I think I'm turning libertarian

[Sethomas]

Okay.

There are two respectable reasons for becoming Libertarian, neither of which are actually coherent.

The first reason would be that ad hoc socio-economic conditions would allow for a LIbertarian governance and would theoretically accelerate the cogs of the invisible hand and thus spur Adam Smith's notion of "universal opulence".

The second reason would be the result of a kind of reductio ad absurdam, whereby they demonstrate that any alternative to Libertarianism is inchoate and thus we must espouse Libertarianism itself. Once one establishes that the logical framework of anything non-Libertarian is compromised, we are obliged to disavow all forms and all degrees of collectivism.

Since the first reason is absolutely batshit insane right now--a Libertarian government in 2009 onwards would fuck up the global economy like a car crash--I'll just talk about the second.

The problem with the second reason is that it invests all of its strength on an absolute: any collectivism defiles human liberty and so must be avoided at all costs. To make this argument, you would have to ignore virtually every thinker of economics that doesn't align himself with Vienna or Chicago. You'd have to basically disprove every line of Durkheim's Division of Labor in Society, which rationalizes that collectivist behavior is essential to the mechanizations of society at large. The question, "does the government have the right to tax, and for what?" is absolutely risible in this context as the taxation process itself is an extrapolation of the public will. The argument that taxation for the res publica is stealing from the individual is absolutely asinine because wealth cannot be produced ex nihilo by an individual, unless maybe he's a counterfeiter.

Thus, collectivism has logical grounding such that for it to be enacted at any of varying degrees does not violate any sense of philosophical integrity either in regards the fiscal nature of society or the classically liberal notions of self-determination. Libertarianism is therefore vacuous.

So, take it from the kid that lived in the same building as Milton Friedman once had: Libertarians are stupid.