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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forumsthe question libertarians cant answer; where are the libertarian countries?
Last edited Tue Jun 4, 2013, 01:26 PM - Edit history (1)
If your ideas are so great then why hasn't any country in the world ever applied them?
When you ask libertarians if they can point to a libertarian country, you are likely to get a baffled look, followed, in a few moments, by something like this reply: While there is no purely libertarian country, there are countries which have pursued policies of which libertarians would approve: Chile, with its experiment in privatized Social Security, for example, and Sweden, a big-government nation which, however, gives a role to vouchers in schooling.
But this isnt an adequate response. Libertarian theorists have the luxury of mixing and matching policies to create an imaginary utopia. A real country must function simultaneously in different realmsdefense and the economy, law enforcement and some kind of system of support for the poor. Being able to point to one truly libertarian country would provide at least some evidence that libertarianism can work in the real world.
Some political philosophies pass this test. For much of the global center-left, the ideal for several generations has been Nordic social democracywhat the late liberal economist Robert Heilbroner described as a slightly idealized Sweden. Other political philosophies pass the test, even if their exemplars flunk other tests. Until a few decades ago, supporters of communism in the West could point to the Soviet Union and other Marxist-Leninist dictatorships as examples of really-existing socialism. They argued that, while communist regimes fell short in the areas of democracy and civil rights, they proved that socialism can succeed in a large-scale modern industrial society.
http://www.salon.com/2013/06/04/the_question_libertarians_just_cant_answer/
NightWatcher
(39,343 posts)No rules, no taxes, all the freedom in the world. I'm free to kill you, you're free do what you want.
n2doc
(47,953 posts)History has shown again and again that a power vacuum is soon filled, usually by a dictator, by violence. All these idiots who think that libertarianism is a viable system also seem to have a very unrealistic view of human nature.