Quote:but that doesn't mean i want to adopt every wackjob item on the libertarian platform

HedCold Wrote:i never said i was a libertarian, but ken's argument is just bad. it also puts alot more faith into the government than he has shown he actually has these days

Quote:you're making the assumption that they will make decisions based on the greatest good instead of individual benefit, and the very ideals that libertarianism is based on would erode under its own hypocracy.

Private racial discrimination, for instance, lasted a hundred years; and it wasn't ended by businessmen changing their minds, but by blacks and liberals organizing. The Libertarian Party platform actually hopes to legally re-enable private discrimination.

So you think the market will correct those problems. In a few cases it will-- if you wait long enough. But very often it's simply impossible: e.g., the monopolist has made sure no alternatives exist. (One of the railroad tycoons, for instance, was careful to buy up steamship lines.) And though it was sometimes possible to break a monopoly by starting a well-bankrolled competing business, that was no consolation to (say) an oil producer who saw Rockefeller consolidating all the refineries. He could hardly start up his own refinery, and he'd be bankrupt before anyone succeeded in doing so.)

Quote:Americans enjoy the fruits of public scientific research, a well-educated job force, highways and airports, clean food, honest labelling, Social Security, unemployment insurance, trustworthy banks, national parks. Libertarianism has encouraged the peculiarly American delusion that these things come for free. It makes a philosophy out of biting the hand that feeds you.