If you are a Libertarian and hold liberty as your core value, why do you not believe in universal healthcare? Nothing impacts liberty more than sickness and death.
On a political spectrum, the term libertarian should relate to anti-authoritarian. So, I can see how the case can be made against socialized healthcare for them. It’s not really about true freedom or liberty. And in the US anyway, it’s largely just facade co-opted by the fascist [authoritarian and wealthy] right wing, ironically.
The word “Libertarian” in US has less relation to the dictionary definition than “Republican” and “Democrat”. These are names of parties over here, even if they have a namesake of governmental mechanisms.
Examples:
Ron Johnson said in a single breath that he was a libertarian and opposed the legalization of marijuana.
Find the average “libertarian” policy position on border policies.
US politics is unfortunately entrenched in tribalism rather than searching for the right tool to match a job or solve a problem and maximize outcomes, the libertarians over here are no exception.
On a political spectrum, the term libertarian should relate to anti-authoritarian
Sure, but we’re not on a political spectrum. Political names are codified as part of a propaganda campaign advanced by the original party leaders. Democrats, Republicans, Greens, Libertarians, Constitution Party, Reformers, Socialists (both National and International) are - at their heart - marketing taglines, fully divorced from the beliefs and policies of their constituencies.
Ron Johnson said in a single breath that he was a libertarian and opposed the legalization of marijuana.
He’s only the latest iteration. I might send you back to Murray Rothbard and Ludwig Von Mises, the OG American Anarcho-Capitalists, both of which had some bizarre theories about what constituted “small government” from the perspective of a Washington DC insider.
Marijuana consumption, much like miscegenation and immigration and unionization, might seem at first glance to be a consequence of independent human agency. But they all carry potential social consequences, particularly against individuals with claim on private property.
By getting high, you’re turning yourself into a public nuisance - possibly even a violent threat - to your landlords. By crossing international borders, you are acting as a member of an invading army and threatening the economic livelihood of prior landed gentry. By unionizing, you are forming a labor cartel - almost certainly crafted through the violent agitation of wicked foreign governments employing the mind-altering ideology of Marxist-Leninism. By miscegenating, you are robbing me of the commodity of a virginal daughter to be traded on the open market.
All of these are acts of violence that threaten the property and security of the rightful landed man. We must rely on the good, honest, well-trained battalion of law enforcement officers in order to uphold the security of that property.
US politics is unfortunately entrenched in tribalism rather than searching for the right tool to match a job or solve a problem and maximize outcomes
The US is focused first and foremost on the claim to private property and the fruitful extraction of wealth from that property. Libertarianism, as an ideology, revolves around defining the extent to which individuals can go in defending that property from evil foreign aggressors and corrupted domestic residents. It endorses a state solely for the upholding of this ideology.
I think the terms that you are instead looking for are positive and negative liberty. Libertarianism, generally, aligns with negative liberty. Universal healthcare is an example of positive liberty.
And in the US anyway, it’s largely just facade co-opted by the fascist [authoritarian and wealthy] right wing, ironically.
I think before folks downvote this for being a flawed opinion on its face, they should remember what the actual question was, and this statement wasn’t lodged in a vacuum.
Now if actual libertarians are downvoting this I’d love to hear their corrections.
I am libertarian-ish, but generally don’t like all the loud libertarian nuts (I register Dem and vote Dem because the things I care about aren’t represented anywhere on the ballot anymore).
For me, it comes to a very simple economics truism: Governments are pretty damn inefficient and tend to waste a lot of money because of the process and bureaucracy. Markets on the other hand, tend to be really efficient at allocating capital when left alone. The times a government should step in is when the market has created a form of externality that breaks things. The old economics example is the people downstream from a chemical plant are paying the price for the plant’s pollution.
From a libertarian lens:
The government should negotiate SPH b.c. it’s obvious that markets failed and we’d all be better off (spend less money) if everyone had healthcare.
The government should stay out of people’s bedrooms and love lives, it has no business there.
The government should use UBI and then eliminate every other deduction, and tax break, and subsidy (Social Sec, . The office running UBI could be one guy sending checks out once a month (exaggerated obvi)
Unfortunately the things I’d like to see from a libertarian don’t actually show up.
Governments are pretty damn inefficient and tend to waste a lot of money because of the process and bureaucracy.
I wish you would take a look at how government works in places like Scandinavia and much of Western Europe. Their universal healthcare systems are very efficient and cost-effective.
Other than politics and gone-wild ideology, there’s no reason the US couldn’t do the same.
The biggest government program is socialized medicine, aka Medicare. The “market” aka private health insurance, costs on average 16% more than Medicare for the same services and population. Your view of government efficiency is tilted by decades of corporate media manipulation and is blatantly false.
Finance management major here, I’d argue that governments aren’t inherently inefficient.
On a local level, government organisations are essentially the same as non-profits. The only difference is in who they are accountable to. Even KPI are pretty much the same.
The inefficiency of a government in contrast to the free market is in its inability to adjust to people’s needs quickly on a global scale. Imagine a company that has to sell a little bit of everything and then some. What kind of resource does it need to have to fully satisfy the demand? It’s practically impossible to make a vertically integrated system that would do this amount of research, let alone organize all the production and supply chains. It doesn’t matter if it’s a government or an entity. They all will drown in beurocracy, except the government is usually stricter as they tend to play it safe.
Hence, it’s really a non-issue if a government takes control over parts of the market. And because they can’t facilitate it all, they take over socially significant parts of it, like municipality governance, military, and healthcare.
Also, you (the person reading, not the person I’m responding to) should never be mistaken in thinking that the free market is perfectly efficient. It isn’t. Creating points of inefficiency drives a lot of revenue. Think purposefully limiting demand to drive prices up. This is what’s happening with insulin in the US, for example. If you have perfectly inelastic demands, you can make your product infinitely expensive.
I responded already but a perfect example of government efficiency is Medicare, which is 16% cheaper than private Medicare replacement programs for the same services in the same population. And Medicare has better outcomes as well.
Having worked a decade each in private and state positions in my experience they’re just different brands of inefficiency. The big difference is that in private industry inefficiency doesn’t really matter as long as you’re making money. A business that starts in the right market at the right time can do everything wrong and still turn a profit for decades and no one will question their efficiency because they’re profitable. If they’re well established enough they can be relatively immune to competition because the market doesn’t justify enough investment to create competition, so they dominate regardless their failings but still get celebrated as a successful business.
The state is judged by completely different metrics of success and no matter how successful, people will still ask if it could have been done more efficiently. In private industry success is the only measure of success.
I register Dem and vote Dem because the things I care about aren’t represented anywhere on the ballot anymore
First past the post doing first past the post things.
Governments are pretty damn inefficient and tend to waste a lot of money because of the process and bureaucracy.
The reason for this is, imo, because they are a monopoly. They have no incentive to reduce costs.
The old economics example is the people downstream from a chemical plant are paying the price for the plant’s pollution.
This is actually more of a Georgist philosophy than libertarian, imo.
The government should negotiate SPH b.c. it’s obvious that markets failed and we’d all be better off (spend less money) if everyone had healthcare.
Cooperatives could potentially be a solution.
The government should stay out of people’s bedrooms and love lives, it has no business there.
I agree.
The government should use UBI and then eliminate every other deduction, and tax break, and subsidy (Social Sec, . The office running UBI could be one guy sending checks out once a month (exaggerated obvi)
In principle, it sounds great, but I personally feel there are some potential economic issues that could get in the way of UBI being a success. An alternative to UBI could be a negative income tax, specifically that which was proposed by Milton and Rose Friedman.
Used to think I was libertarian. But now I think it’s too absolute of an ideal to be any good for humanity. I definitely think free healthcare, housing, food, and education should be guarenteed for everyone.
I agree. The world requires way to much subtlety to function well for everyone for single truth ideas and ways of doing things to work at large scales.
Your comment precisely expresses my attitude. When it came up i used to say that I was fiscally conservative and social liberal. A Libertarian.
But the older I get the more I realize that Libertarianism isn’t the fiction of Atlas Shrugged. There are many people of great worth that cannot be Dagny Taggart or Howard Roark.
Rand failed to take into account that the allure of increasing wealth subverts many bright creators into becoming resource vampires that in turn become oppressors. Ayn Rand would have loved Mark Zuckerberg’s rise through intelligence and hard work, but what would she think of what he’s ultimately built and what it’s done to society?
Real people aren’t as altruistic has her characters.
I think we read different books if you think her characters were altruistic. I remember her specifically calling out altruism as a sin (compared to the virtue of selfishness).
It’s not really about liberty, it’s about freedom from taxes and consequences. They don’t get far enough in the reasoning to understand that they would benefit.
But I’m 20 and healthy, why should I have to pay for healthcare for mrs. sickey over there? Did she even try being born without a chronic illness? Doubt it.
This is anti-libertarian, imo. Libertarianism does revolve around upholding contracts made through individual consent. For this to work, one must be able to give concious and uncoerced consent. Lowering the age of consent does not support this — as it stands, the age of legal consent is, arguably, too low. Being able to provide consent comes with maturity.
It’s a theory that in reality already mostly doesn’t exist. You can hire a range of body guards, personal security people, bounty hunters, and self-proclaimed bad asses to fuck people up.
…the more money you have the more connected you are, the more stuff like that you can do.
NAP is a theory that requires people with money “respect” rather than chilling in the forts they’ve already built in this system, let alone a more free market one.
NAP is a pipedream Libertarians have circle jerks about but like most of their theories would be utter vaporware in practice.
If say, a socialist argued that the average Russian in 1960 was better off than in 1880, and while technology played a positive role, so did the political system, then wt:thon would be arguing that socialism—at least that variant—has profited the average Russian more than monarchy—at least that variant.
and please answer the questions in my previous post, regardless on how it’s probable that neither of us have enough information and knowledge to answer something so hypothetical, with a great amount of authority.
Individual liberty is core to the philosophy of libertarianism.
it’s about freedom from taxes
This is a complicated issue, and it is not a cut and dry opinion of all libertarians to oppose all taxes in their entirety. A core idea in libertarianism is to avoid excessive government abuse of power — taxes are often viewed as one such abuse. Those that are more libertarian oriented, but are more favorable towards some types of taxes are, imo, more accurately referred to as Georgists, but it of course relies on exactly what taxes they support, and their rationale.
it’s about freedom from […] consequences.
If you are referring to consequences from infringing on the freedoms of others, then that is not libertarian. Supporting the idea of liberty is to also support the liberty of others.
What you’re describing is the difference between positive and negative liberty. In the case of healthcare, negative liberty would be one’s freedom from having to pay taxes to support the healthcare of others, positive liberty would be one’s freedom to get equal and fair access to healthcare. Libertarianism does concern itself more with the idea of negative liberty, as it seeks to separate from the state’s interference in the lives of the individual.
American “Libertarians” consider liberty as self-sufficiency, not just freedom from a government, but from being required to contribute to society as a whole.
I am not THE libertarian to fully hold this argument and as others have mentioned there are libertarian arguments for universal healthcare, but I will present the best case I can from those I’ve heard be against it.
The primary case is the idea of negative rights vs positive rights. Where the idea that the state should protect you from others wanting limit your rights vs providing you the ability to do something.
So using the state to punish someone for who is trying to stop you from providing healthcare service is justified use of violence as it protects your negative rights and define and preserves you and the violators boundary. Whereas using state violence to force you to provide healthcare someone you don’t want to would not as it violated your negative right.
This is primary argument against any positive right, is that since it requires a service to be fulfilled the state would be use violence (the basis of state power) to enforce it. Making it tantamount to slavery.
Now the reality of it though is that most libertarians do support this slavery at least in service of giving the state the monopoly on violence (police, military, etc) in order to protect their defined negative rights. And because of our current material abundance we are able to have a fractionalized slavery extracting wealth from people to small enough degree that most people don’t find as aborrent full servitude of an individual.
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