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Comment by cgore | Hacker News Reader

I think a lot of people seem to be confusing Libertarianism with Anarchism. Libertarians typically do see roles for SOME government, and those roles are typically the military, judges, roads, police, and the like.

Not other things though, so no Social Security, no Obamacare, no National Endowment for the Arts, and no space program (other than for space weapons, so get rid of NASA and establish some sort of "US Star Force.")

So with that world view, working at a defense contractor isn't a conflict at all, instead, it is the one "true and legitimate" reason for government in their eyes.

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My understanding from my Libertarian Ron/Rand Paul friends is that they believe the Federal government should not have a single program that's not explicitly specified in the U.S. Constitution.

It's not really a viewpoint I totally agree with, but people who are really deep students of the philosophy come across as pretty internally consistent in their viewpoint.

I think their's a good place for this type of politic. But I'm afraid far too many people who self-identify with it, don't understand it deeply enough or the implications of the ideas.

> My understanding from my Libertarian Ron/Rand Paul friends is that they believe the Federal government should not have a single program that's not explicitly specified in the U.S. Constitution.

The Constitutionalist argument is mostly an outer limit on their support for government programs. They also believe that the federal government shouldn't do many things that it is expressly empowered to do in the Constitution.

Libertarians view of government is, 'I want to be allowed to do whatever I want while everyone else is restricted to doing what I want them to do.' It's a dumb ideology that falls apart with literally any amount of thought.

Where on earth did you find the "while everyone else is restricted to doing what I want them to do" part?

Libertarians who don't themselves do any drugs (eg, Penn Jillette) still want drugs to be legal for other people. Libertarians who are themselves pacifists still want gun ownership and self-defense to be legal. And so on. It seems to me that this view you think "falls apart" with so little thought doesn't have much to do with libertarianism.

No idea why you're being downvoted. Parent's comment is completely false.

"It's a dumb ideology that falls apart with literally any amount of thought", except that it is not libertarianism. Before putting any amount of thought into demolishing a "dumb ideology" you should probably put some amount of thought into correctly defining and characterizing what that ideology is. In your terms, libertarian's view of government is more along the lines of 'Everybody should be allowed to do whatever they want as long as what they do doesn't violate the rights of others'.

Apparently for you it still didn't fall apart as you failed to apply any amount of thought to it. If you did you would know there are basic principles in libertarianism from which it is deduced what government can and can not do, and it's not "whatever I want them to do" at all. But that, of course, requires educating oneself about it instead of dismissing it as "dumb ideology", which is obviously much more than many are willing to do.

Ouch, that straw man must be hurting now. Can you throw in something about roads and Somalia?

Libertarians view of government is, 'I want to be allowed to do whatever I want while everyone else is restricted to doing what I want them to do.'

No it isn't. You're either badly misinformed, or trolling. That is nothing like the libertarian viewpoint.

I don't think he's confused, its just that online you tend to get more of the anarchist type who oppose the government's monopoly on violence. I think there has been a trend away from "statist" libertarianism because that ideology puts you in the awkward position of arguing that we should have military and police to keep people in line, but shouldn't subject that government to democratic control (because otherwise people would vote themselves universal healthcare and social security).

It's true that most self-identifying libertarians would not self-identify as anarchists. But it's also true that the origins of a lot of libertarian thought comes from anarchism.

Libertarians strongly believe in both human rights and property rights. This includes legal/judicial enforcement of contracts and a court with the authority to mediate disputes and punish criminals. Also this includes a police force to help enforce these rights.

> This includes legal/judicial enforcement of contracts and a court with the authority to mediate disputes and punish criminals. Also this includes a police force to help enforce these rights.

Not necessarily. Libertarian anarchists propose that those services can be provided by private enterprise.

more commonly known as Anarcho Capitalism, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism AnCaps are to Libertarians as Richard Stallman is to Linux users.

They are an extreme minority. Most people that identify with libertarianism are simply fiscal conservatives who also support decriminalization of victimless crimes, human rights, a reduced military budget, less invasive foreign policy etc. nothing as extreme as anarchy.

Ultimately most of us end up voting republican because they are seen as a "lesser of two evils".

I'm well aware of anarcho-capitalists, as I consider myself one.

> AnCaps are to Libertarians as Richard Stallman is to Linux users.

There are plenty of ways to interpret that, but I presume you mean that you don't like Richard Stallman and you don't like anarcho-capitalists. Incidentally, I like Richard Stallman and anarcho-capitalism, so I suppose the analogy still holds.

> They are an extreme minority.

Perhaps, but they are an extremely powerful influence in libertarian ethical and economic thought. Murray Rothbard and Benjamin Tucker are (in my view) the fathers of the modern American libertarian movement, and they happen to have been anarchists. Even some popular conservative constitutionalist limited-government libertarians like Ron Paul and Andrew Napolitano are anarchists who essentially lie about their views in order to deliver libertarian principles to a wider audience (I don't really approve of that technique, by the way).

I'm saying that AnCaps and RMS are both ideological extremes and do not represent the vast majority of their respective movements.

But I suppose I did paint with too broad a brush. My statement about law enforcement is the equivalent of someone saying "Democrats don't believe in a totalitarian communist regime where we are all forced to have vegan diets", By and large it's true and for the sake of brevity it makes sense to say it, because those views are not a good example of what the Democratic party as a whole is actually about. This also helps some of the more naive people in this thread get a more realistic perspective on what most self identifying libertarians actually believe.

Cheers.

Out of the things you just listed, I don't think the Republican party supports _any_ of them.

And you'd be wrong for a good number of representatives. I suppose I should have also added "Small Government" and "less taxes" which is what the republicans are at least ostensibly for.

> Not other things though, so no Social Security, no Obamacare, no National Endowment for the Arts, and no space program (other than for space weapons, so get rid of NASA and establish some sort of "US Star Force.")

NASA for most of its existence was pretty much was a platform for military research and demonstration of military capacity with a civilian/exploration PR veneer.

If the public was more less interested in non-military functions of government, we'd still probably have had something doing most of what NASA did, it just would have been more overtly military.

ITYM "no government-sponsored space program".

Right. The whole SpaceX/Armadillo Aerospace/etc. situation that is developing now is almost definitionally Libertarian.

Except that, as far as I know, their main source of revenue is government contracts.

And Elon Musk just testified to Congress to propose having SpaceX put military satellites in orbit at much lower cost (and with more American-built parts...) than Boeing/Lockheed Martin's "United Space Alliance".

I'm just noting nothing in libertarianism opposes space exploration per se, unlike National Endowment for Arts which is a direct antithesis to libertarianism.

definitively* just tryin to help bra

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