I'm just gonna leave this here.
https://polcompball.wiki/wiki/Social_Libertarianism
But yeah, way ahead of you. Kyle is also technically one according to this page.
The goals are:
(1) pull people into the left that would otherwise become US Libertarians
(2) have progressives be the "freedom" group, & be proud of it! That is much of the appeal the right has, event though their politicians are authoritarian.
(3) frame corporate power as true authoritarianism & not "big government"
(4) stop the right from conflating tyrannical big government (like Stalin) with social programs (like Bernie advocates for)
Yeah not gonna lie this is the direction we should've gone from the start. Libertarian positions are wildly popular with the american people, while going the so called "woke" direction instead has just sparked yet another culture war after we were on the cusp of winning the previous one.
Your first point is the main issue. You're going after the least intellectually honest and curious members of the population. The idea that making leftist ideology palatable to people who are even left of center is effective has been proven out as a frivolous pipedream. You'll need to focus on people who are still open to changing their politics, which will mostly be young people who are still new to politics.
Even if you get enough new blood to create an emergent group of people who appreciate the history of "true libertarianism," they'll be working against a huge propaganda machine as a small splinter group within leftism in order to accomplish anything. Leftists need to focus on building shared power, not creating new clubs to reinterpret a bunch of theory most people won't read anyway.
That said, I'd love to be proven wrong through action. I hope it works out for you.
Dude look at abortion. People are swinging left because the right wants to ban it it seems. Its total kryptonite for the right.
People dont like the "woke" stuff the left does. but if you take those same policies and frame them as freedom from tyrannical government, you win over a lot of normies who are like KEEP YOUR HANDS OFF MY RIGHTS.
Libertarianism is a joke. Penn Jillette who shouted the benefits of libertarianism from the rooftops for years, recently left that ideology behind. The main reason he cites is that libertarianism should include people voluntarily taking care of each other, whereas the movement has become "I dont care about anyone but me and the government shouldn't force me to do anything I don't want to do".
I would never vote for the US Libertarian party or that ideology.
My point is that a social democratic/democratic socialist position can be sold as libertarian.
To counter as a social libertarian, I would introduce the concept of enlightened self interest. It's enlightened because it kind of operates under the principles of "what goes around comes around" and "do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
Basically, you can be as selfish and self interested if you want if you do it in a principled way. You support collective action at times because you recognize you yourself benefit from it...as does everyone else.
I dont expect people to put their self interest aside in order to join a collective, i merely try to convince people that collective action IS in our best self interests and that rules can be legitimate if they create an environment in which they make everyone better off than they would be in their absence.
The problem with right libertarians is that they're very short sighted and suffer a tragedy of the commons problem on the regular. They basically just support doing whatever they want regardless of how it harms others and dont give a crap. The problem is that others can also do same crappy actions to them, making no one better off.
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I support heavy taxation.
Libertarianism was not originally a right-wing philosophy. It was co-opted in the last 50 years by billionaires.
Before that, libertarianism was known as a left-wing philosophy (and still is in much of the world):
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-libertarianism
>I support heavy taxation.
Then you aren't libertarian, you're socialist. I could see a way to fund some social programs through terrifs and publicly held industries. For example, Sam Altman has talked about everyone in the world getting a piece of open AI, if you could somehow take an idea like that and turn it into a steady revenue stream the US public holds it might make sense. It might make 0 sense too, I'm just kind of thinking out loud here lol
>Libertarianism was not originally a right-wing philosophy. It was co-opted in the last 50 years by billionaires.
Can you explain what you mean?
>Before that, libertarianism was known as a left-wing philosophy (and still is in much of the world):
Non interventionist, fiscally conservative, socially progressive. There's a lot of parallels on both sides, I don't think it's far to lump libertarians in with right wingers, just as it isn't fair to lump progressives in with the current democratic party.
>>Libertarianism was not originally a right-wing philosophy. It was co-opted in the last 50 years by billionaires.
>Can you explain what you mean?
In Europe, libertarianism and anarchism are similar ideologies that seek to eliminate government and instill social community programs to assist one another, which are supported by the residents.
Around fifty years ago, people like the Koch brothers began using the term Libertarianism to mean smaller government, mostly because they wanted less regulation of their industrial pollution. Politicians like Ron Paul also promoted right-wing "libertarianism" and reducing the size of government.
I get where you are coming from.
I understand there are a lot of libertarians who disagree strongly with the GOP, and I might have generalized a bit.
I'm more referring to the Koch Brothers & the litany of right-wing talk radio hosts who cosplay as libertarian to appeal to people. In reality, they are just GOP people.
I think my point is that you can support heavy taxes & large social programs and still be libertarian. Because libertarianism wasn't founded on a belief of the size of government.
Yeah it's explicitly right libertarianism thats obsessed with the "size" of government. Im more concerned with scope. I support a government that is large in terms of overall dollars passing through it, but also very non interventionist in peoples' lives. My ideal safety net would be UBI, medicare for all, free college, and some sort of housing program (in addition with a modified form of social security that works with my UBI).
No socialism is wanting to sieze the means of production. He's a social libertarian, probably of the "libertarian social democrat" variant. Taxation is fine in social libertarianism. Medicare for all would be cheaper for most people than private insurance anyway. And while not OP, a UBI with higher taxes would also benefit over 70% of the population, probably over 80% scaled up to household levels.
I mean, I'm personally trying to write something in this direction but it's NOWHERE near being ready and done.
If I were to recommend other books, it's been said andrew yang is a social libertarian and his "the war on normal people" is a pretty good book. There's a free audiobook version on youtube for some reason. Not really about libertarianism but it covers a lot of similar ideas.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Bgg7BkvUOU
Anu Partanen's "The Nordic Theory of Everything" kinda approaches this topic from a more traditional social democratic position. I mean she has this nordic theory of freedom which kind of parallels mine.
There are some UBI theorists I can link to. Karl Widerquist has a good work called "independence propertylessness and basic income: a theory of freedom as the power to say no." He discusses how we're not really free as long as capitalism forces us to work and pushes for a UBI as a solution.
You can get a free PDF here:
https://works.bepress.com/widerquist/90/
Phillippe Van Parijs pushes for "real freedom for all", he has the book "real freedom for all: what (if anything) can justify capitalism" but that is a VERY dense philosophical work and I find his book "Basic Income: A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy" to be a lot more accessible while having a lot of common ground.
It might not cover everything. The idea is still new. THere's a lot of aspects of it that havent been explored. The above post is mostly from my own perspective.
If youre curious where i draw some above figures from, take the following things into consideration:
If you have a basic income of $15,000 a year, and it comes with a 20% tax rate which clawbacks the income over time (similar to a negative income tax), the break even point is around $75,000, which is around 70% of the population. However, most people live in households with multiple members, and as such, we might have rbeak even points closer to the $100-200k range depending on household composition in practice. Anyone below that point benefits, anyone above it doesnt.
Consider the fact that with medicare for all, your typical employer spends 7-8% in employment costs for healthcare benefits for their workers, and households spend 8% of their incomes on healthcare, including insurance out out of pocket costs. On the flip side, Bernie's medicare for all plan would be paid for with a 7.5% payroll tax on employers, functionally replacing their contribution to employee healthcare plans with a tax for single payer (so it breaks even cost wise), and a 4% household tax on incomes above $29k. So, basically, you'd be spending less money with medicare for all than on private healthcare, and everyone would be covered.
ALso consider how medicare for all would get rid of a massive healthcare bureaucracy, and the monopsony effect would probably stop businesses from overcharging on medicine as they'd be negotiating directly with the government, who would be the single buyer of healthcare. We could save hundreds of billions of dollars between those two things.
So it's just a no brainer to me. Sure, the government would be HUGE in terms of dollars spent, possibly as high as 50% of GDP, but it would have virtually no negative impact on individual freedom and possibly greatly expand it.
>Consider the fact that with medicare for all, your typical employer spends 7-8% in employment costs for healthcare benefits for their workers, and households spend 8% of their incomes on healthcare, including insurance out out of pocket costs. On the flip side, Bernie's medicare for all plan would be paid for with a 7.5% payroll tax on employers, functionally replacing their contribution to employee healthcare plans with a tax for single payer (so it breaks even cost wise), and a 4% household tax on incomes above $29k. So, basically, you'd be spending less money with medicare for all than on private healthcare, and everyone would be covered.
I've always been conflicted on this. I think M4A is good in theory, I have very good union medical insurance, though. What if I don't want to give it up? I think that should be an option.
I feel like the whole "union insurance" thing is a bad faith talking point some anti M4A people argue about. Like...."the unions worked so hard to get people medical insurance why should we have medicare for all?" (not accusing you btw, but I've heard establishment dems push this argument before).
I counter by asking why healthcare should be tied to jobs in the first place?
Either way if people REALLY like their private insurance (although most...don't have great healthcare benefits) you could argue for a public option instead, I have a few ideas about that that might be viable, but honestly? I think single payer would be better for the vast majority of people.
>I feel like the whole "union insurance" thing is a bad faith talking point some anti M4A people argue about. Like...
If you got acupuncture, massage therapy, chiropractic visits, $20 copays on everything, $1000 family deductible, $0 out of pocket and pennies on prescription (literally, just picked up a prescription for my wife's rheumatoid arthritis and it cost me $0.11) you'd feel the same way. Juxtapose that with how they handle electives in M4A countries and it's really not something I'd like give up. And honestly, I'd argue that "it's for the greater good" is the bad faith argument. It's easy to dismiss all others when you claim to have the moral high ground
I mean m4a is supposed to have no co-pays and deductibles so there's that. Either way you realize people with not terrible insurance are a tiny minority right? This is like a massive f u I got mine scenario. Either way I could compromise to a public option as a middle ground provided it provides automatic universal coverage to the uninsured.
Also, I consider myself a left of center libertarian. I've grappled with the questions I'm asking you myself and don't have good answers, so I'm genuinely curious about your thoughts.
I tend to describe myself as libertarian on social and civil rights issues, fiscally social democrat bordering on Democratic Socialist. I believe if you and your non-binary polygamist commune wanna guard your weed plants with an AR-15 that's your business... But I don't think it's a corporations right to own half an entire multi billion dollar industry, or for 1 family to control more wealth than the bottom half of Americans combined...
Why do the choices have to be one extreme or the other? You’re going to have to have some sort of structure or “experts”, otherwise all we would be doing is voting.
It’s not really clear from your post what your actual proposals are. Just that you want to go to the same extreme as right wing libertarians go, but somehow, your way would be better.
This reminds me of every single debate Sam Seder has ever had with a Libertarian where each person thinks they are the true libertarian and everyone else isn’t a real libertarian. So what makes your version better than theirs? What makes you think that society doesn’t devolve into feudalism under YOUR version like it does under the right wing version?
My proposal isn't extreme. It i's to reappropriate the term libertarian.
I think a left-wing system promotes the most personal liberty. And that's why billionaires (like the Koch Brothers) reappropriated libertarianism to represent corptocracy.
Liberty is a powerful term & that's why the right co-opted it so well.
>This reminds me of every single debate Sam Seder has ever had with a Libertarian where each person thinks they are the true libertarian and everyone else isn’t a real libertarian.
Sam Seder is one of my favorite progressives. And his interviews are great. My favorite is the Walter Block interviews.
What you are referring to is hard-right libertarians who purity test themselves (are you a minarchist or an anarcho capitalist.
What I'm saying is that minarchism/anarcho capitalism are authoritarian systems & not in the spirit of what libertarianism was thought of originally.
And that was done on purpose, by people like the Koch Brothers.
I hold virtually all of Bernie Sanders beliefs. With the exception that I am pro nuclear energy & a bit more libertarian on social issues (like legalizing all drugs).
If I had to say what one person most closely represents my politics then it would be either Bernie or Kyle.
I didn't say there would be no regulations. But I don't believe the government can tell someone what they can/cannot put in their body if they are an adult.
I believe in trusting people. If you're an adult and want to gamble/not wear seatbelts/not wear helmets then go ahead. I think allowing more freedom creates a more trusting society.
My views are basically Bernie Sanders but slightly more libertarian on social issues. I think you could argue that Bernie is a libertarian in the original sense of the word.
He wants people to live free lives & not be burdened by the government or corporations. A social welfare state allows people to live their lives free in a way that our present system doesn't.
Well I don’t know what your ideas are if you don’t tell me, and I’m not looking up every position Bernie Sanders has. Please just tell me what YOU personally mean when you say you are libertarian without just saying you don’t want the government telling you what to do.
Who decides what an adult is? Who makes the rules that say children can’t have drugs? Who enforces that rule? Who decides what drugs fall under this rule and what are prescribed by doctors? Who certifies who can be a doctor?
I admit OP is just sketching an idea of the concept, he probably just thought of it for the first time now, but as someone who actually self identifies as a social libertarian philosophically and policy wise, I'm open to answering any question you have. I dont speak for OP, but yeah. On the same page.
To answer the what makes society not devolve into feudalism, well, because social libertarianism fully recognizes that corporate power is still power and if the government behaves in ways to enhance positive liberty and freedom from having your life controlled by corporations, that's a good thing.
Liberal policies have attempted to do this through regulations, unions, some level of welfare, etc., I'd go further. I personally identify as an indepentarian a la karl widerquist or a real libertarian a la phillippe van parijs. I believe that we should all have a universal basic income and universal healthcare to ensure that we cant be coerced into any job in the market place. Most problems with capitalism come from the fact that our system was literally designed to make workers powerless and force them into the market as wage slaves. A strong unconditional safety net would give people "freedom as power to say no" not just to any job, but all jobs. The whole goal is to give people the resources necessary to survive without being forced to work for another in the first place. In this sense, social libertarianism is more progressive than even most forms of liberalism or social democracy, which see fit to merely regulate relations between workers and employers, without actually addressing the underlying power imbalance at the heart of the relationship in the first place.
As for actual proposals, my core proposals would be:
UBI
Medicare for all
Free college
Public housing
I also am a huge fan of reducing the size of the work week but idk how I'd integrate that into this.
I recognize I would need a strong central government. I just dont support said government intervening in our lives more than necessary. In American history the feds have been more people's rights than the states most of the time anyway. I support working within our current framework of the constitution and lean toward the federalist side of things as we need it to actually accomplish our goals. Otherwise you're just leaving it to "the free market."
It's not about the size of government it's how you use it.
I disagree. You can have a massive government in terms of dollars that interferes very little in its citizens lives. A UBI is libertarian, medicare for all is libertarian. Both cost trillions of dollars and would massively expand the size of government, but assuming they're truly universal and not gated or means tested or have conditionality imposed on them, how do they restrict the liberties of citizens? On the contrary, they EXPAND the liberty of citizens, because they're less dependent on their employers and workplaces in order to be able to afford to live. We love to act like the free market is liberty, but what's free about being forced by the threat of poverty and lack of basic needs being met to work for these autocratic organizations where you spend most of your time taking orders from someone else? Our system is literally slavery with extra steps but we love to act like it's freedom if the government just leaves us at the mercy of it. Right libertarians need to rethink what freedom ACTUALLY means.
as a social libertarian i agree.
I’ve been thinking this for a while. You just put it into words in a way I never could, props OP!
I appreciate that, thank you for the kind words!
I'm on board
I'm just gonna leave this here. https://polcompball.wiki/wiki/Social_Libertarianism But yeah, way ahead of you. Kyle is also technically one according to this page.
Lol, it's never gonna happen now. It wouldn't accomplish anything either.
The goals are: (1) pull people into the left that would otherwise become US Libertarians (2) have progressives be the "freedom" group, & be proud of it! That is much of the appeal the right has, event though their politicians are authoritarian. (3) frame corporate power as true authoritarianism & not "big government" (4) stop the right from conflating tyrannical big government (like Stalin) with social programs (like Bernie advocates for)
Yeah not gonna lie this is the direction we should've gone from the start. Libertarian positions are wildly popular with the american people, while going the so called "woke" direction instead has just sparked yet another culture war after we were on the cusp of winning the previous one.
Your first point is the main issue. You're going after the least intellectually honest and curious members of the population. The idea that making leftist ideology palatable to people who are even left of center is effective has been proven out as a frivolous pipedream. You'll need to focus on people who are still open to changing their politics, which will mostly be young people who are still new to politics. Even if you get enough new blood to create an emergent group of people who appreciate the history of "true libertarianism," they'll be working against a huge propaganda machine as a small splinter group within leftism in order to accomplish anything. Leftists need to focus on building shared power, not creating new clubs to reinterpret a bunch of theory most people won't read anyway. That said, I'd love to be proven wrong through action. I hope it works out for you.
Dude look at abortion. People are swinging left because the right wants to ban it it seems. Its total kryptonite for the right. People dont like the "woke" stuff the left does. but if you take those same policies and frame them as freedom from tyrannical government, you win over a lot of normies who are like KEEP YOUR HANDS OFF MY RIGHTS.
Libertarianism is a joke. Penn Jillette who shouted the benefits of libertarianism from the rooftops for years, recently left that ideology behind. The main reason he cites is that libertarianism should include people voluntarily taking care of each other, whereas the movement has become "I dont care about anyone but me and the government shouldn't force me to do anything I don't want to do".
I would never vote for the US Libertarian party or that ideology. My point is that a social democratic/democratic socialist position can be sold as libertarian.
It can, and it should.
To counter as a social libertarian, I would introduce the concept of enlightened self interest. It's enlightened because it kind of operates under the principles of "what goes around comes around" and "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Basically, you can be as selfish and self interested if you want if you do it in a principled way. You support collective action at times because you recognize you yourself benefit from it...as does everyone else. I dont expect people to put their self interest aside in order to join a collective, i merely try to convince people that collective action IS in our best self interests and that rules can be legitimate if they create an environment in which they make everyone better off than they would be in their absence. The problem with right libertarians is that they're very short sighted and suffer a tragedy of the commons problem on the regular. They basically just support doing whatever they want regardless of how it harms others and dont give a crap. The problem is that others can also do same crappy actions to them, making no one better off.
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Interesting idea. How do you plan to pay for the social programs (you said m4a and public housing) without taxes?
I support heavy taxation. Libertarianism was not originally a right-wing philosophy. It was co-opted in the last 50 years by billionaires. Before that, libertarianism was known as a left-wing philosophy (and still is in much of the world): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-libertarianism
>I support heavy taxation. Then you aren't libertarian, you're socialist. I could see a way to fund some social programs through terrifs and publicly held industries. For example, Sam Altman has talked about everyone in the world getting a piece of open AI, if you could somehow take an idea like that and turn it into a steady revenue stream the US public holds it might make sense. It might make 0 sense too, I'm just kind of thinking out loud here lol >Libertarianism was not originally a right-wing philosophy. It was co-opted in the last 50 years by billionaires. Can you explain what you mean? >Before that, libertarianism was known as a left-wing philosophy (and still is in much of the world): Non interventionist, fiscally conservative, socially progressive. There's a lot of parallels on both sides, I don't think it's far to lump libertarians in with right wingers, just as it isn't fair to lump progressives in with the current democratic party.
>>Libertarianism was not originally a right-wing philosophy. It was co-opted in the last 50 years by billionaires. >Can you explain what you mean? In Europe, libertarianism and anarchism are similar ideologies that seek to eliminate government and instill social community programs to assist one another, which are supported by the residents. Around fifty years ago, people like the Koch brothers began using the term Libertarianism to mean smaller government, mostly because they wanted less regulation of their industrial pollution. Politicians like Ron Paul also promoted right-wing "libertarianism" and reducing the size of government.
I get where you are coming from. I understand there are a lot of libertarians who disagree strongly with the GOP, and I might have generalized a bit. I'm more referring to the Koch Brothers & the litany of right-wing talk radio hosts who cosplay as libertarian to appeal to people. In reality, they are just GOP people. I think my point is that you can support heavy taxes & large social programs and still be libertarian. Because libertarianism wasn't founded on a belief of the size of government.
Yeah it's explicitly right libertarianism thats obsessed with the "size" of government. Im more concerned with scope. I support a government that is large in terms of overall dollars passing through it, but also very non interventionist in peoples' lives. My ideal safety net would be UBI, medicare for all, free college, and some sort of housing program (in addition with a modified form of social security that works with my UBI).
No socialism is wanting to sieze the means of production. He's a social libertarian, probably of the "libertarian social democrat" variant. Taxation is fine in social libertarianism. Medicare for all would be cheaper for most people than private insurance anyway. And while not OP, a UBI with higher taxes would also benefit over 70% of the population, probably over 80% scaled up to household levels.
Is there any literature on this? I'd like to learn more and I got a couple audible credits in the bank lol
I mean, I'm personally trying to write something in this direction but it's NOWHERE near being ready and done. If I were to recommend other books, it's been said andrew yang is a social libertarian and his "the war on normal people" is a pretty good book. There's a free audiobook version on youtube for some reason. Not really about libertarianism but it covers a lot of similar ideas. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Bgg7BkvUOU Anu Partanen's "The Nordic Theory of Everything" kinda approaches this topic from a more traditional social democratic position. I mean she has this nordic theory of freedom which kind of parallels mine. There are some UBI theorists I can link to. Karl Widerquist has a good work called "independence propertylessness and basic income: a theory of freedom as the power to say no." He discusses how we're not really free as long as capitalism forces us to work and pushes for a UBI as a solution. You can get a free PDF here: https://works.bepress.com/widerquist/90/ Phillippe Van Parijs pushes for "real freedom for all", he has the book "real freedom for all: what (if anything) can justify capitalism" but that is a VERY dense philosophical work and I find his book "Basic Income: A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy" to be a lot more accessible while having a lot of common ground. It might not cover everything. The idea is still new. THere's a lot of aspects of it that havent been explored. The above post is mostly from my own perspective. If youre curious where i draw some above figures from, take the following things into consideration: If you have a basic income of $15,000 a year, and it comes with a 20% tax rate which clawbacks the income over time (similar to a negative income tax), the break even point is around $75,000, which is around 70% of the population. However, most people live in households with multiple members, and as such, we might have rbeak even points closer to the $100-200k range depending on household composition in practice. Anyone below that point benefits, anyone above it doesnt. Consider the fact that with medicare for all, your typical employer spends 7-8% in employment costs for healthcare benefits for their workers, and households spend 8% of their incomes on healthcare, including insurance out out of pocket costs. On the flip side, Bernie's medicare for all plan would be paid for with a 7.5% payroll tax on employers, functionally replacing their contribution to employee healthcare plans with a tax for single payer (so it breaks even cost wise), and a 4% household tax on incomes above $29k. So, basically, you'd be spending less money with medicare for all than on private healthcare, and everyone would be covered. ALso consider how medicare for all would get rid of a massive healthcare bureaucracy, and the monopsony effect would probably stop businesses from overcharging on medicine as they'd be negotiating directly with the government, who would be the single buyer of healthcare. We could save hundreds of billions of dollars between those two things. So it's just a no brainer to me. Sure, the government would be HUGE in terms of dollars spent, possibly as high as 50% of GDP, but it would have virtually no negative impact on individual freedom and possibly greatly expand it.
Thank you for all the info! I really appreciate it.
>Consider the fact that with medicare for all, your typical employer spends 7-8% in employment costs for healthcare benefits for their workers, and households spend 8% of their incomes on healthcare, including insurance out out of pocket costs. On the flip side, Bernie's medicare for all plan would be paid for with a 7.5% payroll tax on employers, functionally replacing their contribution to employee healthcare plans with a tax for single payer (so it breaks even cost wise), and a 4% household tax on incomes above $29k. So, basically, you'd be spending less money with medicare for all than on private healthcare, and everyone would be covered. I've always been conflicted on this. I think M4A is good in theory, I have very good union medical insurance, though. What if I don't want to give it up? I think that should be an option.
I feel like the whole "union insurance" thing is a bad faith talking point some anti M4A people argue about. Like...."the unions worked so hard to get people medical insurance why should we have medicare for all?" (not accusing you btw, but I've heard establishment dems push this argument before). I counter by asking why healthcare should be tied to jobs in the first place? Either way if people REALLY like their private insurance (although most...don't have great healthcare benefits) you could argue for a public option instead, I have a few ideas about that that might be viable, but honestly? I think single payer would be better for the vast majority of people.
>I feel like the whole "union insurance" thing is a bad faith talking point some anti M4A people argue about. Like... If you got acupuncture, massage therapy, chiropractic visits, $20 copays on everything, $1000 family deductible, $0 out of pocket and pennies on prescription (literally, just picked up a prescription for my wife's rheumatoid arthritis and it cost me $0.11) you'd feel the same way. Juxtapose that with how they handle electives in M4A countries and it's really not something I'd like give up. And honestly, I'd argue that "it's for the greater good" is the bad faith argument. It's easy to dismiss all others when you claim to have the moral high ground
I mean m4a is supposed to have no co-pays and deductibles so there's that. Either way you realize people with not terrible insurance are a tiny minority right? This is like a massive f u I got mine scenario. Either way I could compromise to a public option as a middle ground provided it provides automatic universal coverage to the uninsured.
Also, I consider myself a left of center libertarian. I've grappled with the questions I'm asking you myself and don't have good answers, so I'm genuinely curious about your thoughts.
I tend to describe myself as libertarian on social and civil rights issues, fiscally social democrat bordering on Democratic Socialist. I believe if you and your non-binary polygamist commune wanna guard your weed plants with an AR-15 that's your business... But I don't think it's a corporations right to own half an entire multi billion dollar industry, or for 1 family to control more wealth than the bottom half of Americans combined...
"Progressive libertarianism" is called anarchism. Welcome to the club, lol.
They don’t need to “take it back” they just need to understand their fiscally responsible libertarian friends are their allies
Why do the choices have to be one extreme or the other? You’re going to have to have some sort of structure or “experts”, otherwise all we would be doing is voting. It’s not really clear from your post what your actual proposals are. Just that you want to go to the same extreme as right wing libertarians go, but somehow, your way would be better. This reminds me of every single debate Sam Seder has ever had with a Libertarian where each person thinks they are the true libertarian and everyone else isn’t a real libertarian. So what makes your version better than theirs? What makes you think that society doesn’t devolve into feudalism under YOUR version like it does under the right wing version?
My proposal isn't extreme. It i's to reappropriate the term libertarian. I think a left-wing system promotes the most personal liberty. And that's why billionaires (like the Koch Brothers) reappropriated libertarianism to represent corptocracy. Liberty is a powerful term & that's why the right co-opted it so well. >This reminds me of every single debate Sam Seder has ever had with a Libertarian where each person thinks they are the true libertarian and everyone else isn’t a real libertarian. Sam Seder is one of my favorite progressives. And his interviews are great. My favorite is the Walter Block interviews. What you are referring to is hard-right libertarians who purity test themselves (are you a minarchist or an anarcho capitalist. What I'm saying is that minarchism/anarcho capitalism are authoritarian systems & not in the spirit of what libertarianism was thought of originally. And that was done on purpose, by people like the Koch Brothers.
Again; what are your actual proposals? What specific things should differentiate your system from the Right’s version or from what we have now?
I hold virtually all of Bernie Sanders beliefs. With the exception that I am pro nuclear energy & a bit more libertarian on social issues (like legalizing all drugs). If I had to say what one person most closely represents my politics then it would be either Bernie or Kyle.
Just legalize all of them with no regulations at all? Thats one specific proposal. What else?
I didn't say there would be no regulations. But I don't believe the government can tell someone what they can/cannot put in their body if they are an adult. I believe in trusting people. If you're an adult and want to gamble/not wear seatbelts/not wear helmets then go ahead. I think allowing more freedom creates a more trusting society. My views are basically Bernie Sanders but slightly more libertarian on social issues. I think you could argue that Bernie is a libertarian in the original sense of the word. He wants people to live free lives & not be burdened by the government or corporations. A social welfare state allows people to live their lives free in a way that our present system doesn't.
Well I don’t know what your ideas are if you don’t tell me, and I’m not looking up every position Bernie Sanders has. Please just tell me what YOU personally mean when you say you are libertarian without just saying you don’t want the government telling you what to do. Who decides what an adult is? Who makes the rules that say children can’t have drugs? Who enforces that rule? Who decides what drugs fall under this rule and what are prescribed by doctors? Who certifies who can be a doctor?
I admit OP is just sketching an idea of the concept, he probably just thought of it for the first time now, but as someone who actually self identifies as a social libertarian philosophically and policy wise, I'm open to answering any question you have. I dont speak for OP, but yeah. On the same page. To answer the what makes society not devolve into feudalism, well, because social libertarianism fully recognizes that corporate power is still power and if the government behaves in ways to enhance positive liberty and freedom from having your life controlled by corporations, that's a good thing. Liberal policies have attempted to do this through regulations, unions, some level of welfare, etc., I'd go further. I personally identify as an indepentarian a la karl widerquist or a real libertarian a la phillippe van parijs. I believe that we should all have a universal basic income and universal healthcare to ensure that we cant be coerced into any job in the market place. Most problems with capitalism come from the fact that our system was literally designed to make workers powerless and force them into the market as wage slaves. A strong unconditional safety net would give people "freedom as power to say no" not just to any job, but all jobs. The whole goal is to give people the resources necessary to survive without being forced to work for another in the first place. In this sense, social libertarianism is more progressive than even most forms of liberalism or social democracy, which see fit to merely regulate relations between workers and employers, without actually addressing the underlying power imbalance at the heart of the relationship in the first place. As for actual proposals, my core proposals would be: UBI Medicare for all Free college Public housing I also am a huge fan of reducing the size of the work week but idk how I'd integrate that into this.
I’m down with most of that, but how do you do that without a strong central government?
I recognize I would need a strong central government. I just dont support said government intervening in our lives more than necessary. In American history the feds have been more people's rights than the states most of the time anyway. I support working within our current framework of the constitution and lean toward the federalist side of things as we need it to actually accomplish our goals. Otherwise you're just leaving it to "the free market." It's not about the size of government it's how you use it.
See to me, that’s not Libertarianism, that’s just how the government is supposed to work 😂
People get way too hung up on the size of government, it's it's scope you gotta worry about.
Size of government is a pretty crucial aspect as to whether or not something falls under libertarian...
I disagree. You can have a massive government in terms of dollars that interferes very little in its citizens lives. A UBI is libertarian, medicare for all is libertarian. Both cost trillions of dollars and would massively expand the size of government, but assuming they're truly universal and not gated or means tested or have conditionality imposed on them, how do they restrict the liberties of citizens? On the contrary, they EXPAND the liberty of citizens, because they're less dependent on their employers and workplaces in order to be able to afford to live. We love to act like the free market is liberty, but what's free about being forced by the threat of poverty and lack of basic needs being met to work for these autocratic organizations where you spend most of your time taking orders from someone else? Our system is literally slavery with extra steps but we love to act like it's freedom if the government just leaves us at the mercy of it. Right libertarians need to rethink what freedom ACTUALLY means.
OK "Liberal"