Libertarians — Page 2

Is the Libertarian model going to work in health care KD? Please explain how.

Libertarians lose elections.

Most Librarians are white, lesbian women who want a return to the Dewey Decimal System and card catalogs.

They are actually nerdy, sexually repressed white men who want a return to the Dewey Decimal System and card catalogs.

Chaucer, Rabelais, Baaaaaaalllllll-zac!

South Florida said: "Is the Libertarian model going to work in health care KD? Please explain how."

I have a couple of responses, both of which you're entitled to regard as cop-outs. :)

(1) Libertarianism is a set of ground-rules about policy-making, but doesn't dictate any particular policy. Just one ground rule, really: you can't use or threaten force against peaceful and honest people to achieve any social or political end. Other than that, libertarianism is about letting us work together to find our own solutions to problems, as hippy-dippy as that sounds. For me to give a detailed answer about what healthcare should look like wouldn't be me answering as a libertarian; it would be me imagining myself as a dictator designing my own perfect society.

(2) Would the libertarian model work compared to what? Except perhaps for a few small and wealthy countries, I think all the systems in place now have serious flaws, whether that's scarcity of important services or a failure to provide healthcare to everyone. I can't say that libertarians have a magic answer to solve these problems, but it would be unfair to expect us to have one, since no one else does, either.

That's all I've got. As I've said, I don't support any drastic shift from the status quo. I do think that humans are good enough to develop a prosperous society that can provide healthcare (and other needs) to everyone without threats and punishments from a gigantic State, and I think that's an ideal to be hoped for, even if I don't get to see much of it!

kdogg wrote: "Instead, I view (economic) libertarianism as a (very, very) long-term ideal, not something to be abruptly implemented by the next president or the one after that or the one after that."

That makes two of us. I'm convinced it will take baby steps. I've met my share of Libertarians in "our" county who are borderline anarchists. They are much more dogmatic than I'll ever be.