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.
Used to think I was libertarian. But now I think it's too absolute of an ideal to be any good for humanity. I definitely think free healthcare, housing, food, and education should be guarenteed for everyone.
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 think we read different books if you think her characters were altruistic. I remember her specifically calling out altruism as a sin (compared to the virtue of selfishness).
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.