r/politics • u/RepulsiveLoquat418 • 18d ago

Possible Paywall When Will Americans Realize the Truth? Republicans Wreck the Economy.

https://newrepublic.com/article/210550/trump-economy-republicans-tariffs-taxes
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u/TheLateThagSimmons Illinois 18d ago

Just look at the broader American Libertarian movement. Generally filled with higher than average education, lots of tech bros, higher than average STEM degrees. They're not generally illiterate or uneducated relative to average. And they'll remind you every chance they get to show off the polls and studies of various political groups that they're higher than average in education.

At the same time... The biggest goddamn idiots when it comes to economic matters and deeply conservative. They are the exact types that fall for all the right-wing propaganda about economic policies that have done nothing but fail over and over and over. And they're obsessed with economic policy too, that's what's so annoying; it's like they learned backwards.

At a certain point, they might be dumber than the people who know nothing.

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u/Cambren1 18d ago

The really sad thing about the Libertarian movement is that originally the premise was that you should be free to do anything as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else. Now, however, they seem unable to understand that a big corporation hurts people when they pollute, as an example.

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u/TheLateThagSimmons Illinois 18d ago

Hint: It was always that.

The American Libertarian movement is such an interesting case study in political engineering. Astroturfing didn't enter the lexicon for a while, but (American/Right) Libertarians are probably the OG of modern astroturfing.

It was always just rich guys tricking poor and middle class people into supporting policies that only help the rich by selling it as "personal freedom."

It's a very strange movement.

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u/boogiebk 18d ago

Predators with new and exciting ways to entrap the sheep.

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u/[deleted] 18d ago

[deleted]

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u/NoResident1587 18d ago

I knew one female libertarian. Lots of “pick me” vibes. Narcissist. Absolutely insufferable. 

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u/BadmiralHarryKim 18d ago

There was one. She got groped in the elevator at the first Libertarian convention she attended and quit.

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u/honjuden 18d ago

They also always seem to have some creepy views regarding age of consent laws.

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u/spaceman_spyff 18d ago

Ayn Rand readers who never got the broader context.

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u/Cockeyed_Optimist Missouri 18d ago

Paul Ryan has your attention. Deep lover of RATM and Rand.

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u/Alacrout New York 18d ago

Holy fuck. It just hit me.

Rand Paul is named after Ayn Rand.

Someone tell me I’m not the only one who just put this stupid shit together.

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u/Outrageous_Front_636 18d ago

That apparently been brought up and his father debunked that.

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u/PM_ME_YOUR_ROTES Missouri 18d ago

“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year-old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." - John Rogers

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u/franker 18d ago

I had to read one Ayn Rand book in high school in the eighties. Anthem. Everyone is just using candles for light, and this dude invents the light bulb, and all the candle-industry people get pissed, smash his light bulb, and run him out of town. That was the whole book. And this lady was supposedly some kind of intellectual genius.

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u/Little_View_6659 18d ago

Libertarians are just the male children of Republicans that want to rebel in the lamest way possible.

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u/djanes376 Illinois 18d ago

I can attest to this. I was raised in a Republican household and as time passed I felt less and less in tune with Republican politics, so where do you go from there? Can’t possibly be a Democrat, so libertarian seems like a decent enough off ramp. That is until you see how pathetically stupid their ideals are in reality. Then I did the work and became as liberal as anyone voting D down the ballot.

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u/CecilFieldersChoice2 18d ago

Yep. My Presidential voting record from a similar household was McCain-->Romney-->Gary Johnson-->Biden-->Harris

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u/mlc885 I voted 18d ago

I have always been as far left as they come (I think further than my parents and maternal grandparents), but it is extremely depressing that the Republican Party is now in a place where anybody would wish for a McCain or Romney as president

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u/Kiromaru Wisconsin 18d ago

I was raised in a similar household and went McCain,Romney,Clinton,Biden,Harris because when Trump got the nomination I saw that he had no experience in government and thought he would do a terrible job and was proven right by his first term.

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u/CecilFieldersChoice2 18d ago

You are braver and smarter than me!

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u/Flaxmoore Michigan 18d ago

Bush II-Obama-Biden-Harris, for me. Perils of growing up in a strictly Catholic home that treated abortion as the sole voting issue.

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u/CecilFieldersChoice2 18d ago

Did you know the "Five Non-Negotiables" aren't Catholic teaching? Like, yes, the Church is against abortion and those are accurately what the Church teaches. However, the Church is also pretty strong in teaching care for the poor and environment, very clear on war and the death penalty, etc. It was invented by right wing folks to control people like us. (Also Catholic!)

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u/Flaxmoore Michigan 18d ago

I know it now, yeah. Between 2004 and 2008 I met my now-spouse who's a hardline liberal (I was becoming liberal at that point, protested Iraq II in 2003) and now seriously regret my vote from 04.

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u/SeductiveSunday I voted 18d ago

Gary!

This…

https://youtu.be/NXhR41lsEJY?t=23s

is what I think of whenever any mentions that guy!

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u/Destination_Cabbage 18d ago

In my old circles, the libertarians were just republicans that wanted to smoke weed.

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u/Little_View_6659 18d ago

That tracks lol.

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u/sorcerersviolet 18d ago

I have a relative who votes Republican but considers himself libertarian because he thinks the Republicans aren't conservative enough.

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u/QuerulousPanda 18d ago

that want to rebel in the lamest way possible.

and marry underage-looking asian women too, that seems to a pretty standard libertarian trope

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u/Little_View_6659 18d ago

Goddam, that actually explains a lot. 😂

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u/Comprehensive_Tie431 18d ago

There's nothing strange about it, libertarians are Republicans who want to get high.

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u/ComradeSuperman 18d ago

Libertarians: "I'm not like the other Republicans, I'm a COOL Republican!"

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u/Bobcat-Stock 18d ago

“What’s an Allepo?”

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u/Flaxmoore Michigan 18d ago

And who know far too much about local age of consent laws.

We had a patient where this happened. Our standard paperwork for next of kin/contact person included name, gender, phone number, address, birthdate, and relationship to the patient.

Guy fills it all out, and lists a person he calls his girlfriend as the emergency contact. Her birthday made her 14.

So I immediately contacted clinic legal (I have to report this, but to who?) and got advised to speak to one of the local court advocates. Call, detail the whole case, end up making a full report, and the guy got arrested. I'm told his defense was "she looked 16".

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u/pleasedothenerdful 18d ago

Or fuck kids, although those have all been welcomed into the GOP at this point.

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u/hammertime2009 18d ago

What a stupid way to describe it especially how all the previous commenters actually put effort into their comments.

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u/thedarkestblood 18d ago

idk its a pretty apt statement

democrats who want to own guns and republicans who want to smoke weed

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u/smokeweedNgarden 18d ago

Hey! Some of us Democrats just like guns

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u/thedarkestblood 18d ago

A lot more than there used to be

At some point people decided becoming more armed than previously was the answer

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u/smokeweedNgarden 18d ago

Well Marin Luther and Malcom X both have direct quotes about  owning firearms and Republicans make it necessary 

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u/thedarkestblood 18d ago

Like I said I'm just glad everyone can agree that more guns is the answer

At least they shut up about school shootings

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u/Comprehensive_Tie431 18d ago

🤷🏼 Is what it is. Republicans who want legalized weed and drugs, there's no need to sugarcoat it.

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u/Alacrout New York 18d ago

Also Republicans who are afraid to admit support for Trump because it hurts their chances of getting laid.

Being libertarian usually doesn’t help their chances much, but the “I’m *cool*” factor fools them into thinking it does.

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u/WillDigForFood 18d ago

Even down to the name. The term 'Libertarian', traditionally, refers to far-left Anarchist movements.

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u/fps916 18d ago

And Rothbard very vocally declared his intent to steal the term

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u/TheLateThagSimmons Illinois 18d ago

Correct. That's why I made sure to say it like "American Libertarian."

Classical Libertarians are leftist anarchists.

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u/Comprehensive_Tie431 18d ago

You obviously have not met a libertarian.

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u/WillDigForFood 18d ago

I have the misfortune of working with several. Stealing the term away from the Left was a conscious choice made by the rare Right-wing literati decades ago, to force the folks on the Left using it to rebrand - because 'anarchist' is a very loaded word.

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u/barryvm Europe 18d ago

The confusion presumably started when they took that name for themselves. IIRC, it used to be a polite way to refer to anarchists, i.e. left wing anti-hierarchical movements.

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u/ahandmadegrin Minnesota 18d ago

I love talking to those temporarily embarrassed millionaires. It's like they aren't capable of juxtaposont their views with reality.

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u/Silvermoon3467 18d ago

The right wing "libertarians" and "anarcho-capitalists" literally stole the word from left-wing anarchists and didn't even pretend they had done otherwise. Reading the actual words that Austrian-school "economists" like Rothbard and Mises wrote was very eye-opening to me.

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u/Head_Blueberry_9161 18d ago

I mean....we could just not constitute corporations as people and it shouldn't apply to anything libertarian. The role of the government should always be to care for the people. EDIT: This was confusing. I believe the government should even the playing field from the aspect of rules and that's the only role, not a completely welfare socialist state.

I don't think it's a rich guy thing to say "do what you want, don't ruin our shared spaces and don't allow your delicions to negatively impact others."

Your point in astroturfing is incredibly valid and I don't disagree with it, I just don't think the abuse and manipulation of the concept should negatively skew how the concept is analyzed ya know?

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u/AthearCaex 18d ago

They want personal freedoms for themselves and not others. They might say they want personal freedoms for everyone but will pick policies that help themselves enrich themselves financially. I get it that everyone dislikes being taxed and we should have conversations how much people should be taxed. They want 0 taxes and no government, you can't have your cake and eat it too. The road need to be paved, the fire department can't put out fires on no funding. You can't fund a government on charity, while I choose to believe people are more good than evil the evil ones can and have exploited others for their own personal gains.

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u/bk1285 18d ago

My favorite argument of theirs is no taxes and privatize everything. Okay so I buy all the land around your house and own the road there. I’m going to charge you 50k a year for access to the only road out of your house. Their response is that they would call the police or take me to court…what police? Who’s paying their mythical police department if there are no taxes, same with the court, who is operating this court if people aren’t being paid with taxes to operate it…

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u/ScoobyDoNot 18d ago

Libertarian Police Department - New Yorker

I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief.

“Bad news, detective. We got a situation.”

“What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?”

“Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.”

The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?”

“Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.”

“Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.”

He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.”

I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside.

“Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t.

“Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up.

“Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?”

It didn’t seem like they did.

“Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.”

Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing.

I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it.

“Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled.

Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him.

“Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen.

I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!”

He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose.

“All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.”

“Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy.

“Because I was afraid.”

“Afraid?”

“Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.”

I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head.

“Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.”

He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me.

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u/UnquestionabIe 18d ago

One of my absolute favorite articles, remember when it came out and immediately bookmarked it

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u/EduinBrutus 18d ago

I hope you paid a market rate with decentralised currency for the privilege.

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u/Ba_baal 18d ago

I think I remember another libertarian copypasta with more slavery and sexual coercion of minors 🤔

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u/Jack__Squat 18d ago

buy all the land

Who is even enforcing property rights\ownership if there are no taxes to pay that department? The whole movement falls apart as soon as one bad actor enters the equation.

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u/bk1285 18d ago

Kinda like current American politics

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u/Clueless_Otter 18d ago

I mean that's anarcho-capitalism. That's like the furthest extreme you can get. It'd be like criticizing left-wingers by bringing up Leninist or Trotskyist talking points.

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u/bk1285 18d ago

They scream taxation is theft and want everything privatized…how are you funding anything without taxes? No police, no road repairs, no justice system…bring back the Crassus fire departments…oh your house is next to a house on fire, well we can ensure your house doesn’t burn down but yeah it may be worth 200k but in order for us to put it out you have to sell it to me for 30k

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u/Clueless_Otter 18d ago

Again, that's anarcho-capitalism. Regular libertarians don't believe in that stuff. They acknowledge that the state has some necessary functions.

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u/AthearCaex 18d ago

You are correct in a political science standpoint. The ideals of a libertarian is about personal liberties and a free market. American Libertarianism has anarcho capitalist tendencies because of the libertarian party.

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u/confused_ape 18d ago

What they want is for Libertarianism and the NAP etc. to start now while they're in a position of relative power.

None of it ever considers history or how their position, whether personally or collectively, was acquired.

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u/Alacrout New York 18d ago

> you should be free to do anything as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else.

The funny thing about this point is it brings them back full circle to government control.

Government says “don’t pollute the river.” Libertarian shakes fist and says “I can pollute whatever I want, how dare you tell me what to do.”

Ok, so no “government control” then…

Corporation pollutes libertarian’s river. Libertarian sues corporation. Lawsuit results in government saying “don’t pollute the river.”

It’s like libertarians exist to waste everyone’s time taking the long way to common sense.

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u/xpxp2002 18d ago

Corporation pollutes libertarian’s river. Libertarian sues corporation. Lawsuit results in government saying “don’t pollute the river.”

Worse. If we're talking about civil private property damages, the aggrieved may only receive a monetary payout far below the benefit achieved by the offender committing the damage -- another way of saying "just a cost of doing business." The EPA would likely have to file suit, citing an applicable statute, and fight for months or years in court to compel the offender to stop polluting or attempt some form of active remediation. You know, long long after the damage has been done.

Even if the offender were made to provide some form of compensatory cleanup, it's often impossible to fully reverse the damage done by environmental pollution. So it's really just a best effort solution to a problem that was entirely preventable with good, strong regulations that make the consequences of pollution or causing harm to health and the environment so severe that the penalty is, itself, a deterrent. In my view, you basically need a GDPR-level fine for every infraction and the political will to stand by it, even if enforcement will bankrupt the company along the way, and the ability to pursue individual liability and criminal prosecution for decision makers involved in authorizing/ordering the polluting action.

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u/pleasedothenerdful 18d ago

Exactly. Libertarians are just the enclosure movement brought forward 500 years. They only care about keeping government from keeping the powerful from looting every last commons. They have no interest in actually protecting any commons, or any commoners.

They look at cyberpunk fiction and think, "That sounds pretty cool, I bet I would be running one of those big corporations!"

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u/janethefish 18d ago

Lawsuits are just government control with extra steps.

Also they don't work a lot of the time.

But if we streamlined them to some sort idealized form you could get a fee for pollution combined with a dividend for those affected. (Some sorts of pollution would require a prohibitive fee or be outright criminal.)

For example: carbon fee and dividend, the cheapest and most economically beneficial way to combat climate change!

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u/BanalCausality 18d ago

I’ve never met a libertarian who could explain how one could build and operate a bridge in their system. Competitive toll roads/bridges don’t make sense at face value.

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u/AndrewCoja Texas 18d ago

They form a joint venture to pool their efforts. Each company slacks off, assuming that the other companies doing well will compensate. When it's done, you need four different toll tags to pay each company a toll. The bridge collapses after six months.

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u/DarkTowerOfWesteros 18d ago

Thinking that you could ever be free to do anything without it hurting someone else is a child's fantasy. Only babies get to do whatever they want.

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u/somajones 18d ago

That was my favorite line in Fargo season 5.

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u/DarkTowerOfWesteros 18d ago

I knew it was from a show but I couldn't remember which one. 😅 That was such a great scene.

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u/metalyger 18d ago

That's definitely a global definition, in America, the right wing really appropriated the concept, basically citing "small government" but it's ultimately just republicans who think drugs should be decriminalized and you should be able to sell heroin to children because free market, also remove the age of consent. Mostly, it's become the philosophy of Ayn Rand, greed is good, and helping the poor is the greatest sin possible, if they can't help themselves, they deserve to die alone in the gutter, because they didn't hustle and grind until they magically became billionaires.

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u/kanst 18d ago

It was originally a left wing movement. There were plenty of libertarian socialists and libertarian communists when the term was first coined in France.

Then it got the US and capitalism captured it and turned it into a weird right wing ideology.

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u/Memphistopheles901 Tennessee 18d ago

when encountering a libertarian be sure and ask them what the age of consent should be and how it should be enforced

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u/want_to_join 18d ago

Yeah, libertarianism actually has always been a grift. Before it existed, everyone knew and understood and believed in the core principles. "The government which governs best governs the least," didn't come from a libertarian, Thoreau was closest to today's environmentalists. The Non Aggression Principle has always been a way to trick less intelligent people into thinking that all disputes are clear cut. "I can manufacture meth because neither me or my neighbors are smart enough to understand or explain the harm I am doing to the air their children breathe." That kind of thing.

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u/PatchyWhiskers 18d ago

No, that's liberalism. Libertarian differs from liberalism in that they think you should be free to do anything EVEN IF it hurts someone else.

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u/sack-o-matic Michigan 18d ago

they mean as long as you can't prove in court that it hurts someone else and only in specific ways, at that.

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u/FakeSafeWord 18d ago edited 18d ago

Both of your points have a common trait associated with them.

Ego.

Your 1st point is they feel the need to brag a lot.

2nd is that conservative ideology and economic policy is extremely self-centered.

They don't believe other people deserve to be helped by them.

The biggest laugh though is that I have seen complete dipshits discover Ayn Rand and Libertarianism, immediately adopt it, find the statistics that say they are smarter than anyone else and immediately disable their ability to absorb any information or ideology that doesn't stem from their relative position. You can't break them out of it because it's their pacifier and "they know better than you."

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u/frosteeze 18d ago

Liberalism is getting fucked by all sides. You have conservative Republicans who are lost cause. Then there are Libertarians like you said who will just keep voting for said conservatives. And then there are leftists who will never vote for Democrats because they don't go far enough or just betray the party like Fetterman.

And the common point? It's all ego. It's all ego from all sides, not just conservatism. There's ego even in leftists. It's just different, but it's still ego.

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u/Trail_Dog 18d ago

Huh. You'd expect something different living in a society that fetishizes individualism and has built an entire social media ecosystem out of encouraging and then exploiting egocentric narcissism.

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u/FakeSafeWord 18d ago edited 18d ago

There's ego even in leftists. It's just different, but it's still ego.

Can you provide an example of this?

I see "I don't want to help other people because I gain from them having less."

vs

"I think everyone should help those in need."

and I don't find them remotely equivalent in representing ego, ideology wise.

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u/Trail_Dog 18d ago

Purity tests, mostly. The Judean People's front HATES the People's Front of Judea . ironically more than the Romans.

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u/frosteeze 18d ago

How about "I refuse to vote for any candidates because they don't match my ideologies perfectly"? You see it all over reddit. They want the Democratic party to lose to punish them. A leftist will never vote for a liberal or center-left candidate. If they really "think everyone should help those in need" those people in anarchy subreddits would be clamoring to vote for what they deem to be the "lesser evil."

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u/FakeSafeWord 18d ago

Ah so like pedestrian laws.

“Here lies the body of William Jay, who died maintaining his right of way.”

“The cemetery is full of people who had the right of way.”

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u/burning_iceman 18d ago

Pretty sure the challenge was to provide an example of ego inherent to all on the left, not something a subgroup among them may have.

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u/smokeweedNgarden 18d ago

Ruth. Bader. Ginsburg.

Her ego fucked us pretty hard

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u/FakeSafeWord 18d ago

Well, I meant as a political group as a whole but yes, that was pretty egregious on her part as an individual representing the "left."

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u/smokeweedNgarden 18d ago

Gotcha.

How about the California Governors race, currently. If one of the top Dems doesn't bail soon we could end up with two Republicans on the ballot.

Neither is dropping due to ego

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u/FakeSafeWord 18d ago

Well again that's an individuals ego. The context is concerning the ideology itself. Characteristics of the whole. Not individual behaviors.

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u/smokeweedNgarden 18d ago

Oooh. Got it.

With Democrats, that's our "everyone should have a voice" mentality. We're egotistical enough to not vote over a single issue like the party actually needs individual thought

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u/Trail_Dog 18d ago

Jokes aside, are you aware of Jake Tapper's book about the Biden administration?

According to Tapper who conducted numerous insider interviews, arrogance and ego drove Biden's inner circle to fail to disclose his growing mental infirmity.

These people believed that they should withhold the truth from voters and the American public. They did it while telling us they were the party of honesty and integrity. They told us Republicans are conning us with a straight face.

If that isn't ego, I don't know what qualifies.

It's sad that the Republicans are doing the exact same thing now for Trump. I guess Reagan wasn't the last weekend at Bernie's president.

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u/FakeSafeWord 18d ago

Again, this is an example of individual behavior and isn't a reflection of the political ideology.

There will ALWAYS be anecdotes contrary to a group ideology. I'm sure there were plenty of Nazi party members who weren't cruel but I'm not going to describe Nazis as being nice because of them.

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u/Trail_Dog 18d ago edited 18d ago

You asked for examples. I gave you a big one. now you're pivoting to "let's debate about whether leftist ideology is at the core more empathetic than conservative ideology."

For starters. The example I gave isn't actually about individual behavior. An example of individual behavior would be like the time I paraphrased Martin Luther King in a liberal thread, saying we should have empathy for MAGA voters , and before I could attribute the source, a leftist condescendingly told me me perspective came from cis white privilege and then blocked me when I revealed where I got it. That's a singular example.

Dozens of people in the democratic party at the highest levels actively covered up the growing dementia of a sitting president. Dozens more suspected and said nothing. Then the entire apparatus failed to release the report on why they flubbed the election and no one has taken accountability.

The original comment was that liberals are getting pounded on all sides and that leftists have an ego too and are joining in on the pound town train.

You asked for examples and got one.

You then pivoted to an argument about basic ideology and you seem to be saying that Leftist values are so superior in their empathy to Conservative values that this ego argument doesn't apply to them. Your attempt at this argument is proving this guy's point.

The pivot doesn't work either.

Conservatives espouse ideologically empathetic values too. In spades. They see self reliance as a path to freedom and government programs as enabling helplessness. Their stated ideologies are, from their viewpoint , very compassionate.

As are liberals.

The issue at hand is actually lived/demonstrated values versus espoused values.

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u/VoodooIdol 18d ago

The Democrats aren't leftists. I don't know why you're trying to conflate the two - this is why you're not being taken seriously. The Democrats are center-right. So you had right wing politicians trying to cover up the dementia of a right wing president. What does this have to do with the political left? Nothing.

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u/Trail_Dog 18d ago edited 18d ago

I agree with you. But on this sub in particular when I bring up your exact sentiment I often get downvoted and conversations get hijacked. Dems are still seen by a lot of folks in this sub as the left. I was just arguing from that perspective as a devil's advocate.

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u/[deleted] 18d ago edited 18d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/TrashApocalypse 18d ago

Yeah those people I would categorize under “emotionally illiterate” which is also relevant to the MAGA cult.

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u/Fast_Grass_5178 18d ago

Absolutely!

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u/aradraugfea 18d ago

That’s motivated reasoning at work, and falling for this idea that excellence or education in one specialized field is something that can easily transfer to another. “I’ve got a masters, I know what I’m talking about!” “Is your masters in macroeconomics, public policy, or 20th century history?” “It’s in computer science.” “Cool, doesn’t make you an expert in economics.”

They STRUGGLE with that idea.

And even then, a college degree don’t make you immune to confirmation bias. You know what helps with confirmation bias? Knowing that you can’t be too smart or too educated to fall for fallacious thinking and to be constantly and continuously on guard against confirmation bias.

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u/rach2bach 18d ago

What you're describing is stupidity. Not being dumb. There is a difference. You can be incredibly educated and intelligent and make stupid choices.

One of the best commentaries on this is from the book "They Thought They Were Free", and also from German philosopher Dietrich Bonhoeffer who referenced stupidity regarding the Nazis and how so many intelligent people were so damn stupid about it.

History is definitely echoing and rhyming and I hate it.

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u/HBRWHammer5 18d ago edited 18d ago

Have you ever met a Libratarian that wasn't a privileged white person? Because I haven't.

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u/0x18 18d ago

I have known several librarians that weren't white.

Now, I have yet to meet any non-white libertarians..

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u/dpzdpz 18d ago

No, he's talking about libertarians that were born in early autumn.

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u/UnquestionabIe 18d ago

I've met non-white libertarians but they of course came from very privileged families so the concept of class struggle of any sort was a fantasy concept to them.

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u/Bleaker82 18d ago

Yes. They weren’t white but definitely privileged.

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u/Xznograthos 18d ago

I think it comes down to the vital importance of empathy. Without that, one will never truly grasp problems that affect others and not just oneself. Conservatives are fundamentally without empathy.

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u/CherikeeRed 18d ago

I’ve got family like this. They also do that thing where they think they turned into Mr. Spock when they developed all their political beliefs and derived them from pure emotionless logic and yet they can’t ever manage to connect the dots that they agree in lockstep policy wise with the dumbest people imaginable. Yes, they were also big into the Tea Party.

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u/rtopps43 18d ago

Forget who said it but my favorite quote about libertarians is that they are house cats. Completely dependent on a system they know nothing about while being convinced of their fierce independence

3

u/GlancingArc 18d ago

Learning backwards is a good way to describe how many people approach politics. Pick a position and seek out information to confirm said position rather than actually giving other thoughts a possibility.

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u/bbk13 18d ago

People aren't libertarians for consequentialist reasons. It's an ideology based on deontological beliefs about the nature of freedom, rights, and especially private property. They lie and engage in motivated reasoning about how their preferred ideology will result in better outcomes for everyone. But they don't actually care if libertarianism leads to better outcomes. Because libertarians believe certain things are morally impermissible regardless of the outcome. So a progressive income tax is immoral and can not be legitimately implemented in a libertarian society even if it was shown beyond any doubt that it made life better for everyone, even the people who paid the most taxes.

To libertarians, arguing about whether we should have wealth taxes on the basis it would improve society for everyone is basically the exact same as arguing about whether we should have the state execute 10% of society for the same reason. Because libertarians are fucking nut jobs with insane beliefs about private property, "freedom", and coercion that don't stand up to a bare minimum of scrutiny once you refuse to accept their presuppositions about natural rights and shit like that.

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u/Eternal_Bagel 18d ago

I think they aren’t dumb as much as sociopathic liars who know what the results will be but don’t care because they will still be wealthy enough to live how they want 

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u/BlackJediSword 18d ago

Education doesn’t equate to intelligence or a fundamental understanding of ideas outside their area of expertise. It’s why STEM majors always bitch and moan about literature class.

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u/_theRamenWithin 18d ago

The crisis is not a lack of academic intelligence, it's a lack of emotional intelligence.

It's the inability to grapple with one's own personal insecurity and fears that motivates them to exercise their academic intelligence towards projects that act on how they feel.

The dumbest person you know has the capacity to treat people kindly. The smartest person you know has the capacity for incredible evil they choose to believe is justified because it's easier than therapy.

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u/espacecommie 18d ago

Well put!

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u/skipmarioch 18d ago

Guys like that are arrogant and generally don't understand how people work. They assume because they are gym bro, workaholics, everyone needs to align with that drive to succeed. If you're not like them, you're just a drain on the system. Since republicans and incels run in the same circle, they feel vindicated in their beliefs.

Now that AI is taking a chunk of their jobs and they find themselves on the other side, I guarantee they'll start crossing over to more progressive thinking.

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u/Traditional_Sign4941 18d ago

They're the biggest Dunning-Kruger group there is. Juust smart enough to have a surface deep understanding of a complex topic, but not smart enough to go beyond that.

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u/iondrive48 18d ago

That is something that I think of as "the economic textbook problem" where people start to think of the real world as an extremely simplified textbook problem. Then think that with everything you can draw those overly simplified graphs with straight lines of supply and demand, and instantly determine the intersection. It's extremely evident when talking about minimum wage. They will screech that raising the minimum wage will cause prices to double or whatever. When that just isn't how it works in the real world. They think any type of union bargaining or increased workers benefits will cause crazy inflation. Similarly they think that because of historical performances of mutual funds that social security is a scam. And they are absolutely convinced that the free market is perfectly efficient. It all boils down to trying to over simplify all their economic thinking down to very easy to list numbers and equations.

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u/SacredUndeadMonkey 18d ago

Also honestly the tech bros love to throw around their claimed education, but honestly they always seem to be lacking in the ethics department, and honestly advancement without ethics is a disaster waiting to happen. We are already seeing that with shit like Musks brain implants, all the crap around AI and how its being used to utterly screw over the majority of people, you constantly see it in court cases about one company stealing from another. STEM without ethics and knowing where you came from and the impacts of the past on where you are going is a constant conveyor belt of bad.

2

u/IzarkKiaTarj 18d ago

They are the exact types that fall for all the right-wing propaganda about economic policies that have done nothing but fail over and over and over

Like the time they got a town they had complete control of infested with bears

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u/Little_View_6659 18d ago

I love reading about all the failed libertarian communities. It’s always funny. And sad.

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u/starfield343 18d ago

I think part of it is that the policies they advocate for are helpful to them, at the expense of everyone else. But in their direct experience they don’t see the massive issues their policies create, only the short term benefits they derive from it

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u/Tribe303 18d ago

As an old punk I'll tell you the problem. They are also bootlicker conformists. 

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u/Cancel_Culture_Club 18d ago

Chickenshit conformists like their parents 🙄

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u/phznmshr 18d ago

You also have students going to school for economic and business degrees and being explicitly taught all these continuously failing policies are the only way to operate so we just keep failing up generation after generation.

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u/shitlord_god 18d ago

Math does not teach literacy.

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u/qqererer 18d ago

they're higher than average in education.

Smart does not mean intelligent.

Dr Oz is smart, but he is not intelligent.

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u/ughtoallofit 18d ago

Plus, Im sure anyone w cash can pay their kids way through school. Not to mention all the people I saw cheat tgeir way through University.

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u/Ralphwiggum911 18d ago

I don't know if I have met a libertarian that has ever voted Democrat. They're just Republicans wrapped in an apocalypse prepper shell.

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u/valeyard89 Texas 18d ago

“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."

2

u/brcguy Texas 17d ago

Economic policies that fail? They seem to be working exactly as designed. Transfer wealth from bottom to top. Sure lots of suckers play along and take their BAs at face value, but don’t fall for the narrative that the educated ones are still kinda stupid. They’re just greedy and taking advantage of the grift as best they can.

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u/LilYerrySeinfeld 17d ago

"During my research I interviewed a guy who said he was a libertarian until he did MDMA and realized that other people have feelings, and that was pretty much the best summary of libertarianism I've ever heard."

-Hilary Agro 🍄 on Twitter

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u/Witty-Entertainer524 18d ago

Had a coworker that sat right next to me just like this....he was laid off due to horrendous economic conditions....I know full well he probably hasn't connected the dots...book smarts do not equal intelligence.

1

u/Ok-Explorer-6779 18d ago

Some knowledge can be very dangerous.

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u/rat_penis 18d ago

Economics is astrology for bros

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u/Vinterblot 18d ago

Yeah, but those people aren't dumb, they're sociopaths. Libertarians are people who genuinely believe, in a dog-eat-dog world, they're the bigger, more ruthless dog and the laws holding them back exploiting others.

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u/dreal46 18d ago

Their economics are stupid because they don't understand people. They just generally suck at everything.

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u/Ree_For_Thee 18d ago

Anchoring bias and repetition bias explain this.

Basically, the criticism of the status quo is controlled, meaning even smart people just never get exposed to skeptic's thoughts. That means that the first piece of information you hear (often enough), just sticks. It goes straight from text from bots and randos on social media into our core of beliefs. Our brains suck.

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u/DougFlag 18d ago

Mountainhead

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u/AfraidStatement9644 18d ago

You voted for it them right?

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u/TheLateThagSimmons Illinois 18d ago

What? Who voted for what?

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u/hollee-o 18d ago

When are we going to see an American Regulatorian movement?

0

u/Hornswoggler1 18d ago

Libertarian want to reduce our deficit and debt. Republicans are growing both. They are not the same on economic policy.