"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
I've worked for financial trading companies and for advertisers before, but I can't do that work anymore because I think those industries mainly make the world worse. Not won't do it, but can't. The daily conflict between my principles and my actions would be too painful.
Cognitive dissonance is really uncomfortable. I don't think most people can live with the cognitive dissonance of being an anti-government government worker. Not without falling into what user omegaham correctly identifies as doublethink.
And I think that would be especially true of the libertarians I have known. If I were to generalize about them, I'd say that on average they're unusually thoughtful and unusually principled. Most people don't even try for a coherent political philosophy. I just don't know a lot of people who will think that deeply and then be totally ok not living by those principles.
Libertarianism will look like a "coherent political philosophy" only if you're a young white kid from an affluent family.
They make for witty-sounding quips, but both are ad-hominems[0] that do little to actually address and argue against the tenets of either philosophy.
[0] (In before someone points out that this is not a true ad-hominem because it attacks a stereotype (and a straw man at that) rather than a specific individual).
Or, anybody else.
Not other things though, so no Social Security, no Obamacare, no National Endowment for the Arts, and no space program (other than for space weapons, so get rid of NASA and establish some sort of "US Star Force.")
So with that world view, working at a defense contractor isn't a conflict at all, instead, it is the one "true and legitimate" reason for government in their eyes.
It's not really a viewpoint I totally agree with, but people who are really deep students of the philosophy come across as pretty internally consistent in their viewpoint.
I think their's a good place for this type of politic. But I'm afraid far too many people who self-identify with it, don't understand it deeply enough or the implications of the ideas.
The Constitutionalist argument is mostly an outer limit on their support for government programs. They also believe that the federal government shouldn't do many things that it is expressly empowered to do in the Constitution.
Libertarians who don't themselves do any drugs (eg, Penn Jillette) still want drugs to be legal for other people. Libertarians who are themselves pacifists still want gun ownership and self-defense to be legal. And so on. It seems to me that this view you think "falls apart" with so little thought doesn't have much to do with libertarianism.
No it isn't. You're either badly misinformed, or trolling. That is nothing like the libertarian viewpoint.
Not necessarily. Libertarian anarchists propose that those services can be provided by private enterprise.
They are an extreme minority. Most people that identify with libertarianism are simply fiscal conservatives who also support decriminalization of victimless crimes, human rights, a reduced military budget, less invasive foreign policy etc. nothing as extreme as anarchy.
Ultimately most of us end up voting republican because they are seen as a "lesser of two evils".
> AnCaps are to Libertarians as Richard Stallman is to Linux users.
There are plenty of ways to interpret that, but I presume you mean that you don't like Richard Stallman and you don't like anarcho-capitalists. Incidentally, I like Richard Stallman and anarcho-capitalism, so I suppose the analogy still holds.
> They are an extreme minority.
Perhaps, but they are an extremely powerful influence in libertarian ethical and economic thought. Murray Rothbard and Benjamin Tucker are (in my view) the fathers of the modern American libertarian movement, and they happen to have been anarchists. Even some popular conservative constitutionalist limited-government libertarians like Ron Paul and Andrew Napolitano are anarchists who essentially lie about their views in order to deliver libertarian principles to a wider audience (I don't really approve of that technique, by the way).
But I suppose I did paint with too broad a brush. My statement about law enforcement is the equivalent of someone saying "Democrats don't believe in a totalitarian communist regime where we are all forced to have vegan diets", By and large it's true and for the sake of brevity it makes sense to say it, because those views are not a good example of what the Democratic party as a whole is actually about. This also helps some of the more naive people in this thread get a more realistic perspective on what most self identifying libertarians actually believe.
Cheers.
NASA for most of its existence was pretty much was a platform for military research and demonstration of military capacity with a civilian/exploration PR veneer.
If the public was more less interested in non-military functions of government, we'd still probably have had something doing most of what NASA did, it just would have been more overtly military.
And I do make an effort to push them toward more cost effective technologies and processes but the sad truth is they don't want to hear it because they prefer to waste money on oracle licenses and aligning text on reports nobody will ever read, than have their budget reduced.
There really ought to be incentives/bonuses built in for employees in govt who can successfully cut their budget and perform the same job at the same level of quality. We would instantly see a drastic reduction in the cost of our government.
There are some types of services, like crucial infrastructure, where failure is not an option, hence government, hence sacrificing efficiency in favor of dependability.
The larger the organization the more room there is for waste within its ranks. No organizations are larger than the government.
Perhaps you should consider consulting for less well-funded segments of the Government? The constraints make for ingenious solutions.
If you don't mind me asking. What state/department do you work for?
On the theoretical side it goes back to the whole Trotskyism/Stalinism debate.
Okay, I give up: What are you expecting to find upon doing that? Most libertarians I know are in favor of free movement of labor and open immigration in general. The current Libertarian Party Platform includes this bit:
"Political freedom and escape from tyranny demand that individuals not be unreasonably constrained by government in the crossing of political boundaries. Economic freedom demands the unrestricted movement of human as well as financial capital across national borders."
(source: http://www.lp.org/platform )
Are you trying to imply that libertarians are inconsistent? There are plenty of libertarians who believe in open borders, Bryan Caplan being one prime example.[1][2] On the other hand, it is also perfectly self-consistent to believe that citizens of a country are entitled to liberties which are not guaranteed to foreigners.
[1] http://openborders.info/bryan-caplan/
[2] http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2010/10/caplan_on_immig.htm...
I self-identify as a libertarian (with qualifications, if you want details). If you try talking to me about free movement of labor, I think you'll find that I advocate it fully.
Just about every self-professed libertarian I know (and I know a lot) support total freedom of movement of labor. Many of them actually oppose the very idea of nation-states and national borders in general.
Those are the people who have a realistic, first hand understanding of the government innerworkings.
Also, a contradiction between believing that allocation of capital would be more efficient under a less centrally-influenced system, and being willing to accept higher pay and benefits from one of the central institutions only exists if you believe that individuals should strive for public good even at great personal expense. Which strikes me more as a moral view taken by nationalists than libertarians.