Hi folks,

Libertarianism is always a philosophy that inspires me, and just elevates my well being.

That said, if I use any labels at all to describe my political and otherwise philosophy, I am ultimately an Individualist, much more than a libertarian. This is why I am, and always will be, registered as an Independent.

Therefore, as a result, there are points I agree with in libertarianism, but points I definitely diverge with them on.

What I love about libertarianism is its emphasis on the individual. One's own attitude is most important in getting thru life, more than relying so heavily on government or other institutions. They always say that our attitude is ultimately what determines our altitude in life, and I have found it to be so true.

I respect government assistance in many ways. But while help from the government is available in most cases, it should only be taken if all else has failed: the highest responsibility lies with the individual themselves, for their own well being, be it mental, physical, spiritual, etc.

It is also up to each individual to improve society, more than the organization they do or don't represent. Here is an example: let us say, a person lives in the far north, where they have very harsh, very cold winters. It is winter, and he has fallen on hard times financially. Therefore he cannot pay his heating bills, let alone his other bills. The electric company gives him extra time to find the money to pay his heating bills. But after a certain point, the electric company will shut down his heating system, if he doesn't pay the bills in even an extended time period.

What can prevent this person from dying due to freezing in those harsh winters? We can't blame the electric company - that corporation is an entity, not a human being. It is, rather a group of individuals, just like government. They are following their rules, their contract, regardless of the situation of the individual who pays that company for their heating. And we cannot fault a corporation for that.

So what helps that person in distress, therefore, is ultimately the charity of the people around him. Maybe his neighbors can help pay his bills in the meantime, while he tries to find ways to get back on his feet. This help, will prevent him from dying in that bitter cold. Those individuals around him, are likely not part of the electric company, nor the government. They are just common workers, trying to help a friend in dire need.

Therefore, it is ultimately the responsibility of each individual, to be responsible for their well being. And more than an organization or corporation, many (though not all) individuals also have the ability to help others in difficult situations, and elevate society as a whole. It all starts from each individual.

What I also love about libertarians, is they offer very good, very poignant reminders about how limited government is, about how good it can be. Don't get me wrong, I am not NEARLY as anti-government as many of you libertarians are. Do I want to see government smaller than the behemoth it is today? YES. For sure. But I also appreciate the good things government does, and therefore do not ask for nearly as small as the minarchist or near-anarchist society that many of you libertarians aim for.

But again, government, while it does many good things, is also very limited in how good it can be overall. Any central planning authority can only do so much. Read the work "I, Pencil", just to understand this. It is a great essay. The point of the essay is to show that no individual or group can know enough to dictate to others how things that are much more complex should be done. This applies to any central planning authority, like federal government.

This applies to a common libertarian concept of Spontaneous Order - which explains that cultures, markets, languages, etc. were never formed by any one mastermind, or any one central government; they formed randomly, on their own, through the coordination of common people. There was no single mastermind involved. Therefore, central government can, and should, only do so much to re-shape the society of the country it governs. I of course am all for the police, and such safety measures so that people don't harm or physically hurt others, or steal, etc. But as far as a country's habits, their good and bad quirks, their culture, etc...there is little if anything government should ever try to do to control these things. Again, the government, nor any central planner, never invented them, anyway.

Some prominent libertarian or classical liberal economists have also pointed out that we live in a world of physical laws. In other words, scientific and natural laws. And if you are part of any faith or spiritual tradition, we can say that we are bound by spiritual laws too. These laws - natural, physical, spiritual - are more powerful than any government, or even any one person, and their reasoning. So again, government, while it does many good things, has major limitations as to the good it does in society.

All of the things I have said above, are all the things I really appreciate about libertarianism, and those things really correspond well with the individualist philosophy.

Here though, is where I differ from libertarians quite a bit: libertarians, though they have some individualist attributes, still put a lot of reliance on a system, as a solution to society: the free market. Or really better yet, let's just call it the private sector. They love the private sector to the point where they would die on a hill for it, and it almost seems, they worship the private sector/free market.

Here's the kicker: Everything I've mentioned in the above paragraphs apply to both the government AND the private sector.

So, as an individualist, I don't die on a hill for ANY major system. Neither government, nor the private sector. Neither government, nor corporations. Both these systems have their good points and bad points. And we need both of them. Sure, I'm not necessarily drawing a 50-50 equivalence between both systems, and you may "prefer" one system over the other.

But at least, we should acknowledge that both systems have strengths and weaknesses. For example, I don't know how many of you have actually worked for major corporations. I have. For many years. And believe me, some of them, too, similar to government, have very beaurocratic, slow-moving systems that have very slow moving correctional systems. I know of corporations that said they were going to get rid of bad software systems years ago, and yet they are still using them today. Corporations have one thing in common with governments, in that they too are formed by significant groups of people, not just by one individual, and they cannot serve the needs of all customers and employees. Their customer base, and their employee base, like society at large, is too diverse for one company to know all their needs and behaviors.

So again, as an individualist, I absolutely do NOT die on a hill for any major system, be it government or private sector. I rely on my own inner strength, my own attitude, I try to be as good a person as I can be in society, etc. To me, more than any major system: if each individual can work on themselves in this way, only then can society significantly improve.

Think about it.

Under full libertarianism, your salary will be the same with 3rd world salary. If your salary is higher, then those 3rd world will come and replace you.

And I am talking about "moderate" libertarians where only productive 3rd world people come. In extreme open border. libertarianism, all people can come to your country. They can eventually vote for even more socialism or wreak havoc. Just look at Europe.

Of course some of us will make even more money. But majority most likely will earn less? Are you okay with that?

What about monogamy?

Under full libertarianism, dude like Elon can have 1k-1million children. Just offer money.

I personally have no issue with this. But many people do. Many people here do.

They like monogamy, for example. To me monogamy is socialism.

Some people would say that Elon couldn't possibly attract thousands of women. Wrong. Look at the chicks he is knocking up. That's the kind of chicks he can get consensually. Monogamy won't survive libertarianism. In Tinder and everything a few top dude get all.

You see women like money a lot like men like young beautiful women. Beautiful women can attract infinite number of men. Sure she has capacity. She can't be knocked up by all. But there isn't really limit for "attraction". Onlyfans show that beautiful women are racking a lot.

Some people here argues that the child is the victim because the child doesn't consent. Seriously. A child born with superior IQ and huge inheritance is a "victim". What's next? They're also privileged?

In consistent libertarianism, women getting paid to share some rich dude with harem will be very common.

And I haven't touched touchy issues like do people have right to be protected by government from violence or should they pay private cops. I am talking standard normal libertarian.

We all like free market in all but what's the limit?

Not to mention practicality. Like how exactly libertarian party can win election if full libertarianism means majority of people are just as better off as 3rd worlder? Even if we all like libertarianism we will be outvoted.

And don't like democracy? Well. Many libertarians do.

I think this is why I am closer to moldbugian than libertarian. But what do you think? What's your limit?

Fentanyl addiction and overdose is a serious problem in in the USA, but it seems it basically isn’t anywhere else. Some people say this is the case because of unregulated privatised hospitals which just prescribes fentanyl to patients and gives syringes with it to them to consume later. In other places it is only prescribed if the pain of a patient is truly unbearable.

Privatised hospitals also have a star rating, and they want the patients to walk out feeling as little pain as possible, so they prescribe fentanyl.

Is this true? What is a potential solution besides regulations and/or nationalization?

Im guessing that ending the quasi private money printing cartel is a pretty popular plan around these parts.

I'm curious about what models of money folks would like to see replace it.

I’ve been doing some reading on the philosophy of liberty and free expression and there is one question I have become increasingly interested in: Why are libertarian concerns regarding free speech almost exclusively focused on the external restriction of expression and almost never on the proactive improvement of the internal ability to excercise this freedom?

This is not a matter of someone deciding what is good and bad expression, but just an observation that a society of legally free but mentally degraded people is not a very free society in any meaningful sense. I get that it might simply be out of scope for some kinds of libertarianism, but a political philosophy is informed by what a person thinks matters. Why is this question on the effective exercise of liberty almost entirely ignored?

JS Mill talks about the development of individuality, human capability and how society is made richer by the diverse experiments of life. But that this can only be done well when the mental faculties and core human abilities are well developed. This is why he believed a strong education was essential in a healthy liberal society.

Further, I believe today, there are a certain set of issues brought on by new technology that makes threats to the internal ability to exercise freedom of expression more pressing. Just to note a few:

• News and social media driving a habituation of emotional reactivity over thoughtful discussion and evaluation of issues.
• The increasingly concerning trend of people outsourcing critical thinking and the ability to articulate thoughts to LLMs.
• The damage to attention span and ability to concentrate as a result of extended consumption of short form content.

I see these as threats to human creativity, critical thinking and originality - the core ability to effectively exercise free action both at a personal and societal level. Perhaps I’m imagining these issues to be more significant than they are, but issues like them related to poor education, growing mental health issues, the weakening or corrupting of human faculties through unhealthy habits - why are these not at least equally as offensive to a libertarian as outside restriction?

What is the libertarian solution here?

Which think tank do you prefer? Cato or Mises?

Libertarianism prides itself on its intellectual foundation. You despise idealism, relying instead on rational choice theory, Mises’ praxeology, and economic cost-benefit analysis. You claim the free market is the perfect mechanism and that people act exclusively to maximize their own utility.

But if we apply your own laws of economics, game theory, and opportunity cost to the very fact of your participation in the libertarian movement, a fundamental paradox emerges.

This article is not a debate about whether freedom is good. It is an audit of your personal life strategy. Try to answer these questions while staying within the framework of rational economics, rather than switching to the language of religious preachers.

Part 1. The Accounting of Opportunity Cost: The Mathematics of Your Illusions

Let’s drop the abstractions and look at dry numbers.
The main platforms of your community have existed for years:

• r/Libertarian — created in January 2008.
• r/Anarcho_Capitalism — created in November 2008.
• r/AskLibertarians — created in October 2013.

Combined, that’s hundreds of thousands of members and millions of reads. Imagine an "average" ideological libertarian. If, since 2008, he spent just 1 hour a day reading Rothbard, arguing in comments, proving the inefficiency of the Fed, and fighting leftists, by today he has burned about 6,000 hours of his life.

What is 6,000 hours in the free market?
It’s not just "free time after work." It is writing the code for two IT startups from scratch. It is reaching fluency in Mandarin. It is an MBA and a fully built network of useful connections. It is seed capital that would already be generating compound interest.

You might say: "I do this not for money, but for morality and freedom!" or "I can work and browse Reddit at the same time." But praxeology is ruthless: by choosing to spend a marginal hour on political activism, you did not spend it on building your capital.

Hence the first questions:

1. If you claim to act out of moral duty, sacrificing your time with no guaranteed return so that future generations can live in a free society—how do you economically and psychologically differ from the communists who urged people to endure hardships today for a brighter tomorrow?
2. Imagine the outcome: libertarianism wins, the state disappears. But the former bureaucrats, lobbyists, and "crony capitalists" who milked the state for those 18 years and fought against you will enter the new anarcho-capitalism with millions of dollars, connections, and real estate. Meanwhile, you enter it with a deficit of 6,000 hours. In your brave new world, private capital decides everything. Where is the rational egoism if you single-handedly, and for free, built a system where your bosses and the owners of the private courts will be the very people who exploited the state while you were writing posts?
3. Look at the platform owners, podcast creators, and thought leaders in your movement. They monetize your traffic, receive donations, and sell books and lectures. From a game-theory perspective, they act entirely rationally—converting your ideological rage into their private capital. Are you, the rank-and-file activists, not the very "useful idiots" you so love to mock among the left?

Part 2. The Leftist Contrast: Why Socialists Turned Out to Be Better Investors

You despise the left and labor unions for their economic illiteracy. But let’s compare the ROI (Return on Investment) of leftist and libertarian activism from the perspective of the participant's cynical self-interest.

When a socialist, union member, or leftist activist spends their 6,000 hours, they receive dividends before the global victory of their ideology.

• Unions in France strike—and secure a reduction of working hours to 35 a week while maintaining their salary. They physically claimed back their free time.
• The left in Scandinavia achieved free childcare, healthcare, and education. They reduced their personal out-of-pocket costs for raising children.
• Members of kibbutzim or cooperatives receive a share in collective property and insurance in case of illness.

The leftist movement rewards its adherents. It converts political time into material benefits and social protection here and now.

Now look at yourselves:
4. The libertarian movement gives you no protection from being fired, no insurance, no capital, and no exclusive rights after victory. You demand colossal sacrifices from your followers, guaranteeing them in return only the right to compete under disadvantageous conditions. If leftist structures pay their participants with tangible benefits, and your structure demands unpaid labor for an abstraction, who between you actually fails to understand the economics of incentives?
5. The perfect game-theory strategy for living under anarcho-capitalism is to accumulate maximum capital under the state (including government contracts) so you can later buy the best private security and courts. Doesn't the math prove that the most profitable strategy for a pragmatic libertarian is to publicly support the state, get rich off it, and wait for the naive fanatics from Reddit to bleed while overthrowing the government at their own expense?

Part 3. The Grafton Failure: A 20-Year-Long Hypocrisy

You often say: "We don't need the state; we have reputation institutions, the NAP (Non-Aggression Principle), ostracism, and contracts."

But history gave you the perfect chance. The "Free Town Project" in Grafton, New Hampshire (USA). This wasn't the wild jungle—it was a town protected from external enemies by the US military, integrated into a massive economy, with a great climate. For 100 years before the libertarians arrived, there had been no bear attacks.

Hundreds of ideological anarcho-capitalists moved there. Taxes were cut. Police budgets were slashed. And what happened? A group of "free citizens" started dumping garbage and feeding bears. This is a classic negative externality. Their actions created a direct threat to life (a NAP violation) for their neighbors. Bears started killing pets and besieging homes.

And this is where your main myth collapses. You claim the free market will instantly solve the problem through private courts and reputational damage (boycotts).

1. More than 15 years have passed since the experiment. In that time, millions of posts have been written on r/Anarcho_Capitalism and r/Libertarian. Why have the intellectual base of libertarians, your authorities, and your channels never officially condemned those specific individuals who fed the bears and acknowledged it as a crime against the NAP?
2. Where was your vaunted institution of reputation? Why didn't you subject the NAP violators to global libertarian ostracism? Why didn't local private businesses in Grafton refuse to sell them food to force them to stop endangering the community? If the desire to sell a can of beans to a violator is more important to you than the basic safety of your neighbors, how will your system handle a mega-corporation dumping toxins into a river?
3. There was no dictatorship in Grafton; no one forbade you from opening private arbitration. But no one took responsibility. The threat was stopped only by the arrival of a state game warden who threatened fines. If, in 15 years, you couldn't apply your own laws to a dozen misfits in the greenhouse conditions of a small town, why should we believe your laws will work on the scale of a 140-million-person country?

Your Move

You cannot answer "we do this for freedom" or try to drape yourselves in the mantle of holy martyrs.

First, because this makes you altruistic idealists working for free for the benefit of society (which destroys your own praxeology and turns you into the very leftists you despise).
Second, what great lack of freedom are you talking about? You live (or ideologically orient yourself) in the USA—a country where in most states private ownership of a combat arsenal is allowed, light drugs are legalized in many places, power is decentralized, and corporations wield colossal influence. You already have a baseline that many in the world can only dream of. You are burning your life for the right not to pay taxes for roads and to ignore environmental regulations. Is this marginal increase in "freedom" worth thousands of hours of your life?

And you cannot hide behind morality, because your children pay for your morality.
Those 6,000 hours you spent arguing on the internet, reading theory, and fighting political battles—those are hours you stole from your family. You didn't spend them setting up a trust fund for your child, paying for their elite education, or passing down hard skills. You are making your children poorer right now.

And now remember the finale: in that very anarcho-capitalism you are building, your children will need capital to buy private justice, good security, and healthcare. But you didn't accumulate this capital because you were busy "fighting for the idea." With your own hands, you are preparing your children to become wage laborers (or disenfranchised outsiders) for those former state bureaucrats and crony capitalists who spent all this time hoarding money. Your "morality" is the economic betrayal of your own offspring.

And you cannot say "we will regulate everything through the NAP and private courts," because Grafton will forever remain a monument to your inability to punish violators of your own rules. If you didn't apply ostracism to the neighbor with the bears, you will never apply it to a billionaire with a private army.

So, my final question to libertarians:
After the math of opportunity cost has been exposed, after it has been proven that you are enriching your enemies and stripping your children of their competitive advantage—who among you is ready to honestly raise your hand and say: "Yes, I am an irrational altruist, ready to sacrifice my family's well-being for a utopia whose fruits will be reaped by others"?

Answer directly. No slogans.

P.S. For outside readers (observers):
Watch closely how they respond to this article. Libertarians love to accuse everyone around them of economic ignorance, appealing to cold logic, egoism, and market incentives. But trapped in this logical snare, they will be unable to use their own tools.

You will witness a miracle: pragmatic capitalists will transform before your eyes into religious fanatics. They will start talking about "faith in a righteous cause," "sacrifice," "moral duty," and abstract ideals—meaning they will start speaking exactly like those very socialists they hate so much. Watch the comments; it will be the best proof that libertarianism is not economics. It is just another religion.

My orig.\\nInal tried to post about this subject got deleted , so i'm going to try again. Forgive grammatical errors.I'm using talk to text.

I just had a argument with chat GPT like, I do every now and then.When I drink ears by myself. His main argument is that we should not do away with lobbyists, because it would be hard to do.And it would invite other forms of influence.

After a very frustrating argument , I could not get a legitimate reason on why we shouldnt do away with it just because it is morally wrong. Does anyone have an argument on why rich people and corporations should have the most influence to deregulate? Or to ceate laws in the first place? Chat g p t's biggest answer is that it would fix one problem and create a vacuum where influence would come from other places. My answer was that we should start somewhere. Fix one problem at a time and vote on new ones as they come up. Our government greatest strength lies in the fact that the writers of the contest constitution and founding fathers main goal was the greatest system that could be changed on the fly. That's the best part about our government is that when it's working correctly, we can vote on and address new problems as they arrive, people forget that the amendments are amendments, people forget what the word amendments mean they mean a change, and there is a method to add or subtract and change existing once that is the only Protection against their main argument.

It's stupid to say we shouldn't change the laws on lobbyists because it would create new problems period\\nI'm hoping to find someone that could present a logical argument against me. Specifically , can anyone morally argue that lobbyists are morally correct?

Libertarianism Is Economically Irrational Even for the People Fighting for It

Imagine three equally capable people in 2008.

The first spends one free hour every day promoting libertarianism: reading theory, writing posts, arguing online, persuading people, and fighting against the state.

The second simply focuses on his career and business.

The third cooperates with the state: he joins the political or bureaucratic establishment, receives government contracts, licenses, connections, privileged information, cheap capital, and access to protected markets. He may even actively oppose libertarian reforms because they threaten his position.

Over eighteen years, the first person invests roughly 6,000 hours in an idea.

The second and third invest those same hours in money, property, and influence.

Now consider the two possible outcomes.

The state survives

The libertarian activist loses.

He spent thousands of hours fighting for a reform that never happened.

The ordinary entrepreneur accumulated capital.

The political insider accumulated capital, connections, assets, and political influence. He earned the highest return precisely because he cooperated with the system and helped prevent it from changing.

Libertarianism wins

It may seem that the activist has finally won.

But the new system does not reset the game.

The money, real estate, companies, connections, information, and managerial experience accumulated under the state do not disappear.

The political establishment enters the new market economy not as a defeated class, but as a wealthy one.

Its members can buy privatized infrastructure, land, companies, housing, media outlets, arbitration services, and private security.

Their networks will not disappear either. Former officials, bankers, government contractors, and owners of state-protected monopolies already know one another and already know how to coordinate.

And what does the person who spent eighteen years fighting for libertarianism receive?

He is not entitled to any share of the new society.

Nobody compensates him for his 6,000 hours.

Nobody gives him an advantage over the people who fought against his ideas.

He is simply told:

>

And he must compete against people who accumulated capital while he was building a free market for them at no cost.

He may even end up working for a former government contractor who spent decades opposing libertarianism, but then used money earned through the state to buy assets in the new libertarian society.

The payoff matrix therefore looks like this:

Strategy	The state survives	Libertarianism wins
Promote libertarianism	Wasted time	Freedom without capital
Accumulate capital	Greater wealth	Greater opportunity
Cooperate with the state and resist reform	Maximum rent and influence	Capital and networks carry over into the new system

Even fighting against libertarianism may be more profitable than fighting for it.

If the state survives, the political establishment keeps its rents.

If libertarians win, the political establishment enters their society with money, property, connections, and organizational superiority.

It can lose politically and still win economically.

The libertarian activist can win politically and still lose economically.

This is not merely a free-rider problem. The system rewards the counter-player: the person who exploited the state, resisted reform, and then captured a large part of the benefits created by someone else’s victory.

The incentive structure of socialist activism is different.

A union, party, or cooperative can reward its participants before any final political victory: with higher wages, legal protection, financial assistance, bargaining power, jobs, positions, or a stake in a collective institution.

The stronger the socialist movement becomes, the more resources it can potentially distribute among the people who helped build it.

A libertarian movement, by contrast, effectively dissolves its own coalition after victory:

>

Socialism at least attempts to reward cooperation.

Libertarianism rewards the accumulation of private capital—even when that capital was accumulated through state privilege and through active resistance to libertarianism itself.

The rational strategy is therefore:

>

So who has a commercial incentive to promote libertarianism at all?

Why should a rational person spend eighteen years building a system in which the main prize goes to the people who exploited the state, fought against reform, and accumulated capital while he was arguing on Reddit?

Libertarians build the free market. Their opponents accumulate the money required to buy it after the libertarians win.

In the end, those who fought against freedom inherit it as owners.

Those who fought for freedom inherit it as employees.

We are always told one of 3 things.

1: Hours will be cut to save money
2: Prices will rise because the consumer will carry the costs
3: Billionaires will leave and their business will evaporate into thin air

Why don’t we see this happen in real life? No seriously. I understand the theory. If the rich people lose money then everyone else will pay for it. When we get our hour cut, we are normally given a reason. Me, nor anyone around me has ever heard a manager say “We are cutting our hours because the guy who owns this place is losing money to taxes.” I see prices go up from time to time but price increases are normally do to problems that happen in Washington or the supply chain. How many of the billionaires in your area actually move after they threatened to?

I’m not talking about what you see in the news. The news can make anything look like anything. Why don’t we see this stuff happen in real life? I haven’t seen you haven’t seen it and no one around. You has seen it either. So why do we believe in this stuff?

Somebody have given me 3 samples.

1. Friends

2. Families

3. Communities

Let's examine friends. Elon befriend Jensen Huang. They eat lunch together. Sometimes Elon pay, sometimes Jensen pay. They ride private planes together. Go to billionaire club together.

Then Elon says I need 10k GPU. How would they do so? Tit for tat? You help me once lah give me 10k GPU. Latter you need money I give you money.

No. They turn that 10k GPU into transactions.

So friends trade when money is significant. Things are commodified when money is significant.

Families. Not a valid counter example. In US you can't pay women to be your wife. In Indonesia you can. It's called contract marriage. Not illegal. Not legally recognized either. In US you have sugar relationship I think. It's commodified.

Ah. But people still get married you said. They still have boyfriends/girlfriends. Fair enough. But that's because transactional relationship is very restrictive. Like do it too openly you hit prostitution laws. Also child support is far from normal market contract. The laws, rather than agreement decide the amount.

Ironically, a woman that love her children would agree to a contract where the men pays a lot to children's portfolio. Rich men would prefer that too. But the court make such contract impossible. Money got to go mom.

There's surrogacy. But it has restrictions. Like the eggs can't be from the same donor with mom and you can't surrogate "normal way".

So families are not commodified because commodification is legally complex.

The last one is communities. That's also a very interesting counter example. See. The jews used to have this privatized communities called Kibbutzim. It's not commodified. They stick around due to shared ideology and so on.

After a while, many Kibbutzim becomes joint stock kibbutzim. So shares are tradeable. And the commodified version is simply better I think.

But yea. Are there privatized communities that's not commodified? Amish society isn't. So it's a valid counter example.

Another sample is nation state. Citizenship of most nation states are not commodified. Even though technically there is nothing in international laws that says a state cannot declare that their citizenship is tradeable.

And I think this is a very interesting counter example. If citizenship is tradeable and have market price, I think libertarianism will win. Many of our ideas are kardol hicks efficient and would improve citizenship market price.

Why it doesn't?

Another sample is a dynastic rulers that behave like owners on a state. Often, those are pretty economically libertarian. Things like small kingdoms like Monaco, Dubai, Macau, Liechtenstein.

I want to explore more of this idea.

I think price discovery and market transactions improve humans well being and when not restricted we will tend to commodify all things, if not most things.

Any interesting samples or counter examples?

As someone who is about to turn 18 (tomorrow), I’m gonna have to start paying taxes, and be responsible for voting, and be more financially independent. So economical systems have been on my mind. I live in America, and my way of being patriotic is by doing my best to make the country I live in a better place for not only myself, but the generations after me.

I think the problem when people are trying to figure out an economical system is that people feel like they have to choose just one, and the whole one. 

I feel like things could be solved way easier if we picked the best parts of all sorts of things and stitched them together into.

For example; Taxes. Nobody likes taxes, but they’re necessary in order to keep things going. But the people paying taxes should have the right to choose what their taxes go into. 

Libertarianism has that down, as an *idea*, but it only works if 100% of the community is not being lazy, and has the interest of other people in their hearts when making these choices. A good example of this is an audiobook I’ve been listening to. “The Libertarian Bear”. 

We can fix that part by making taxes mandatory, but making sure the people have the choice of what they’re paying for. To do this, we could put in a system where they decide what their taxes pay for by deciding what they’re doing with their money. 

-The sales tax on gas goes towards paying for roads. If you don’t think roads are necessary, then just don’t drive a car. If you’re driving a car, you’re helping pay to build the roads that you drive on. 

-School fees (which are a little higher, but affordable for the general public, anyone who is unable to pay school fees for their child can still enroll their child into school, they just have to prove that they are not able to pay them) go towards providing the children with basic learning resources like textbooks, pencils, pens, erasers, backpacks, uniforms, etc. They also go towards maintaining the school, paying the teachers, feeding the kids a balanced and healthy lunch (not the prison food shit we get served in public schools in America), etc.

-Having kids. Benefits for having kids still exist, and should exist. (I’m still on the fence about if birth rates are actually low enough to become a threat, or if it’s propaganda spread by sexists and shit, because it looks to me more like we have a problem with too many people and not enough money and jobs and homes and food) But, you’d get higher benefits if you **adopt** kids instead, or first. Because there are so many children that don’t even have homes, children that are already alive. Money spent on paying adoption fees and such goes towards schools, as well as playgrounds and paying crossings guards, and funding childcare and protection services. So if you don’t have a kid, you won’t have to send em to school, and you won’t be paying for the education and facilities for kids that aren’t yours. But I mean, you *should* want to help any kid, yours or not. So There would be a lot of charity events, things that encourage people to spend a little bit of money to make their neighborhood a safer place for the littles. Adding onto this, the cost of things necessary to raise and care for a child should be reduced significantly from what they are. It’s ridiculous, nobody should be needing to spend that much money for baby formula or baby food, dear lord.

-Buying fresh fruits and veg, local produce. The sales tax on that specifically goes towards upkeep of the farmland and things related to it. If you think the farms aren’t important, then don’t buy produce. Sales tax on meat and animal products go towards upkeep of livestock and paying the people who make the food available. So, if you’re not buying animal products, you’re not paying for the products to be produced.

-Property taxes. Paying property taxes, owning a house or apartment, homesteading, etc. goes towards building more homes, paying the salaries of the fire department, and basic law enforcement. As well as maintaining a balance between city growth and protecting the environment around it. Like old growth forests. If you don’t think having a fire department is important, I dunno man, live in your car or something.

-Speaking of law enforcement, the punishment for abusing authority is higher than it is (where I am) if someone pulls strings to get a judge to give an improper ruling, then both that judge, and the string-puller, are punished. Either by fines, or jail time. Any judge that rules innocent for someone who obviously did a horrible thing to a child is immediately investigated and their hard drive is searched, because only a child predator would protect a child predator.

- A zero waste policy. Restaurants, buffets, and food businesses often make an excess of food, and throw a ton of it away at the end of the day. Since they’re throwing it away, they wouldn’t be making money from it anyways. So, extra food that is made and not sold by the end of the day, and that would have been thrown out, goes to the less fortunate, because people who are starving won’t care if a donut is a little bit stale. This does not mean that lower quality or ruined foods are given to the people who need it, and any buisness found guilty of doing so would be fined. Any food that can’t be sold, but can be donated, should be. Food pantries and all that. Adding onto this, factory farming would be illegal. With produce like fruits and veg, maximizing output and minimizing space should be a priority. But farming animals should mean they’re given the right amount of space to thrive and produce more product, because a pasture-raised, well-fed and happy cow probably tastes better than a VR-raised and bare-minimum-fed cow in a cage they can’t move in.

-Of course more money is put into environmental safety and conservation. Paying your water bill pays both for the company to upkeep the pipes and allat, but also goes into keeping up-to-date on the most energy-efficient ways of treating sewage and keeping the natural water pollution-free (or minimized at least) Paying the electric and heating bill does what it regularly does, but also funds research into more clean power sources, like geothermal power like Iceland, hydroelectric, and nuclear power. Yes, believe it or not, nuclear power is much safer than the media has led people to believe. In fact, there was an entire smear campaign against it done by big oil companies, in the 50’s I think. Most meltdowns (that I know of) were as a result of poor management (3 mile island) or a previous natural disaster (fukushima).

-Socialized healthcare. Healthcare should not be so expensive that insurance companies even need to exist. It was insurance companies in the first place that lobbied for healthcare to become more and more costly. And on the topic of insurance, it should be illegal for insurance companies to deny coverage based on nonsensical arbitrary rulings by people who don’t have a medical license. They cannot say shit like “well you haven’t had a seizure in a while so we’re gonna stop covering your expensive anti-convulsants”. Going back to healthcare itself, lifesaving drugs like epinephrin or insulin or narcan should be freely available, and at the very least, very affordable. People who don’t need insulin shots aren’t going to just take insulin, because having too much insulin can also be dangerous, and as far as I’m aware, insulin can not get you high. Life saving and emergency surgeries like appendectomies, organ transplant, blood transfusions, cancer treatments, anything involving damage to important bodily structures, should be far more affordable, and if the patient is unable to afford it, and they can prove that they are unable to afford it, then the cost is reduced significantly. Reproductive care should also be very affordable, and should be invested and studied equally between the sexes (the three biological sexes, mind you sex is different from gender. Trans affirming healthcare after a transition is included in this). Surgeries that are not necessary to save a life, or immediately deal with a serious illness, would cost a little more. Like a surgery I had when I was ten, my life was not in danger, but the surgery would improve my quality of life if done. It’s called a bilateral femoral de-rotational osteotomy. Cosmetic surgeries for trauma patients (burn victims, massive facial scars, missing parts of the nose or ears and all that, any massive and obvious damage that makes the individual unable to carry on with daily life without feeling like they’re supposed to hide) would be more expensive than the previous kinds, but still more affordable than it is (at least where I am). Cosmetic surgery like botox, lip filler, BBL, breast implants, hair removal, tanning, etc. Would cost more, but definitely not more than they cost right now (again, applied to where I am at least). Dental care and ocular care should be included under the same category as medical care, because your teeth and your eyes are still a goddamn part of your body. The money that you’re paying for healthcare goes towards the upkeep of hospitals, paying the staff, and providing essential care for those who are unable to afford it.

-Last additional things that I want to mention but haven’t completely formulated. Government is not allowed to fund terrorists, I can’t believe I even have to say it, but here we are. Also not starting ears over petty shit. We’re at the point where we do not need to seize land with combat, so we oughta stop doing that. Corruption is more heavily punished, idk how we’d enforce that, but it oughta chance soon cause I’m real tired of the moldy tangerine that’s in charge where I have to live. Sex crimes have harsher punishments, I will not be taking any debate on this one. People who have been convicted of tax evasion, (i’m not talking about someone who fudged the numbers a little bit, i’m talking about big corporations) do not get to be in the government. Why should our taxes go to you if you wouldn’t bother paying taxes when you were supposed to? After someone in the government’s term has ended, a poll is held to determine whether or not the people think they did a good enough job to be allowed to run again the next time. Lobbying (at least in the context of lobbying votes and government shit) would be illegal. I don’t understand why it’s legal in the first place, because as far as I’m aware, it’s rich people paying politicians money to do certain things, and that seems to go against one of those really important rules that says you can’t pay people to vote a certain way, idk.

That’s all I can think of at the moment, and it already took me a few hours to draft this up, but I think it’s a good start, and if we work together, maybe we could actually make a meaningful change in our world. Please add on any suggestions, I’d love to hear what you think might help. Any genuine solutions to problems you face in daily life, or that affect the country you live in, are welcome. And please, be respectful. This is here so we all can actually have an intelligent discussion.

And, remember, the point here is to at least *come up with ideas* about the ideal system to live in. Even if it seems like it’s not feasible due to the current state, at least share something. It could do more than you think.

EDIT: Yes, these things might make taxes higher, but we would also tax the rich 70% (could go higher for sure, but yk) and work to make minimum wage the same as living wage. And make it so that a house cannot be owned unless the person owning said house is actually living in it for at *least* half the year. So yes, people can have vacation homes and rent them out, but they can’t rack up the price like crazy. Also landlords have a basic list of things they’re required to do, no more of those ridiculous landlord dictators

As the title suggests I was curious to see opinions on home owners associations across the US. I've been seeing videos of people being fined for having more natural gardens and having home decor not align with the hoa guidelines. What do you guys make of this? I've heard some of my libertarian friends argue against this and some argue for it stating since it's voluntary to buy a home in an HOA it's alright for the most part

Would be curious to know wider opinions

People pay taxes for the police, fire department, water, roads, etc. Why is healthcare any different? Isn't it even more important?

Socialism, Feudalism, Mecantilism, Monarchies, Communism....

Somebody decides they would like something to be fixed, built, invented.... they either voluntarily raise their own money, use their own time and energy and take risks of losing the above.... or, somebody who controls the Army and All the Guns TELLS YOU....

1. This land will belong to this group/person/company (Capital allocation)

2. Your time will be spent doing this (Labor Allocation)

3. My rules are now the ONLY RULES (Arbitration / Legislation / Judiciary (or none)

4. Losses are due to the incompetence of others (kill them) or the peasants not having their collective hearts and minds properly dedicated (Mao Great Leap Backward / Cultural Revolution

......Capitalism will have some Big Winners... but generally, nobody is compelled to eat ZOO ANIMALS because a socialist Dictator named Jugo Chavez appointed a boot-licking Bus Driver to Run every industry in the country.

I am asking in the context of video games, movies, software etc. Notably, the newest installment of GTA is not releasing with a physical disc. This does not seem to go well the fans of the game. With most of the major corporations pushing for subscription model, many people are left with no choice besides pirating.

And before anyone complains about theft, I don't consider intellectual "property" as property.

Would you consider moving to the U.S. Virgin Islands to help establish a liberty paradise? The U.S. Virgin Islands has a voting-age population of only about 70,000 people and is a paradise for anyone who loves the beach lifestyle. If 20,000 libertarians moved there, they could elect liberty-minded politicians and implement libertarian policies in a relatively short period of time.

Because the U.S. Virgin Islands is a U.S. territory, U.S. citizens can move there just as they would move to another state. The challenge with the Free State Project in New Hampshire is that New Hampshire has a population of about 1.4 million—and it's cold!

What are your thoughts?

I don’t typically post in political forums but today I’m asking a few different political communities, because I am genuinely curious what you guys think.

I know this is form of social media but other platforms which are more reel-based seem to heavily focus on 1/2 issues. I will assume that the first one that you list is the most important issue to you right now.

Thanks in advance!