Forum Post: Let's Create A Liberal/Libertarian Fusionist Party...
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 8, 2011, 3:42 a.m. EST by RG32
(81)
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And go with 85% libertarian ideals (which encompasses many liberal social ideals) and 15% liberal ones. Who is with me?
I propose instead a liberal/socialist party which supports the liberal interest in individual free enterprise and investment while providing a legal framework to contain the piracy and rapacity of hyper-capitalism. This requires a strong, but wise government and a constitution in which are inscribed the laws of the Social Market
omg
If you want a party other than the Democratic or Republican parties to have a shot in hell of doing anything, you'll need to find a way to implement instant run-off voting, so people won't be too scared to vote for 3rd parties:
http://www.instantrunoff.com/sapphire/main.php?url=/&SubsiteID=3
This is an interesting (long) video about transpartisanship - people from different points on the political spectrum uniting behind specific issues to bring about change:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Of9XKrjbkA
Ostrolenk is a conservative/libertarian psychologist & political activist
see there are some guys(padmasambhava) on the chats and forum who are into outsourcing of jobs to india .weed them out this forum is about americans anot indians
hey guys get intelligent get our jobs back from india nand china , we do not have to create new jobs, we do not have to print money
Please, I hope not. OWS seems so pleasantly amorphous because it's not about ideology. Libertarianism is precisely an ideology. It is not flexible when faced with new or opposing evidence. I think too highly of OWS to think they would fall for petty libertarian memes.
"seems so pleasantly amorphous because it's not about ideology. " I loled.
As defined by dictionary.com: amorphus "a fetus without head, heart, or limbs"
Is it fair to expect it to grow into a productive adult?
fair enough. it does need to grow, but not by becoming more ideological. Maybe I see in OWS what I want to see. But the triumph of man and his outcomes the past 300 years can be directly attributed to placing a premium on evidence, not ideology, or fairytales, or infallible systems of thought (libertarianism falls under this purview). There's a reason most libertarians are the richest in society.
Well, if it continues on as it has, you'll get your wish and then you can see the results of that.
Hating ideology doesn't make ideology go away. Nor does it actually make it good or bad. It just means you might be making yourself blind to something good and useful, if it seems to be working for......almost everyone else.
hmmm...could you clarify? My point about evidence is simply that the answers cannot be found in one closed system of thought. If that were the case, we'd already have all of the major problems in the world and be on our way to infinite progress. Libertarianism is essentially a belief in faith; a belief that markets only fail when it comes to defense and property rights is pure ideology and not backed up by the evidence. I'm sorry but I don't have a reliable theory for everything
You'll have to discover if it can or not, but why toss out all systems of thought then? You seem to be celebrating the lack of ideology, which for the sake of shortening the discussion, is any substance or purpose. The benefit of ideology, any ideology, is that it's based on a principle which is impartial (in theory at least). It gives you, beyond popularity or emotions, some sort of guiding idea. A philosophy. Without this, I'm not sure how you put anything coherent together.
As for free markets, you're right about how it is ideology. You know why? Because we've never had a chance to test it, recently, on any sort of whole scale. Governments have been too involved, central banking, etc. The principles work, when applied in parts, which is why the school of thought continues. The problem with it is that it's very hard to control people in this system. When you give freedom to individuals and encourage them to become themselves and do as they please (without initiating violence on anyone else), it's difficult to get them to do what they tell you.
Here's an example of when free market principles were applied, and worked. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czcUmnsprQI
Sorry...you lose me when you say free markets failed because they were never tried on a large enough scale. This is the same argument the Marxists made when the Soviet Union was falling apart. Two problems with these arguments are the political economy constraints and the infallibility complex. If a severely limited government leaves it vulnerable to crony capitalistic influences, then your desire for a limited government free of crony capitalistic influence fails. So what evidence would force you to reconsider your faith in free markets? And about the depression of 1920-21, funny how Thomas Woods doesn't want to face up to the reality that Big Ben Strong had something to do with it. I don't trust pure historians and Austrian 'economists' to analyze economic events. For them every event vindicates their viewpoint. I trust real economists with empirical data and statistical tools. They actually go through the process of making falsifiable hypotheses and testing them against the existing evidence and data. I don't mean this in a nasty way, but what do you make of a place like Somalia? Shouldn't those areas where armed militias has monopolistic control be thriving right now? Seems pretty free to me
Maybe free market principles have gone away because people stood by and accepted that they'd rather have something else. We could complain all day about how the two party system is horrible, but if americans keep voting for a two party system, what then? Which, strangely, is what brings us here. Everyone is sick of corporate control of government, yet nobody is willing to change thier own lifestyle and do something different. How can we expect a different result? Even if the "system" changed, if we continue living in a way that perpetuated the old system, it'll come back.
You bring up a fair point about austrians, but I'm not convinced it's any different than anyone else.
The use of force against people is part of the problem. The armed militia is hardly an expression of a free market, and rather groups of people fighting for limited resources against each other. The irony, I think, is that if all that time was spent farming, vs killing each other, there may not be a need to kill each other. I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on Africas problems.. I'm not. But when I look at the problems we face today, here in the USA, much of the problem stems from the way things are controlled, and so more control is part of the answer? Seems ridiculous.
Until you get the money out of the election process, you won't be able to reform the two-party cartel, so founding any third party is basically useless. Let's do first things first: create a true representative democracy!
thats a decent idea but it would be like throwing raw meat into the lions den. it would just be another president that once they get into office realize that they have no power...so back to square one
If you take into consideration that we agree on a lot of issues, it comes out to like 40% liberal ideals (overlapping libertarian ones).
I don't fully understand what "libertarian ideals" entails. Please expand :)
Thanks, Richard
I want to End the Fed, End the Wars, End the Drug War, End Too Big To Fail, Repeal The Patriot Act, Return Civil Liberties To The People, Get Corporate Money Out Of Politics.
That is a good start. I also think that gun laws should be relaxed, the tax code reformed, and we should take power away from the central government and return it to people in their communities. I realize that these might be more controversial in the context of Occupy Wall Street, but the first list includes all of the big issues for me.
What are you going to do to enact this change? Above all we must remember to act within the system to fix it, not tear it down. I am glad you have voiced your opinions. Now we must continue discussing if more progress is to be made.
Cheers, Richard
How is that different from Libertarianism? I believe Ron Paul supports most of your views. I'm not trying to be contrarian; I'm honestly curious.
Many liberals could agree with at least 6 of the 7 main ideas that I purposed.
Ah, so it's more about leaving out certain things out that Liberals wouldn't agree with? That is kind of the idea I had with my post about voting for deal breakers.
In a nutshell http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXBNONftdXI