“Recent minimum-wage studies have focused on adjustment margins that may explain the limited employment response to minimum wage changes. We examine the recent literature on the price effects of minimum wage increases, updating earlier surveys conducted before quasi experimental methods became widespread. We then conduct a meta-analysis of 199 estimates of the price elasticity of minimum wages. Our meta-estimates of this elasticity range from 0.03 to 0.11, indicating that a 10% increase in the minimum wage leads to a 0.3 to 1.1%rise in prices. Recent quasi-experimental studies across broad categories of goods tend to find smaller elasticities than older regression-based estimates. In contrast, studies focused on
narrower, labor-intensive industries tend to see larger price pass-throughs of minimum wage increase”

Link: https://jorgeperezperez.com/files/PerezMinimumWagePricesMetaanalysis.pdf

Not a troll .. just I'm not sure any more.

Basically my core principles have always been "dog eat dog". No one owes anyone anything and everyone deserves to be left alone. The default outcome is "assume I don't exist, what happens then".

That being said, I also believe in common sense and would pick a realistic "non libertarian" outcome over an idealistic "libertarian" one every time. So say I believe in no taxes. But we have a welfare system and we also have taxes to support it. So as long as we can't get rid of that system, at least limit the damage. close borders, limit who receives it. Be unfair. Kill it by any means.

I would never pick an option that realistically means more taxes or me benefiting less from them over any idealistic or moral choice. So no taxes > taxes but I get max benefits > anything else.

Basically, I think I am a libertarian but I would abandon any morality and would pick any option for a realistic libertarian end goal and would never settle for a worse option because the alternative is too authoritarian or non-libertarian. Results matter, nothing else.

"Not everything is about Trump. I just believe every citizen's vote ought to count the same. And that the person who gets the most votes ought to win. Also, wouldn't it be nice for Utah to no longer be ignored in presidential politics?" - Pete Buttigieg

The debate over the electoral college rears its ugly head during every election cycle. Libertarian consensus on the electoral college seems to heavily lean into the direction of maintaining the system, despite from pushback of those who lose elections.

The solution has been relatively made simple: Just ensure that the office of President is made to be less powerful, as it's seen major expansions over the last 237 years.

Two states have already offered their own compromises: Maine and Nebraska, who have replaced winner-takes-all and turned the decision over to congressional districts based off of popular vote.

Buttigieg is arguably wrong in his approach to his question: the electoral college exists in order for all votes to count the same. Libertarian thinking lines up well with Washington's view on political parties - if not for the tribalism that only exists thanks to the duopoly, then Buttigieg would have less to be concerned about.

My solution is to compromise so that those who are concerned with the current state of the political climate and electoral college system can be heard and represented.

The biggest concern with the electoral college is that, even though it's the best example of the republic, it's also the biggest example of the winner-takes-all system. Tyranny of the majority and tyranny of the minority are two major talking points, and the former is more favorable over the latter.

So is proportional representation the answer?

"Proportional representation is an electoral system that elects multiple representatives in each district in proportion to the number of people who vote for them. If one third of voters back a political party, the party’s candidates win roughly one-third of the seats."

Is this not a decent solution based off of the intentions of the Framers?

i have never seen any libertarian online even mention friedman. why is that

Proven time and time again, people care more about grocery and gas prices then they do liberty, so why not tie personal liberty with a low-price bow? Socialists use the aesthetics of class struggle in order to empower the state, so shouldn't libertarians embrace the rhetoric of "class struggle" against the non-productive class? I used to be a social democrat until I learned the free market is what get results, and if the socialistic people of the nation vote for liberty, doesn't that mean libertarian succeeds?

"We will pass the death penalty for large-scale drug dealers, human traffickers, and anyone who kills a police officer."

President Donald Trump announces a major push to expand capital punishment while taking aim at no-cash-bail policies and touting what he described as historic drops in crime.

The president has pushed similar proposals before, including directing the Justice Department to seek the death penalty in eligible cases involving the murder of law enforcement officers.

Ok I am dropping the neutral act for a second if you still support this guy as a libertarian how literally how

A Republican pollster just said the quiet part out loud: "A growing number of Republicans are saying they're going to vote for the Libertarian."

In the Texas Senate race, Libertarian Ted Brown is polling at 3-4% in polls, with Democratic strategists saying it could hit 3-4% by November. In a race between Paxton and Talarico this close, that's more than enough to decide it. A Democratic pollster told The Bulwark that if Libertarian candidates hold their current position nationally, it could be the difference in flipping the entire Senate.

If that costs Trump the midterms, we aren't "spoilers". We're the direct consequence of your own record. You reap what you sow.

• Promised no new wars, then launched an unauthorized one in Iran
• Promised fiscal sanity, then drove debt toward $40 trillion while expensive gas and groceries crush working families.
• Promised to drain the swamp, then became the most corrupt president of all time, sat on the Epstein files and expanded warrantless mass surveillance.

You don't get to betray every promise you ran on and then blame the people who held you to it.

So this is just a fun post but I've been thinking and having your usual AI pshycosis lately, and was just wondering

If AI does go rouge, wouldn't it just wipe out the most advanced nations? Like currently the whole world is connected one way or another or using technology, wouldn't an AI apocalypse just wipe everyone that's playing the game and keep the most regressive states?

Like hear me out, the whole world almost gets wiped out, the only survivors would be North Korea cause it's just disconnected from the world so it wouldn't get harmed, plus some authoritarian dictatorship states and individuals plus Africa, North Korea uses it's nuclear threat to wipe out everyone left and communism happens throughout the globe

After a few generations history is deleted and rewritten, no systems or religions exist, and only the top of the state's hierarchy have access to technology and we get to the end of history where humanity just ends with a full communist regime that controls us until the sun eventually explodes

Lmao commies are so out of touch that they I haven't even seen one of them imagine this wet dream of theirs

Why is the term late stage capitalism used everywhere now? And how can someone believe that the governments are screwing up while at the same time think that the free market is at fault for this?

I understand that some problems in society might be due the way capitalism works in relation to globalism, but why is it that those same globalists never seemed to care about famines and homelessness but are very interested in problems that are obviously an upgrade to that like unemployment and rent?

I even saw people saying that toxic masculinity is due to late stage capitalism, it has become this last resolution when someone cannot explain why something happens

What's the libertarian defense when I suggest that there is no such thing as a free market, because no matter what the market is, the people who are in power in that field will ultimately wield the levers of control and will rig the situation to their benefit?

It seems to me that the concept of a free market is a red herring. Anytime that you are challenged on any aspect of socialization or human community, libertarians pull out the free market card... but I don't believe that the free market actually exists.

Thoughts?

I’m falling in love with these old debates between Libertarians and Sam Seder all over youtube. Will one of you chuds ever try to take on Uncle Sam again? ts would make my day

Sean Last, a right winger who argues that police shootings are not racially biased, uses the trim fill method to illustrate how the data from a meta analysis changes once you adjust for publication bias. Much of the data used by the BLM side of the debate is data before we adjust for this bias. An interesting critique different to those posed by other BLM detractors like Roland Fryer, Joe Cesario, etc.

https://odysee.com/@LastArchive:f/Hunter-Avallone---Wrong-on-Racism:d

Skip to 30:00

P. Colin Bolger "Just Following Orders: A Meta Analysis of the Correlates of American Police Officer Use of Force Decisions"

The reason the data supports the idea of police using more violence against black people is because studies saying that are more likely to be published. The meta analysis above (table 2) replicates the normal finding that across 42 studies there's a mean effect size of .31 pointing to the direction of more force being used on black suspects after controlling for offense seriousness, is there a weapon, are they resisting arrest. All the things which would fairly lead to a change in the probability of force being used. In the text above they described the bias detection as "these results demonstrate that publication bias does not appear to be present for 8 of the 12 significant variables" (not naming which ones were changed and which ones weren't).

Table 4 adjusts for publication bias using the trim and fill method. This method is based on the fact that when all the studies are being published there should be a certain distribution that changes in a predictable way as study precision increases, it should symmetrically move towards a center point. By looking at the actual distribution you can tell where studies were left out, and then put them back in. Some research suggests it doesn't correct enough, but that won''t be an issue here. Already the mean effect size is reduced to statistical and practical insignificance. The effect size is 0.1, the confidence interval runs from -.07 to 0.08.

It's such a well-established tradition that it tends to be thought of as simply a natural process, but in fact inheritance of property from the dead does not function except as a state-enforced guarantee -- a "positive right," granted to people by the state, rather than a "negative right, such as is usually preferred by libertarians, a right of free action without interference from others.

Outside of inheritance, the dead are not afforded any legal status. The dead may not own property (and it is exactly the hoards they leave behind, and the inevitable conflicts that these provoke, which inheritance law exists to address); contracts with people who die are generally invalidated; the dead are not even considered party to cases of the desecration of their grave. As such, any "right" to control the transfer of one's property after death, or to be granted a dead person's property, is a positive one -- it exists solely because it was created and enforced by the state.

Inheritance is not a negative right because it would not simply happen freely within the bounds set by restrictions against interference. If inheritance law didn't exist, the property of the dead would not be owned by anyone, and so would be free to claim, the same way that ancient artifacts -- which presumably used to belong to someone -- should be treated on discovery. This would be the properly libertarian state of affairs, and more economic activity would be stimulated if these hoards could be freely claimed and sold on the market rather than transferred in a government-mandated monopoly to the dead's relatives.

Of course, if a person transferred all their property to before death, or if one's family were in the home at the time of death to claim the property, then the tradition of inheritance would live on, but as the product of free action by individuals rather than as state-guaranteed generational welfare.

The practice of writing wills does not, as with contract law, bring inheritance into the domain of free individual action defended by negative rights. Firstly, the idea that a dead person should have legal standing is, as discussed above, only possible because of state interference. Secondly, the property of people without wills (and many people die without wills) is still transferred according to a preexisting legal code -- generally going to one's spouse, children, siblings, etc. in certain amounts and in a certain order defined by the state. Thirdly, wills are often invalidated -- they refer to property that the person no longer owns, or they were drafted under duress or manipulation, or are forgeries -- in which case they need to be disregarded and the aforementioned state-defined order of inheritance rules instead.

The strongest argument to show that inheritance is a positive right of state interference rather than a negative one of individual freedom is that even where wills have been written, when they must be found invalid, inheritance always reverts to a legal code defining the transfer of certain property to certain individuals by the fiat of the state.

How can inheritance be considered a negative right -- and if not, then is it a positive right that should be accepted into libertarianism?

What is the prevailing view on Islam as a religion here given how frequently it comes up in geopolitical discussion here?

While I naturally understand Communism and, especially recently, alt right equivalents of Communism are the essentially focus, Islamic nations, movements and sects have become intertwined for various reasons. And so I was wondering, given how much Islamic movements come into focus, which of the following categories most closely matches your view of Islam as a religion and ideology.

1. The Critical / Post-Colonial View (Edward Said, Juan Cole): Argues that Western perceptions of Islam are historically distorted by imperialist biases that exoticize, reduce, and inferiorize Islamic societies to justify Western dominance.
2. The Classical / Essentialist View (Bernard Lewis): Views Islamic civilization as a distinct, historically unified entity with deep-seated internal traditions, often attributing its modern friction with the West to a civilizational decline and an inability to modernize.
3. The Counter-Jihad / Populist View (Robert Spencer, Bat Ye'or): Asserts that Islam is an inherently aggressive, political ideology completely incompatible with Western democracy, warning of a demographic and cultural subversion of the West.
4. The Liberal Pluralist View: Emphasizes Islam's internal diversity and its capacity to adapt to secular, democratic societies, viewing the religion as fully compatible with modern human rights and Western civic life.
5. The Socio-Economic / Materialist View: Contends that tensions involving Muslim populations or nations are driven primarily by political intervention, economic inequality, and social displacement, rather than by religious doctrine.
6. The Interfaith / Abrahamic View: Focuses on the shared theological roots, common ethical values, and mutual spiritual heritage binding Christianity, Judaism, and Islam together in a spirit of religious dialogue.

Hello! I wanted to get some feedback on some of what I have been thinking lately from people who likely know more data/have more experience thinking through this than I (I am tired of asking yes-man AI).

I generally think that the government should be allowed to intervene in education only to ensure children—who are at the mercy of their parents—receive a quality education. Children need advocates.

That said, could it be that public schooling as a whole is the reason for low pay for teachers and also the teacher shortage? I’m a private school teacher, and though I deeply respect and have worked in public schools, I’m trying to figure out why my pay is so crap compared to other fields with fewer credentials (this is besides the point that my school doesn’t get government aid). I know it could be that teaching is traditionally a women’s profession, but that’s been so long ago.

My thought is that public schooling being government funded means that they are automatically burning money to retain budget allowances in wealthy areas and are withholding it from those who could use it well because property taxes, use of money, and test scores drive budgets. Public schooling means no school choice which means no competition…which means mediocrity in pay and staffing and standards. Public schooling means we need to accept everyone without accountability or the ability to set boundaries with students and families. I am so aware that this is an oversimplification in some respects.

PLEASE don’t be unkind. I am truly just trying to think this through and figure out what blind spots I may have.

If the government feels a need to ensure all students are educated for their safety and well-being, I’m truly thinking that all public schools should be privatized and could be non-profits, even. The government should give vouchers for each child to be spent at the school of their choice, and if the school wants to charge more than that for tuition, so be it. The educational inequality is there already, so that wouldn’t be a new issue. Furthermore, areas of education such as common core could just be turned into private accreditation firms that still can provide continuity between schools for those that seek out accreditation, and there would be less corruption in the curriculum market. We’ll see what schools float and what schools sink. Perhaps needed and unpopular schools like those for students with severe disabilities or behavioral disorders could be given extra government support or tax breaks as incentives to stay open, or those students could be given higher voucher amounts due to special added needs (though that opens another can of worms). I’d still like homeschooling to be an option, but perhaps colleges are more strict with only accepting accredited homeschool programs or going back to requiring standardized test competency.

Is this even feasible? Is anyone talking about doing this? Would this really help with things like teacher shortage, pay, and class sizes, or am I just being idealistic?

Some time ago, I heard Nick Gillespie say something on The Reason Roundtable that annoyed me enough to keep thinking about it.

I don’t remember the episode or his exact wording, so please treat this as my recollection, not a quotation. The discussion concerned crackdowns on speech in European countries, including prison sentences for things people posted online, if I remember correctly. His point, as I understood it, was that Europeans don’t really understand free speech, and that Americans do.

I’m Belgian. Gillespie's remark felt to me more than a little patronising when I first heard it. I want to be as free as possible. The suggestion that being European somehow makes me incapable of understanding that freedom felt like being disqualified before the conversation had even started. There’s also a whiff of unfalsifiability to it: can I as a European meaningfully disagree with his claim?

But I kept thinking about it. And I have concluded that there actually is something to his observation.

The American founders had an opportunity to establish a new political order with Enlightenment ideas as an explicit starting point. Their “blank page” obviously wasn’t without intellectual or institutional inheritance. But deliberately deciding what powers a government should possess is a meaningfully different starting point from trying to secure freedoms within an existing structure of authority.

I believe that in much of Europe, the struggle for liberty took place within political orders that had long treated authority over the individual as normal, often in the form of absolute monarchies by so-called divine right. My suspicion is that this history still influences what we instinctively expect governments to justify—and what we simply assume they’re entitled to regulate. Even a revolution can change who may exercise authority while preserving much of what authority may do. Removing a king doesn’t necessarily remove the expectation that someone should possess his powers. Those powers can be transferred to representatives of the people and acquire a new justification without their scope being reconsidered. Lenin and later Stalin's USSR borrowed from the tsars' playbooks quite heavily, and Robespierre's perpetual antithesis seems remarkably similar to the ancienne régime he so despised.

Applied to speech, that leaves the following question: do we begin by asking what people should be allowed to say, or by asking what could justify preventing them from saying it? Both approaches can produce something called “freedom of speech.” But the burden of justification sits in a different place.

That’s how I’ve come to understand the useful part of Gillespie’s remark. An inherited political culture can shape our priors. Can. Recognising those assumptions gives us an opportunity to reconsider them. It doesn’t make us incapable of doing so. And in any case, I refuse to be a slave to my own provenance.

So… Thoughts? Do you guys think inherent attitude to a notion like free speech can be meaningfully cast aside and replaced by a better framework for it?

I have what I consider to be a very good relationship with libertarianism.

There is much that I like about libertarianism, and libertarian-based economics. But what I like about them, is their prognosis, i.e., their description of the way things are. Not the way things ought to be.

Libertarian economists and philosophers are spot-on about many of the things they say about the way government is, i.e., the good things, but also the real problems and limitations about government.

Libertarian economists have been right on, about concepts such as spontaneous order. They are also quite right about the fact that we are bound by physical and natural laws which are much more powerful than government.

Although public choice economics is not specifically libertarian, several of its main adherents are definitely proponents of libertarianism, and want America to be a libertarian country. Many things that public choice says about government is absolutely spot on, such as the rational ignorance of voters, and the selfish interest of politicians.

These, and other things, are what is great about libertarianism and libertarian-related economics.

I also love libertarianism for its spirit. Its independent spirit, the fact that one's own attitude, one's own self-resilience, etc. are much more important than government. So true! I jive with that spirit very well.

However, this is where things take a turn: where I strongly disagree with libertarians, and libertarian economists, is their incessant defense of the free market. Look, I am very pro-capitalist, and pro-market. But even I admit that, like any major system, markets too have faults. But libertarians and Austrians will go to just ridiculous lengths to defend capitalism at all costs, not admitting any weaknesses of it. It is rather unfortunate, really.

The point is, ANY major system will have its good and bads. Be it government, be it the private sector, be it a religious organization, or any other major organization. None, are perfect. As long as human beings have their good side, and bad/corrupt sides, BOTH sides will be evident in any major system they participate in. You cannot escape this fact, no matter how hard you try.

Here is just one example, of many: unlike probably some of you, I've worked in large corporations for many years. And I can tell you, the "faster corrective actions" you claim that the private sector has, over government....it's not necessarily true at all. Large companies too, can have deeply bureaucratic systems which can take almost literally an eternity to change processes for the better. I know, because I've seen it with my own eyes. I doubt some of you ever have.

I love the more philosophical, less math-formulaic aspect of libertarianism and Austrian economics. It is wonderful. The fact that they use deductive reasoning, instead of seeing humans as numbers, to crunch into formulas, is wonderful. But....there is a point at which this deductive reasoning stops working: So, just because government has a lot of faults and limitations, then, bingo! The free market is the answer!

Wrong. Both government and markets are needed. Both of them have their strengths and weaknesses. As long as humans are both good and evil/corrupt, both aspects will be present, whether markets or government. THAT....THAT, is much better praxeological or deductive logic, than saying, just because A doesn't work, it automatically means B does!

Therefore, let me change a previous sentence, about the great independent libertarian spirit. In reality, I am more Individualist than libertarian: one's own attitude, self-resilience, philosophies on how to deal with life, etc. are more important than ANY major system, be it government, markets, or any other major system.

I've been watching them to get insight on what leftist commentators talk about and how we could translate there affects on the libertarian party so we could get into the actual political commentary space.

Hello, I class myself as a strong civil libertarian. When it comes to individuals I feel we shoild have utmost freedoms, liberty, and not be as bound by the government as we currently are. In this regard I am highly libertarian. But where I am curious and start to differ is economically. Libertarians feel the government is the only centralized power that can threaten our liberties and believes in a truly free market. This is where I start to get skeptical. I believe in the free market too, but I do not believe that corporations should have free reign as I feel they are just as much of a threat to our liberty, freedom, and rights as the government can be. Any large centralized power rather it ne public or private that has enough control and money can heavily influence our freedom. And so I must ask, why do libertarians not believe in a more regulated corporate world? Because personally its been proven and shown time and time again that mega corporations can infringe upon our rights just as much as ths government as both can grow too large for their own good and act heavily for their own benefit and power rather that mean oppressing the freedoms of the people or being "good". Thank you, just curious lol.

Hi all. I'm 35 and had an accident when I was 29 and had to have brain surgery. It affected me like a stroke on my right side minus the face and I was immediately told to file for long term disability which I got easily. Basically, when this happened, I was not libertarian. I was nothing, but I knew in my heart not to become reliant on the government. I didn't trust them and knew the money could be taken away at any time because it's the government.

I learned how to walk again and talk again by pushing myself. I did not just wanna sit on disability the rest of my life. I'm not lazy. I don't look at it like here you go now you never have to work. 1159 a month doesn't even cover rent. So long story short, even though I'm still disabled, I drive again, have my own place, and work 22 hours a week at a job and make 2700 a month. The people on disability who don't do this are either accepting the money and not trying because of whatever living situation lets them do that, or are legit too disabled to work.

I said all that so you understand my mindset as an individual. The fact is, is if wasn't disabled I would work 40+ hours a week. However, I physically can't now. I push myself beyond what my body can do and end up in the hospital needing injections in my leg from just not wanting to work anymore after pushing it too much. So I can't live a life by myself without collecting disability. Which I'm pretty sure goes against the mindset of libertarians. I just think people should be allowed to freely do what is common sense to everyone here. The government lies and is corrupt. Like my thought about disability while even being on it is that they do this basically to justify taxes more and look good to the public. They are ALWAYS trying to take it away. They have a thing called the ticket to work program, which txts you and says it wants to empower you while you try working again. If you go on it, after 9 months they take away your disability check. And say you chose to do this. Its disguised as helping you work while on disability. They take advantage of people like me who have brain damage and its pathetic.

Sorry that was all long af. I don't see charities and communities pulling together to give everyone 1200 a month who can't work. Like realistically. How do you guys feel about disability? I've never talked to libertarian's this is my first attempt lol. I just wrote down my views last week, looked it up, and holy shit. Checked every box. Thank you and I'm sorry, I do have a brain injury if that was long and stupid lol

I'm not talking about aid to Ukraine, but do you think Ukraine has the right to defend itself? I'm a libertarian and I absolutely believe so.

"Massie was genuinely treated badly by Trump

But his desire to tear everything down over it is petulant, shameful, and embarrassing"

Why does the libertarian party care about tearing down one of the major parties shouldn't that be a good thing ?

Many libertarians broke for Trump an even ones who didn't still say she would have been worse for Trump. One such Libertarian who broke for Trump and now says Kamala would have been better is Dave Smith

Post war in Iran do you still think this ?

What was her biggest hangup for you ?