If you are a Libertarian and hold liberty as your core value, why do you not believe in universal healthcare? Nothing impacts liberty more than sickness and death.

I don't think it's quite so organized as this mindset leads to extremely self-absorbed and selfish people who arent good at organizing en masse. Multiple times now, libertarians have tried to form their own communities on land and sea and it always falls apart once they actually try to form the communities as it just turns into government rules and taxes like we have now. They don't even want to live by their own group's authority.

Libertarians are political extremists who hate anything related to the government but don't care about being oppressed by private businesses, or they think that it simply won't happen in their utopia. Libertarians are everything they hate about the woke left, only applied to the government.

Libertarians don’t give a flying fuck about liberty.

Are you talking about people who are misappropriating the term, or the actual philosophy of libertarianism?

My anecdotal experience is 'temporarily embarrassed millionaires' lean Libertarian and imagine they'll be young and healthy until they're old and wealthy.

I recently got out of the military and it's been a complete shock how bad the private healthcare system is. So much red tape, so many charges, so much money being spent on both ends: to the insurance company, again to the insurance company (copays), and then to the provider when the insurance company won't cover things.

With Tricare? "Hey doc, I need this med for my migraines." "Alright, here you go." No charge.

The American health system is a complete scam keeping people under the boot of their employers and of the for-profit insurance companies.

In the case of UBI and universal healthcare, both of those would unequivocally make people more free.

It is important to note that, specifically, they are examples of positive liberty.

The sovereign citizens and the right wingers masquerading as Libertarians have given the ideology a bad name.

I agree.

If anarchists are often misunderstood I'd imagine libertarians even more so. Both philosophies advocate for the lack of a state, splitting between preference towards the community/collective vs individual, and are often misinterpreted to mean every thing the state does or should provide today can't exist without it.

Also, their liberty to exploit you for profit.

100% Libertarianism originated as a left wing movement in the 19th century. Right wing libertarianism didn't ooze out of the swamp till nearly a century later. In the mid 20th century. Post red scare when actual leftist were keeping their heads down due to fascist witch hunts. And unable to really call out the posers.

Real libertarians don't have a problem with government. They just believe that it should be focused on maximizing freedom, and access to it. Where the larpers are all about maximizing their personal freedom (privilege) and don't care if others have access.

This is also known as "Libertarian Socialism." Interestingly enough, this idea predates the current definition of Libertarianism by decades.

"Socialist" things like public infrastructure, and yes, public healthcare, would be supported by individual libertarianism.

Huh??????

I feel there now has to be a distinction made between “Capital Libertarians” and “Individual Libertarians”.

You might be interested in Isaiah Berlin's "Two Concepts of Liberty".

Basically, there is no absolute thing called "liberty", because anything you do changes the material world and the state of the material world also shapes what you're able to do. So you can't talk about simply "liberty", and must always describe it in terms of those two relationships. What Berlin calls "freedom to" and "freedom from".

For instance, I might consider my liberty to mean that I have the "freedom to" shoot a gun in the air. My neighbors might consider their liberty to mean that they have the "freedom from" falling bullets.

We can't create a policy which guarantees both "freedom to" and "freedom from" for all people. But we can create a policy that guarantees both for some people. We just have to allow that some people get to enjoy both the rights and the protections, while other people lack the rights and must suffer the consequences of others' actions.

And that might be why the contemporary conservative version of so-called "libertarianism" plays so well with a notion of a superior social class, whether that's economic, religious, or racial. You can invoke the word "liberty" in support of your attempts to bully others, and then you can invoke it again as a protection against others' attempts to bully you.

My bad....

I consider myself Libertarian, but I feel there now has to be a distinction made between “Capital Libertarians” and “Individual Libertarians”. One wants the liberty of capital, the other wants the liberty of the individual. I find myself in the latter. Corporations can go fuck themselves, the individual is paramount.

It may be better to stick with existing terms like positive and negative liberty.

But I'm 20 and healthy, why should I have to pay for healthcare for mrs. sickey over there? Did she even try being born without a chronic illness? Doubt it.

Don't forget lowering the age of consent

Libertarianism is just values free Capitalism.

It’s not really about liberty

Individual liberty is core to the philosophy of libertarianism.

it’s about freedom from taxes

This is a complicated issue, and it is not a cut and dry opinion of all libertarians to oppose all taxes in their entirety. A core idea in libertarianism is to avoid excessive government abuse of power — taxes are often viewed as one such abuse. Those that are more libertarian oriented, but are more favorable towards some types of taxes are, imo, more accurately referred to as Georgists, but it of course relies on exactly what taxes they support, and their rationale.

it’s about freedom from [...] consequences.

If you are referring to consequences from infringing on the freedoms of others, then that is not libertarian. Supporting the idea of liberty is to also support the liberty of others.

What you're describing is the difference between positive and negative liberty. In the case of healthcare, negative liberty would be one's freedom from having to pay taxes to support the healthcare of others, positive liberty would be one's freedom to get equal and fair access to healthcare. Libertarianism does concern itself more with the idea of negative liberty, as it seeks to separate from the state's interference in the lives of the individual.

It does seem to now mean "people that don't want to pay their taxes".

The best description for the modern "libertarian" I've heard is that they're just conservatives who smoke weed

"Libertarian" became popular in the US when it started being incorporated into various science fiction novels. Probably the most famous is "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress." I love the book as science fiction, but the society the author creates depends on so many caveats that even the author has the old style 'free' system fall apart as soon as an actual government [as opposed to prison regulations] is formed.

I'd personally prefer to not give them the satisfaction of calling themselves "libertarians", and to, instaed, call them out on their missapropriation — the philosophy should be defended from those who would tarnish it.

Or they delude themselves into thinking everyone will pay their fair share voluntarily, forgetting that rich people exist who don't give a fuck about the common good.

"Bb-but.. I w-wanna.. !"

How childishly reductive. I can’t believe this got upvoted.

Money Babies.

Libertarians want all the benefits of libertarianism AND socialism, but they don’t want to pay for any of it.

This is conjecture. Based on what are you making this claim? Libertarianism's main focus is on maximizing the negative liberty of the individual.

They want state-enforced socialism for themselves and crushing capitalist competition for all the people they feel are "beneath" them.

In that sense, you are correct.

Libertarians want freedom from government force. They want to be able to fund healthcare by choice. They want the freedom to not have taxes being used to send weapons oversees. Libertarians are for social and economic freedom.

Your comment precisely expresses my attitude. When it came up i used to say that I was fiscally conservative and social liberal. A Libertarian.

But the older I get the more I realize that Libertarianism isn't the fiction of Atlas Shrugged. There are many people of great worth that cannot be Dagny Taggart or Howard Roark.

Rand failed to take into account that the allure of increasing wealth subverts many bright creators into becoming resource vampires that in turn become oppressors. Ayn Rand would have loved Mark Zuckerberg's rise through intelligence and hard work, but what would she think of what he's ultimately built and what it's done to society?

Real people aren't as altruistic has her characters.

I agree. The world requires way to much subtlety to function well for everyone for single truth ideas and ways of doing things to work at large scales.

But now I think it’s too absolute of an ideal to be any good for humanity.

Would you mind elaborating on this?

Because they really just don’t want to pay taxes, which are needed to fund universal healthcare.

That is rather reductionist — it is more complicated than that.

Also most people who say they’re libertarian have no clue what the word means, and are morons.

I would be very hesitant to say "most" but there is indeed a faction that misappropriates the term.

They don't want to pay taxes because they don't like how government uses taxes and don't trust the government to do a good job. Plus, it's an additional layer of bureaucracy at the top which costs more money and is less efficient.

That's not fair. They also really care about getting rid of age of consent laws!

Libertarians only care about 2 things: lowest taxes possible and legal weed, and they would gladly sacrifice the latter in favor of the former. Anything else is nothing more than lip service.

This is a very ignorant statement.

I think there are roughly three subgenres of libertarian; the two you identify (wants hierarchy with warlords and wants public heroin use without jail time) but then there is also a third group that has focused a lot of rage on age of consent laws for some reason.

Libertarian care about maximizing social and economic liberties. Liberty being defined as freedom from authority. Taxes are forced on citizens so libertarians generally want to limit taxes to a minimum. I see no reason to believe that universal healthcare would be cheaper than insurance. The government is an inefficient monopoly where private insurance companies have to compete for the lowest rates.

Remember the government is not your friend.

The government is working out just fine for people in Nordic and other EU counties

How do you deal with bears?

I think certain industries should not be run for profit. It creates perverse incentives that harm the common man. For example healthcare.

I agree. The way that I generally look at it is that a lot of healthcare results in leonine contracts which cannot be fairly consented to. The free market requires conscious and uncoerced consent to be given by all parties involved.

Another industry I think shouldn’t be for profit is education. We want an educated population. It should be encouraged, so it should be free for anyone who wants it.

Personally, I would argue that it's a bit more complicated — it depends on the type, and manner of education. But, in a general sense, I would be inclined to agree.

In my view, libertarianism is a perspective that the government should interfere with the personal liberties of the individual as little as possible.

I agree.

Every single government action should be heavily scrutinized and challenged. Some actions are justified. For example regulating healthcare I think is justified.

I agree.

I believe that cooperatives should be encouraged if not explicitly mandated for large companies.

I have no issue with a large company/organization, so long as it is acting competitively. I personally think that the best place for cooperatives is where intrinsic monopolies appear, e.g. utilities.

Look at all hierarchies of power and challenge them.

I agree.

I think governments often make mistakes and through heavy handed actions end up screwing the average person. By dramatically limiting government action, you help prevent this.

I agree.

Remember the government is not your friend.

At the very least, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The feedback loop does seem to trend towards large government and overreach.

You just described a somewhat progressive leaning liberal.

You believe that the government should stay our of our homes, socially. Progressives have been leading that charge for decades, and moderates have been on board for a while now.

You believe in universal Healthcare and income. Those are very progressive ideals. Those are about as anti libertarian as it gets, because they take away a lot of "individual" freedom, because to fund that, roughly half of your income will need to go to taxes. Maybe more, I haven't looked at the numbers in a long time, but plenty of current examples to pick from.

You believe in industrial regulation to combat bad actors when necessary. That is a general liberal ideal.

Nothing besides keeping the government away from your personal life is even marginally libertarian. And that's pretty much the only overlap between libertarianism and liberalism.

This is all from a U.S. point of view.

Imo, it would be better worded as follows:

• Negative liberty: freedom from something.
• Positive liberty: freedom to do something.

I don't think being downvoted for answering the question in good faith should happen, but I do see a few bad faith answers that absolutely should be downvoted

Kinda thought lemmy was the better reddit. Seems it's just a different reddit.

You're right especially in that it almost makes sense - the only people I've seen who are more allergic to nuance than libertarians are Trumpists

there is a difference between freedom to and freedom from

The terms that you are looking for are postive and negative liberty, respectively.

To me, this reads like it implies that government and govt programs are bad because of the govt employees, but if you were to take those same "corrupt" politicians and put them to work at private companies that they would stop being "corrupt." Like it is a belief/reaction to one specific bad instance of a large government/program. "The government sucks at program X, so if we get rid of that program, the same general population will gain empathy, morals and efficiency if working for a company to run program X."

Damn, you'd have to be completely brain dead to still believe anything is more efficient than single payer healthcare. The US has the worst outcomes for the highest cost in terms of life expectancy. Same with roads, utilities, schools etc... the more you privatise the more expensive things get for a lower quality product.

A well regulated, competitive market is good for many things, but for others it's atrocious. An unregulated market has never produced good outcomes on any scale larger than the board of directors.

If you're seriously summarizing the libertarian agenda then I can't believe any one over 14 could hold these ideas unless they were VERY sheltered from reality.

Libertarians see government as inherently prone to corruption and thus want to limit their power as much as possible.

I prefer voluntary interaction to using force or violence. Personally I believe we're obligated to help each other and our community and would voluntarily be a collectivist - I'm just not willing to force everyone else to.

We still need to modify liability and IP law to disincentivize megacorps and not use violence to benefit the wealthy.

How do libertarians generally handle minority rights? Is it as bad as conservatives? A good example are all of these anti-trans and anti choice in abortion bills. What would a libertarian think of these?

Looking on the internet it kind of feels like libertarians are usually suburban people or people so out of the way that the messes in Washington don't affect them as hard as those in the cities. So I have only met one and he didn't seem to fond of our black coworkers, if you get what I mean.

Liberty (to me) is freedom from authority.

The term for this is "negative liberty": the freedom from something; whereas, "positive liberty" is the freedom to do something. Libertarianism, generally, aligns with the idea of negative liberty.

The problem with this is that in a free democratic system, government is something you do, not something which is done to you. You can't just pick and choose which aspects of government you like. Part of the social contract is that if you want clean water and plumbing and shit, then you agree to abide by fair democratic consensus. If you don't, I suppose you are free to go live in the woods.

The problem is defining what acceptable positive rights involves. There are people who think that having to "work to survive" is somehow a major human rights abuse. I don't think that anyone should be entitled to not have to work unless they are severely disabled and can't work. At the same time, expecting people to work multiple jobs is corporate oppression.

I really like your answer but to me this is what motivated me towards libertarianism. We have been voting between two parties that both are authoritarian in different ways and the result stinks. Let's try the other half of the compass for a change. If government sucks then don't vote for more government to fix the corrupt system. Vote to limit government and give power back to the people.

In other words, they’re all about their Liberty to do what ever they want.

I disagree. What you are describing is positive liberty. Libertarianism, generally, aligns more with negative liberty.

Libertarians are the right wing version of 20 year old socialists who want free stuff and have no understand of what really drives and motivates people.

I tend to lean left but I'm incredibly disappointed with the state of the political landscape.

I always assumed it was impossible for a free market to exist in healthcare. One important tenant of a free market is being able to freely enter and exit the market at will. Exiting the healthcare market is impossible. You can't reasonably choose to leave the market when life is forcing you to engage in it, or choosing to leave the market would lead to death. It's the equivalent of having a gun put to your head.

So I support free market solutions where they exist. Health insurance may be one of the few situations where it doesn’t.

The main issue with healthcare is that it is a leonine contract. Because of that, it is incompatible with capitalism.

This is more a distinction between positive and negative liberty. Positive liberty is the freedom to do something, and negative liberty is the freedom from something.

Utopias aren't real, and authoritarianism ends the same way whether you're a fascist or a tankie.

I wanna eat buckets of cheese

Before applying any of these so-called "isms" to the collective, the most important step, imo, is to ensure that there is synchronization on the collective's ideals and principles. In general, understanding all extremes, their benefits and drawbacks, is the best approach forward. One must be rooted in their ideals and draw from diverse pools of experience to round out one's beliefs.