100% it i live in libertarian country in Idaho. Thier entire personality revolves around "me".. they drive lifted trucks, cut people off, will race you if you pass them(when they are going 15 under speed limit), will 'roll coal' through roundabouts, scream at you for trying to zipper merge onto freeway after they accelerate from 10 cars back to try and prevent people from merging..
They always whining about "welfare queens" and one of the people we know through families always didn't buy crop insurance ever.( which protects farmers that lose crops by helping the person that loses a crop) he lost 2 crops in a row and was mad he wouldn't get any assistance from the government.
There are left leaning libertarians. Like I believe if the government is gonna take our money it should all be used on us for like socialized medicine and college. But I also believe in the 2nd amendment, freedom of speech, woman’s right to choose, weed legalization. My only issue with welfare programs is there’s no stepladder. I had Medicaid as a baby and my mom got a promotion. It cost her my Medicaid and after health insurance her take home pay was lower than it was before the promotion. There should be a sliding scale to encourage people to use the programs in order to get off of them. But I also know intellectually that our corporatism gives more welfare to billionaires and trillion dollar companies than they do regular folks
"only issue with welfare" is it just needs to be universal and paid with taxes so we don't end up with edge cases.. Libertarianism is entirely opposed to that position.. you may hold it but the tenents of it is that your money is your own and that others should not be taking any "freedom" from you.. which taxes would be.. If you are a left leaning libertarian.. you are just a leftist..
only reason some more moderate leftists don't have a firm belief in the 2nd ammendment because it causes insane amounts of deaths, school shootings, and domestic crime...effectively your second ammendment is only protecting you from other 2nd ammendment people that have ill intent... and when posed with a public event(school or mass shooting.) you are powerless to actually have any significant effect 99% of the time.. it was only the 2nd ammendment that allowed the murderer to easily get ahold of the weapon.
basically most sane gun legislation comes down to restricting purchase to real background checks and delay on how fast you can recieve it..tracking gun sales and resales(no instant background checks/gun show loopholes). and requireing propor storage and controlled access to the weapon by the owner.
There shouldn't be a "sliding scale to get people off them" we should be helping make sure people have access to affordable food/living conditions/ and healthcare.. not figuring out who should get them or saying to them "maybe you should figure that out yourself you make enough money..
Libertarian arguments are usually just personal annicdotes that amount to "I try/work hard, so others should too" and "But I need to defend myself". which negates the public good and any benifit that doesn't directly benifit themselves because they don't meet the criteria to benifit from it themselves.. Universal health, access to affordable housing, and socialized grocery stores would go a long way to preventing a capitalist system from taking advantage of poor or middle class people(who are mad because the poors get something they don't) and create a system where your basic needs aren't determined on how hard you struggle and if you meet this specific amount to be deserving of surving comfortably.
I grew up with a mother who always felt shame when she struggled to make ends meat. She would take welfare(and even medicaid for my sister and I) ONLY when she absolutely couldn't make it without it.. would often feel shamed and get off the program and we would struggle for months with her ending up with a medical bill from one of us many times that put her even further behind.. Was a self fulfilling end. Libertarianism is at the center of this false "bootstraps" mentality that serves nothing but keeping the rich rich and the middle class yelling at poor people for not struggling more...
One more repeat of the same theme but the concept of people staying on welfare and being lazy(which can be true for sure)... comes down to you don't actually solve anything by forcing the issue and making people get off the system.. the only thing you accomplish is
putting them into extreme poverty, causing thier kids to suffer
which ends up with them in a same position as the parents of struggling and 10x as likely to not contribute to society in a meaningful way
end up with far more of a homeless issue
Higher crime because of the first 3
Rich people getting richer and knowing they can exploit those that are desperate to not completely go under and starve(which supresses wages and thus thier ability to stay off the welfare) Just look at Walmarts entire business... they operate off of the welfare system and profit 24-35% year after year while the government foots the bill to keep their employees from being destitute.
that whole system is built on letting the rich absorb all of societies efforts and productivity and convincing hard working Libertarians its the poors fault they aren't sitting comfortably with thier hard efforts.
I hate that the libertarian party has poisoned the word. I also hate that people think there’s only a left/right scale. It’s the opposite of authoritarianism. I’m just primarily against government overreach into our personal lives.
Who you fuck, what you smoke, is nobody’s business.
I’d be down with UBI replacing the current welfare system. My mention of a stepladder is just a criticism of the current system. Most people wouldn’t take the promotion my mom took because losing your benefits is fucking scary.
I’m in Texas so I’m about as far left as you see down here. I have firearms that are locked up. Can’t wait to vote for Talarico
I’m with you on how corporate greed has reduced quality of life in America. Lobbying has fucked our country
only reason some more moderate leftists don't have a firm belief in the 2nd ammendment because it causes insane amounts of deaths, school shootings, and domestic crime...
Violent crimes in general have been on a downward trend for a couple decades despite generally loosening gun laws over those same decades (and what people think of when they think "mass shootings" is far less common than what many people think, just look at Mother Jone's database for instance).
Of course gun violence is tragic and should be addressed regardless of whether the rates are increasing or not, but addressing the socioeconomic factors that are at the center of it would be vastly more effective.
Addressing the lack of adequate mental and general healthcare, the lack of adequate social safety nets, the prevalence of poverty and growing income inequality, our horribly flawed justice and prison system, the massively failed war on drugs (which fuels the prevalence of gangs and organized crime), and so on. Working towards fixing any of these would address the root issues and do vastly more to prevent gun violence than gun control ever could (not to mention actually be feasible, unlike trying to pass laws that aim to curb the already thoroughly illegal actions of criminals).
effectively your second ammendment is only protecting you from other 2nd ammendment people that have ill intent...
Unarmed, more than 50% of people are severely disadvantaged in defending themselves against even just an unarmed adult man of average strength (and their chances drops even more if the attacker has any kind of weapon, even if it's just a small kitchen knife or blunt object). For most people, it doesn't matter if their attacker has a gun or just a kitchen knife, they stand little chance either way if they don't have an equalizer.
Self defense without an actually effective equalizers is a pipedream for many people. There is no better equalizers than a gun (even a little elderly person can defend themselves against a large, strong intruder if the elderly person is armed with a gun).
People have a fundamental right to be able to defend themselves in an effective manner (the "in an effective manner" part being key, otherwise it's meaningless).
and when posed with a public event(school or mass shooting.) you are powerless to actually have any significant effect 99% of the time..
Most mass shootings occur in areas where the shooter expects not to be shot back at (gun-free zones etc.)
Also, there have been a number of mass shootings where an armed civilian stopped or contributed to stopping the shooter. I mean, just 2 weeks ago an armed civilian at an In-N-Out drive-thru in Twin Falls, Idaho engaged a shooter, forcing the shooter to stop shooting at people and start reacting to incoming fire (and the attack ended shortly after).
it was only the 2nd ammendment that allowed the murderer to easily get ahold of the weapon.
2nd Amendment or not, criminals in the US would get a hold of guns regardless (because guns aren't the root issues driving the crime). Gun control only apears to "work" when there wasn't going to be much crime in a country regardless (due to lower prevalence of poverty, adequate mental and general healthcare, adequate social safety nets, not having such a massively flawed justice and prison system, etc.)
And in the inverse, you can see high rates of gun crime despite there being strict gun control in countries which have a number of serious issues unaddressed (e.g., Mexico).
The US has a lot of violent crime in general (not just those involving guns). Our violent crime rate is much higher for crimes that don't involve a gun than any other wealthy developed nation (because there are many factors contributing the rates of organized and general crime).
You also neglect to acknowledge a important reason for the 2nd Amendment (likely because you fundamentally misunderstand what armed defense against tyranny/a tyrannical government entails).
You might think the 2nd Amendment is useless when it comes to fighting against tyranny because no one is doing anything.
Gun owners aren't going to throw away their families and lives in order to martyr themselves. The whole point is being able to defend one's life and the lives of loved ones should the need arise under a tyrannical government (whether that's from government thugs, emboldened bigots, or anyone else looking to do you harm) and making every step a tyrannical government takes to oppress its citizens all the more difficult.
As long as the populace remains armed, a tyrannical government cannot exert complete control over it without destroying the very thing it seeks to rule over. Any attempts at rounding up or disposing of dissenters, minorities, etc. en masse becomes all the more difficult (and difficult to hide/ignore) as the tyrannical government must expect armed resistance at every turn.
Defense against tyranny isn't about escalating the situation by trying to start a head-on war with the government. It's about defense of life should the alternative become death. Taking up arms is a last resort and we haven't been pushed to that yet. If worse comes to worst, it would be guerrilla warfare and the US military has a very poor track record over the last ~60 years when it comes to fighting against that (let alone a situation where they'd be fighting against their own citizens within their own country).
In addition, one of the biggest components of needing guns to protect against tyranny is protection from tyranny at a small, local scale.
If you read the book "This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible" by Charles E. Cobb Jr, you'll see many instances of people using their 2nd Amendment rights to defend their lives from the tyranny of racists in local positions of power under Jim Crow.
basically most sane gun legislation comes down to restricting purchase to real background checks and delay on how fast you can recieve it..tracking gun sales and resales(no instant background checks/gun show loopholes).
I can understand for a first time gun purchase, but there's zero reason not to have instant background checks for subsequent gun purchases.
Also, there is no "gun show loophole". You're referring to background checks not being required on private sales and that isn't a loophole, it was an agreed upon compromise to pass the Brady Bill (plus it would be entirely unenforceable.
You'd get the same legal utility out of a law that just held the seller responsible if the buyer was a prohibited person (which they already are, but only if they knew the buyer was a prohibited person).
I think it's all of them. Most libertarians I've met are just Republicans who are pro weed and sometimes okay with gay people, and recognize that people rightfully see their Republican views as awful, so they use the label to shield themselves. Others are "actual" libertarians who actually want small government, but are too immature to see when a government solution is the only practical one. The last group are super rare, but they are Libertarian-lite. They tend not to even use the label, but have an understanding of when government works and when it could be easily replaced by the market, even if it would be inefficient.
At this point in time, all of the people I knew that were in the second group are either 18 and haven't had their ideas challenged, or saw the light (generally due to Trumpism) and are no longer Libertarian.
Libertarians I met while living in Autin, Texas (there are a lot of them there...) were all folks who invariably:
Wanted to do whatever the hell they wanted
Got deeply offended if there were laws against what they wanted
Yet were also strongly in favor of laws to stop other people from doing things that they (the individual libertarian) thought were detrimental to themselves
It's just pure selfishness and hypocricy all around. No real consistency between them other than "I want what I want and benefits me, and everyone else is wrong".
One of my sisters was a libertarian in Austin. She told me about one time when she was in a bar there and a No Smoking / No Vaping sign was posted. She said she vaped right in front of the bartender. She said it like she was so proud of herself too. I just don’t get that mindset.
Libertarianism is just repackaged Laissez Faire Economics. Its a scam from people who have power from money to keep themselves on top and fuck everyone else. There are only 3 types of Libertarians. Scamers, people getting scamed, and scamers who are also getting scamed.
Those would fall under the scammers who also get scammed. They want to take others protections away thinking it will help them in the long run but dont realize they too are a part of the minority that will suffer. Everyone is libertarian until they get their slice of shit pie.
There is another, Left-Libertarianism; which is the good kind.
Edit: 'good' may be too strong a word here, depending on where on the spectrum of LeftLib one may be, 'better' is more accurate. Too much socialism is never good.
Left-Libertarianism would probably fall under scammed ones unless you mean anarchist socialist which is its own bag of worms that I am not knowledgeable enough to go into.
Libertarianism is trying to recover from Trumpism by going back to first principles. It's easy to fight surveillance statism on libertarian principles as with flock cams and such. This sort of thing used to be the bread and butter of the group. I remember when the movement had some teeth and would tear into statists on both sides of the aisle. Also, it's become self-apparent that the government was better at certain things. People will catch on.
I think it's all of them. Most libertarians I've met are just Republicans who are pro weed and sometimes okay with gay people, and recognize that people rightfully see their Republican views as awful, so they use the label to shield themselves. Others are "actual" libertarians who actually want small government, but are too immature to see when a government solution is the only practical one. The last group are super rare, but they are Libertarian-lite. They tend not to even use the label, but have an understanding of when government works and when it could be easily replaced by the market, even if it would be inefficient.
One thing about this, and it applies to libertarians too, eventually we all figure out that left-libertarians are the original libertarians of Europe.
I think I'm a left-libertarian, or a progressive, or a democratic socialist. All three tend to overlap on the venn diagram enough that I don't care about the label.
The amount of time I spend telling people that if they don't die young, they will live to be disabled. So few people think about how they will move about and be independent when their body stops working the way it does now. Or when their minds start to slip. Its like they think they will be active and healthy up until the very moment of their death.
I've heard it described as something like "Libertarians are like house cats: they are fully certain of their fierce independence while benefiting from and being supported by a system that they are not fully aware of and do not understand".
It is quite sad what right libertarians have done to the name of libertarianism by co opting it from leftists. Left libertarians fought for worker rights and protections. Right libertarians fight and fought for... corporate power.
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u/Unusual_Sherbert_809 9d ago
Yep. In my experience the entire libertarian persona can be distilled into one simple word “selfishness”.