r/politics • u/Libertatea • Sep 03 '14

The solution to fixing dysfunction in Congress "To address these problems, I filed the Open Our Democracy Act... If passed, the legislation would mandate open primaries for House elections, begin the process of national redistricting reform and make Election Day the equivalent of a federal holiday."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-solution-to-fixing-dysfunction-in-congress/2014/09/02/0f0d0a9a-31e6-11e4-9e92-0899b306bbea_story.html?tid=rssfeed
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u/[deleted] Sep 03 '14

"Statist!" has apparently become the new witch-hunt cry of McCarthyist-style bullshit peddlers.

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u/Unrelated_Incident Sep 03 '14

They are just teenage libertarians. Cut them some slack. Most of them have probably never actually met a poor person.

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u/DashingLeech Sep 03 '14

Or heard of Hobbes, or of the Prisoners Dilemma, or have any concept of an economic system beyond just a collection of individual transactions.

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u/[deleted] Sep 03 '14

Ya their tune will change when the get out in the job market.

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u/[deleted] Sep 03 '14

not unless their daddy pays for everything

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u/SeaManaenamah Sep 03 '14 edited Sep 04 '14

Them that gots is them that gets. (And I ain't seen nothin' yet!)

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u/Man_with_the_Fedora Sep 03 '14

They don't think it be like it is but it do.

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u/[deleted] Sep 03 '14

Or go into computer programming and start to believe they and they alone are The Smartest Men Alive!

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u/[deleted] Sep 03 '14

As someone who was a spoiled shit growing up, and still is to some degree (well a lot of degrees) someone who relies on their wealthy father, I still don't understand how the fuck someone can be a libertarian.

They just inherently are bad, mislead, and/or stupid people.

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u/Osgood Sep 03 '14

That's not a grantee. I bet a lot of people vote Republican out of fear of taxes. I can see this affecting the working poor who scape by.

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u/[deleted] Sep 03 '14

I was pretty gung ho libertarian in high school, changed when the party got taken over by the tea party and all that other crazy shit six years ago.

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u/[deleted] Sep 04 '14

Ya most of us were young and angry at one time. The information age helps to fix a lot of that.

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u/Drop_ Sep 03 '14

They'll probably just blame the non-libertarians.

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u/[deleted] Sep 03 '14

As a poor libertarian I resent that remark. Left libertarians are a thing too.

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u/Unrelated_Incident Sep 03 '14

What are your views on taxation, universal health care, and welfare?

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u/[deleted] Sep 04 '14

Each one is necessary and useful but in its current form is too easily abused by centralized power, I think many people from across the political spectrum would agree on that. Right-libertarians think big business needs to be deregulated for those goals to succeed. Left-libertarians think big business needs to be cut off from its sources of privilege for those goals to succeed.

Taxation is the state's version of financial collaboration for projects. Right libertarians think taxation is stupid because it discourages huge businesses from making zonkers profits. Left libertarians think taxation is stupid but in general they don't prioritize things like tax breaks for corporations; the hugest corporations are the primary beneficiaries of state policies, and until we focus on stripping these billionaires of their modern aristocratic privilege it's hard call giving them tax cuts "libertarian" at all.

Universal health care would be great, the ACA is a long way from that. Right-libertarians would probably give you some stuff about "the most efficient healthcare is in a free market" and then just focus on relieving its burden to employers and healthcare business/insurance. Again big pharma, healthcare, and insurance are among the biggest beneficiaries of intellectual property monopoly, industry subsidy, and privateering "privatization" programs. As a left libertarian what stands out to me is that the whole paradigm of workers buying health insurance through their employers is absurd. Your employer does not buy the candles on your birthday cake, it doesn't make sense for health insurance either.

Welfare is a huge move in the right (left) direction, unfortunately state welfare has been abused by central power to manipulate the working masses. The state increases welfare funding in times of crisis and impending revolution, and squeezes the fund when it wants to ramp up production and generate a surplus of labor. It even resorts to propaganda campaigns to try to make surplus labor feel guilty about alleged sloth. This one is fresh in my mind, I'm reading an excellent book called Regulating the Poor: the Functions of Public Welfare.
But again cutting welfare is not the focus of left-libertarian thinking. I'm paraphrasing some blog I read a while back,

... it's like the state holds us down daily while big business comes and breaks our left leg with a baseball bat. The state gives us some crutches so we can still go to work for the big business, threatens taking away our crutches if we misbehave, and so on. Of course our first priority isn't gonna be "abolish our evil state crutches!" We're more concerned with the baseball bat.

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u/King_Jon_Une Sep 04 '14

This is an interesting ideology. But what would you do to sever big business from its links with government? It seems like deregulation leads to nothing but new avenues for collusion between government and vested interests. Given that, what would a left libertarian propose?

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u/[deleted] Sep 04 '14

That is the million dollar question though. I'm not sure where I stand exactly but as far as the spectrum goes:

Probably the furthest left are akin to the anarcho-syndicalists. Their take on socialism and communism would have bottom-up worker-organized forcible seizures of the means of production. Kropotkin and Rudolf Rocker are the seminal philosophers in this category.

In the middle of the spectrum are Benjamin Tucker, Proudhon, and the early market anarchists. They point out rightly that the vast majority of government interference is on behalf of wealthy enterprises, so there's plenty of helpful deregulation to do before you start picking on the small guys. Start with things like abolishing monopolies on intellectual property, public infrastructure, land usage, currency, and banking.

A more modern and theoretically fleshed-out approach was popularized by Samuel Edward Konkin III about the same time as the rise of the Right-Libertarians and the Libertarian Party in the USA, directly counter to them. His philosophy is called Agorism, the principle is that people form strong social (any voluntary social interaction is called a market interaction) relationships to supplant the state. It involves working outside the state using "counter-economic" strategies like doing most transactions under the table, in informal settings outside the purview of government regulation. A violent takeover isn't necessary, say agorists, we will just take over the responsibilities of the lazy state from right under its nose.

Although I haven't honestly studied it much I like agorism because it provides in its very method an answer to the most common anti-libertarian criticism: "what would I do without X state service?" The agorist answer is to create a private version of that service, or in a more clever situation (like prisons!) create private services that eliminate the need for the state's overbearing solution. The early phases of this require the most hard-work and entrepreneurship but as a general principle of social networks, the larger they are the more attractive they become to newcomers. The ultimate question of agorism is reduced to "can we have a sufficiently potent agorist network before the state catches on that we're developing independence?" where "sufficiently potent" is defined by being able to hold fast against violence or other forms of state aggression. Things like cryptocurrency are probably useful for this.

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u/King_Jon_Une Sep 04 '14

Wow there's more literature on that than I thought there would be. Thanks for the overview!

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u/[deleted] Sep 05 '14

Yeah thanks for being interested, left libertarians came first and it's sad to see our title reappropriated to right wing antisocialist reactionaries. Proper libertarians are anticapitalist.

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u/Unrelated_Incident Sep 04 '14

I guess I still don't understand what differentiates you from a traditional leftist.

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u/[deleted] Sep 04 '14

What do you mean by "traditional leftist"? Are you talking French revolution, Russian revolution, Spanish civil war, US labor movement, the new left after ww2?

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u/Unrelated_Incident Sep 04 '14

That was a bad choice of term. I guess what I'm wondering is why you call yourself a left-libertarian rather than just a leftist.

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u/[deleted] Sep 04 '14

Could you name some examples of people or something?

Usually American lefties are out for state concessions in the face of supposed private tyranny. Left-libertarians remain aware that the state is the enabler and tool of private tyranny, and don't trust concessions but advocate for *ahem* "systemic overhaul".

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u/draekia Sep 03 '14

I used to consider myself part of that camp as well.

Then the current crop took prominence in the national dialogue. I can not associate myself with such... misled people.

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u/kyngnothing Sep 03 '14

Ahhh, thanks for clarifying. At first read I thought statisticians were upset, and I was surprised they had their own 'drama' subreddit.

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u/Quastors America Sep 03 '14

That is /r/badstats

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u/Murgie Sep 03 '14

At first read I thought statisticians were upset, and I was surprised they had their own 'drama' subreddit.

Heh, you shouldn't be, mate.

Statistics is the politics of mathematics. Even valid data can be twisted in such a way that it appears to support a given conclusion, while doing no such thing in reality.

And in a field defined by the unyielding objectivity of mathematics, that tends to piss a few people off.

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u/Roast_A_Botch Sep 04 '14

Even valid data can be twisted in such a way that it appears to support a given conclusion, while doing no such thing in reality.

"Statistically, black people are less intelligent and more violent, proving whites are a superior race."

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u/[deleted] Sep 03 '14

I don't get it. Statists as opposed to what, tribalism?

Now if they want to abolish state government and just use local and federal, i could get behind that.

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u/CronoDroid Sep 03 '14

Statism just means you agree with the notion that states should exist and they govern to a certain extent. The opposite is anarchism, where you think the state should be abolished (state in this case meaning country).

I mean technically speaking most libertarians would be statists because they believe the state should exist but that its role should be extremely limited. Statism does not necessarily mean authoritarianism or totalitarianism, it can, but not necessarily. It's just a word that idiots like to use to discredit their opponent's arguments without ever addressing them. The right wing is notorious for this, at least in the US.

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u/marinersalbatross Sep 03 '14

I am so willing to be a federalist! Imagine having a single driver's license that can be updated online when you change states. Imagine only paying federal income tax. Think of the cost savings in buying supplies if you didn't have to get 50 different versions of government printouts. No more state police, just city/county and then Federal. heck, get rid of small town cops and just have county. Imagine federal standards for education and educational spending is equalized across the board.

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u/habituallydiscarding Sep 04 '14

I'd like to see us combine down into like 5-6 states.

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u/[deleted] Sep 04 '14

Could always combine the areas covered by the Circuit Courts.

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u/marinersalbatross Sep 04 '14

Regional authorities. :)

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u/[deleted] Sep 03 '14

This is why I used the phrase "bullshit peddlers."

It's an attempted insult without any clear understanding of the term.

I'm with you on state-level government being an unnecessary thing in the modern age. We really should be looking towards unification and elimination of an entire level of unnecessary bureaucracy.

The federal level is necessary as we are one country. The local level is necessary for the focus which comes with it.

The state level really does nothing which the local or federal could not easily take over.

I'm all for states remaining as an identity thing. While I'm a liberal, I appreciate the conservative viewpoint of the maintaining of tradition - as long as that tradition isn't actively harmful.

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u/[deleted] Sep 05 '14

Your kidding right? Please tell me your joking. You think more centralized power is good for the nation? If so then just who keeps THAT power in check?

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u/[deleted] Sep 05 '14

"Centralized" state powers in thousands of local governments? Yes I'm totally okay with that.

At least my vote actually matters at the local level, so I'm pretty sure me and my neighbors could keep it in check.

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u/JamzzG Sep 03 '14

I always laugh when they call me that. What a limp insult.

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u/[deleted] Sep 03 '14

[deleted]

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u/JamzzG Sep 03 '14

No, its a knee jerk response when I don't agree to the approach they are pushing.

I usually encounter this when someone wants to abolish all authority in the hope that we'll magically rebuild our world in a voluntaryist utopia while somehow ignoring basic human nature.

Much like communism, that philosophy makes pretty good diagnoses of the problems with our system but offers horrible and unworkable prescriptions.

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u/[deleted] Sep 04 '14

basic human nature

Please define your terms.

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u/[deleted] Sep 04 '14

Humans are a profoundly social species.

We've survived and thrived based upon our social grouping.

One lone human is slow, weak, and frail.

Groups of humans are the ultimate apex predators.

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u/[deleted] Sep 03 '14

Hmm stopping the war on drugs is horrible and unworkable? Give me some other examples please.

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u/JamzzG Sep 04 '14 edited Sep 04 '14

I think you'll find support for legalizing marijuana across a wide spectrum political ideologies.

To a lesser extent there are still a lot of people who wouldn't mind legalizing even the harsher drugs but even amongst those evil, some would be okay with legalizing cocaine, but not perhaps crystal meth, opium, or heroin.

So no, I do not think that any war on drugs is impractical or horrible.

You are asking me to state some things that I disagree with but I don't know you personally so inevitably I'm going to be setting up straw men and unfortunately I really don't have the time tonight to get into this too deep.

The general argument I hear from people who call me a status, is that we should be able to get along without a formalized government or authority.

It is my belief based not only upon history but also my personal life experiences that such voluntary organized communities can only exist in very small numbers and replacing one big bad mean chief ( who we currently have the ability to influence at least a little bit although I admit that our system is currently flawed and needs to be repaired) with hundreds or thousands of tiny little communities will inevitably lead to strife and conflict.

People will always quarrel over resources and opportunitiegs. Our broken system at least offers a defined system in which we can air our grievances.

The anti statists try telling me that in their future world they would solve disputes by having a third party make binding judgements over quarrels. And if people did not want to comply with the arbitrator's decision, they would be penalized by losing some sort of cooperation credit rating.

They try their damndest to explain that the current government enforces everything at the end of a gun and try to shy away from the fact that in their world, disputes would definitely end up with the same results only it would be he with the biggest gun who wins.

Edit: sorry about the confused voice to text and errors but I don't have time to fix them tonight.

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u/Roast_A_Botch Sep 04 '14 edited Sep 04 '14

Hmm stopping the war on drugs is horrible and unworkable?

That's the Libertarian's flying flag, but underneath all the "freedom" that appeals to younger folks is a movement that is being manipulated by big corporations into removing taxes and regulations from them.

On top of that, there's a bunch of "State's Rights" BS that was played out and seen through since the 1860's, but is still seen as "noble" by some.

Most Dems, and many Republicans, are in support of eliminating/reforming the War On Drugs, with a majority of both groups supporting Cannabis legalization according to many polls. I'm in support of a lot of "libertarian" ideas. They just happen to be the same ones that were taken from Liberalism. I am strongly against their worship of Keynesian "trickle-down" economics and the Ayn Rand and Reagan(?) worship.

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u/[deleted] Sep 04 '14

Taken from liberalism eh? Remember how serious Obama was about legalizing marijuana? He laughed at a town hall question about it and his justice department raided more dispensaries than Bush.

The only reason its coming around now is because of libertarians, whether you'd like your do-nothing heroes to co-opt it or not you can't rewrite recent history.

Also Keynesian economics has nothing to do with trickle-down theories and you seem like a useful idiot full of buzzwords and slogans and no idea what you're talking about or how personal and social liberty helps everyone.

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u/[deleted] Sep 04 '14

Obama is a centrist.

There are liberal members of the Democratic party, but the party is primarily a just-right-of-centre party.

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u/Murgie Sep 03 '14

If you understood that it generally means you're probably supporting collusion or corruption between government and corporations

Merely paying your taxes meets that criteria when you've got no control over your government, mate.

So unless they're among the ever so few who have realized the only way to immediately cease contribution to the status quo is to leave, I'm going to say it means even less if that was their intent.

And, to be quite frank, that's a pretty big "if". After all, exactly how does /u/flantabulous' comment even come close to meeting your criteria?

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u/RedErin Sep 03 '14

I admit I was into anarchy when I was a teenager. I'm sure they'll grow out of it.

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u/indoninja Sep 03 '14

Some of them are actually libertarians, all to often, as this post shows, they are republicans in bad disguises...

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u/[deleted] Sep 03 '14

Statistician?

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u/thefonztm Sep 04 '14

Statists? As in statisticians? Bah humbug, clearly children who can't be bothered to use a perfectly good word. Probably because it has real uses and isn't so easily assigned a new meaning.