re: #518 bloodstar

They’re wrong. but that philosophical belief in the limited role of government is a major driving force behind their statements.

That’s what I’m afraid of. In everything I’ve learned and read and studied over the past five years about complex systems, the one sure-fire way to completely fuck them up is approaching them with an ideology. I don’t understand why so many libertarians cannot get the importance of the final two words in “As limited government involvement as possible”.

In addition, many libertarians appear to believe the market can predict future needs and address them before they exist— that the free market will solve global warming because there will be demand to solve global warming. That represents such a strange and incorrect view of economics that it makes me worry about their grasp of economics in general.

I think if nothing else, Barr has the zeal of a convert but also the credibility of being a former congressman, which can help sway people to understand the libertarian party isn’t just a party of kooks and crazies.

I think it might help if he actually explained the shift in his views; I’ve never read anything from him that actually made a convincing narrative. And hell, I came from a somewhat similar place to him, and made a somewhat similar conversion. But I can actually explain, narratively, how that changed in me.

I know the Libertarian party has some serious and potentially fatal flaws, but it’s still the party closest to my philosophy with the Democrats second. (maybe liberaltarian is more apt for me…)

I don’t think the Libertarians or the Democrats can be accused of having a coherent philosophy.

I’m philosophically in favor of pragmatic and practical solutions for problems that face us; to me, that puts the GOP and the Libertarians in last place, since they are entirely ideologically dominated. The Democrats still have far too much of an ideological approach, but both historically and in the present moment they’ve shown themselves to be far more pragmatic than ideological.