I have a comment awaiting moderation for Catallaxy,
where Julie Novak has attempted to answer the question "why are there no libertarian countries":
* Julie may well have read of this article elsewhere (it was getting a
lot of publicity in the US), but I was the first to raise it at
Catallaxy in an open thread some days ago. It attracted little
comment, apart from the “just piss off” variety, and daddy dave accused
it of being deliberately provocative to dare raise it at a libertarian
themed site (even though, as many others now point out, the threads are
dominated by conservatives.) This is an example of the completely out
of whack treatment yours truly receives at the blog – it was an
interesting argument well deserving of comment, but because I am the one
to raise it, I am the one who deserves punishment.
* Isn’t it gob smackingly ironic for the complaints at this blog
regarding the alleged crushing nanny statism which Australians are
suffering under that Julie is citing recent research ranking the country
high in the matters of economic and personal freedoms? I haven’t been
able to download the paper at the link, but people who can should
perhaps explain why it doesn’t support my contention that the blog is
full of exaggerating panic merchants?
8 comments:
Catallaxy a libertarian forum? Get outta here. They treat everyone with a divergent view like shite. You are not alone.
Why are there no libertarian countries? Because most people aren't that stupid. Only idiots try to push that ideology to its logical conclusion
Well, yes.
Marxism basically fails because it gets human nature on an individual and societal scale wrong; people know that libertarianism does exactly the same thing without having to try the experiment.
Catallaxians are just like old fashioned Communists.
Evidence never matters only ideology or simply make it up!
I replied to you at the time. Quite simply, it's hard to convince governments to wield less power.
dd, I think that is just silly.
First, I suppose we should define what a "libertarian country" would be, but I presume it is one which envisages no government run health services, no government welfare services, no government schools, and no government mandated minimum wage.
Do you seriously think any group of citizens in the world would ever want to try such a society?
It is not that no government would want to give up the relevant powers: it is that no group of citizens would ever let them do it.
well there have been 'libertarian' countries and states, so defined, but mostly in the 19th century before the rise of massive bureaucracies and the welfare state.
libertarianism is not anarchism; it's about less state, not no state. There's a difference.
Yes, dd: I agree - many of the features libertarians yearn for are features of pre-modern states.
And they no longer exist because - shock horror! - people realised the systems were not working well without some government involvement.
We all know libertarians have fantasies about how great it must have been to live in the wild west (they were all fans of Deadwood, weren't they) or in a Robert Heinlein future (there is a high degree of science fiction fandom amongst libertarians, I think: it goes along with their general fantasy prone nature); but the great majority of sensible people see the success of modern societies as being because nations were sensible to evolve away from what are now considered libertarian ideals.
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