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The 24 Types of Libertarian

Comic: The 24 Types of Libertarian

30 replies on “The 24 Types of Libertarian”

I’m waiting for the 24 types of ‘progressive’. (I’d call them ‘liberals’, but they hijacked that word from the libertarians, ironically enough).

Some of these are hilarious, but I think a lot of them are conflating capitalist and libertarian. One can endorse many of Ayn Rand’s beliefs without being a bigot or small government evangelist.

ScotterC — Ayn Rand would certainly have had an issue with the people depicted in “Naive” (Rand herself called anarchism “naïve), probably “Petulant” (most don’t win because they come off as a bit insane), “Too smart for science” (attack the science with science, not personal attacks), “Denial-ican,” “More libertarian than thou” (she really hated the idiotic idea of privatizing the police — rightly predicted that this would devolve into a vendetta system), “Nepotist,” “The Apostle” (nothing should be described as “magic”), and “Bizarrely Hypocritical” (she favored a right to abortion).

And libertarianism isn’t a philosophy. It’s a range of political beliefs. Picking at individual libertarian (or libertarian-ish) political beliefs is easier for Mr. Deutsch than actually discussing a philosophy on its merits. I find that is a common technique among leftists a.k.a. “progressives” neé “liberals.” Like conservatives, they don’t really have a philosophical underpinning. The pick positions and argue backwards. See “Whitey.” They, like any decent human being, are disgusted by the idea of a racist restaurant owner. So let’s slap a big asterisk next to the right of private ownership. But when conservatives slap an asterisk on women’s ownership of their uteruses, leftists have to slap an asterisk on their own asterisk… and so forth. Do they believe in private ownership or do they believe that the government has the right to dictate usage rights? Yes.

Yes Mark, well said indeed. This is why I can’t tolerate either extreme, left or right. Both have so much wrong with their ideologies and aren’t open to learning.

What about civil libertarians of the Paine/Mill vein?

/raises hand
//somewhere between Historian, Briefly Tempting and Stoned
///and probably Gunner Joe if I lived in the States

@Mark:

“libertarianism isn’t a philosophy”

“[L]iberals, [l]ike conservatives, . . . don’t really have a philosophical underpinning.”

Welcome to the club, brother. Liberalism has a _goal_, not a philosophy. The goal is shared prosperity, and the method is pragmatism. It’s libertarians who steep themselves in ideology.

Re: Mark’s comment.
Owning a restaurant is not the same as uterine privacy. A woman doesn’t have to ‘own’ her own body.
Conflating the two issues is disingenuous at best, frightening at worst.

“Do they believe in private ownership or do they believe that the government has the right to dictate usage rights? Yes.

Ummm…liberals believe government has the right to dictate *some* usage rights. Yes.

Because you don’t like their conclusion doesn’t indicate a lack of a philosophical underpinning for it – it indicts that you don’t like it, which I find is pretty much the depth of any libertarian argument about any subject.

“And libertarianism isn’t a philosophy. It’s a range of political beliefs. Picking at individual libertarian (or libertarian-ish) political beliefs is easier for Mr. Deutsch than actually discussing a philosophy on its merits. I find that is a common technique among leftists a.k.a. “progressives” neé “liberals.” Like conservatives, they don’t really have a philosophical underpinning. The pick positions and argue backwards.”

Yawn. There’s nothing more inspirational than semantics and straw men.

I find that a common technique among Scientologists is to seize upon a cheesy novel and to claim that no one who has not read this work of fiction cannot truly understand their philosophy. Wait, did I say Scientologists? Sorry, I meant Libertarians.

Mark thinks that requiring public access on a non-discriminatory basis to public accomodations is requiring women to allow public access to their bodies on a non-discriminatory basis. That’s right – a restaurant and a uterus are exactly the same. Holy crap.

BTW, anyone who is a libertarian after college graduation – including Alan Greenspan – really needs to grow up.

R.

R.

#5

One can endorse many of Ayn Rand’s beliefs without being a bigot or small government evangelist.

No, you actually can’t. That’s the point. There is no way to make that retarded political philosophy square with reality. You have to create science-fictional scenarios (what if there was no government? what if all the blacks were gone?) to contain such an unreal philosophy.

Matt – The problem with “shared prosperity” seems to be the lack, of shared effort and responsibility as part of the formula. As everyone tries to work the edges, it is the middle that really works, even though one wag describes a good compromise as an arrangement where neither party is totally happy. And, if anyone thinks that the path that the US and Canada are on is the right one, just wait. It isn’t that taxes are wrong; it is the waste of bureaucracy in action and failure to attach work/training requirements to the receipt of help for all but those who are not truly capable of either.

I chuckled as the “libertarian” crowd came out of the woodwork to complain. Libertarians really have a few tenets that the vast majority of them hold onto. One is that the free market is better than government authority to dictate because we as people control it. Too bad they fail to recognize that the fortune 1000 control more than a sizable whole of the market and thus can dictate amongst themselves what we get. Try building your own flat-panel television in your cottage and tell me how that works out.

The second is that they principally want liberties for themselves. Some truly are anarchistic but most are just poorly disguised reactionaries and the internet just seems to make it easier to hide that until you poke them with a stick over abortion or personal use rights. They always eventually become Rand Paul’s and question whether they shouldn’t have the right to refuse service to various people they don’t like based on race, creed, ethnicity, sex, or sexual preference.

Then they usually go off against the left because libertarians really are right-of-center no matter what they like to think. Libertarians are just reactionaries with a giant ego saying they can handle their own lives. The 24 panels is great, I plan on having it hang in my office whenever the kids come in for conference or ask me about papers I’ll be sure to let them see it.

Xeranar, there is no such thing as a free market. There are only government-regulated markets and customer-regulated markets. Funny enough, but the customer regulated markets end up pleasing customers more, and the government-regulated markets end up pleasing governments more.

Libertarians, like customers, generally prefer customer-regulated markets.

Russ, there is no such thing as a customer-regulated market. It is a producer-regulated market. And customers, if they could get their brains free of advertising, generaly prefer government-regulated markets.

CUSTOMER-REGULATED MARKET? Are you bloody insane? The customer has no say in what is in the market and generally pays no attention anyhow. Lead in toy paint at Wallyworld? So what, it only cost $1.29!

Capitalism is a game of the rich… workers & consumers are mere pawns. We create the wealth, capitalists distribute it among themselves. Time to change the rules of the game

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