The state should only run monetary and defence policy - discuss.

[DARKSEID]

Campaign for Ron Paul 2016 if you want to see it happen

[fight_professor]

I guess its a trade off between absolute efficiency (small state) v fairness with a socialist model with redistribution.

[squealpiggy]

I disagree that Victorian Britain is a model for a libertarian system.

Why? There was no social welfare, no healthcare, no regulation, no labour laws, the government essentially involved itself in defense. What is the missing element for it to be a model of libertarianism?

Quality of living indexes are extremely partisan, and basically associate socialism and access to government programs with quality of living. All they really grade is the level of government interference in their citizens lives.

This is partisan nonsense. You have unilaterally declared that because countries who perform well on these scales do not gel with your personal politics then the index must be wrong, not your personal politics. In short you have decided that evidence that runs counter to your cherished personal beliefs doesn't count as evidence. You might as well believe in Noah's Ark, it's the same intellectual process.

[ZeeBrah]

Ron Paul 2012 AND 2016!

[MBE]

It's been done. Doesn't work. Victorian Britain - rampant poverty, rampant crime, unregulated exploitation of people and the environment in the name of profit. Nobody (in power) noticed until the Great War when it became apparent just how messed up the nation was and how riddled with disease, both pathogenic and based on malnutrition, were the conscripts.

You'll notice that countries with progressive social policy tend to top all indices for quality of living. Libertarianism is a crock.



This is a conspiracy theory and a lie.

Interesting theory but I'm not fully convinced that Victorian Britain analogy can be applied.

I think the key difference now is the workforce is educated. They have skills that take decades to replicate. Another factor is the diversity and abundance of industry ensures that skilled workers have alternatives.

In the Victorian-era, the towns sole factory owner could just take an illiterate peasant off the street and put them to work in a day.

[fight_professor]

It is true that the scale and complexity of the economy, the education levels, globalization and so on would today present a different challenge then that faced in the Victorian age.

[Grand Champ]

They tried that once, it was called the Industrial Revolution. 95% of the work force lived under slave like conditions.

Trust me, if you're not part of the 1% you do not want to reverse back to that.
16 hour a day work hours
no paid vacation
little to no safety net if you got laid off from day to day
well under minimum wages

[squealpiggy]

Interesting theory but I'm not fully convinced that Victorian Britain analogy can be applied.

I think the key difference now is the workforce is educated.

Educated in publicly funded government mandated programs. Take those away and you have an uneducated workforce once more, apart from for those people with the capital and the will to invest in their children.

[MBE]

Educated in publicly funded government mandated programs. Take those away and you have an uneducated workforce once more, apart from for those people with the capital and the will to invest in their children.

A good point. I believe its the states responsibility to provide access to education for all.

However saying that libertarianism would fail because it did for the Victorians is comparable to saying communism will succeed because it did for many paleolithic tribes.

Although I suggested the difference in education for the first analogy, I think there are a range of social and economic differences that make a fair comparison between Victorian libertarianism and modern libertarianism difficult to conclude.

[Spray_resistant]

No way, I love working for the state never want to go back to private sector with no protection or security. It took me a while to get used to the idea of moving up through seniority but a competitive work force just seems laughable now to me, I mean who cares its just people trying to make a living this way you get a chance by just sticking it out long enough.