this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2025
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Libertarian Discussion
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Place for discussion from a Libertarian perspective, meaning less top-down control and more individual liberty. In general, the intent is discussion about issues and not a discussion on libertarianism itself or any of its branches.
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Libertarianism does not exist.
It's a stalking horse for generic conservatism, where ingroup good and outgroup bad. Then you shuffle cards to form argument-shaped sentences following the word "because." If they differ from yesterday's sentences, eh, who cares.
Libertarianism is an approach to policy, not a set of policies itself. Generally speaking, libertarians want to solve problems with more freedom rather than less. They generally don't think government should make decisions for people, but they do think the government has a role in helping people when they run into problems.
Libertarians disagree with each other on what extent government should be involved, hence why they disagree with each other, but they're similar in the approach to policy. There isn't really an in-group or out-group, just people who generally agree that more freedom is better than less.
If you look at the two popular sides of political debate, it's all about which freedoms we're willing to give up to accomplish some goal, like giving up guns or privacy. Or in other words, the ends justify the means, provided the means aren't too bad. In libertarianism, the means are the ends, meaning how we solve a problem is more important than solving the problem, and if the solution to the problem is too intrusive, the problem probably doesn't need to be solved. For example, let's say someone decides to tackle gambling addiction. The conservative may want to ban it because gambling is a sin, the liberal may want age restrictions and heavy regulations to prevent companies from taking advantage of people, and the libertarian would maybe say legalize it, and if they're left leaning, tax it a bit to provide rehab services because anything more is a violation of freedom.
Well said!
Your chosen example is 'How do we solve this profitable abuse?' 'Don't.'
At best - your philosophy has been co-opted by rich bastards seeking high-minded excuses for destroying all obstacles to their consolidation of wealth and power. At worst they invented it. As they've invented countless internally-consistent pretenses they will adopt or abandon as it suits their plain and simple motives.
The best-case scenario, where there really is some core of true believers and they're all you'd like to talk about, sees you use cigarettes as a positive example. Manufactured desire converted to chemical dependency. It's a denial of systemic problems, in an era where systemic problems from profitable abuses might end human civilization.
An approach to policy that demands no policy is the sound of one hand clapping. At least I think that's the gesture it's making.
If you're talking about people like Musk and Thiel, then yeah, Musk is only using it to push Twitter and to get that DOGE spot, and Thiel seems like an accelerationist more than anything. But since both are firmly attached to the government teat for their businesses, it makes no sense calling them libertarians. If you're referring to Trump, I'll just point to his speech at the LP convention where he got booed.
If you're talking about someone else, please name them so we can discuss them.
Well yeah, cigarettes are a fantastic example. The conservatives who call themselves "libertarian" only do so for fiscal matters and wouldn't touch libertarian social policy with a 10' pole because their socially conservative party mates would roast them for it.
It's something I think should be 100% legal despite believing nobody should use it since people should be able to choose what to put in their bodies, and we have simple, minimally intrusive laws to protect people from second hand smoke (be X distance from buildings, except in designated smoking rooms/areas). Chewing tobacco is even less intrusive and is covered by littering laws. We can even age restrict it since only adults can properly consent to addictive substances.
Maybe tax tobacco a bit to fund quitting assistance programs and call it good (would be far less than current "sin" taxes). People are unlikely to hurt others due to the effects of nicotine like they could with alcohol or hard drugs, so it's a pretty simple conclusion.
It's not a denial of systemic problems, it's an explicit acknowledgment of a few things:
It doesn't demand it. I gave you examples of policies WRT cigarettes that correct the worst of the problem without violating anyone's freedom unnecessarily. It's pretty close to what we have today, minus punitive taxes and with taxes that help correct the problems it creates.
But sometimes no policy is the best policy. Sometimes you just need to let people create solutions for themselves.
Hey, so... do Democrats get invited to LP conventions?
I've spent twenty years bickering with libertarians online, in a rich tableau of bickering with damn near everyone online, and the few typical improvements over run-of-the-mill republicans are counterbalanced by suggesting whites-only businesses should be left to the market. As a rule, they're not bigots... but they view bigotry as individual choice, where prevention means 'well I wouldn't--' and solutions go 'you should just--.'
Systemic problems are not addressed by individual action. That's. What makes them systemic. I know you have glimpsed the elephant, walking around feeling its shape, because you've said artificial scarcity can violate the non-aggression principle. That doesn't actually make sense, but it understands something's fucked, and searches for reasons, using the cards you're prepared to draw. This was in the thread where you suggested that bombarding people with "SMOKE!" ads and making their deadly chemical dependency as gentle as possible was a perfectly fine level of manipulation for profit. Admirable, even. A commendable example of unrestrained markets doing something good. Like so long as you can say choice with a straight face, problems aren't real.
Meanwhile this herd of alleged porcupines isn't notorious for direct action against overbearing police presence, except for those armed pricks harassing meter maids a decade ago. Y'all chided 'get government out of the marriage business' like that'd solve corporations excluding a man's husband from healthcare. All the Ron Paul bros on reddit were fine with state governments doing whatever, so long as the boot on their neck wasn't federal. Your party convention hosted a fascist. If the grand philosophy was more of an excuse, for the supermajority of those who identify with it, what would look different?
Yes. Biden didn't accept, but Trump and RFK Jr. did.
This isn't an issue with libertarians, but people generally. Most people are cowards, and libertarians are no different. That said, I'm sure plenty of libertarians have joined protests along with Democrats and independents.
Libertarians at least are pretty consistent in calling for an end to qualified immunity.
Ending the government institution of marriage wouldn't happen without some form of replacement. My proposal here is to replace it with a certain set of contracts, such as joint financial responsibility, joint medical responsibility, etc. Health insurance would no longer be able to use "marriage" as a determining factor for health insurance and would probably use one of those contracts. Doing anything else (i.e. having their own definition) would certainly be considered illegal discrimination, no?
That said, most libertarians support gay marriage since the other option is far less likely to happen and isn't well defined.
Ron Paul is about as good as you get with someone running as a Republican. I would personally make a few changes:
That's a loaded question, and I'm not exactly sure what you're really asking. But generally speaking, if libertarianism was designed to funnel power to the elite, it would be a lot more successful and better funded.
It seems rich people don't actually want libertarians in power, so they focus their money on the two party system because it's easier to work with corrupt politicians than idealists.
That's 100 percent the answer! It astounds me that Lemmy doesn't realize that the the people in power, regardless of party, are rich and don't look out for them. The one thing that both Democrats and Republicans agree on, is that there shouldn't be third parties! lol
They don't wanna lose their power.
And that's the "both parties are the same" argument. Yes, they have very different policies so they're not literally the same, but both oppose real electoral choice. I think that encourages both parties to grow the power of the federal government, because even if it benefits their opponents in the next cycle, they're all but guaranteed to get that power back afterward. If we had viable third parties, that guarantee isn't there.
Your opinion isn't fact. Bro, you are a well-known duopoly worship promoter. I don't take anything you say seriously. Republicans suck. Democrats suck. That's my opinion. You have yours. We're never gonna agree.
Ooh, I'm well-known. Shame it's for something made-up. I've long been an absolute crank about ranked voting and breaking the two-party system.
I have not seen any alleged third party fall so consistently to one side, as libertarians backing republicans. You can glibly denounce 'both sides,' but so does one side, and it's the side y'all routinely vote for. Pretending the outright fascists are only as bad as the ineffectual liberals is standard rhetoric for those fascists. I have no love for the democratic party, but they're a thousand times better than the bastards currently snatching people off the street. Your beef with people who want cheaper healthcare needs to be fundamentally distinct from your beef with people openly drooling about rounding up sixty million Americans.
Observable reality is not a matter of opinion. On some subjects, you can speak your mind, and be wrong. Claiming any great bulk of self-professed libertarians are-too distinct from and unaligned with generic conservatives is observably wrong. You know who else claims that? Conservatives. The ones who aren't fully in the cult act like there's some silent mass of real conservatives, like however we pretend they were thirty years ago, and they're gonna ride over the hill and put all this extremism behind us. But no. It's just the extremism, and a facade.
The facade for this group is a lot of high-minded academic language to say, let rich people wield unchecked power. Pleasant-sounding excuses to eliminate societal guardrails against discrimination, poverty, hunger, and child laborers who can't count to ten.
Actual pragmatic property-fetishism would still acknowledge the diminishing marginal utility of money and tax the hell out of rich people. A handful of guys being able to shape an entire country is antithetical to any visions of decentralized order. Everyone does better when that excess is spent on infrastructure.
Actual economy-uber-alles thinking would demand a high minimum wage, so people can buy things. If a business can't afford to pay a comfortable living wage, they fail, oh well.
Actual individualist fixation would expect amazing schools for everyone, so no brilliant budding minds are doomed to obscurity. Do you want meritocracy, or do you want to measure how rich some kid's parents were? Some beat the odds, but most don't, because that's what odds are.
A society arranged on your stated ideals would look nothing like what you advocate. What you advocate looks an awful lot like what republicans advocated, before they went mask-off. A gun in every fridge and private school and deregulated everything and tax cuts tax cuts tax cuts. These are just demands from hierarchy, to increase hierarchy.
I'll keep voting third party. Thanks! By the way, you aren't just a "crank," you're an outright dick to people on Lemmy. I don't know what your deal is, but you're easily one of the biggest jerks I've ever witnessed on Lemmy. I've seen you advocate violence, stalking, troll accusations, etc. I don't know what you got going on in your real life, but dude...
The problem with that, is on the few times you aren't ranting or calling people names, I can't take ya seriously. And I know you're ok with that too. So all good.
There are fun chaos trolls, ragebaiters, etc. But you, oy. You are the unhappiest person I have ever come across on the internet. And I'm fucking old. So I think you are either fake and you are trying to confuse people because you work for foreign agents, or you have some condition that makes you chronically bitchy. Either way, nah, I don't believe a word you are saying. And you worship the duopoly.
I invite you to bring receipts for any of those shrill claims, because it's inevitably going to be a couple shrugs about Charlie Kirk, and then nothing. Glib frustration with infuriating nonsense, which you've somehow twisted up into lurid allegations about... stalking? I cannot even guess what the fuck inspired that fantasy. And you put 'troll accusations' in the same breath. Bit of a disconnect, yeah? Arson, murder, jaywalking? I gladly admit to calling people trolls, when they're trolling.
Like when they just make shit up and don't have an argument.
Like this directed abuse in the absence of fact.
At no point were you asked to believe me. That denial is a confession. It speaks to a worldview fixated on interpersonal loyalty, where things are true because a trusted person says them. You'll never agree with me because claims from the outgroup are automatically wrong. That tribalism is the core of conservatism. You don't have an answer, and that doesn't bother you, because you've already drawn me as the soyjak, and apparently that's all you think there is to reality. What a shame there's no way for opposing claims to be settled by lookin'.
Anyone can look at your post history, you're removed comments, and see how you are. Brah, you know it and you're proud of it. I don't even know why you are denying it, since you wear it as a badge of pride.
Also, I'm not conservative. thx
Ohhh, Universal Monk slandered me again. No, an obvious exaggeration about instance-owners escalating their discouragement against Lemmy's most block-evading troll is not somehow an endorsement of crimes, you adorable little dingus. You adorable vote-manipulating sockpuppet, if we glance at your own modlog and pretend that's infallible.
So your whole 'we know you' schtick is just one guy clutching pearls about me saying what an asshole he is, huh? That's disappointing. When I argue with sugar_in_your_tea, there's notes. In our previous interaction he kinda defended actual Nazi newspapers, and I'll give the benefit of context and nuance, but that shit's coming up again. You play a weak game if you wanna come out accusing someone of murder fantasies and gangstalking, and your whole basis is - 'but a tankie said so!'
Meanwhile, you've done less than nothing to distnguish yourself from any other conservative. You want to label me, and pretend that's a substitute for any form of counterargument. Like. The whole accusation was, y'all just sneer at outsiders based on this ideology-as-identity, and reach for excuses to justify that kneejerk conclusion.
And your rebuttal was to do that three times in a row.
I don't know who the sugar tea monk guy is, but by the sound of your rant, you're proving my point. I don't even know where your nazi newspapers example is coming from, or what you're talking about. I'm not even talking about newspaper?! What?!
We're talking about you being a jerk and now you are talking about how you read nazi newspapers?! WTF?!
Is your reply meant for me or for someone else?! You sound like you are having an entirely different conversation than what we were talking about.
I knew you were a jerk, but I didn't know you were a nazi. You read nazi newspapers and brag about it. Fits your presonality, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Of course you are a nazi. Have you ever heard of the nazi bar? You're who they talk about. I bet u worship Trump too. Eww, I don't deal with fascists. Yuck, go away.
They're an odd sort of troll.
Could you please cool it? We really don't need these kinds of personal attacks.
I disagree with this person too, but that doesn't make it okay to slander them. Attack arguments, not people.
Understood. But when he said that about your conversation with him, I got annoyed, because you've never defended any Nazi newspapers.
But you're right, no need to stoop to their level.
My level being an accurate reference to specific events I'm prepared to source.
When you recognize you were wrong, your beliefs are supposed to change.
I don't think I was wrong. My beliefs haven't changed, and I stand by everything I said. My opinion of you hasn't changed whatsoever. But I also recognize that this isn't my community, so I will abide by the rules. But nah, fam, nothing has changed on my end. :)
The person in question told you I was right, and you agree with them, but still pretend I'm wrong.
Which is different from the ingroup-based reality I described... somehow.
I think you are misrepresenting his response, which is something you are prone to do. In fact, he said, "but I do think they’re misrepresenting it."
I won't give my real thoughts on you, as I don't want to go against the rules of the person who runs this community.
Again, I stand by everything I said. My opinion about you hasn't change at all. :)
'He kinda did.'
'I kinda did.'
Troll.
And again, I stand by what I said about you, and my opinion hasn't changed at all. But I don't wanna break the rules of this community, so I can say it. But I did say it earlier, and I still believe it. I just won't say it again here.
But don't worry, if I come across you in a more permissive forum, I'll gladly repeat it all. :)
Having said that, I agree with the article posted as well. :)
What's not permissive about this forum? Here's our list of rules:
That's it. This community essentially has no rules. Here's the modlog, there are two entries there, and both are from an admin of this instance.
I haven't picked any other mods because there's no mod burden. I intend to keep the rules very loose to keep it that way, because I value free speech.
Wasn't meant as an attack on you or your comm. I just want to call him names and stuff, like he attacks other people in his comments.
You have a great community. But he calls people names, so I'll call him names. Just not here. You and your community have class. I don't. So it's really a matter of me not wanting to disrespect your comm. :)
Yeah I've already saved this thread for when you lie about me to someone else. Called that in the first comment.
Meanwhile someone in your ingroup admits they did exactly what I said, but they said nuh-uh before repeating exactly what I said they said, so it doesn't count. Again: first comment.
Honestly, thank you for being an uncomplicated example of exactly what I'm talking about. I could put a sticker on your forehead and you'd try rubbing it off the guy in the mirror.
Good. Because again, i stand by everything I said. And thank you for reinforcing exactly what I have always thought of you.
And I also stand by the article I posted. :)
I kinda did though, but I do think they're misrepresenting it. It was in a different thread in a different context. I honestly didn't recognize the user was the same because I don't keep track of usernames unless they're an obvious troll.
Here's the discussion.
I was arguing for a "wait and see" approach to federation saying we don't have enough evidence to say maga.place is bad enough to defederate. The evidence presented was the domain name (90% seemed to stop there) and posts in their conservative community using sketchy sources and nothing about their admins or mods.
The discussion shifted to the sources themselves, and they asked whether I'd support a ban on "Der Sturmer" (Nazi publication prior to WWII) and I said no, but I wouldn't read it because I don't like obvious propaganda. I don't believe in banning any media and instead think good media should crowd out the bad. I'd say the same for any extremist propaganda because freedom of speech is very important to me.
I think it was meant as a gotcha question, since that seems to be how that user argues. I absolutely don't read or support any Nazi anything, but I will defend their right to publish just as I would for anything else I disagree with.
Does should mean will?
Disinformation is not erased by correction. Brains don't work that way. Reactionary radicalization must be prevented, because curing it is a thousand times harder. This is protecting people from harm through speech, as much as censoring directed threats or bigoted abuse. Polite phrasing on intolerable beliefs is just mobster speak: 'it would be a shame if anything happened to your children.'
It was meant as a universal touchstone. Surely, I thought, everybody recognizes literal nazi propaganda should have been stopped, at some point. But no: that obvious extreme was met with milquetoast 'well I wouldn't read it.' Neither did the Jews, buddy. Didn't help. Systemic problems aren't about you.
By the by, calling pointed questions "gotchas" is also a conservative tactic. I opened gently with acknowledgement that at one point the nazi party was just some schmucks. But not only did you suggest the problem with pro-holocaust propaganda was sourcing, you outright invited modern fascists to the table, so long as their racism is scientific racism. You can't wedge yourself under a low bar and claim it was a trap.
No, one of the core tenets of libertarianism is that freedom means dealing with the freedoms of others. People will use their freedom in ways you don't like, and that could be sieg hieling they way down the street or publishing a nazi newspaper, but exercising that right does not restrict yours. A popular saying in libertarian circles is, "your rights end where mine begin," and that goes both ways.
I strongly disagree that allowing someone to exercise their freedom of speech harms anyone else, outside of extreme cases like yelling "FIRE!" in a crowded theater. Speaking filth doesn't itself harm others, the harm to others comes from what others do in response to that speech.
It was a pretty extreme question given the context, and that's frequently a type of "gotcha" question. It's a form of reducto ad absurdum, which means arguing the most extreme logical end (i.e. "I support free speech" -> "So you support Nazi newspapers?"). Whatever the intent, it looked like a "gotcha" question.
I didn't say anything to that extent. Saying someone should have the freedom to say what they want isn't "inviting them to the table." Inviting them to the table means having them on a popular TV network to discuss their views or something, inviting them into the bar is like having their newspapers on display at your store. What I'm talking about is just not kicking them out of your city for having bad ideas.
Word salad.
Good day.
I'm not gonna take anything you say seriously. And you are against third parties. So nah, fam. We ain't gonna be friends.
You are functionally illiterate.
This is true most days, so yeah, I can cop to that! :)