Trump: The First Year

Mostly that (somehow) Trump has achieved a great deal in regards to getting Dems and the GOP to work together.

Unfortunately most of that is centered around hating Trump.

Personally I’m just more surprised than anything. I was always under the impression that the left was much more inclined to this tribalism aspect you’re talking about. Maybe it’s just about how damn loud his base seems to be. Optical illusion or something.

Yeah. Me too, Mufasa. And probably every Libertarian-minded person you’ll ever meet IRL, too. And pretty much everybody who isn’t on the far, far, way far left. Or who accepts some fiscal realities and isn’t motivated by getting elected,

General to the thread, not just to you @Mufasa, or your response to @H_factor.

I’ve never met a single person who planned a Libertopia or who wanted ZERO government, as fun as that is to pretend that imaginary islands and anarchists are out there getting in the way of… well, anything really.

The reality is that we’ve long had programs for the elderly and the poor. And we have a country where indigent people aren’t turned away from the ER or the county health dept. We could have started with trying to make those programs better, and extend them to the working poor who were falling through the cracks. I would strongly support that. Maybe consider the affluent elderly people who can certainly afford to buy health insurance on their own, but WILL have a coronary if we touch their government entitlements. That’s the reality. Not some BS about stupid Anarchists and wacko Libertopians building imaginary islands on reddit.

As for the hypothetical with the doctor who wants your home before he’ll treat your kid? That guy would have to keep his wife and kids behind a walled fortress, and arrive at the hospital in an armored car, because his neighbors would soon decide that he didn’t need to be alive. Most guys who are smart enough to be surgeons could figure that out.

Mostly people are concerned with the size and effectiveness of the FOURTH branch, or the sense that regulatory over-reach and government inefficiency has become really burdensome, and is sometimes getting in our way. We see unelected bureaucrats writing "regulations,"that can effect HUGE parts of our economy, and carrying out sentences on violators which include fines and jail time. No legislative branch or judiciary required. Neither of the major parties has been effective at all with cutting out PORK, or with tort reform, which is badly needed at every level of society.

Libertarian-minded people actually care about these kinds of things. Really.

That’s it.

@thunderbolt23, I did read the Reason link you put up. Thanks. And of course, that’s true to an extent. We could look at Adams and Hamilton supporting centralized government, in particular. The founders weren’t all of one mind all the time. Otherwise, I won’t go off on why we can see our Constitution as a document that limits government power, or with the motives behind our revolution. You know all of that. If many modern libertarians like me are inspired by Classic Liberal thinkers of the Enlightenment, or by people like Thomas Paine, then… that is what it is. Religious toleration, freedom of speech, the freedom of the individual, and the freedom to property… All Classic Liberal ideas from that time.

From a recent poll I put up in the Stupid Thread.
More than one in three people (37%) could not name a single right protected by the First Amendment. THE FIRST AMENDMENT.

Only one in four (26%) can name all three branches of the government. (In 2011, 38% could name all three branches.)

One in three (33%) can’t name any branch of government. None. Not even one.

Ya’ll should be more worried about those facts. Way bigger problem than your imaginary island builders.

Well, maybe it’s not unfortunate in the long run then… Worst case we have 7 more years of him, but I don’t see how he wins in 2020 unless the Dems do something completely stupid and run another awful candidate. (Although, depending on 2018, if it still goes red, they should run a shit candidate, and save the star for 2024…) That said, I didn’t think he had a shot in hell to win more than a handful of states last year…

But either way, maybe trump hate will usher in a new wave of cooperating?

lol. I get where you’re coming from, but spend enough time in the right’s bubble and you’ll see they are everything the hate about the left, just different about it.

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The threat of vigilantism–against innocent children and spouse no less!–as de facto regulation on the free market? That’s a not-so Invisible Hand, I’d say.

OK, let’s make the surgeon less loathsome (and the hypothetical less ridiculous). Suppose he simply demanded a fair-market-value payment in advance for his services–and the family couldn’t pay, resulting in the death of the child. Would that be a reasonable ‘free market’ action on his part, or would it too be deserving of murdering him and his family?

When it comes to ‘stoopid,’ don’t make the mistake of underestimating us.

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I’m in a classic liberal/libertarian group elsewhere and the question came up about “who used to be a democrat”. I answered because I was.

But for all the fault of the Dem’s the GOP is a semi controlled disaster of a party. They literally do so much wrong, all the time, I am baffled they ever win, like ever.

Maybe they both need to burn to the ground and start over with hard fund raising caps. (Not donation caps, but fund raising.) Because that is basically all our representatives are these days, who can raise money the best… God damn sales people the lot fo them.

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Re: Thy hypothetical doctor. That was no threat of vigilantism. Just telling you all what you already know about what would happen if a doctor began refusing to help desperate people. Desperate people do desperate things.

If we have a society where the moral fabric allowed for that, you’d also see wide scale lawless behavior. Right now, we treat people who show up at the ER, so it’s just a strawman.

As for wives and children living in an armed fortress? Just look at people in countries run by corrupt police and drug cartels. You find anyone with money in fear of their children being kidnapped for ransom. That’s not a hypothetical situation.

I think the rest of my post pretty well explains where I stand on HC, so I won’t engage the free market question.

You are buttressing my argument that HC is not suited to a free-market model of delivery. After all, nobody talks matter-of-factly about people killing a plumber and his family if he refuses to fix their pipes for free.

Yes, because of regulations (specifically EMTALA, an unfunded mandate).

Indeed. As a wise woman I know put it: Desperate people do desperate things.

As my hypothetical assumed a true free market in HC, you already have.

I don’t think that spending a lifetime in DC would give one the necessary knowledge and wisdom to make the right decisions for the nation. They only give one the knowledge on how to stay in office. Prove you can make it on your own before you decide that you are so special you should be running things. Any college kid who says that after he gets his degree he is going to go into politics should be branded on the forehead so we know better than to elect him.

Sure. Yes to all of that. You’ll get no argument here.

In fact, I think if you asked most libertarian-minded people, they’d probably also agree with you. I think you’d find very few ZERO government, let’s have fully-free market healthcare people, in the real world. Now in progressive strawman world, where there are hordes of libertarian island builders? I don’t know.

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Peter Thiel’s plan wasn’t the product of ‘progressive strawmanism.’ It was going to happen, until he realized it would cost vastly more than he anticipated.

No job gives the necessary knowledge and wisdom to make the right decisions for the nation. The main reason being pols aren’t in place to make decisions for us, they’re in place to make OUR decisions happen.

I can make it on my own. I’m also, in no way, suited to be POTUS.

Politics is an industry. Very very very few people go straight from college INTO elected office unless they’re legacies.

Whether or not a particular job can prepare you to be president, experience in the real world should count for something.

Just because you can make it on your own might not make you fit to be president but not being able to make it on your own probably makes you unfit.

People in college, some are still teenagers, believe that they should hold elected office one day. Based on what? What 20 year old believes he knows enough about the world to be president or a congressman? Someone too lazy to get a real job. And yes, they might not go straight into elected office but they become interns and move up from there. They receive a thorough education in how to be a bureaucrat.

With the exception of legacies, I’m struggling to think of a more cutthroat industry than politics. Is there a particular industry you’re thinking of that would better prove they can “make it?”

And how exactly does this not prepare you to be POTUS? The biggest bureaucrat in the world?

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I don’t disagree with any of that - but I do think there’s a distinction between Classical Liberals and libertarians. While they often claim to be the same, I see large differences. Classical Liberals weren’t vehemently anti-government. They obviously weren’t statists either, but this idea that the core of their philosophy was hating government is false. They hated arbitrary, illegitimate government - but they didn’t think every government program or intervention was an act of violence against people’s freedom.

So it is (often) with self-described libertarians (not saying you). Mention any public policy problem, and then first response is always “duh, the market can totally fix it, they government just screws it all up, and the moment government gets involved, it’s just another species of slavery. Freedom!”

Which is - stupid. But I can set my watch by this predictable response. And it gets old.

You don’t take this approach. I always look forward to your thoughtful libertarianism. But I don’t suffer the bumper sticker foolishness.

And more of them should speak up in the thoughtful way you do about them. I actually think that mainstream America is classical liberal lite - the old socially liberal, fiscally conservative formula. There’s a chance for libertarian-ish people and ideas to make headway, especially given the state of the two parties.

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@anon71262119 @EyeDentist

Peter probably found out about the fortunes of Paddy Roy Bates and his sovereign micronation of Sealand. They’ve had fights with pirates for their little slice of Anarchist heaven. Lmao.

Edit: just read that he wrote a constitution. So not an anarchist, just a separatist.

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A chief executive of the country should be a leader. Not a bureaucrat. Now very few have been exemplary leaders. Especially lately.

bu·reau·crat
ˈbyo͝orəˌkrat/Submit
noun
an official in a government department, in particular one perceived as being concerned with procedural correctness at the expense of people’s needs.
synonyms: official, officeholder, administrator, public servant, civil servant, functionary; mandarin; derogatoryapparatchik, bean counter, paper shuffler
“Washington bureaucrats”

Cool story, and a sporty flag to boot. My only quibble is with the name–isn’t Sealand an oxymoron?

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I don’t believe all pols are bureaucrats (just a lot of em). In his scenario all pols are bureaucrats which includes POTUS and somehow starting as a bureaucrat at a young age doesn’t qualify you for office.

Your both wrong hes just a jerk off

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I may be saying that most are bureaucrats, which is the nicest thing I can say about them, but that doesn’t mean I think that’s how it should be. The entire concept of the career politician should be done away with.

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