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Libertarianism is a real nice idea.
I'd be a Libertarian in a second ... if I didn't have this rather strong distrust of my fellow man.
Ultimately it comes down to who do you trust to protect you from things that you, as an individual, have no direct control? The good intentions of government that you control via our pseudo-democracy or the good intentions of other individuals that you do not control at all?
Essentially, one tenet of Libertarianism is that of the free-market. The idea is that instead of having a government body regulate an industry, a third-party (ostensibly without ties to said industry) offers analysis and reports. Basically, Consumer Reports on a massive scale.
A couple of examples:
- The Coal refining industry.
Instead of having EPA inspectors, they would have no mandatory inspections. A non-profit organization is created who offers to inspect a company's plants and analyze the data they capture and report and rate the plant against other plants. Consumers then have access to the information to base their decision on which power company they want to purchase energy from. Sounds wonderful. But what happens when a consumer only has one option? And what happens when that one option decides it doesn't need to worry about these non-profit inspections anymore? Which means they don't have to worry about polluting anymore. Plus they can charge whatever their hearts desire. So here's where the consumer solution gets a little uncomfortable. The solution is that the consumer can either start their own coal processing plant to provide their own power or they can move.
- The Child Car Seat Manufacturing industry
This industry is currently HEAVILY regulated by the government to prevent the deaths of children through faulty manufacturing and/or false claims. Again, the libertarian solution is to provide a non-profit industry watch group to offer to test child seats and offer reports to consumers. Ostensibly, a concious consumer (as we all should be concious in our purchasing decisions) would not purchase a child seat from a manufacturer who produced faulty seats. Additional safety information would be determined by the propensity for any given seat to cause deaths in car accidents.
In the end, the question is - how much polution would be created before a critical mass is reached (cutting through the spin put out by the energy company to deny their polluting behavior) to convince the polluter to stop? How many children must die before it becomes common knowledge that the manufacturer makes dangerous seats?
This issue with the free-market concept is just one serious flaw of Libertarianism.
Do you trust your fellow man or do you trust the government to protect you from your fellow man?
I don't trust either one. But I know I can affect change in government that I cannot over my fellow man.
Another form of Libertarianism are the Constitutionalists. I'm not too familiar with that specific brand, but I believe it essentially points to the Constitution as the final word on Federal gov't, with individual States in control of everything else.
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