Is libertarianism too rational?

[mammador]

I am a libertarian and believe in freedom without hurting others. But then I get the impression that libertarianism is too rational.

People don't act rationally, and logic equates with emotion/whim and impulse in human behaviour and decision-making.

Take employment as an example. Libertarians invariably say that without anti-discrimination laws, employers will always choose the best candidates since it's economically rational. lolwut? OK, so what if employers don't care about competitiveness, or wish to sacrifice this for choosing their own kind?

Surely libertarianism should be revised to account for, well....human nature..

 

[spittledip]

I am a libertarian and believe in freedom without hurting others. But then I get the impression that libertarianism is too rational.

People don't act rationally, and logic equates with emotion/whim and impulse in human behaviour and decision-making.

Take employment as an example. Libertarians invariably say that without anti-discrimination laws, employers will always choose the best candidates since it's economically rational. lolwut? OK, so what if employers don't care about competitiveness, or wish to sacrifice this for choosing their own kind?

Surely libertarianism should be revised to account for, well....human nature..

IDK, communism is pretty rational too. Capitalism and democracy seem rational also. Socialism seems rational. The problem has always been people, not the forms of government.

 

[Absolution75]

I am a libertarian and believe in freedom without hurting others. But then I get the impression that libertarianism is too rational.

People don't act rationally, and logic equates with emotion/whim and impulse in human behaviour and decision-making.

Take employment as an example. Libertarians invariably say that without anti-discrimination laws, employers will always choose the best candidates since it's economically rational. lolwut? OK, so what if employers don't care about competitiveness, or wish to sacrifice this for choosing their own kind?

Surely libertarianism should be revised to account for, well....human nature..

I actually agree, full blown libertarianism would only work in an extremely well informed/logical/rational community. But you don't really revise libertarianism, you just move a bit further away from it. You can still take and apply its ideas.

Libertarianism is the answer for a society that doesn't exist. There isn't a single best solution for government, unfortunately.

 

[DucatiMonster696]

Basically you are saying that pacifism (nonviolence), etc are too rational as those are the underlying lynch pins of Libertarianism. As in rejecting the idea that government should be used as a truncheon to create "Solutions". Additionally Libertarianism does not completely reject the role of government in society however Libertarianism supports a more passive form of government action that does not erode the rights of the minority in society, provides and maintains choice for people to opt out, and is held in check from growing out of control and accountable for its actions.

 

[Anarchist420]

libertarianism only lasts under voluntary unions (non-binding confederations that recognizes the right of exit among other things) with all sovereigns under it respecting the right of exit (i.e., freedom of disassociation), both individual (if an individual wants to move out of the entire confederation or move to another member of the confederation wanting to take him in without threats issued) and collective (where local democratic govts vote to secede from the sovereign).

anyway, i advise people to look at dickinson's original draft, jefferson's proposals, and the ratified articles of confederation and perpetual union.

once you read the three documents you will conclude that a jeffersonian model of govt is the only one capable of securing liberty for more than a generation. and murray rothbard, the coolest, sweetest, and most intelligent man ever, elaborates on why the perpetual union was a failure in conceived in liberty (if i am mistaken about that, then it is in for a new liberty ) but i think it was the former.

 

[drebo]

The biggest problem with libertarianism (and liberal social policies in general) is that libertarianism relies on people to recognize their own personal responsibility in their actions.

For instance, if I choose not to go to work today, that was a choice that I made and I need to deal with the consequences of maybe not having enough food to eat. Or, if I decide to go to the beach nude, I may have to deal with ridicule and people asking me not to be naked in front of their children.

In these days, people would rather bitch to someone else and make them responsible.

We can't have liberal attitudes toward ourselves and our actions until people stop relying on other people to enforce equality and responsibility.

 

[Spungo]

Surely libertarianism should be revised to account for, well....human nature..

Extreme anything always fails to account for human nature. We see that communism has turned into an oppressive dictatorship every time it has been tried, but that doesn't stop people from saying it will be different this time. We see that unregulated capitalism always leads to dangerous work conditions and serious environmental damage, but that doesn't stop people from saying it will be different this time.

ABOLISH THE EPA!!!!

(smog in Beijing)

People will always overshoot. The EPA has a few bad rules, so we need to abolish the whole thing. Capitalism has a few poor people so we need to abolish the whole thing and become the Soviet Union. My baby had a dirty diaper so I threw it in the trash.

 

[Anarchist420]

i have also been thinking that most of the world pop, the ones with the mark of the equator on them from their direct maternal line (80-90% of the time, very rarely is the child more like their father... civil, metrosexual men like more masculine women who nag and are non-productive so that explains why most men in the world are macho and why so few women are actually without any testosterone at all), is inclined to aggression and non-production (which is really just destruction as people exit life either having lived more independent/producing than dependent/consuming or vice-versa) and that most people in the world are not tolerant of their own kind while being jealous of the productive minority of the world pop. also, i believe that Old Europeans have a matrilineage from central asia (like modern day siberia) and share that in common with about 40-50% of today east asians... that then means matrilineal descendants of Old Europeans could have some kind of intolerance/collectivist gene (very common in East asians, but a maximum of 20% in europeans today) that makes them have bad gas and heart problems if they are around equatorial people (where 70-80% of modern european haplotypes come plus all black african and austronesian ones). so that explains why "europeans" are in between blacks on one end and east asians on the other along with the fact that there is a lot of inter-european variation while not so much inter- east asian or inter- black variation.
so i think all of that accurately explains how libertarianism is pretty dislike throughout the modern world and why it wasnt even necessary in the earliest stages of nature (because the Old Europeans loved each other, as do jews today as well as white south africans and the Cromwellians/Anglo-Irish) so they had a gift economy for example while people with mtDNA origins close to the equator are more warlike, less intelligent, ruder, and more likely to be the slave race by nature... the latter would be born not knowing they were slaves, and only some would not be privately owned by "the laws of nature and of Nature's God")

 

[Pray To Jesus]

A4 you need to use paragraphs.

 

[Pray To Jesus]

(smog in Beijing)

:'(


At least the particulates are keeping the Earth cooler.

 

[theeedude]

I think you are confusing simplistic, which is what Libertarianism is, with rational.

 

[Lithium381]

The biggest problem with libertarianism (and liberal social policies in general) is that libertarianism relies on people to recognize their own personal responsibility in their actions.

For instance, if I choose not to go to work today, that was a choice that I made and I need to deal with the consequences of maybe not having enough food to eat. Or, if I decide to go to the beach nude, I may have to deal with ridicule and people asking me not to be naked in front of their children.

In these days, people would rather bitch to someone else and make them responsible.

We can't have liberal attitudes toward ourselves and our actions until people stop relying on other people to enforce equality and responsibility.

True, the coin of freedom has two sides .. .. liberty on one side and responsibility on the other...

 

[Lithium381]

I am a libertarian and believe in freedom without hurting others. But then I get the impression that libertarianism is too rational.

People don't act rationally, and logic equates with emotion/whim and impulse in human behaviour and decision-making.

Take employment as an example. Libertarians invariably say that without anti-discrimination laws, employers will always choose the best candidates since it's economically rational. lolwut? OK, so what if employers don't care about competitiveness, or wish to sacrifice this for choosing their own kind?

Surely libertarianism should be revised to account for, well....human nature..

I'm also a self-described libertarian. I recognize that my opinions should not influence others; so long as their actions aren't hurting anybody and it's two (or more) consenting adults entering into a contract then i'm all for it.

 

[Spungo]

I think you are confusing simplistic, which is what Libertarianism is, with rational.

Bill Burr hating on Stefan Molyneaux

 

[nehalem256]

I'm also a self-described libertarian. I recognize that my opinions should not influence others; so long as their actions aren't hurting anybody and it's two (or more) consenting adults entering into a contract then i'm all for it.

The problem is how do you determine that?

Say one person buys a house they really cant afford and defaults on it. No one is really hurt by that and life goes on.

Now say 10 million people buy houses they really cant afford and default on them. All of a sudden its RIP economy.

And that is the real flaw in libertarianism. It relies on the number of people who screw up being small enough to not completely screw everyone else over.

 

[sandorski]

No. As Senseamp said, it is Simplistic. If it was Rational, it would address the variables that make it unworkable. Instead, it simply ignores those variables.

It is too Idealistic.

 

[Phokus]

Libertarianism works incredibly well when you're talking about 2 people trapped on an island and each person specializing in something to keep both people alive. It works well when you keep adding more people but somewhere along the line, it falls apart when the number of people participating in the system gets too large and some people start monopolizing all the wealth, pushing externalities on others, using asymmetric information/irrational consumer behavior to cheat others etc.

 

[DominionSeraph]

The biggest problem with libertarianism (and liberal social policies in general) is that libertarianism relies on people to recognize their own personal responsibility in their actions.

For instance, if I choose not to go to work today, that was a choice that I made and I need to deal with the consequences of maybe not having enough food to eat. Or, if I decide to go to the beach nude, I may have to deal with ridicule and people asking me not to be naked in front of their children.

In these days, people would rather bitch to someone else and make them responsible.

We can't have liberal attitudes toward ourselves and our actions until people stop relying on other people to enforce equality and responsibility.

No, the biggest problem with libertarianism is that it relies on people to recognize what he judges to be "their own personal responsibility". (Which is why it's, "Good luck with that," AKA "LOLbertarianism.")

The libertarian fails to acknowledge that his ideas belong solely to him. He declares them "objective ("rational")", uses that to mentally foist them off onto everyone else, then declares everyone who does not align with his beliefs to be ideologically "incorrect" while distancing himself from any requirement to promulgate said beliefs. "If only everyone thought what I think they should, when I think they should, and acted how I think they should, everything would work great!" But his perspective isn't radically less self-centered than the conservative who sees nothing incongruous between, "Deez filthy blacks shouldn't be allowed to even look at our wimminz," and, "I'm 'murrican! I has rights!" He doesn't see all possible viewpoints so it's guaranteed that his ideologically "perfect" world isn't balanced, leaving inhabitants remaining with some very valid gripes over its nature.

Conservatards may not be very bright, but even they can figure out that you're not going to have resolution between conflicting viewpoints without sufficient power to force a resolution. Our decisions are going to be imperfect, unfairness will exist, but we can do no better than our best, and each has to move forward based on their judgment. The government that is the summation of individual judgment as to its best practices and possesses the fraction of power assigned sits over individual personal conflicts.

Libertarianism is really just teenage, whiny rebelliousness. "Why can't I do whatever I want with nobody telling me nothin'? I wasn't plannin' on hurtin' anybody, I just wanna do whatever I feel like."
You can only successfully chart a course that can't come into conflict with a person if you are them. You aren't. So that doesn't work. This is why people have implemented a system that gives them some say over what others do. Spoiled white teenage males crying that it's unfair that their privilege wasn't extended into being the sole arbiters of what behavior of their is allowed doesn't really form a compelling argument that there's a burning need to implement this. Quite the contrary, as the degree of self-absorption they exhibit says that they're nowhere near ready to judge such a thing.

 

[Anarchist420]

Libertarianism works incredibly well when you're talking about 2 people trapped on an island and each person specializing in something to keep both people alive. It works well when you keep adding more people but somewhere along the line, it falls apart when the number of people participating in the system gets too large and some people start monopolizing all the wealth, pushing externalities on others, using asymmetric information/irrational consumer behavior to cheat others etc.

modern liberalism also correlates negatively with intelligence like conservatism does contrary to classical liberalism.

 

[Anarchist420]

The libertarian fails to acknowledge that his ideas belong solely to him. He declares them "objective ("rational")",

the only school of econ compatible with classical liberalism declares that the value of everything is subjective and it is right. and you accidentally just proved that.

 

[Vic]

Not everyone is Howard Roark.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Not everyone is Howard Roark.

Speaking of Howard Roark, the Objectivists (hard-core advocates of laissez-faire capitalism) would argue that the Libertarians are irrational because they lack a principled philosophical base for advocating liberty. There is also such a thing as "Christian Libertarians" who oppose things like abortion and birth control and perhaps even NAMBLA members (National Association of Man-Boy Lovers) under the Libertarian banner. This may be of interest to some:

Libertarianism: the Perversion of Liberty

 

[Vic]

It's easy to wave the flag of liberty. It's much harder to understand what liberty is.
" What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! Who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment and death itself in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment . . . inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose." - Thomas Jefferson

 

[Moonbeam]

There are problems with the word rational. In the first place everybody thinks he or she is rational and they judge everything from their level of understanding. Secondly rational can refer to a couple of different things. One person may reason logically and arrive at an absurd conclusion that people with practical rationality reject instantly. If we all saw rational in the same way things would go swimmingly.

 

[Zaap]

The problem is how do you determine that?

Say one person buys a house they really cant afford and defaults on it. No one is really hurt by that and life goes on.

I wouldn't say no one is hurt by that. If you can't afford something, no one should be forced by some stupid government policy to "sell" it to you. I don't really see this equation as having a thing to do with libertarianism.