But that's just it; Libertarians don't want any of that.

They want Rapture.

If they want Rapture, they either think they're somehow not going to die, or they just want a chance to shoot everyone they can. Or both.

In either case, as well as others, they're naive to the point that they should never have been let out of day care.

It's healthy to mistrust government, but blind faith in private enterprise is not so healthy. Anybody see the movie "The Informant"? That's the kind of extraordinary circumstance that has to happen in order for corporate wrongdoing to come to light. Corporations aren't accountable to anyone. You'd think they'd be accountable to their shareholders, but they don't have to tell most of their shareholders dick. Unless something really fucked up happens, corporations are a few people with a lot of power making decisions in secret.

Enron generated false shortages and literally stole millions of dollars from old ladies on fixed incomes, but they only got caught because they got way too greedy and so they went broke. If they'd only managed to steal millions of dollars and make a profit, they'd still be doing it. You have to assume that there are some corporate entities out there who are more successful.

I prefer to think of it as "Anarchy for rich people," myself.

Libertarians believe every stupid 80s movie ever about how you'll come out on top because the writers are on your side.

Libertarians genuinely think they've got the touch.

I'd be a billionaire by now if I didn't have to pay 25% taxes on my barely above minimum wage job.

Libertarian's aren't anarchists. They're Republicans who don't want the stigma of being associated with Republicans.

Now Teabaggers, though ...

The sad part is that libertarians are slightly less realistic than anarchists. Okay, not the punk kids spraying the symbol on a wall, but the ones who espouse it as a way of actual life.

Both may be unrealistic, but at least the anarchists (though the model/definition they use may vary) mostly acknowledge the fact that you need a community and a collective goal, even if it's just "survive" (or in most such communities, "prove that anarchism works") to keep the group working together without need for governance. Granted, their model only really works in a vacuum devoid of forces counter to their own and seems to lose its cohesion as the group grows in size past keeping everyone on the same goal, but it still admits you need a community/public good as part of it.

Libertarians tend to handwave that part of the equation away with words like "invisible hand" and a community will naturally form when everyone is only looking for themselves.

What? Sure. Okay. Whatever. What?

I don't know what you've actually been trying to say, but I believe that the following:

"The most simple issue here can be summed up in a question. "Should things be fair or should things work?" The answer people tend to jump to first, and the one children tend to stick to, is that things should be fair. But after dealing with reality for a while, I think a rational person will pretty quickly come around to the idea that "fair" doesn't account for much."

is exactly what a libertarian would say, because a libertarian believes that government attempts to make life fair are why things don't work.

Beyond that, the only point I'd want to make is that any failure by anyone to understand whatever it is that you're actually saying is not necessarily "willful".

No matter what anybody does, things are never going to be completely fair, and things are never going to completely work. I think the question is: WHO do things work for?

I happen to think that making rich people pay more taxes than poor people isn't fair. it's what works. For everybody.

This would be what is called a false dichotomy.

No, because it's not a dichotomy. It's a observation that the two concepts are frequently opposed and we often have to choose which one we should aim for at the expense of the other. I think it's clear from the question that it's not presented as mutually exclusive or applying to every situation, and I think that by failing to see that by taking a literal interpretation of the wording, you're wilfully refusing to understand what it means to be a pedant.

>>>No, because it's not a dichotomy. It's a observation that the two concepts are frequently opposed and we often have to choose which one we should aim for at the expense of the other.

Gosh, I really thought that's what a dichotomy is.

Maybe you should make a grandstanding display of typing "dichotomy" into Google and find out where you went wrong.

Meerkat "This would be what is called a false dichotomy."

Hooker "No, because it's not a dichotomy."

John Holmes Motherfucker "Gosh, I really thought that's what a dichotomy is."

I just got off of work (10 hrs), no lunch break, not even a snack; I'm hypoglycemic... i.e. my brain hurts, and I'll probably regret this, but FUCK YOU ALL!

No... John & Meerkat are right. That's a dichotomy. It's really not a hard concept... I don't know how/why Hooker could mess it up.

LOL I looked up "dichotomy" before I posted.

No, it's not a dichotomy. Hooker is right in pointing out that fairness and functionality are usually NOT mutually exclusive: in any policy you should be able to get at least a little of both. A policy is rarely ever necessarily completely non-functional or completely unfair, hence the two concepts are not mutually exclusive, and hence we aren't dealing with a dichotomy.

A dichotomy has to be entirely one or the other. Suggesting that a policy is completely unfair, yet completely effective ("sure universal health care would work, but it's SLAVERY!") would be presenting it as a dichotomy. A false dichotomy, in this case, as we know that there is a happy medium of some fairness and some functionality, and that it's just a matter of opinion and healthy debate in order to settle on the most acceptable ratio.

>>No, because it's not a dichotomy. It's a observation that the two concepts are frequently opposed and we often have to choose which one we should aim for at the expense of the other.

I'll admit that Hooker is right in pointing out that fairness and functionality are not mutually exclusive if you'll admit that saying that they ARE mutually exclusive is an odd way of doing that.

Mostly it's a philosophical question. The point is not to make you pick one. The point is to make you think about how they come at odds, which I believe libertarians deliberately refuse to do and it's the most fundamental problem with the ideology.

By the way, John, that's not a response to you, so please shelve the 1000 character response.

What? Sure. Okay. Whatever. What?

I don't know what you've actually been trying to say, but I believe that the following:

"The most simple issue here can be summed up in a question. "Should things be fair or should things work?" The answer people tend to jump to first, and the one children tend to stick to, is that things should be fair. But after dealing with reality for a while, I think a rational person will pretty quickly come around to the idea that "fair" doesn't account for much."

is exactly what a libertarian would say, because a libertarian believes that government attempts to make life fair are why things don't work.

Beyond that, the only point I'd want to make is that any failure by anyone to understand whatever it is that you're actually saying is not necessarily "willful".

I think he meant as in, does it work or not work? Pretty definitively "no".

So instead of buying into one entire crate or the other, you've just picked out the parts you like best in each one.

Yeah, fuck internal consistency, inductive reasoning, and the whole crucible of socratic questioning. Just take a dash of red and a pinch of blue and you have yourself real growed-up opinions.

Shang, old bean, he's far better suited to survive than someone who claims to be a True Libertarian(TM). A TL has to believe in his heart of hearts that removing all barriers to regulation will somehow result in nobody taking advantage of the situation and creating monopolies that use their money and power to remove any competitors from the market. They believe that private police forces will somehow result in better criminal justice instead of whoever has the most powerful version of Blackwater working for them deciding what is "evidence" and when a search or seizure is just and proper.

It's as naive as thinking Communism will also result in nobody taking advantage and putting themselves in as supreme leader.

These isms, along with a lot of others, were also cherry-picked at one point. They're often quite good at pointing at things and saying "here's why this isn't fair," but their solutions are about as realistic as basing a form of government on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien.

They're political ideologies, not religions. Much like with the various forms of physics, it's far saner to have different applications of government/individualism depending on the circumstance, number of people affected, long-term costs, etc.

I swear it's an expression of ancient primate tribal instincts: if my tribe doesn't steal and/or rape the other tribe's cattle and/or women, they'll surely do it to us. That's pretty zero-sum all right.

What's funny is how they act that way, then when speaking (mostly to those they're going to fleece) that wealth is created/grown/whatever. Yet when it's time to be pissed, some other group is "stealing" from their limited pie.

Oh, and natural resources somehow last forever. That seems to be another unbreakable law they have.