Libertarians Are Politically Homeless in the Trump Era

President Trump is cutting regulations and despite all the hysteria to the contrary he is actually reducing the administrative powers of the executive branch and shrinking the size of many agencies. All of this makes libertarians happy - at least for those who care about bite over bark.

In spoiling the veneration many people hold for the imperial office, and reminding them to be wary of its powers, you could interpret the bark as also good for libertarianism.

> I doubt many libertarians harbored illusions that things would get better after 2016, no matter who won.

I know some big-L Libertarians were predicting Trump would produce or accelerate a collapse of the Republican Party which would leave the LP as its successor as a major party.

> Trump's election in itself proved the shabbiness of the "(S)he'll never win" argument.

Not really for libertarians; the LP, after all, did run a candidate, and despite the two weakest major party candidates by most measures in the post-WWII era, still didn't do much.

Ya, I kind of got that impression too. Let's model people as psychopaths when they're bargaining with trinkets. Oh that went pretty well...let's use it to run society...what could go wrong.

I personally consider myself a libertarian / MinAnarchist (gov should only be courts, police, military) hybrid and I don't think there should be public welfare at all.

There will always be private welfare/charity. The government is one of the worst run charities.

For individuals such as myself and yourself, personal donation and charity will always be better to the end recipient than a government run charity (welfare).

The official "solution" is that people voluntarily give to charity. But I doubt that people would give as much as they are currently forced to (they could probably do more good with less money by giving to efficient charities like givewell.org, but most people won't do that either). On the other hand if you are going to take money from the rich and give it to the poor, why not give it to the people in Africa who it will help most, rather than to Americans who won't be helped as much? If your answer is "Because Americans wouldn't vote for that" then what you're doing looks a lot less like charity and a lot more like theft. If you were being charitable you would want to do as much with your money as possible. (EDIT: *their money)

WRT Taxes, they’re seen as a necessary evil. They are necessary for a government to function, and that function should be to protect an individual’s rights (among those property rights).

WRT helping the poor, and those down on their luck; this is out of scope. It is of course our moral responsibility to help those less fortunate, as humans. You can and should give to the needy. However, being coerced into donating to a homeless shelter is not donating at all.

Libertarians take the optimistic and perhaps misguided view that humans are inherently good people. Crazy, I know.

I have considered myself fairly libertarian, and have voted for libertarians in various positions for years. I think this is a bit like saying "I have a question for Republicans" or "I have a question for Democrats"--you'll get disparate answers depending on who you ask.

I am not opposed to taxes, and support them. Libertarianism is not anarchism. I think government programs should exist, and do well.

My informal theory is that there are two types of libertarians, or two dimensions to it, one regulatory and one financial. I see myself as extremely deregulatory, but not against taxes. So, e.g., I am not opposed to a single payer health care system, with concomitant taxes to pay for it, but am also in favor of massive health care and drug deregulation. Obviously in such a system the government would have to establish rules for itself (in terms of what it would support and would not) but I don't see why that would have to prevent someone else privately from doing something else.

I'm kind of a democrat-leaning libertarian, though, in that I usually (always in the past, but not by principle) vote for democrats when I don't vote for libertarians.

My salient political principle is really about injecting competition into society. Sometimes that might mean government services and/or intervention (where private industry is failing to provide a service or meet a need, or where monopolies exist), and sometimes it might mean massive deregulation (where the government plays favorites through regulatory capture--my definition of regulatory capture being very broad compared to many). So far I haven't found a party that matches my outlook well, although libertarianism in general has maybe been closest.

"Libertarian" is a big umbrella. Most are not social darwinists, and anarchists are a different category altogether. Most libertarians acknowledge a legitimate role for the state in those few things the state can do best (e.g. national defense, police, etc.)