Freedom is the ONLY thing that counts. I do acknowledge that Libertarians claim to want to pursue freedom.
However I believe that Libertarianism, will only replace tyrannical government with tyrannical rule by businesses.
The problem with governments no matter their political leaning is that most political ideologies lack any mechanism to deal with corruption and abuses of power. Libertarianism seeks to deal with this by removing government and instead hand the power to private companies.
Companies are usually small dictatorships or even tyrannies. Handing them the power over all of society will only benefit the owners of these companies. The rest of society will basically be reduced to the status of slaves as they have no say over the direction of the society they maintain through their 9to5s.
These companies already control governments around the world through favors, bribes or other means such as regulatory capture or even by influencing the media and thereby manipulating the public's opinion through the advertisement revenue.
Our problems would only get worse, all the ills of today's society, lack of freedom, lack of peace, lack of just basic human decency will be vastly aggravated if we hand the entirety of control to people like petur tihel and allen mosque.
Instead the way to go about this is MORE democracy not less of it. The solution is to give average citizens more influence over the fate of society rather than less. However for that to happen we all need to fight ignorance and promote the spread of education. It has to become cool again to read books (or .epub/.mobi's lol)
The best way to resolve the the corruption issue is to not allow any individual to hold power, instead having a distributed system.
More of a community-driven government. Sort of like these workers owned companies. We should not delegate away our decision-making power. We should ourselves make the decisions.
Although this post is in English it does neither concern the ASU nor KU or any other English speaking countries, in particular. It's a general post addressing a world wide phenomenon.
I think you may have come up with the least unpopular opinion on Lemmy. There's more people who are unabashed fans of Stalin and Mao than there are libertarians.
Buuut...I mean, I'm not a libertarian, but I've taken libertarian ideas more seriously than you have, so I can play devil's advocate.
The idea behind libertarianism isn't to hand power over to corporations; that's just what detractors claim will happen. What they claim will happen is that corporations will become far less powerful.
The nightmare cyberpunk scenario where companies acquire private militaries and just physically take over doesn't really apply. The difference between libertarians and anarchists is that the former do see a place for government, usually including military, courts, policing, enforcement of contracts, and a few other things. So companies would continue to have to earn your dollar the old fashion way.
Now, think of industries that suck, where the companies are really shitty causing people to complain about them all the time, but are nonetheless stuck using them for lack of options.
Got some? Okay, now, were you thinking of electronics companies? No? How about bedding, or kitchenware? Hardware & tools? Flooring? Children's toys? Food & grocery?
Or...were you maybe thinking (depending where you live) of banking, airline, healthcare, insurance, or telecom industries?
Okay, now, change of topic: think of some industries with lots of regulation and government intervention.
Did you by any chance come up with the same list?
Lots of people will claim those industries are heavily regulated because they're somehow inherently shitty, and need the government to step in to fix them. Libertarians would say that those industries are shitty because regulations and government interventions prevent competition and shelter incumbents. They don't have to treat customers well anymore, or make particularly good products, because their position is secure whether they do or not. In an actual free market, competition is easier, so it's harder for a company to establish a monopoly.
An extreme example: Britain famously demanded Hong Kong as compensation from China during the Opium Wars, and used it as a gateway to Asia. They treated it with a sort of benign neglect: as long as the port was functioning, they didn't pay that much attention to the operation of the territory. It was not heavily regulated, to the point that even (for example) the healthcare industry was basically regulation-free. You could literally stick a sign on the door of your apartment claiming you were doctor, and start treating people, and nobody would stop you.
So, since healthcare is one of those sacred industries that requires heavy government regulation to protect people, the life expectancy and health outcomes of Hong Kongers must have been abysmal, right? Well...no, it actually climbed steadily throughout, and is #1 in the world today (though it should be noted the situation re: regulation changed post-1997). And it was a hell of a lot cheaper than American or European healthcare at every point.
There are industries where monopolies seem to form naturally. In my lifetime, Microsoft, Facebook and Google have all been accused of being monopolistic. There were calls for government intervention. But like...they were monopolies (or got close, anyway) because lots of people chose to use them. Nobody was forced. I couldn't stand Microsoft or Facebook, so I switched to Linux way back in the 90s and I've never really used Facebook at all. I do use some Google products, because they're pretty good.
And I'm fine. Nobody ever threatened me. My life wasn't negatively affected AFAICT. I just didn't use that product. Competitors appeared, like Linux & BSD, Reddit, Lemmy, etc, and I liked those better so I used them instead. That was it. Pretty boring as far as dystopias go.
The situation is a bit different when it comes to government. I can't opt in or out, I'm just stuck. I mean, I can move (assuming I have enough cash to do it), but fully extricating yourself from your home country is surprisingly hard: the US will chase you around the world to claim taxes from your income. And you immediately have to pick another country, and your options are severely limited.
People talk about corporations in such dire terms. It's kind of mystifying to me: just don't fucking use that corporation's products. Voila! You're free from their insidious influence.
Ahh, but they corrupt government institutions with their lobbying money! The libertarian answer is: have fewer government institutions, then. They can't lobby to bend regulations in their favor if there are no regulations in the first place. They would say that heavy regulation means incumbents are protected from competition, and can thus extract more 'rent', meaning more profit, which they can then turn towards warping the copious regulations in their favor...meaning still more protection, more profit, and more regulatory capture.
Like I said, I'm not a libertarian, but I understand their perspective, and I think it should be more influential than it is. I can talk about how rent control raises housing costs, or how "worker's rights" results in lower pay, or how minimum wages are racist and sexist.
Or you can just call me names for taking libertarians seriously! That seems like the more popular approach.
Wasn't the state of healthcare at the time somewhere between useless and actively harmful? Not much use in regulating what the experts of the day are completely wrong about.
Anyway my issue with much of the argumentation you've presented here, despite there being many reasonable points, is that most libertarians seem to simply not care at all whether their predictions of how well unfettered capitalism will go are realistic or true. It's just talking points to them, because if they weren't true, it would still be justified to favor absolute property rights over everything else. That's what they really care about, the justice of no one getting to touch their stuff, and it outweighs everything else.
Which is frustrating, because despite their rare willingness to drill down into specifics, it's a clear point of biased disingenuousness. If the only thing a point means to someone is that if it is made one way others might be persuaded of their cause, the incentive is to only understand it that particular way, and never realize or admit if it's wrong.
My issue with the core ethos is, a person's ability to opt out of things very often depends on how poor they are, and so if property is liberty, it's only liberty for those with the property.
The state of healthcare in the 1960s through the 1990s? I mean, it wasn't that bad. Life expectancy at the time was rising very quickly in developed countries--and in Hong Kong.
Libertarians can drive me crazy too, and I agree that a lot of them are driven by ideology, not practicality. And a lot of them can't even make these arguments in defense of their own beliefs--they just come at it from a simple moral POV ("taxes are violence!"). But that's not unique to libertarians: most people hold to ideologies they don't fully understand, which is why they defend them rabidly with insults and attacks, instead of just explaining why they believe what they do. "I believe we should do this because it's right, and I'll get mad if you try to explain why it's impractical, impossible, or counterproductive!" is an attitude I hear more often, if anything, from the Left.
And, well, in a libertarian world, your ability to opt out of things may depend, to some extent, on your wealth--but (they would say) it's easier for people to get wealthy in general. And as I pointed out in my original post...well...no, it's not really true. I opt out of Facebook and Microsoft and other 'monopolies', and I'm just fine. Why would that change? But I really, actually can't opt out of the state, and the bigger the state gets the more restricted we are. So, the solution to "if the libertarians got their way, some people would be more free than others" is "we should significantly restrict freedom overall, for everybody"?
I was thinking of the 1800s, overlooked that you also were referring to more recently