas where the political philosophies blend and overlap, but they are distinct.
I think there are also quite a few libertarians who recognise the necessity of wealth redistribution as a guard against creeping inequality, and would prefer that it be done in a market compatible way, instead of via government services.
Libertarianism is all about the individual and that individual's resources. Uber-rich have the vast majority of the resources. The uber-rich only need laws to protect themselves from the non-uber-rich.
The 'middle-class' and poor have no resources and little time to counter the uber-rich. The middle class gains nothing from giving up government protection.
Therefore libertarianism is enables the uber-rich.
And btw, the Koch brothers are very much libertarians and they very much have a lot of power.
Libertarianism is all about distributing power, instead of consolidating in. This results in less violations of individual liberty (you don't have governments stealing from the poor and giving to the rich, or corporations polluting the land the poorer live on, or large media conglomerates effectively brainwashing people into submission). This results in mostly and increase in prosperity for the poorer folks, while the rich of the rich might not be able to sustain their position (although there will still be rich people).
EDIT: I would think that libertarians would be more interested in personal sovereignty than has really been apparent in this thread? At least I thought there was more to libertarianism than boiling everything down to commercial transactions.
There needs to be a term for otherwise libertarian-minded people, who also understand that the platform should revolve around correcting the power imbalances between large wealthy organizations and individuals, whether those large organizations are governments or corporations. I don't see why we can't restrict the ultra-rich billionaires while still protecting the small-to-medium rich who actually did bust their ass to gain their fortunes.
I would like to add that a true libertarian would be aghast at the thought of a state bailing out private ventures, especially without assimilating them, no matter how big or small.
Most people don’t dive deep into ideologies. They stay in the surface and end up believing whatever the media outlet expresses as a “truth widely acknowledged”.
Regulations are great for libertarians, but only if it makes them richer!
If it makes anyone who's not in the rich people's club richer, than it's 'redistributing wealth' and 'big government getting in the way of innovation'.
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