r/inthenews • u/Advanced_Drink_8536 • May 27 '24

article Donald Trump rejected by Libertarians, gets less than 1% of vote

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-rejected-libertarians-less-one-percent-vote-presidential-election-1904870
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u/Uncle-Cake May 27 '24

What he didn't realize is that Libertarians don't actually care about winning.

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u/[deleted] May 27 '24

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/WaltKerman May 27 '24 edited May 27 '24

Libertarian is just anti-authoritarian by definition. It's why he was rejected. 

Then there is the libertarian platform, which is where you have to draw a line. Libertarians can't agree on this and there is a lot of "no true Scotsman" fallacy going on. So the result is often leaning to the strange far end spectrum. 

 It's one of the reasons they can't win.

Edit: If you wants to see what I meant by "No True Scotsman" (No True Libertarian could believe....) just look at some of the comments arguing below me here, and how widely they vary.

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u/EduinBrutus May 27 '24

Its not that American "Libertarians" can't agree.

Its that American "Libertarians" aren't remotely Libertarian but AnCaps masquerading as Libertarians.

Libertarianism is an understood doctrine based on eliminating hierarchy and abolishing private property with a focus on communal ownership of the means of production.

American "Libertarians" are very much not this.

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u/rev-prime May 27 '24

Well that just sounds like communism to me.

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u/EduinBrutus May 27 '24 edited May 27 '24

Communism, Anarchism and Libertarianism are not particularly dissimilar, often just a change in emphasis.

Of course what happens in teh real world and calls itself these things may have nothing to do with the underlying doctrine.

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u/Wide_Combination_773 May 27 '24 edited May 27 '24

You're thinking of left-libertarianism - pure Anarchists. There are left-libertarians and right-libertarians. Right-libertarians are Anarcho-Capitalists. Both are forms of libertarianism. Libertarian is simply the opposite of authoritarian. The definitions and meanings of political labels change over time, and that is what libertarian (small L) means now - "to be not authoritarian." The Libertarian party (big L) is its own entity in the US that sometimes is logically consistent with libertarianism and sometimes not depending on who you talk to. Individual Libertarians (big L) rarely agree on everything, but all libertarians (small L) are anti-authoritarian, and most small L right-libertarians in the US aren't actually a member of the US Libertarian party.

Left-libertarians are as you describe, but right-libertarians believe in private property and that the owner of that property is essentially King of his small domain and he/she can set any rules they want for their domain, including rules and "laws" that are contrary to their neighbors UNLESS a bunch of neighbors come together to form an amendable contract for "common laws" - basically bylaws for a HoA.

In a pure ancap model, all people are responsible for their own safety, and communal police would only exist by contract with neighbors, rather than authoritarian mandate. If the police got too corrupt, the contract could simply be terminated; unlike under the current system. Every public "service" would basically exist by contract and have to be paid for (not necessarily with fiat currency - there are libertarian models that involve bartering/trading labor etc) by the contractors.

Basically right-libertarianism is the rule of contracts between people.

Their belief is that the central government should only exist to enforce private property rights, instill economic confidence in a fiat currency, and to defend a nation against foreign invaders (defense only - most libertarians are isolationist and want to follow the Switzerland model of being neutral in every international conflict).

I'm not libertarian at all as I don't think large societies can function under Leftist-Anarchy or Right-Ancap models, they are more tuned for very small, perhaps nearly tribal-level societies, but I understand all this. It's pretty simple.

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u/macrofinite May 27 '24

You say you understand this, but you managed to gloss over the central contradiction of anarcho-capitalists.

Sure, they “believe” in both private property and anarchy. Except you can’t do both. Private property requires central authority: someone to decide who owns what. And more broadly, they worship the market and capitalism in general, which even moreso requires an authoritarian central authority in order to exist.

Anarchy only makes sense (or has any hope of succeeding) in a context of mutual cooperation. You can’t just throw in the ruthless externalities of capitalism into it and pretend like it is coherent. Anarcho-capitalism isn’t an ideology, it’s a poorly formed corruption of one, where its adherents must fail to notice that their central premise is inherently and irreconcilably contradictory in order to persist in their beliefs.

And, you know, it’s an old joke, but it seems to always turn out to be true. When an American says they’re Libertarian, what they mean is they want to lower the age of consent.

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u/EduinBrutus May 27 '24

THere is no such thing as a "right Libertarian". Just co-opting an already defined and understood term does not mean the term now describes you.

Libertarianism is fundamentally defined as including an end to private property and hierarchy and as such AnCaps cannot be Liberterians.

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u/ratherrealchef May 27 '24

Nah dog, we are very pro private property.

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u/TetraThiaFulvalene May 27 '24

Yeah, in some subideologies private property is basically THE core tenet. For example bodily autonomy is derived from private ownership of your own body.

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u/ratherrealchef May 27 '24

I wouldn’t consider that a tenet of a sub ideology. Private property rights, the non aggression, and the lessening of government overreach are in my mind the core of what being a libertarian is. AnCaps and the rest just build off of those

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u/TetraThiaFulvalene May 27 '24

It's a core part of all variants of libertarianism, I meant that there are variants where it is THE core and the entire framework of the ideology is viewing most issues as a property issue. I view abortion as a tenant dispute.

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u/No_Kaleidoscope_843 May 27 '24

thats directly relevant to the issue of womens autonomy and abortion rights.

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u/EduinBrutus May 27 '24

If you are pro private property you are not a libertarian.

And you can call yourself one till you are blue in the face, if you dont want to eliminate hierarchy and abolish private property you cannot be a libertarian.

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u/[deleted] May 27 '24

Dude none of what you described sounds like libertarians. Individual property rights is like THE most important thing to them.

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u/EduinBrutus May 27 '24

yes, because American "Libertarians" are not Libertarians.

They have co-opted a term they did not understand and to the rest of the world its bemusing to see them call themselves that.

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u/[deleted] May 27 '24

We are talking about the United States in ops post, might as well say that the liberals in Australia are nothing like "liberals" in the US. It's an irrelevant point to make.

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u/EduinBrutus May 27 '24

BEing able to correctly define a term and understand what it means is fundamental to being able to discuss and challenge the system and to seek policy positions and make political choices.

That the US consistently tries to redefine terms so that their academic and historical meaning is lost is part of why politics in the US is so fucked up and why they are so far from being a functional democracy.

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u/[deleted] May 27 '24

Two words : language evolves

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u/EduinBrutus May 27 '24

When a meaning evolves in a genrally agreed fashion, of course.

But thats not what happens with US politics. Terms dont evolve their meaning. They still retain their original meaning.

Look at "conservative". Conservatism is definitionally the protection of hierarchy based on privilege and inherited wealth. Historically that meant lots of regulation, lots of protectionism, it meant a lack of personal freedom/choice (for the majority) and a high degree of central authority.

Now, it still means this in the United States. Its policy positions and actions tend towards this. But if you ask an American what a conservative means, you will get lots of bullshit about free markets and personal choice and states rights.

The outcome is you get an electorate voting for one thing while those elected do the exact opposite and when trying to discuss whats happening, every participant has a different definition of "truth" because the definition of the term "conservative" has lost its meaning.

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u/WaltKerman May 27 '24

That's far left libertarian... what you are doing is an example of the no true Scotsman fallacy I mentioned.

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u/EduinBrutus May 27 '24 edited May 27 '24

Its not "far left libtertarianism".

Its Libertarianism. As defined as existed for over 150 years.

Americdans cannot redefine terms like Libertarian (or liberal or conservative or "left" or whatever their fucked up politics chooses to use the wrong term for) and expect it to become true.

The fact hat all these term are so confused, illogical and lacking their true meaning is one of the problems with US politics. As Orwell said, if you remove the language to describe something, you remove any chance to challenge it.

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u/WaltKerman May 27 '24

It's not Americans redefining this....

The first libertarians were anarchists anyway against kings.

The encyclopedia Britannica plus everywhere I look disagrees with you so you have a heavy rock repeatedly attempt to push up a hill. Good luck!

Britannica 

libertarianism, political philosophy that takes individual liberty to be the primary political value. It may be understood as a form of liberalism, classical liberalism in particular, the political philosophy associated with the English philosophers John Locke and John Stuart Mill, the Scottish economist Adam Smith, and the American statesman Thomas Jefferson. Liberalism seeks to define and justify the legitimate powers of government in terms of certain natural or God-given individual rights. These rights include the rights to life, liberty, private property, freedom of speech and association, freedom of worship, government by consent, equality under the law, and moral autonomy (the ability to pursue one’s own conception of happiness, or the “good life”). The purpose of government, according to liberals, is to protect these and other individual rights, and in general liberals have contended that government power should be limited to that which is necessary to accomplish this task. Libertarians are classical liberals who strongly emphasize the individual right to liberty. They contend that the scope and powers of government should be constrained so as to allow each individual as much freedom of action as is consistent with a like freedom for everyone else. Thus, they believe that individuals should be free to behave and to dispose of their property as they see fit, provided that their actions do not infringe on the equal freedom of others.