Arguing with a libertarian is like arguing with a brick wall.

[liberalnarb]

I was having lunch with a couple of guys I know today and one of them is a libertarian . He decided to try to get me into a debate. He started by telling me that I don't "believe in freedom." As it turns out, he believes there should be no taxes AT ALL. When I asked him where he recommends we get the funding for basic necessities of life like roads and bridges to drive on, schools for kids to attend and healthcare to rely on when we get sick. He actually believes that we can trust for-profit corporations to take care of EVERYTHING because they will gladly do it for profit. I then argued that we can use the American healthcare system as an example to prove that companies are in the business of screwing people. (I don't think I need to go into detail on this site.) He then stormed out of the room yelling at me about how "History is not on my side." Libertarians are extremely stubborn. Whatever, another debate won!

[Binkie The Clown]

1. News Flash---

Arguing with a creationist is like arguing with a brick wall.

And so it arguing with a Republican, Democrat, Christian, Muslim, Atheist, Football fan, Country Music lover, DU member, (for all X where X is a human being with strongly held beliefs).

[Orrex]

2. I have never met an actual Libertarian who wasn't an asshole.

Not asshole as in "this person and I strongly disagree," but asshole as in "this person goes out of their way to take advantage of other people and then blame them for being taken advantage of."

DU has a handful of self-professed "Left Libertarians," but that's simply a throwback to quaint notions of ancient etymological history.

[apnu]

13. I have met a Libertarian who freely admits to the fallacy of Libertarian beliefs.

He says of himself and his ilk: "I want everything but I don't want to pay for it." He says this with a straight face followed up by a chuckle.

And yes, he is an asshole.

[Bonx]

18. Maybe you just know a lot of assholes ?

[Orrex]

21. Not so many, and a disproportionate number of them are Libertarians

[HughBeaumont]

20. The ones I chuckle at are those who blame imaginary "powerful progressives" for our problems.

Libertarians seem to live in this fantasyland where America HAS a political spectrum that veers further left than "Slightly Right Of Center", which is now America's new Democratic position.

"Progressives are hypocrites, Progressives caused this, Progressives were and are always at fault for that . . . " I believe a Princess Bride quote is in order here . . .

[Hortensis]

32. "Progressive" is definitely #1 misused and misunderstood.

[just4lulzidk]

3. your counterargument should've been: there's no such thing as a libertarian in this country

you're just a republican who's too embarrassed to call himself a republican

[Fast Walker 52]

6. the old joke is: a libertarian is a conservative who likes to smoke pot

[Lizzie Poppet]

12. I've heard that as "libertarian = free-market Republican with a bong."

[Populist_Prole]

36. Another one I've heard

Libertarian: A freedom lover who wants police protection from his slaves.

[GummyBearz]

4. I'm gonna stick my neck out on this

I think it is a case by case basis. Some libertarians are not as extreme as to want "no taxes AT ALL". This guy you are talking about seems to be the extreme type. I try to give them more benefit than doubt and judge it on a case by case basis, but an extreme libertarian society would devolve into chaos and anarchy pretty damn fast.

[liberalnarb]

8. Extreme is an understatement. I will never talk to him again!

I forgot to add in the OP that he had the balls to tell me that if I were President he would "assassinate me in the name of freedom." My friends sure do associate with the nicest people .

[GummyBearz]

24. Damn

That is fucked up. Disassociate in a very discrete manner

[Hortensis]

34. Many true libertarians would like to try out chaos

and anarchy. I've read some articles by libertarian leaders in their journals, and most hold extreme views in comparison with the rest of America. I'm speaking of libertarian personality, the real thing, not just someone who's adopted it as a political ideology.

Libertarianism not only has been something of a fad belief, attracting many affected by the current anti-establishment dissatisfaction, but wealthy people have found it a very convenient "philosophy" for putting a seemingly respectable gloss on even deadly levels of callousness and greed.

"We should not cave in the moment a regulator sets foot on our doorstep. Do not cooperate voluntarily. Instead, resist to wherever and to whatever extent you legally can. And do so in the name of justice." Charles Koch, whose many documented crimes, both charged and uncharged, include hiding critical information from employees and local communities of illegal exposures to and releases of toxic chemicals produced by Koch Industires, including resulting death and severe illness, and whose libertarian "views" always support his economic greed. Note that Koch Industries is privately held and run.

Behind his libertarian posture, Koch is actually very possibly be a hard-core authoritarian conservative like his Third Reich-admiring father. These things are genetically linked, and he runs his empire as an authoritarian.

[Fast Walker 52]

5. they are hopelessly brainwashed assholes and not worth arguing with...

Libertardians.

[tenderfoot]

7. Libertarian = Conservative Republican that's too cowardly to admit it.

Same goes for "moderates".

[Bonx]

9. I don't know any libertarians in favor of any of the conservative social agenda.

[liberalnarb]

11. I do, hypocritically, the guy mentioned in the OP.

[Bonx]

14. You both seem confused as to what a libertarian is.

[liberalnarb]

16. Feel free to enlighten me then.

[Bonx]

17. here you go

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism

[LanternWaste]

30. The three I work with vigorously defend male/female only marriage and the right to refuse service...

The three I work with vigorously defend male/female only marriage, and the right to refuse service based solely on race. Quite possibly, we must both entertain the fact that anecdotal evidence is both convenient and self-serving...

[Bonx]

31. There's no rational libertarian defense for denying same sex marriage.

Anyone espousing that is by definition not a libertarian.

[TampaAnimusVortex]

33. That's not libertarian... that's the conservative position.

Libertarians would say that government has no place in dictating marriages or the right to refuse service because either would require the initiation of force.

[tenderfoot]

35. I know Ron Paul and son Rand Paul do. Never mind that libertarian fiscal agendas don't work either.

As proven in Kansas, Ohio and Michigan.

[marble falls]

37. Libertarian: Republican that wants to smoke pot legally.

[gratuitous]

10. True that . . .

Years ago, I was in a running argument with a libertarian loon for quite some time at another web site. He was of the tribe you describe in your post. I finally decided to pester the chump about libertarian ideals, selecting the field of restaurants. Just about everyone eats out from time to time, whether it's McDonald's or the hautest of haute cuisine. All of those restaurants are subject to health inspections for proper food storage, handling, and preparation.

In the Libertarian Paradise, there shouldn't be any regulation of restaurants at all, because no restaurant would intentionally poison its customers by sloppy food prep. But as we know in the real world, there are people who will take any available shortcut to fatten the bottom line. Can we trust restaurant owners themselves to subject themselves to an inspection regime that might close down a popular eatery? The alternative is for everyone who dines out to bring their own inspectors and food testers, who may or may not detect health code violations when they don't have the authority of the law behind them. Or is it more efficient for everyone to fund a Public Health Department that inspects restaurants and has the power to shut them down? The answer is pretty obvious, considering the enormous benefit to the current system at a relatively cheap cost.

After chasing the loon around for a couple of weeks, he finally, grudgingly, conceded that I had a point, that the shared cost of public health inspections of restaurants was the fairest, most efficient method of making sure that dining out was less likely to wind up with a trip to the emergency room or the morgue. I nailed that pelt to the wall and quit engaging him after that. He quickly returned to his demented world view, but I figured I had made my point, if only temporarily.

[HughBeaumont]

15. That sounds like an Anarcho-Capitalist.

A particularly nasty breed of Libertarian that believes the country isn't right wing ENOUGH and thinks being HYPER right wing is the solution to our ills.

[font size="3"]Logical fallacies[/font]

Anarcho-capitalist books tend to read like Marxist books — dense and full of provocative ideas that sound good in theory, but are presented as "this is the way it would work" when it has never really been tried. The Market for Liberty makes blanket statements such as "in a laissez-faire society, only gold would be accepted as the standard of monetary value" (how do they know?); competing educational systems would "forever end squabbles over cirriculum" (how?); eliminating medical licensing would "end the doctor shortage and drastically reduce the cost of medical care" because "anyone could practice medicine in any area in which he was competent, regardless of the number of years he spent in college" but we needn't worry about quacks performing surgery because "reputable physicians would probably form medical organizations which would only sanction competent doctors, thereby providing consumers with a guide" (and no quack would falsely claim endorsement, they aren't that shady); and we needn't worry about private defense agencies becoming like warring Mafia gangs because "a defense company which committed aggression...would be left with no customers, associates, or employees except for undesirables." Not very reassuring. The book brings up many objections in a straw man manner and dismisses them without serious discussion, and uses "always", "never", and "will probably" far too much.[11]

Samuel Edward Konkin's The New Libertarian Manifesto posits five hypothetical stages in which government is supplanted by a black market "counter-economy" led by a "New Libertarian Alliance". Again, this is purely hypothetical and smacks of Marxist historical determinism and Leninist vanguardism; how does he know?

Competing private courts enforcing competing polycentric bodies of law, as envisioned by David Friedman, presents an especially confusing mess. The implications of this are best left to the reader to imagine.


[font size="3"]Assorted Crankery[/font]

As with any fringe ideology, anarcho-capitalism is riddled with people stacking their own crank views on top of it, including views that conventional wisdom might hold to be incompatible with anarchism (and capitalism for that matter) to begin with. A short list could include the aforementioned Galambosian view on intellectual property; Hans-Hermann Hoppe's asinine support for monarchy; Eric S. Raymond's wingnut views on the War on Terror; the Robert A. Heinlein fan club who think fascist tripe like Starship Troopers is their idea of a libertarian society; and Gary North, a dominionist Christian who runs in anarcho-capitalist circles (we don't know whether he considers himself an anarcho-capitalist, but he hangs around with them).

[PETRUS]

19. Sort of like a brick wall, but more like whack-a-mole.

Libertarianism is internally inconsistent. Your friend is correct that taxes are coercive (anti-freedom, or whatever), but that's true of all property institutions. Property income (interest, dividends, etc.) is functionally equivalent to taxation but libertarians don't complain about that. Libertarians will try to tell you that, unlike taxes, the latter category is the product of voluntary transactions, but that could only be true if there's an abundance of unclaimed land and natural resources (or if one could actually choose to occupy no space and consume no food and continue to survive).

Matt Bruenig elaborates on the analogy here: http://mattbruenig.com/2014/08/02/capitalism-whack-a-mole/

[beachbumbob]

22. I was the democratic leader on PCF for a while and libertarians were my

Bread and butter...a political philosophy that has NEVER been instituted because it fails from the starting gate....

[GOPblows431]

23. They are so out of touch with reality

Libertarians are welcome to move to Somalia, a true tax-free paradise with lots of guns.

[Matrosov]

25. Why do you hate freedom?

'Why do you hate freedom?' is their standard response when they run out of arguments.

To be fair, at least libertarians are a little more honest than your average conservative Rethug, who'll also claim to be in favor of small government, but who then has wet dreams about using federal power to outlaw abortion, same-sex marriage, and so forth.

[Javaman]

26. you are being kind...

I liken them to 6 year olds who don't want to go to bed.

[LiberalArkie]

27. Was he in IT? Just about every Libertarian I have ever met is in IT.

[Scootaloo]

28. Libertarians are nuts

Given a chance, most will explain to you - in perfect sincerity - how postage stamps and the Holocaust are exactly the same, "because it was coercion by a government with the threat or reality of violence!"

[libodem]

29. GOOD!

You can lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink. Good luck trying.

Good for you though at least you had the debate. You tried.