FreedomPatriot @[email protected]

Americans think that the collapse of the USA is a funny joke.

the america you are holding on to died many generations ago

@freepatriot
Hey, some us celebrate the end of the big gay.

@freepatriot - I don't cause I remember what images of civil war torn cities across the planet looked like decades ago.

@freepatriot I don't think libertarians support gun control, or welfare. In fact, the stated opinions of libertarians are against those things.

However, I am concerned that the net effect of libertarian policies, as they get implemented, will increase both, although it would be unintended.

Here's my reasoning. And I am giving just one example here.

Libertarian policies, from my understanding, are that lesbian couples should be able to guard their marijuana patches with AR-15s.

The trouble with this is that there is now no doubt that marijuana use, although maybe fine for some people, leads to seriously increased risks of debilitating, and lifetime debilitating, mental illness. (1)(2) Including up to 8 points -- i.e. half of a standard deviation -- of permanent IQ loss. (3)

People with debilitating mental illness become a social concern. The average American is pretty soft-hearted and we don't want people starving or dying from exposure. So people whose mental illness makes them unemployable are going to be taxpayer supported. So this is a policy whose net effect will be expansion of the welfare state. And 8 points of IQ can make the difference between a high school graduate, and a college graduate, and at least a 500k lifetime difference in income -- that's nothing to sneeze at.

Furthermore, the gay thing is not just a matter of what people might do in the privacy of their own bedrooms. Lesbian couples have a much higher rate of domestic violence(4), necessitating greater public intervention. And because it is so expensive, nearly all HIV treatments are subsidized by taxpayers to the tune of billions. So this increases public cost as well.

When you have a society with an increasing number of mentally ill and lower-IQ people engaging in increased levels of domestic violence, the odds of people being willing to accept gun control in order to keep guns out of the hands of people they cannot trust increase dramatically.

BECAUSE the powers that be seem to favor the marijuana and the gay thing, it is very easy for libertarians to make progress on those sorts of issues. But much harder for them to make progress on shrinking the welfare state. So even though libertarians may champion both equally, in practice because there will only be support for one part of it, the outcome of libertarianism becomes skewed in such a way as to increase the welfare state and odds of gun control.

It would seem to me that for libertarianism to actually be effective it would have to FIRST dismantle all social safety nets. And then if people want to end up with schizophrenia, lower IQ or being beaten by a butch lesbian ... well, maybe some charitable people as individuals might help them out, but it won't be taxpayer subsidized.

I am sympathetic to many libertarian views, but I think that in practice for libertarianism to achieve its actual stated objectives rather than the opposite, it has to first work incessantly to tear down the welfare state and all associated bureaucracy, even if that means people dying in the streets. Without that, people have to work with the natural consequences of their decisions -- i.e. liberty. At which point, maybe things like making dope legal would make sense because the sole public obligation would be the hygienic cleanup of the overdose bodies to be dumped in mass graves.




(1) https://www.columbiapsychiatry.org/news/recreational-c...
(2) https://medicine.yale.edu/news-article/behind-the-smok...
(3) https://www.samhsa.gov/substance-use/learn/marijuana/r...
(4) https://interactofwake.org/resources/gender-based/

@freepatriot IMAGE CONTAINS BIRB

@freepatriot I definitely do not favor punitive taxation of the wealthy, or an income tax at all. After all, an income tax is highly invasive and the deck is stacked.

At the same time, we should recognize that right now a great many people enjoy impressive incomes, not because they are so smart or innovative or hard working, but because they had the foresight to buy regulatory legislation that would pose a barrier to competitors entering the market, thereby securing profits at a level that would be impossible in an actual free market.

So what I favor is the removal of this favorable regulatory treatment of incumbents, as well as actual enforcement of anti-monopoly legislation that would generally prevent buying out of competitors. In this way, there will be more competition, and the ability to generate wealth will be spread further.

Americans are completely insane now.

Americans scream that there would be no unintended consequences if millionaires were taxed at a higher tax rate.

Americans swear that if toothpicks were banned today then there would be no chance tyranny would increase in the future.

You know that you should be saving money to prepare for the collapse of the USA, but why bother when the world is ending?