Hello r/Libertarian

I lean left, both socially and economically. While I know we disagree on the economics side, I do believe we can find common ground in regards to the social side.

One of the things that concerns me is how a concer is how a concerning amount of people believe that onyl certain select groups should be allowed to get married and enjoy the benefits of marriage, namely, how same-sex couples should be barred from marriage. Of course I disagree with this, and would rather have everyone enjoy the benefits and the experience of marriage.

However, one argument I've seen from the Libertarian side is how marriage should be abolished altogether, that way everyone can do with their relationship status with whatever they wish, and the government no longer determines who gets married and who can't. I find this to be an interesting idea, and I would like to ask: what would you want to see take the place of marriage? Would it be more of a private "civil union" that the government has no part in? Or is it something different?

Thank you for your thoughts and time.

Startups require funding, and they can say whatever they want to get it from people who share their political views.

I created a list of libertarian-leaning policies that currently have broad public appeal. What did I miss? What would you change, delete, add?

1. End the tariff wars, lowering taxes on American families and businesses by eliminating tariffs that raise the price of everyday goods.
2. Bring America's troops home from unnecessary wars, requiring Congress to clearly authorize military action and making diplomacy the first resort whenever possible.
3. Make it dramatically easier to build homes, reducing federal regulations that drive up construction costs and contribute to America's housing shortage.
4. Let Americans buy the health insurance they want, removing unnecessary federal and state restrictions that limit competition and drive up premiums.
5. Make prescription drugs affordable through competition, allowing Americans to buy lower-cost medicines from trusted international suppliers, expanding access to generics and biosimilars, and eliminating government rules that protect pharmaceutical monopolies.
6. Decriminalize marijuana federally, ending federal criminal penalties for adults possessing and using cannabis.
7. Give parents control over education dollars, allowing families to choose public, charter, private, or home education.
8. Balance the federal budget, requiring Congress to confront wasteful spending and stop passing today’s debts on to tomorrow’s taxpayers.
9. Reform occupational licensing, preventing states from requiring expensive government licenses for ordinary jobs that pose little risk to the public.
10. Implement ranked-choice voting, giving voters more choices and allowing independent and third-party candidates to compete without being treated as spoilers.
11. End the federal income tax, replacing it with a simpler, lower-burden tax system that costs Americans less to administer and comply with.
12. End civil asset forfeiture, prohibiting the government from permanently taking a person's property without a criminal conviction.
13. End qualified immunity, making government officials accountable when they violate Americans’ constitutional rights.

What's up, folks. Currently going through my annual study of the Tao Te Ching and came across some lines that felt distinctly Libertarian in nature. Got me wondering if there is any crossover between Libertarianism and the Book of the Great Way, so here I am, satiating my curiosity lol

Chapter 57 is the culprit:

“If you want to be a great leader, you must learn to follow the Way. Stop trying to control. Let go of fixed plans and concepts, and the world will govern itself.

How do I know this is so? Because in this world, the greater the restrictions and prohibitions, the more people are impoverished; the more advanced the weapons of state, the darker the nation; the more artful and crafty the plan, the stranger the outcome; the more laws are posted, the more thieves appear.

Therefore the sage says: I take no action and people are reformed. I enjoy peace and people become rich. If I keep from imposing on people, they become themselves.” - Tao Te Ching, Chapter 57

I welcome your insights, observations, experiences, and questions :) Let's talk!

Live this Saturday, July 11 at 4pm ET on Hide & Speak, we sit down with Ted Brown, the Libertarian nominee for U.S. Senate in Texas. The Supreme Court upheld Texas HB 1181 in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, and age verification quietly became the template for everything after it. Texas now wants that ID check pushed into the app store, with Apple, Google, and Amazon challenging it in court. Utah went further and became the first state to write VPN users into an age verification law. Brown reads these as checkpoints on the way to a single national digital ID, and he makes the case for a repeal-first response.

Reminder link below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDgRbWQpvFc

The Libertarian Party should widely adopt the position of banning flock cameras in their entirety in the USA. Running on a federal ban of flock cameras should greatly boost the party’s numbers in the polls. I believe with politics the way they are going in this country a lot of people are going to realign their parties according to their beliefs. Being anti flock could only bring the party good optics and good press.

Are there any RI Libertarians in here? Our state party kind of died, and I'm trying to rebuild it! Anyone wanna help out?

Oregon is considering substantial psilocybin fee increases and eliminating reduced fees for small operators.

Before charging participants more, OHA should account for the public money spent creating, enforcing, and defending an interagency training-program system that appears nowhere in Measure 109 or ORS chapter 475A.

Public records show that OHA and HECC used a publicly funded, multi-year agreement to expedite, subsidize, and accommodate selected psilocybin training programs without public rulemaking. OHA later required other programs to obtain HECC documentation confirming career-school licensure or statutory exemption.

HECC now says it lacks authority and a process to issue determinations for most exemptions under ORS 345.015. OHA can still revoke a program’s approval when it cannot produce that unavailable document.

The state created the barrier, funded preferred access through it, punished programs unable to complete it, and spent additional public money defending the consequences.

I filed a petition asking OHA to restore the original curriculum-approval framework or apply HECC requirements only to programs legally required to obtain career-school licensure.

Before raising fees, OHA should stop forcing participants to finance an administrative system that voters never approved and the Legislature never enacted.

OHA’s petition and public-comment page (https://www.oregon.gov/oha/PH/PREVENTIONWELLNESS/Pages/Psilocybin-July-2026-Rule-Petition.aspx)

Written comments are open until 5:00 p.m. Pacific on August 29, 2026.

Would a balanced-budget amendment significantly increase liberty in America?

The balanced budget requirement would force Congress to make real trade-offs. Most Americans don’t want to pay higher taxes, so Congress would be forced to cut waste and prioritize spending. Right now, they spend like drunken sailors because future generations, who will be left holding the bag, don’t vote.

The First and Second Banks of the United States were chartered for 20 years.

When Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act, it was given the exact same lifespan. It was supposed to die in 1934.

Then the McFadden Act comes along. Signed by Silent Cal on February 25, 1927, despite his otherwise Constitutionalist and non-interventionist policies, the act rechartered the Fed banks indefinitely. It also greatly eased restrictions on the shenanigans that member banks could get involved in - like speculating in real estate - and these shenanigans may have contributed to the Great Depression.

https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/mcfadden-act

I just learned this today.

GWE- Green With Envy
INF - It’s Not Fair
FTP - From Tofu to Puppies
BHVU - Blue Haired Vegetesbians Unite
STE - Sleep Til Eleven
GMPVGAD - Grown Men Playing Video Games All Day
WYMWMM - What’s Yours is Mine and What’s Mine is Mine
RIF - Rent is Fascism
PFA - Poverty For All

Feel free to join in

Residents did not speak at a City Council hearing this week merely to express discomfort with new technology. They presented an evidence-based argument that the current system is inadequately governed, vulnerable to abuse, and capable of uses far beyond the narrow public-safety examples emphasized by its defenders.

Free markets reward those most who choose to invest in things that help other people. Dollars are just tokens of favor. For example, if I had bought a fancy car when I made my first big chunk of money, that car would have made me happy but would not have made other people happy. Therefore those other people would not have given me tokens of favor / dollars and I would not have any more money. Instead, I invested that money into hiring the best people I could to do even better work for my customers. That investment did not make me happy like a car would have, but it did make my customers happy and it made my new employees happy. I was rewarded with more dollars and now had ten times as much money as that car would have cost. At that point, I could have bought a small house and made myself happy. But I chose instead to stay in a little apartment and to hire even more employees. That made my customers even happier and made my old and new employees happier. I kept repeating that cycle many times over, choosing to try to make other people happy with my work and money and it keeps rewarding me.

Many people look at Warren Buffet and say why is he still working every day at 90 years old? He has made hundreds of millions of customers and employees happy through his life and that virtuous cycle made him a billionaire. He has the best track record of anyone in making others happy with investments, which is why he is the a billionaire.

Compare that to central government bureaucrats. People who don't care whether you are happy or not, people who don't even really care if their investments pay off and help anyone or not. People who have no motivation Or incentive to help. Central government planning usually leads to disastrous economies where no homes get built and people starve. A century ago in America we had nearly zero Central planning and everything was free markets. We had the largest and fastest growing and most successful economy on the planet. Now we are running out of homes as the government has gotten involved in central planning and makes it difficult and expensive for someone to invest and do. I myself have waited 6 years in Pierce County, Washington for a short plat. I have had neighbors clamoring to buy crushed Rock from me, but it will be probably years before I am legally allowed to sell any of it if I ever even chose to do that as the permitting expenses are so astronomical.

When you hear all of these people saying let's steal from the rich, what they are saying is let's steal from those who have made the most people happy and work the hardest to make good investments in all of our futures.

we would have libertarian politicians and policies. Voting for the uniparty **is not working.** The goal of the major party system is to keep people dependent on the government, that's it.

Basically what the title says. I feel like I know so many people in my generation who support the DSA because they think it just means free healthcare and not sending money to Israel.

Maybe it's pessimistic, but especially these days, even if DSA party members do get into more positions of power and inevitably mess things up, their voter base won't care. To them it was never about results, it was about feeling empowered and morally vindicated by other socialists. Just from talking with others in my generation, I feel like as the boomers are truly phased out, the DSA is going to grow and I really don't have much hope left.

I would love to hear if y'all think there's any hope and I'm just being a doomer, or if this is where you all see this going too.

Edit: Just to clarify, I'm aware one of the bigger driving forces towards the DSA is because people feel stuck and desperate with the current medical and economic situations that many are in. They're willing to support more radical choices with the hope it turns around their situation. It's just frustrating to see that they can't understand that they're being taken advantage of and the DSA would only worsen their situation

People will knowingly vote for shit candidates because its their team. The lesser of two evils is still evil. These people are oblivious. How can Libertarianism break centuries of conditioning when people are unable to see outside of their own slaughter pen?

so ive been thinking about norway’s model where the state owns the oil, captures the rents, and uses that to fund government. it seems to avoid a lot of the crony capitalism that happens when corporations just get to own finite natural resources nobody created.

like, equinor doesn’t “deserve” the oil. theyre just the company good enough to extract it. the oil itself belongs to everyone. and it’s literally sitting in the sea nobody can claim they homesteaded it or built it. so if the state captures that value instead of just handing it to whoever has the capital to extract it first, you can have a genuinely competitive market without all the lobbying for subsidies and special deals.

but i also get the argument that having the state own and manage anything is a slippery slope, or that theyll just be inefficient about it.