"Freedom" thread or something

This question is mostly cor libertarians: what direction do you think the world in general will turn in the next decades? Do you think that libertarianism and its principles will gain importance, markets will be freer, people in general enjoy more liberty both economically and socially? Or do you think that the world will turn ever more towards full statism, with ever growing governments, taxes that continue to go up as spending demands it, people more dependent of government to provide more and more of the basic needs, less economical liberty with ever more regulations even from enviromental statists, less personal liberty in the name of the common good and politic correctness, and in general, a world where there is a law for everything and a tax for every earning possible? If you select the former, do you really think the current trend seen in Europe (higher taxes) and soon to be replicated in the US will go away? Do tou think people wi decide to be more independent once they have gotten used to the State protection?

This is not a question for debating whether this or that principle or element I mentioned is really good or bad or even exists. I just want predictions for the future from libertarians.

I sadly choose the latter. I see no hope for liberty in the future. The individual will in a few decades or a little more totally collapse in favor of the absolute dominion of the statist and the group. Once even the US is gladly accepting a world where everything is dictated and provided, I'm not sure where the alternative can come from.

Nice article about Sweden's "socialist" miracle (there's a link to an article on Norway too). Anybody with deeper economic knowledge or more versed in Scandinavia to comment?

The T wrote: Nice article about Sweden's "socialist" miracle (there's a link to an article on Norway too). Anybody with deeper economic knowledge or more versed in Scandinavia to comment?

manofmystery wrote: Of course, the nonsense myths this article so effectively dispells have been what have kept this thread vibrant for so long.  How many of you, who eventually came around, believed at least 1 of these myths before coming here? Also, how often do we continue to see them used as throw away lines, used in a last ditch attempt to invalidate our opinions, when opponents have no leg to stand on?  They were certainly promoted as facts by republican debate moderators, earlier this year, and probably alwys will be by old media. Myth and Truth About Libertarianism

Good article, MoM. The one that I run into all the time is the "all people are good" one, which utterly baffles me. It is precisely because we don't believe all people are good that we object to giving people unlimited power over others in the form of government. Isn't that self-evident?

I haven't run into all of them, but there have been several folks here on PA who have said to me "well, you may want everyone to be free to do whatever they want, but I'm not so trusting. In a world of angels your system might work, but not in the real world."

The "everything is cost benefit, you have no morals" argument came up just the other day in the accents thread, remember?


Edited by thellama73 - October 02 2012 at 12:36

thellama73 wrote: I haven't run into all of them, but there have been several folks here on PA who have said to me "well, you may want everyone to be free to do whatever they want, but I'm not so trusting. In a world of angels your system might work, but not in the real world." The "everything is cost benefit, you have no morals" argument came up just the other day in the accents thread, remember?

thellama73 wrote: Dean wrote: The accents thread contained anti-economist,... comments, not anti-Libertarian ones. Isn't that the same thing?

In your house maybe.

Dean wrote: thellama73 wrote: Dean wrote: The accents thread contained anti-economist,... comments, not anti-Libertarian ones. Isn't that the same thing? In your house maybe.   All economists =/= libertarians; all Libertarians =/= economists.

Sometimes you take the nonsense I say too seriously, Dean.

Why can't the US just implement a period of supply-side economics like they did in the 1980s? It'll surely be the cure for this stagflation that it has been in.

You think?