(December 29, 2017 at 1:14 pm)CapnAwesome Wrote: I consider myself a pragmatic libertarian. People should have the maximum amount of freedom while we have enough regulation to protect the environment, health and safety of the population. And regulation to protect consumers from their own poor decisions, ie the subprime mortgage crisis.
I've always liked libertarians. I'm not one, but there are two things I like about you guys
1) Your ideology is principled and sensical.
2) I agree with you on drug legalization and social issues.
One criticism that I've always aimed at libertarians is that they do not seem to produce many moderate candidates. They're always these balls-to-the-wall "no government" people. Nice to see a "pragmatic libertarian"... it makes sense.
The only point of contention have is that free market capitalism is exploitative in nature. Sure, it puts products on the shelves and money in people's hands. But left unmodified, capitalism has shown again and again that it prioritizes useless trinkets over human welfare. Add to that its propensity to overproduce and create economic crises, and you have something of a disaster when you calculate the human cost. I think we should do everything we can to ensure that working class families live with dignity. Also my comments about development made earlier in the thread apply here.
If a given solution to capitalism is more problematic than capitalism, this is no good either. But I have a problem valuing a system which values production and consumption over human welfare. Inasmuch as we can improve upon capitalism, we ought to. And I wholeheartedly disagree with the motto, "the freer the markets, the freer the people."
