That's fascinating; I've been called Libertarian because I'm the opposite. I'm socially progressive yet fiscally conservative, and from what I've read, there are branches of Libertarianism that can embrace either extreme or a mixture.

I've listened to NPR since I was a teenager in the early 90s, and while I don't always agree with the commentators, I usually find the subjects fascinating and the content entertaining. Here in Atlanta the "Second Cup Concert" classical music show kept me motivated at work, and Lois Reitzes' voice was as soothing as listening to Bob Ross talk about his paintings.

But then again Americans seem to use 'liberal' to mean 'left-wing', is that right? Because that's pretty insane IMO, that's not really what it means anywhere else..

To me it means balancing the budget and actually working off debt. Right now, that means higher taxes. Being responsible with the treasury rather than borrowing with no intent to pay it back. Spending responsibly and ensuring the spending is not wasteful or kickbacks to political cronies, etc.

https://www.bloomberg.com/markets/rates-bonds/government-bon...

Everyone downvoting the comment should read this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_liberalism

On the other side, there's a group that is often called liberal, who support open borders and (often) free international trade, but don't tend to agree with capitalism because they think it increases inequality.

There don't seem to be any true liberals (if you look at the two groups that the US is always talking about) in the full sense of 'economic liberalism'.

There's a major political party which has been saying "free market", "less spending and regulations", and only turned protectionist as of the last election (Republicans) with the election of a populist president. This change hasn't pleased everyone associated with the party. You can read many editorials inveighing against Trump's economic policies in the Wall Street Journal, for instance - whilst also finding plenty of disdain for his erstwhile political opponent Hillary Clinton.

(Concerns about their desire to regulate other things are not addressed by this comment.)

There's also the Libertarians, certainly a minor party, but one which has been consistently against protectionism for longer than I've been alive, and is likely to remain that way until I'm dead.

Much of this is caused by a two party system fuelled by hate for the other party. Now I realize that I'm generalizing here, but as an outsider, this is what it looks like.

Here in the Netherlands, one of the two biggest parties of the elections 4 years ago, practically disappeared because its voters disagreed with what they did during the last 4 years. So they all moved to parties that seemed to better represent their viewpoints. Something like this is just impossible in the US and moving between the two parties is often as difficult as dropping a religion, since many people are tied to their parties through friends and family. I've experienced all of this while living in the US and am still seeing this on Facebook.

I've noticed republicans and (so-called) libertarians being protectionist long before last election, so I think that's a bit of a non-point.

The idea that America and Americans are principled is a myth. Note: That's not a judgement. Simply an analysis of the historial facts.

Liberal means a lot of different things based on the context.

Liberal can mean a lot of different things depending on the context. The classical usage though is more individual freedom less state (from the enlightenment) the US version is more like Social Liberalism (vs. Social Conservatism).

Not quite. I do want lower taxes and less government in people's lives, as long as that benefits the people. I have less of a problem with welfare than people might think, though I believe we'd benefit more overall from a universal basic income as long as it's funded wholly from dismantling existing welfare programs rather than as an addition to them. That eliminates tons of bureaucracy, overspending, and politicians mooching off loopholes in the existing system. I concede though, that at this stage it's nothing more than a pipe dream.

I am most definitely not socially conservative or economically liberal.

Many European anarchists describe themselves as libertarian, in the US the terminology is just not common, so people might be talking past each other here.

Edit: Found it, it's a short speech, but it's from a larger one about freedom: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cnj3dObd6do

ETA: End to the drug war, non-interventionist foreign policy.

In practice, not sure there's a difference. When everybody insists the Emperor's clothes are nice...

Libertarianism is an idealist philosophy which elevates individual rights over that of the collective. This is not a logically inconsistent position, but the real world is not required to conform to what you think is logical. In the real world, rights don't exist if they're not enforced, and you'll note how that word is also inseparable from violence. It would be nice if we lived in a world where libertarianism were possible, or communism too for that matter. Unfortunately such is not the case.

Fair enough.

> anyone who doesn't is a doormat.

Don't be ridiculous. Can you really not imagine any other reason for a rational person to approve of government programs, at least in principle?

To be fair it's not a blanket black and white thing. You can be both, one in one area and one in another. I think we worry too much about labels.

See, this is why I think arguing about labels is a complete waste of time. The majority of libertarians that I personally know are for smaller government in some areas. That doesn't always meant anti government. Sure you'll find plenty of libertarians that are anti government but you're going to find a lot of people with a lot of views calling themselves all sorts of different things that, ultimately, do not fit very well.

For example after reading multiple websites regarding my own political views it would seem some places labeled me as a Libertarian Socialist, others a Liberal and one other a Fiscal Conservative Liberal. I'm not even convinced these labels make complete sense and really only capture some of my viewpoints in a pretty inarticulate way.

Ultimately I just think all of these labels are a complete waste of time. People are imperfect and you'll never bucket them well. Even when you have finally come up with the perfect buckets for people you'll be lucky if half of the people put themselves in the correct bucket either due to a misunderstanding or some other reason.

What to limit it to is what differentiate different liberal (the original definition, not what your parties have done to it) movements. Some will want nothing, others include only the police, army and diplomacy. Some will include basic infrastructure. Most think contracts enforcement is the responsibility of the government. You even have libertarians who are for a universal basic income.

But using a huge brush of "hurr durr libertarians, tea party, Ayn Rand" to paint libertarians is an error. Which a lot of so-called libertarians do too, like far left people who will parrot concepts while they never read -and certainly not studied- Marx books.

As a side note if the only knowledge you have from the libertarians points come from media (old and new) you should reflect on how they report on tech things you know about and how maybe they report all subjects as badly.

One could argue that the goal of a libertarian is to maximize individual liberty, and plausibly argue that the loss of liberty via taxation is both a faux loss (eg, actually a charge for externalities, not an "extra" cost imposed by others) and liberty maximizing (eg, freedom from concern of unemployment ruining your life is more freeing than the loss of freedom to not pay taxes).

Well, if the money funnels in billionaires and overseas corporate accounts, an individual has even less choice in how to use it (unless he is the owner of said company or the billionaire).

Whereas with the government at least the individual gets a vote on how those money should be used.

>It’s about power, and in our world, money is power.

So better than the government, where we have some say, have that money, than billionaires and mega-corps, which we don't control.

Billionaires buy things, travel, and hire people to work for them. They don't hold onto their money forever. And if they do hold on to, it lowers the supply of money in circulation, thus increasing the value of the dollars YOU hold. A rising tide lifts all ships. So I fail to see the problems. Besides, it's their money, what right does anyone else have to it? If you want their money, find something to sell to them. Maybe start a billionaire vacation resort on the moon. That will create tons of jobs.

> Whereas with the government at least the individual gets a vote on how those money should be used.

Voting is just a small piece, the bigger part is the full-time lobby groups and interest. They have a much more control than the individual gets 1 vote out of 200+ million. And just because 51+% of voters think it's ok to steal someones income, doesn't make it right.

Their living and partying costs are so tiny compared to their wealth, we can just as well say that they are "holding onto their money forever".

>Besides, it's their money, what right does anyone else have to it?

I don't believe in the concept of "their money" above a certain degree. After a point such gains are so much part of systemic faults and imbalances that it should be "everybody's money" but its just hoarded.

>And just because 51+% of voters think it's ok to steal someones income, doesn't make it right.

Absent a god, it's only what people think that makes something right or wrong.

There can be billionaires and average people all prospering at the same time. It doesn't bother me when billionaires have hordes of money and private jets. I have an average income, but my life is very comfortable especially compared to human history. I don't have to work on a farm, I have air conditioning, time for entertainment, cheap plane tickets to travel thousands of miles in a single day. I think ancient kings would be jealous of what the average person has access to now.

I am super grateful for all the "selfish ba$#@rds" like Henry Ford who brought cars to the masses and made them selves massively wealthy in the process. Communists, Italian Fascists and Nazis all tried to provide the "peoples car" and every time they failed. Capitalism benefits the common man the most! Even when capitalism doesn't work right, it's still far better then centralized systems.

Another "selfish ba$#@rd" is Steve Jobs. Thank him for helping bring the computing power to the common mans home!

> it's only what people think that makes something right or wrong

To be logically consistent, you must admit there is no moral basis to say what the Nazis did was wrong. Or the nice friendly communists who believe in sharing "everybody's money" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_... I'll take my chances with the Rockefellers :)

If not, why not? Do the same reasons not apply to healthcare?

Government influence is what inflated healthcare costs in the first place by removing all aspects from true consumer choice (aka - the market).

What other product that people need can people not buy no matter how much money they have?

Courts/police are relatively straightforward and cheap, and act as an enabler for contracts and personal choice.

Of course, many more people spread colds, cause accidents, etc than commit crimes, so it makes sense that the cost of controlling their externalities is more than those of criminals.

But your choice seems arbitrary: you couch it in pragmatic terms, because you're not categorically against government programs, but then avoid actual cost-benefit analysis, rendering your opinion nothing more than whim.

That's what it always seems to come down to with "libertarians": unprincipled bullshit that aligns with their whims (such as yes police, no NHS).

Healthcare doesn't stop people from spreading colds. You're not actually reducing externalities with most categories of care. And if there were no police you would see a lot more theft.

Anyway, you can put it in cost-benefit terms, but you have to include a strong freedom factor. A government that takes 2% of GDP to keep public order is far better than not doing that. But taking a very large fraction of income to provide health care? That is an enormous cost to both spending and freedom, and reasonable people can see those costs as higher or lower than the benefits.

If it includes vaccinations then yes, it very much does.

Give people money, give them mandatory financial literacy training before they get said money, let them figure out how best to live their lives, remove the minimum wage in the process. I'm also strongly opposed to malum prohibitum laws as well - the government does a poor job of respecting peoples civil liberties out of the misguided concept that any and all evils are preventable - the truth is, sometimes bad things happen, and not every potential bad thing is worth the collateral costs to prevent it.

A source like Vox covers urban/coastal issues from the 'inside', treating first-hand sources as credible and writing like the reader is included in the topic. There's also a significant assumption that readers inherently care.

It writes rural white plight stories as 'explainers', approaching them the way you would approach some international crisis your readers are unlikely to know about. One big human-interest frame example to make your readers care, lots of background and statistics, first-hand interviews that add flavor, but are aggressively contextualized by talking to professors and experts who aren't part of the community. And, of course, a necessity to say "which maybe caused Trump" or otherwise justify why such stories are relevant to their readers.

Basically, I think NPR/Vox/etc have started covering rural plight stuff far more, but they're still explaining those people to their readers.

If you summarize every story, you end up with a lot more "affirming a liberal view of the world" ones than "affirming a conservative view."

That said, I still believe the content of the stories presented hews far closer to objective fact and truth than what I've seen from conservative media. So I wouldn't say it's nearly that biased.

But of course, 80% is actually pretty close to the number of Americans that are not white heterosexual men. We may just have gotten used to an overrepresentation in movies, politics, and our social life.

I think the problem is you're lumping all minorities into one, and treating rural whites as a separate category.

Pick any particular minority group, and you could make the same statement:

"80% of the stories of the day are related to non-X group. Group X is rarely mentioned"

It's common to watch for bias on a per-story level, looking for either bad facts or heavy spin. That's the level where liberals insist conservative media is biased and other media isn't. NPR is generally great on that level - if they run a piece, it'll be factually accurate and told from some basically reasonable viewpoint.

But it's also worth talking about multi-story bias - what will you come away believing if you hear 100 (factually accurate) stories from this source? That's the usual level where conservatives complain about liberal media bias. (They're not wrong, though conservative sources do plenty of the same.) NPR looks way less good on that level; the scheduled programs (e.g. Fresh Air) lean very liberal/cosmopolitan, while the news reports are prone to a focus on political, coastal, and international issues without so much awareness of the 'interior'.

It's still a vastly better source than most news for learning about any single event, I generally prefer it to NYT coverage even, but it's not exactly comprehensive.

I have two main difficulties with NPR. First, as a baby boomer, I wonder whether my generation will let go. WAMU still plays old Car Talk shows on Saturday morning, a couple of years after one of the brothers died. Garrison Keillor did, finally, let go, but it took him a while.

Second, so much of it seems to me the self-esteem of the college-bred classes. After a while, I wonder whether it isn't as restrictive to the listeners' viewpoint as the private school. (I suppose that this doesn't apply to truckers so much.)

"being able to laugh at jokes at the expense of either of the two major parties". Shouldn't one be able to laugh at jokes that are funny in general?

[edit: added missing comma]

My impression is public radio quiz shows don't depend on a college education but reward the accumulation of knowledge and attention paid to current events. The college-educated are more likely to to appreciate those rewards. I'm sure there's also the occasional joke or comment that assumes a shared experience found in college but I expect that's rare enough to not completely put off someone who can't relate to that experience (sometimes they'll say it knowingly, making a joke out of assuming everyone has the same background, especially whiteness).

http://www.wnyc.org/shows/ask-me-another

I occasionally listen to the syndicated podcast. I know next to nothing about cars. Minus the 'forwards from grandma' style jokes that occasionally pop up in the beginning it's a quality program.

As with the media more general, the “NPR is liberal” line is a decades old part of the effort to pressure coverage to move further to the right that generations of conservatives have been indoctrinated into as an article of faith; its been quite successful, and if it was ever true in any sense other than maybe the coverage not being as far right as the (rightward moving) center of mass of the Republican Party, it hasn't been for a long time.

"Alexa, play NPR" also works. It will use the ZIP code from your Amazon account and play the local NPR affiliate from either TuneIn or iHeartRadio.

This is how I listen to it at home - one Echo Dot (connected to a Tivoli Audio Model One) in the "office", and another using its built-in speaker, in the bedroom.

I'm assuming it's the same as wanting to listen to ABC Melbourne when you live in Sydney - but that means missing out on the local news or particular presenters.

So there are places where the local station carries almost no NPR content.

After asking the question I thought about it more and I think I just need to fully commit to podcasts. I've pretty much stopped watching live TV (except for sports) and the same should probably be true for radio.

You might be able to say "Alexa, play KGOU" (or whatever station you want).

We connected it to our light dimmer and ceiling fan and it was harder than it should be to make it work. We would say "Alexa, turn the lights on" and it would reply with something like "I don't know about a device named lights". So, the natural next question is "Alexa, what devices do you know about?" That should work, but it doesn't.

In a quiet room, the microphones are amazing. But as soon as I turn on the fan over our stove, the white noise makes the Echo practically deaf.

Other things like turning on drop-in was an exercise in frustration. Why can't I just say "Alexa, turn on drop-in for the household?" Instead I had to go to the app, give it access to my contacts, turn on drop in on our contact card, then turn on drop in on both devices.

Frankly, I don't think there should even be a phone app. Go all in on the voice interface.

http://abc.net.au/rn

They do some awesome shows also available as podcast.

Bonus: Aussie accent is a barrel of laughs (I say that as an Australian!)

Isn't that the opposite of a libertarian?

Then again, I've never found two libertarians who could agree on what being libertarian actually means, so maybe not.

How many libertarians are poor? How many are minorities? How many are women? The libertarian deck is pretty obviously stacked - it's all about maintaining property rights with zero responsibility; for example, somehow 'taxes' are 'violence', but 'enforcing property rights through the courts and the exact same sheriff that would recover taxes' is 'not violence'. Pick on any libertarian thread and the cloth unravels pretty fast.

The biggest trick the libertarians have pulled, in my opinion, is convincing people that they're the only ones interested in civil rights.

Libertarians aren't angels (except perhaps in a relative sense, when considering any POTUS other than Carter elected in my lifetime), but they never get 3% of the vote, for one office. Yet they're some sort of crazy powerful bogeyman that every progressive of correct thought must constantly fear and agitate against on threads that originally had nothing to do with that. Besides didn't you get the memo? Instead of caring about Libertarians, now you're supposed to care about a much smaller and stupider group of statue enthusiasts! They're going to destroy the nation with their passion for old statues! In the meantime please ignore the wars and brutality that the two wings of the mainstream party keep doing...

This is why I find libertarians fucking annoying, because they just wholesale declare the world to be other than it is. No, they're not a bogeyman, but they do spend a lot of time derailing politics, like when Rand Paul describes government provided universal healthcare as literal slavery of doctors. Yes, the two major parties in the US are fucked, but libertarianism is not the only alternative.

Also, you're a child for revenge-downmodding. When all my comments in time range go down by a point except the ones that specifically you can't downmod, it's stupidly obvious it's you.

Sorry about your internet points. Now that I've regained composure, I'll be sure to upvote you occasionally. You'll make it to the top in no time! I don't think I downvoted all your comments, however? I'm pretty sure I upvoted this one? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15069956 Bygones!

I'm happy to support any alternative. I feel that any actual change (as opposed to Trump's new-boss-same-as-the-old shtick), in no matter what direction, would have to be an improvement. For instance, I voted for Bernie in the primaries, and he had my vote in the general before DNC wiped their asses with that vote. I haven't voted D or R for President in decades. I guess I can understand being annoyed by libertarians, although I myself am not. What drives me around the bend is CNN reptiles like Jake Tapper or Alisyn Camerota defending the two-faces-one-party status quo and all the wars and brutality that entails. That often takes the form of pointless derailing bitching about libertarians or greens or random online skeptics or whomever, of which yours upthread is a prime example. Sorry... I don't think we'll see the changes we want by starting the effort with a purity test.

I used to listen to NHPR a lot when I had a long commute one summer and would occasionally tune in. My biggest complaint isn't that NPR is too liberal, only that it is very surface-thought in its discussion of topics. Too often a story will raise what seem to be obvious and interesting (but maybe difficult) questions and the journalist or interviewer will just move on.

I dimly have one example in mind, a government agency (port authority?) in Oregon had millions in carbon credits (tax offsets) that it couldn't use, so it sold them to some other Oregon company for cheap to some corporation. Imagine its $5m tax credits that it sold for $1m. The company could then offset $5m of taxes. This was billed as a good deal for the port authority.

Of course as described it's really the state of Oregon losing $4m by selling the credit on the cheap, which seems totally insane. This was never discussed. I gave up after that story.

Tom Ashbrook (On Point) does this especially egregiously. Some of his simplistic (or biased) "So what you're saying is..." moments make me cringe.

I realize it's a call in show, but jesus, there isn't anyone out there with a less obvious liberal bias / more technical background who's interested in the job?

Let callers or interviewees make their points fairly, then debate them. Rhetorically dancing around the topics with the advantage of being the host just makes me feel like I'm listening to Bill O'Reilly. (Ugh)

It's also a simple formula: find an expert in the field who's also a halfway decent host, then invite guests who work in the professional and balance their biases against each other.

Diane Rehm, for all her awards, has an awful tendency to cut people off in ways that destroy clarity. Things like letting someone give "on one hand..." and cutting them off as they say "but on the other hand...", so that only half their opinion gets aired.

On the "more technical" side, Science Friday really needs a host who understands something about science. Flatow's digested 'restatements' tend to be flatly wrong, and he's often two or three laps behind what an interested layman would pick up. I can understand going slowly in the name of accessibility, but he sort of forfeits that right by arriving at completely inaccurate final summaries.

It's not bad overall, but there's an aggravating tendency for the interviewers to 'participate' when they're not really qualified to have a dialogue instead of simply offering prompts.

http://www.npr.org/series/700000/driveway-moments

As a libertarian, don't you find the economic news reports from NPS cringeworthy though?

Do I disagree with stuff they say sometimes? Absolutely. But not enough to change the station.

Then again, I am more tolerant or opposing views than most, unfortunately.

Why do you say "unfortunately"? I would say it is a strength if you can tolerate opposing views without necessarily accepting them.

Edit: Or Planet Money?

Nevertheless hey are both good sources of facts if you look past the naïve understanding of economics.

It also helps that, depending on where you live, NHPR is the most entertaining programming available. The Exchange is a very high quality current events show, and the host is incredibly good at her job. I would listen to that when traveling up to PSU for school during my senior year.

If you find yourself north of Tilton, NH, you're not going to have much choice in radio programming. Unless, that is, you enjoy country or Christian radio.

The reason conservatives think NPR is wildly liberal is they don't listen to it. They only listen to conservative media, and it tells them NPR is 100% pro-communism and also is pro-Sharia law. Which anyone who actually listens to it knows is utter nonsense.

The lesson here is you should listen directly to both sides, and not just listen to one side and take for granted it is telling you the truth about the other side.

NPR is itself is pretty good here. It regularly has conservatives presenting their views. But I also subscribe to a conservative magazine, just to make sure I am getting the whole story.

Are you being facetious? NPR is extremely liberal.

> [1] I'm a Libertarian and thus social liberal and economically conservative which puts me in the great position of being able to laugh at jokes at the expense of either of the two major parties.

I'm moderate independent so I too laugh at both sides.

I also don't listen to NPR or watch foxnews as they are a terrible waste of time.

You seem to have a lot to say about something you never listen to because it's a "terrible waste of time".

Did I say I never listened to them? I used to as a teen and young adult. I was a big fan of NPR. Even was a supporting member and have their tote bag somewhere( WNYC is my station )...

I also used to watched a bit of foxnews, but that was only at work when they had it on.

But the past few years, I grew up. I will still listen to radio lab once in a while if they have an interesting topic and maybe catch wait wait don't tell me ( especially if they have an interesting guest ).

But for the most part, it's gotten old and boring. But that's my opinion. I'm sure yours is different.