Libertarians are like people who go to job interviews and say the first thing they’ll do if hired is burn down the company. Why do you guys want to participate if you hate it all so much? Is it really this bad? Do you really go to bed at night hating yourselves for using public roads, and feeling like shit heels because the antibiotic you’re taking was approved by the FDA?
This thread could form the basis of a survey course in economic theory, the cornerstone of which is that libertarians will not read the Constitution, ever. Up above, this corb person talked about how the Mormons give all this money to (religious) charities, and how that’s somehow better or more meaningful than federally operated safety nets.
This is called “providing for the general welfare.” It’s a central theme in American democracy. You don’t have to like it, or be “saddened” by it; the rest of us like it, and understand it, and want it to be part of our lives and the lives of untold millions of other Americans who rely on it. Again—it’s central to the entire American experiment; without it, you don’t get much of anything unique. In fact, what progressives and some democrats believe—much to the chagrin of libertarians—is that the experiment is ongoing and that the breadth and depth of the safety net can still be vastly improved. In its heydey in the 1930’s, it put millions of Americans to work building dams, roads, and parks; it utterly saved this country from total disaster. And the right, ever sore losers and obstructionists, have been dismantling and cursing the New Deal for decades since.
I’m not a young guy anymore. I avoid political arguments whenever possible. But I still listen to them. For all the hand wringing the right (and libertarians are still very much to the right of me) does, I see no downside whatsoever to universal healthcare, a well-funded social safety net, and a severely curtailed defense budget. As far as I can tell the only complaint with any merit is that it’s expensive and it will make us broke. Well guess what? We’re running trillion dollar deficits on war materiel and tax cuts already!
I’d rather go broke providing for human kind than thumping my copy of Atlas Shrugged while I man the velvet rope in front of the hospital.
There are lots and lots of dystopias cropping up all over the world where you can go and watch how well the free market solves social problems (hint: it doesn’t.) I’m sure they could use someone with good “which poor guy will we voluntarily help today” picking skills.
