I distrust Libertarian political / economic philosophy.
Now note: I don’t inherently distrust people who claim to be Libertarians. I know more than a few, and I trust them. As individuals.
But I look at the political theory, and I don’t find it to be workable. And so, this series of posts. First up, the “Libertarians in name only”.
One of the common tenets of libertarian political and economic policy is the removal of restrictions and regulations on business. And there are a number of “libertarians” who use this (and get other libertarians to agree with them) to say things like, “the government shouldn’t have the right to tell me who I have to provide service to”. What this is, is racism. What these fake libertarians are saying is, “we only serve black/Asian/Mexican/etc people because the government forces us to”.
The real libertarians fall in line with this, saying that they should be able to do this, but that if they do, they’ll only be punishing themselves, because less and less people will do business with them, and it will be self correcting.
It’s one of those arguments that feels right. You sit there going, “Yeah, I can see how that would work”. The problem is that not everyone would know. Or if they did know, they may not have a choice but to do business with the individual. And that’s why those particular government regulations were put into place to begin with.
As a side note, though… I’ll mention what I believe is the most honest branch of the libertarians. And that’s the people who are libertarians because they want to smoke pot. They’re opposed to the government regulations on marijuana, and quite often, don’t care about other government policy. They just want to get stoned. And the Libertarian party is, to them, the most likely way to get what they want.