Meerkat

What model are you referring to? A libertarian would, first, tell you to mind your own business as far as sovereign issues are concerned that don't impact your safety etc. Second, a libertarian would tell you the best way to bring nations forward is through free trade, not by stirring up a hornets nest that may have all sorts of unintended consequences (I hope you don't need any examples, they are knocking on your backdoor by now). You have to often choose between dilemmas, from your own moral perspective, and often doing nothing is the best approach.

He is free to have his own judgments, but he should not coerce others into accepting them using police force. I think it's been also stressed a few times what the ideal involvement of the government would be. I think your 3 types of people who are looking for less government is almost laughable with all due respect. Given your level of intellect you should know better (there are numerous highly successful businessmen with these convictions). You seem to weirdly focus on some marginal situations and ignore broader picture.

It's a false assumption and all your "analysis" that follows is therefore complete crap and non-sense as so many have pointed out. Our own fortune is our own business - look, if you think it's otherwise, you are free to exercise along that path but you should not coerce others into that exercise using force. And as so many have pointed to you out, a libertarian, given free choice, is far more likely to volunteer in helping someone in genuine hardship. Collectivists and statists of various breeds have starved to death infinitely more people than people who want less government messing around and about. So once again - your assumption that libertarians have no care for the fellow humankind is just plain dumb. First, because you ignore various cultural and social forces within society and obviously assume there is no social opprobrium in a libertarian society. But if you apply a little bit of intelligence and intellect, you will have to digest that humans generally have way more fear of what fellow humankind will think of their actions rather than of police. Think of your own activities - do you go about your business of any sort fearing only about law and police or do you behave subject to various other incentives? And that's what the folk has been heartily advising you - it's not the government that holds up the society, it's not police. Social/cultural norms generally do it. Second, you are consistently refusing to digest that people acting in their self-interest create an environment that increases chances of other people succeeding (and much more so than with any government interference beyond its acceptable scope of activity). Third, a few simple questions have been addressed to you earlier in this thread to highlight some of the moral hazard and free-riding situations created by the welfare state and the morality of those situations. You have happily ignored these aspects, just like you have ignored other questions and then you wonder why someone calls you "weird"?

That's their choice, not sure if you applying some black humour here or using it as a rogue example to justify individuals should not be part of private, fully funded (and, most importantly - not leveraged ...) schemes depending on their own contributions.

Well written article touching many salient points. So true on modern day education and brainwashing....

Correlation does not establish causality.

And the surprise is exactly what here?

Do you also wonder if taking care of one's pension shouldn't be his/her own concern and the middleman known as the "welfare state" should be kicked out of the equation?

How so?

Equally amusing is ur belief that pockets filled with less worthy paper is necessarily a better place to be than the one with emptier pockets but carrying more valuable stuff.

The guy's though talking apples while you oranges... the quality of housing, mass built, on average, is dodgy on this island. Prices and credit, that's a different story and anyone with common sense knows what elephant is to blame for that...

How about removing props rather than tackling consequences of the said props with more regulation on how ppl are allowed to behave?

Lost me here... but it is what it is. I know plenty of people need to do some soul searching and reassessment of their beliefs... The biggest controversy is that of plenty claiming being anti-fascist, anti-socialist, anti-communist when in fact the modern day educational system and mass media have preconditioned pretty much everyone to being exactly a socialist. Historically, all that stuff was proven to be wrong by economists proper of the day, both in theory and practice, so the establishment promoted Keynes to have another interventionist "answer". All we know Keynes disowned much of his own stuff. And some of his ideas have been so perverted by now that he would probably be in a disbelief - same way Orwell became disillusioned after seeing what mis-allocation of power could do to a society. Anyway, one thing always worth remembering is that whatever the public service, someone is always paying for it. The government does not create anything - for example, for every job created in public sector, there is one lost in the private sector. And so on. Any service is paid for by taxes collected from the productive.

Spot on. Until they start selling their treasuries and what not to withdraw cash from the market it's all busy-bodying. Make pretend, smoke and mirrors, for BBC and so on to enjoy all those press conferences, Q&A.... the dry residual of which is pretty much a fat zero? Edit: indeed, they will move on the market telling them in no uncertain terms. Until then they will pretend they are the pace setters

This is exactly what evades the statists. Reverse the logic into retrograde and you find we would be still living in dark ages. What's the point of the thread beyond me.

Man, they say there are no stupid questions.. but the truth is, of course, that there are - and those are always the most difficult to answer.

Well... hold your breath then. Here is what the Austrian sage von Mises said: "To a considerable extent, without knowing it, many people are philosophical Marxists, although they use different names for their philosophical ideas." Here the ideas: 1. Abolition of private property (think property tax). 2. Heavy progressive income tax (in place). 3. Abolition of all rights to inheritance (what's the tax in the Blighty?) 4. Confiscation of all property of emigrants&rebels (tick, think of people, say, in the States prosecuted, like Martin Armstrong). 5. Centralisation and monopolisation of credit by means of a national bank (tick). 6. Centralisation of communication and transportation (tick) 7. Govy ownership of the factories (well, think steel and some other examples at certain times). 8. Equal liablity of all to labour (tick). 9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries (tick, think agricultural subsidies) 10. Free education to all in public schools (tick). Hence, why I personally refer to all major political forces of marxists of different breed. Whereas Corbyn is a pretty militant version, no non-sense (to his credit, for his honesty at least), then cons are more disguised - in the abstract they not, they this and that, but in practice check their beliefs with respect to the above - they are perfectly happy with it, in principle.

Curiously it is indeed - try explain your mom or wife why is it good that you pay more for bread or milk, will you?

Are you being ironic here, my detector cant make up its mind ... the whole point is that inflation is pretty much an indirect tax that affects the lower paid stratum of the society more than anyone else. Now, lower profit margins ... the guys investing take their risks and all that. Whatever the reason and maybe a narrow joy for someone that the capital provider does not make money and even loses, the eventual upshot maybe less than inspiring - closure or contraction of that particular business that results in unemployment. On this note, there is absolutely no reason to cheer lead government imposed tariffs in a market that is otherwise open and subject to to free competition. Minimum wage requirement is a totally redundant measure. If it's too low and market commands higher wage, it's obvious why. If it's too high, artificial unemployment will result because not everyone can get employed.

Well, a few succinct quotes were put forward at a point. The one of Franklin with respect to the 2 wolves and a lamb deciding what to have for the dinner - if that's what the government is dwelling on you know it's gone badly wrong. The other one was that of Mencken about democracy being a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. All this basically tells you the constitution needs to be obeyed to the letter and the government has to be imposed a very limited scope and limited resources and constantly checked so it does not extend its tentacles beyond what is really necessary. A very useful tool to keep the govy on the leash is by having a relatively fixed money supply which is out of the government's control - as pointed out a few times, the desire for runaway deficit spending to finance wars and other lavish spending including on its own expansion were the true reasons why gold standard got abandoned for good. In other words, plenty of practicable tools that can be used to make sure a representative government focuses on its true remit.

Explain why is it good, especially for the average Joe you seem to so concerned about, at least in the abstract...

And what was the child mortality rate and all that (birth control, education etc.)? Oranges and apples.

Why can't be education left to the market forces? It is one of the areas that the market has been coerced into subsidising and for an obvious reason. There is absolutely no reason why there should not be competition. If the state wants to participate in it, fine - as long as it's fair competition; it would only be moral if they let people opt out and use that tax money to spend on private schools of their choice. As a small side-step, are you aware of the 10 communist manifesto tenets that Marx laid out as the cornerstones to facilitate bringing about fully blown socialism?

Absolutely - the things that cannot be left to free market forces. That should be the crux of the discussion. The thing is though - whereas we see libertarians pointing out the elephants in the room, i.e. excesses of the state/bureaucracy for various reasons the response from interventionists is all too often to digress the discussion by focusing on a fly here and there, i.e. relatively minor nuisances to highlight the importance that there's got to be an institution having a monopoly on power/coercion. Say, wonderpup himself that started this thread is yet to address some real life examples of massive moral hazard/free-riding problems (and costs) created by the welfare state and instead prefers to focus on some theoretical and rather irrelevant abstractions of drowning and slavery.

The thing is I am yet to see a libertarian that claims its anything like Utopia. First, let's get it straight, the discussion is not about bringing a utopia about. It's about making choices among a few set-ups and find the one that delivers most, all things considered. If anything, utopians are the Marxists and intelligent design proposers that think central planning can almost make everything and anything better. Libertarians tell you not to hold your breath and think a bit, and judge by using empirical examples/outcomes rather than wishful thinking.