Where did all the libertarian posters go, OT?

This place used to have a creepy, fanboy and fangirl devotion, sexual fetish, cult-like, irrational hard-on for libertarianism. People on OT used to go on and on about how we need to abolish the public sector and how the private sector is some kind of perfect, flawless, amazing utopia.

People used to say how selfishness and greed are the ultimate virtues and put Ayn Rand and the Austrian school of economics on a sacred pedestal that was immune to criticism in any way, shape or form.

So what the hell happened? libertarian posters used to swarm here like insects. They were overwhelming majority of the people who posted and voted here. Now they are less then 40%.

Off-topic went from being overwhelmingly libertarian to overwhelmingly liberal.

Disclaimer: I am not complaining, I am simply wondering caused the shift from libertarianism to liberalism.

Maybe they grew out of it

There were hardly any true libertarians here, ever.

@samanthademeste:
They probably got tired of people's antagonistic attitude towards them.

"...used to go on and on about how we need to abolish the public sector and how the private sector is some kind of perfect, flawless, amazing utopia."
Really? No one, except perhaps trolls, would ever state anything like that.

Ayn Rand did through John Galt.

yup

Once can only hope they snapped out of it. But if your account is any true, and they transitioned from libertarianism to liberalism, then I doubt it.

The libertarian movement gained popularity due to the apparent under-performance of the federal government's economic policies during the Great Recession recovery period, and also became more vocal during the 2012 Election (for Ron Paul). Ron Paul's candidacy faded away because he was destructively radical, and that severely reduced libertarian activism.

The movement's basic ideas have also been discredited by the fact that the U.S.'s labour market is far tighter, the deficit far smaller, and the dollar far stronger than it was in 2012, which destroys their entire philosophical underpinning that the U.S. economy was "doomed" if it continued to experience "government intervention". The recovery was in fact caused by the expansionist monetary policy of the Federal Reserve. Libertarians wanted to cripple or eliminate the Federal Reserve and institute a gold standard, which are both terrible ideas that would have severely slowed the recovery and destabilized the U.S. economy in the long run.

So, what's the point of the libertarian movement when its primary purpose and solution is publicly discredited? What's left are those who still believe in the other economic ideas (a much smaller group), those who joined because they don't like social welfare and those who joined for its socially liberal policies. And the latter two can easily be reabsorbed into the existing Republican-Democrat establishment.

Sooner or later, most people have to admit that socialism actually has some merit :)

No, no they don't.

Sure they do. Humans don't thrive under capitalism, at least not more than a few percent of us.

This isn't even remotely true. Millions upon millions have thrived under Capitalism, which explains why there are few to none true socialist states out there. (No, European nations have socialist leanings but are a mixed economy)

I merely said that socialism has some merit. And "millions and millions" have thrived despite captialism, noone benefits from leaving all the money with a handfull of greedy old corpses, except for the corpses themselves.

It seems like a lot of the more libertarian and libertarian-leaning users left OT. Kind of a shame really, political threads aren't much fun anymore.

I also miss the CWU (been gone a while). Religion threads are no fun anymore either.

Maybe the got tired of posting to people who can't see the forest for the trees.

@MlauTheDaft: What merit?

@JimB: An emphasis on welfare, which is the cornerstone of a well functioning society.

Captialism has taken over my country (used to be the partially socialist "Scandinavian Model") and now we get to have understaffed/underfunded hospitals, a defunct educational system and working poor.

Welcome to "America".

What capitalism, if so the banks would had been allowed to fail.

I suppose the correct term is Crony capitalism :)

@MlauTheDaft:

Where do you live, may I ask?

@samanthademeste: Denmark.

Living standards are quite good, but we're apparently dead set on ruining all the good aspects of our country, especially our educational system. The notion seems to be that inequality in a class based society is a great thing, despite the fact that only 10% of people get to be part of the upper 10%.

There never were any Libertarians.

There is only one kid that I can remember, and I think he was playing more of a parody than being an actual libertarian

Laihendi?

Libertarianism is a boy's philosophy.

Modern libertarians are the result of kids taking econ 101 as an elective, getting the easy A, and developing a religion around it. If the country started selling off it's infrastructure to the private sector, the economy would come to an abrupt halt, everything would go to the highest bidder, and everyone would seek maximum profit. We would be penniless within seconds of the anarchy.

@GreySeal9: that's not entirely fair. Libertarianism in its "purer" forms suffers from being overly idealistic, and young people tend to be more idealistic. But many political philosophies are overly idealistic. Socialism is too idealistic and yet doesn't get the same criticism. A lot of more liberal economic policies suffer from unrealistic idealism, as do libertarian ones. So it's more productive I think to critique a view on the merits than to label it slash something people "grow out of".

Rofl at your ignorance of macroeconomics. There is a reason why pretty much every rich nation is either capitalist or drowning in oil and why every socialist nation is dirt poor. And that's the simple fact that market economies promote efficiency, flexibility and innovation whereas socialist ones excessively curb ambition and entrepreneurship to the extent that they cause stagnation and waste.

I find it hilarious that such a large proportion of Westerners and rich Westernized Asians are so quick to demonize the very economic system that enabled the Industrial Revolution and literally made them 50x richer than they would otherwise have been.

@MlauTheDaft: That is the product of a socialist society it can't support itself.

I didn't think I needed to clarify that "no one" equals "IGN OT commenters," especially considering said people are the subject of this thread.

I made fun of ayn ryand and they all saw I was right and stopped.

I suppose a thank-you's in order... :P

Absolutely, the "pure" isms on just about any front are overly idealistic pipe dreams, but I think Libertarianism gets it's bad rap precisely because it's adherents demand the extremes (at least in my experience). It's hard to even imagine what a moderate Libertarian view would entail because I'd imagine it would look a lot like the mixed mode economies of Western Countries with socially liberal policies. And in that case, why would they bother to exist as a party?

I'm still slightly liberal but more towards libertarian.

Tumblr Age is Liberal Authoritarians, the scary type of all liberals. They expect things to be handed to them without any effort of their own, and they are overly offensive towards everything to the point they contradict themselves.

Same reason why there are Blue-dog Democrats and Rockefeller Republicans. Each party and political philosophy has their own niche group and yes, there are libertarians that way to the right and to the left on a number of issues backed by their own political philosophy and beliefs.

I consider myself a libertarian that sways liberal. There is value in government such as welfare, but the issue is when government becomes restrictive and too authoritative that becomes a problem.

This is true. I'm just in a trollish mood today lol.

But I've actually critiqued extreme forms of liberalism as well because they too are not focused on real world solutions. Even the liberals who were blaming Obama for not pursuing single player were not being constructive.

Yeah. I've never encountered a Libertarian ideology that still looked like Libertarianism and was reasonable. I have to admit that I'm pretty biased against the ideology tho; it rubs me the wrong way.

By all means, if the party wants to morph their platform into more of a mixed mode economy model with socially liberal views, then they'd probably find a more receptive audience. But I think in that case they'd end up being absorbed into one of the major parties.

But they lose me completely when talking about the evils of fiat currency or abolishing medicare and such.

Yeah that's basically the Democrats but because they are the official party of big government, most libertarians would not want to vote for them. Also, libertarians are already being absorbed by the GOP but the Republicans completely ignore them on social and even fiscal issues as well as foreign policy. At least libertarians would find the democrats receptive on social issues and sometimes foreign policy issues.

As for everything else, hardliners be crazy man.

@JimB:I agree. The answer lies somewhere in between, but capitalism is as much a failure as socialism is.

Wasn't it pretty much just laihendi?

Laihendi my love where did they take you

Where do you dream upon those stars I call home

You seem to have an unhealthy obsession with libertarians and anarchists. Of which there are different kinds mind you. That's all i've seen you post about, just saying.

Views like Stephan Molyneux? Yeah that's bullshit. But he does have some good information, you have to learn to look for the good in an argument and discard the bad.

My views are similar to Chomsky's, we need a free society in which corporations don't run things and which the people are in control of the resources, instead of a future where there's a tax on breathing. None of us alive today will see an end to government, but it's the way to go.

Libertarians basically want government to make way for corporate tyranny.

@Chozofication:

The only articles I have made on libertarians and anarchists are the Noam Chomsky article and this one...

maybe I do talk about politics too much, but it is the only type of topics where people actually respond too.

I think it is actually worse than what you have stated. You and I both understand capitalism and socialism to be matters of economics and most importantly who owns the means of production, markets, and prices, etc. Decades ago many people started to describe socialism in terms of much more than economics, including all manner of social policy aka the role of government. Fast forward to today and we are doing the same with the word capitalism.

I am surrounded by idiots who believe capitalism is bad and then go on to explain in great gory detail all the lousy choices gov't makes, as if that is evidence that capitalism is broken. We cannot even have real conversations on the topic anymore because the terms are now so vague and meaningless.

tl:dr Capitalism is not a zero sum game.