What political philosophy do metalheads most associate with?

[adaher]

Well, if you're generally of the opinion that the government should stay out of your bedroom and your wallet, then you are more a libertarian than anything else.

Which means that you are consistent. I've never understood people who favor limitations on some types of freedom but hold other freedoms sacred. Most of our liberties are connected so that limiting one effectively limits them all. For example, if you don't have property rights or self-defense rights, what exactly is left? The right to complain about it? Ah, but then only if you don't do it by buying air time on a TV channel. 1st amendment doesn't apply to paid speech according to some. Which means you have free speech rights only if not too many people can hear you.

 

[end]

Well, if you're generally of the opinion that the government should stay out of your bedroom and your wallet, then you are more a libertarian than anything else.

Which means that you are consistent. I've never understood people who favor limitations on some types of freedom but hold other freedoms sacred. Most of our liberties are connected so that limiting one effectively limits them all. For example, if you don't have property rights or self-defense rights, what exactly is left? The right to complain about it? Ah, but then only if you don't do it by buying air time on a TV channel. 1st amendment doesn't apply to paid speech according to some. Which means you have free speech rights only if not too many people can hear you.

Consistency for the sake of consistency with no underlying logical support carries no value when it comes to matters like these. "Liberty" first of all, is not a binary concept. As with everything there are shades of grey and multiple downstream repercussions to every "liberty" granted or taken away. An increase in the liberties of one person can oftentimes result in the decrease of liberties for another. The assertion that most liberties are tied together so that when you lose some you lose all makes no sense either. To argue that gays' right to marry is somehow connected to minimum wage laws (an issue of a right for businesses to pay as little as the free market will allow them), or that the right to bear arms is somehow connected to our government-run road system (the issue of a right for private entities to set up toll roads instead), shows a lack of logical thought and an overly simplistic perspective very reminiscent of the test in the original post. Similarly, Libertarianism and its worship of the free market relies on people being rational actors, which they are not.

 

[edgeofthorns]

Well, if you're generally of the opinion that the government should stay out of your bedroom and your wallet, then you are more a libertarian than anything else.

I honestly don't understand how any rational person would want anything otherwise. That totally blows my mind! With that said, I wish that people that don't want the government to stay out of their "business" would go live elsewhere in the world. Quite frankly, they're annoying to me.

~Brian~

 

[adaher]

"Liberty" first of all, is not a binary concept. As with everything there are shades of grey and multiple downstream repercussions to every "liberty" granted or taken away

Oh, no question. There are always exceptions and as they say, consistency is a hobgoblin of small minds. What I was referring to was in broader terms. Conservatives favoring economic liberties but not social liberties and liberals favoring social liberties but not economic liberties.

To argue that gays' right to marry is somehow connected to minimum wage laws

In one sense they are. A government powerful enough to control one can probably control the other. That's another case that libertarians commonly make which I think has a lot of merit. And some rights are so critical that if you don't have them ,you really aren't a free person. Right of self-defense is one. Not necessarily gun rights. But in some countries, they will prosecute you for using excessive force, like if a woman beats a rapist up too badly. Or property rights. If you can't own anything or the rights are so sharply limited that they have little value, then you aren't free. Property is a basis of freedom. A man's house is his castle and all that. And my other example on free speech I think holds: if your speech is only unregulated if only a few people can hear it, then it isn't worth much. The ability to spread your views far and wide requires money and the right to spend money to spread your views far and wide is absolute. Or else you don't really have freedom of speech in any meaningful sense.

 

[booB]

Consistency for the sake of consistency with no underlying logical support carries no value when it comes to matters like these. "Liberty" first of all, is not a binary concept. As with everything there are shades of grey and multiple downstream repercussions to every "liberty" granted or taken away. An increase in the liberties of one person can oftentimes result in the decrease of liberties for another.

Liberties, by definition, cannot be granted. They can ONLY be taken away.

You should read up more on natural law. It is possible to orchestrate a system wherein people can do almost anything they want, as long as it doesn't infringe upon the rights of others to do almost anything THEY want. The problem (especially in America) is that when someone finds a certain behavior to be immoral or reprehensible, (s)he feels it is his/her prerogative to prevent this sort of behavior from taking place, by force if necessary. When the majority agrees on these prerogatives, they become laws that take away liberties from the minority.

The assertion that most liberties are tied together so that when you lose some you lose all makes no sense either. To argue that gays' right to marry is somehow connected to minimum wage laws (an issue of a right for businesses to pay as little as the free market will allow them), or that the right to bear arms is somehow connected to our government-run road system (the issue of a right for private entities to set up toll roads instead), shows a lack of logical thought and an overly simplistic perspective very reminiscent of the test in the original post.

Rather, your strawman argument is an oversimplification of the libertarian platform. It is absolutely true that when government takes control of one aspect of our lives, it is easier for that government to take over other aspects as well. The more socialized programs the government introduces (New Deal -> social security -> affirmative action -> medicare -> TARP), the more likely it is to introduce new regulations and leach more autonomy from our fiscal and social freedoms -- regulations that would most likely not even be seen as necessary were it not for the increasingly socialist climate.

Similarly, Libertarianism and its worship of the free market relies on people being rational actors, which they are not.

Again, the opposite is true. The current system is run by bureaucracy, and bureaucrats are much less rational than consumers. Too much bureaucratic poking and prodding at the economy is exactly why we are where we are. Plus, bureaucrats always have their own interests in mind, and, given too much power, will steer an economy to suit their own agendas. Consumers, on the other hand, are too large a group of people to have much individual effect on an economy. Therefore, what steers a free market is whatever is GOOD for that market -- ie, whatever the consumers, en masse, are willing to shell out money for. If a business goes under, it is either being poorly run or providing a service that people do not want to buy, and it probably should go under. In our current system, such a business gets artificially propped up by the bureaucracy.

 

[adaher]

That's a really good point. People are people. The people in the government aren't any wiser or smarter than us. Being motivated by profit isn't anymore selfish or less rational than being motivated by political considerations.

The only time government should intervene in the market is where there is a clear cut example of a market failure. Because private entities will often engage in anticompetitive practices, and it's not just big corporations. Individuals will try it too. Anyone who lived in Florida during the housing bubble and witnessed neighbors colluding and often threatening each other to prop up prices when they started to fall knows that there really isn't much difference between the average person and the stereotypical greedy CEO. One woman made headlines by selling her place for $50,000(it was valued at $150,000) because she wanted to give a poor young family who she was friends with a break. Her neighbors SUED her.

When big money is at stake, very few people can avoid being greedy. CEOs only seem greedier than most because practically every decision they make involves big money. But put a regular guy in the same position and he makes the same decisions.

 

[Pellaz]

...government intervention in the market...

I disagree with Ayn Rand on many points, most notably on the proper use of altruism, but in Atlas Shrugged she is completely spot-on regarding the effects of the central government's meddling on the job-producers in the economy. Instead of industrialists 'striking' or skipping out to Galt's Gulch, we see some modern-day equivalents: businesses relocating overseas because of more favorable tax structures, less onerous union requirements and other government influence. I won't argue that all regulations are bad, but there's no question whatsoever that we have virtually destroyed this country's ability to convert industrial capital to manufacturing jobs...and most other non-service jobs as well. With the Cap & Trade and the so-called Employee Free Choice bills lurking on the horizon, there is little hope to be seen there, either.

Not even Rand foresaw the federal takeover of the USA's largest industrial giant, nor did she envision the crushing debt-service we are paying now. Sure, 'the boys in Washington' have been running up a hell of a tab for decades, but it took eight full years of George W. Bush to raise the federal deficit from 60% to 70% of the US's GDP. In only one year, since January, that deficit has gone from 70% to 90% of GDP...and it will equal the nation's entire GDP in another year.

To put it bluntly, the moment that China and the other buyers of Treasury securities decide that we'll never pay them back and stop buying them.....we're doomed.

 

[adaher]

We won't really be doomed. It's just that progressivism will be doomed. Foreigners stop buying our treasuries and spending has to drop. No other way around it unless the government wants the Fed to buy the bonds, in which case we get hyperinflation.

 

[Dominick_7]

I assumed the polls would say most would be Libertarian or Centrist. I think the poll was not that great. It said I'm Libertarian, so I experimented a little bit and it made me a Centrist. I would add that natural law tells us natural God given liberties (in accord with the happy/good life) relate to the good, and does not apply to what is immoral. That is, natural law teaches us that no one has a moral right to do wrong. People may have a legal right to do something but it may actually be immoral, so just because it is legislated that doesn't mean it's a liberty in the true sense of the word. As our Declaration of Independence states, government doesn't create or give rights or liberties, its to secure rights, and it can be securing the wrong thing for the people.

 

[Pellaz]

We won't really be doomed. It's just that progressivism will be doomed. Foreigners stop buying our treasuries and spending has to drop. No other way around it unless the government wants the Fed to buy the bonds, in which case we get hyperinflation.

We may be in for hyperinflation regardless.

I saw a curious headline today in the ATL rag-of-a-paper: "Dow rises on news of sagging dollar."

Huh?
Two cheers for our side?
WTF?

 

[adaher]

We have a trade deficit. The way that trade deficits are balanced in a free world market is for our currency to drop, thus making imports more expensive and our exports cheaper. The US has often tried to keep the dollar high for foreign policy purposes, and some other nations peg their currency to the dollar so that they can keep their trade surplus, but that's how it's supposed to work in theory. the Obama administration isn't defending the dollar and that's the right call at this point.