Libertarian Presidential Candidate Michael Badnarik Answers

Last monday, you were given the chance to Ask Questions of the Libertarian Party's US Presidential nominee, Michael Badnarik. Today we present to you 15 of the most highly rated comments, and the answers from the man himself. Thanks to Mr. Badnarik for taking the time to talk to us. His answers are yours with just a click of the mouse below...

Re:Question (Score:5, Interesting) by celeritas_2 (750289) (#10237051)

How can we change the system so people have the choice between multiple candidates and not just two?

It's a long, hard, uphill battle. A lot of Americans don't know that until the 1890s, the government didn't print ballots at all. Voters wrote their own, or used pre-printed ballots provided by the party of their choice. The adoption of the "Australian ballot" gave the politicians control of what choices were put in front of voters.

Today, the Libertarian Party -- and other third parties, of course -- have to fight to get on the ballot. In some states, we have to gather enormous numbers of signatures. In others, we have to drag the state to court. We've been very active on this front. In 1980, 1992, 1996 and 2000, the Libertarian Party's candidates appeared on the ballot in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. This year, it's 48 states and DC -- we missed the signature requirement in New Hampshire and are in court in Oklahoma.

A better question, of course, is how do we offer the American people REAL choices -- choices they can vote for without fearing that their vote will be "wasted" on a candidate who "can't win?"

There are various alternative voting systems that address this problem.

Instant Runoff Voting allows the voter to assign a rank to each candidate; if no candidate gets a majority of "first place" votes, then "second place" votes are counted, and so on, until someone gets a majority. This allows people to choose a "third party" candidate as their first preference, but still get a vote between frontrunners if their candidate loses.

Personally, I prefer Approval Voting. In this method, each voter can select as many candidates as he likes -- he can vote for all the candidates whom he can live with. All of the votes are counted, and the candidate with the most votes wins. The result is that the winner is not necessarily "the most popular," but "the one that the most voters are okay with."

Of course, the "major" parties don't approve of anything that might threaten to break their shared monopoly on power. That's why they've instituted the Australian ballot and draconian ballot access laws. But we'll keep fighting them until we win.

timing (Score:5, Interesting) by j1mmy (43634)

I fully support the Libertarian platform and ideals and I have every intention of voting for you in November. My only beef with the libertarian approach is timing. You've stated that in your first couple months of holding office you'll eliminate the federal reserve, kick the U.N. out of the country, and bring as many of our troops home as possible, among other radical (but good) changes. My question is this: how do you plan to handle the societal impact of these changes? Eliminating the federal reserve is not something I'd expect to go over lightly in the financial markets, for example. Much of the Libertarian platform is a severe departure from the current state of the nation -- I feel that society would need time to adapt to these changes.

I guess my first response to that has to be that for a Libertarian to be elected to the White House right now would indicate massive social upheaval already. Yes, my ideas are radical -- but my election would prove that America is ready for radical solutions.

You're right, though. It isn't as simple as that. Stating my goals and what I'd attempt to do is not the same as stating what would happen. The presidency is an office of limited power, and I'd actually spend a good deal of time struggling with Congress and the courts to get my solutions implemented, giving Americans time to prepare for the changes.

Of course, with some of the changes I'm proposing, I've set a longer timeline on anyway. With American troops in more than 135 countries around the globe, I don't plan to just buy them all airline tickets and tell them to catch the next plane home. My plan for Iraq is a 90-day phased withdrawal concentrating on the physical security of the troops. For drawing down the US military presence in Germany, Korea, Japan and elsewhere, I've proposed a two-year timeline, with the first actual troop pullouts beginning at the end of the first year. That's quicker than George W. Bush's 10-year timeline, but it isn't unduly hasty.

My expectation is that if we eliminate the Fed's monopoly on currency provision, the Fed will continue exist -- it will just have to compete with other currency options on a truly level playing field without the government demanding that its currency be accepted instead of others. People can decide whether they want to hold their wealth in green pieces of paper backed only by seven trillion dollars in debt, or in currency coined of, or backed by, some scarce commodity. I'm not planning to haul Alan Greenspan and the Board of Governors off to Indiana for death by lethal injection or anything like that.

My job as a candidate is to articulate a vision of the changes I propose and to argue forcefully for their implementation. The checks and balances which our nation's founders wrote into the Constitution provide a framework in which those changes can be implemented with the minimum possible chaos.

How to reform Electoral College? (Score:5, Interesting) by code_rage (130128)

There have been proposals to eliminate the electoral college. Notably, Slate has run a series of pieces calling it "America's worst college." Slate's coverage has examined some of the political difficulties in trying to change the system and has proposed some possible solutions.

It's clear from the results of 1992 that the electoral college, as currently implemented at the national and state level, tends to turn small spreads into large ones, and eliminates 3rd parties altogether. As a 3rd party candidate, this must be an important issue to you (after ballot access, perhaps the most important one).

How do you propose to address this? Would you support an amendment to the US Constitution to abolish the Electors in favor of direct popular vote? Or, would it make more sense to address it state by state, using legislation to split the electors proportionately within each state (as Maine and Nebraska do)?

I have to tell you that I'm skeptical of electoral college reform at the federal level. Yes, the system has flaws, but I haven't seen any alternative proposals that don't have serious flaws themselves.

On the state level, I do advocate choosing electors by congressional district as Maine and Nebraska do, with the two non-district electors going to the overall winner of the popular vote. That would be more reflective of overall American voter sentiment.

Going to a straight popular vote would, perversely, represent the end of American democracy. Candidates would be inclined to cater to a few urban areas where they can buy the most votes for their buck (or their promise), effectively disenfranchising rural voters. To the extent that the presidency is a representative office, it should represent Peoria and Birmingham as much as it represents New York and Los Angeles.

"Should have gone to..." (Score:4, Interesting) DrEldarion (114072) (#)

When somebody you strongly dislike is running, it's very tempting to vote for the person who is more likely to win against them rather than the person whose views you agree with more.

What is your response to the people who say that a vote given to a third-party candidate is wasted and should have gone to one of the main two parties, if only to make sure that the "bad candidate" doesn't win?

If the "wasted vote" argument ever held any water, it doesn't any more. The two major parties have moved toward a weird, non-existent "center" for the last 50 years, to the point where it's difficult to tell them apart.

We could argue all day about whether Bush or Kerry is the "lesser evil." The fact is that they both support the war in Iraq. They both oppose gun rights. They both supported the PATRIOT Act. They both support the war on drugs. They both support confiscatory taxation. They both support ruinously high levels of spending, huge deficits and increasing debt.

It's hard to tell them apart on the real issues. They spend their time scrapping over "swing votes" in the gray area of the "center" -- which means, in practice, "how do I not make too many people too angry to vote for me?" That's no way to do politics. Politics, in my view, should be as unimportant as possible -- but where it's important, it has to value freedom, remain rooted in principle and be forward-looking.

All I can tell the "lesser of two evils" folks is that if they keep voting for evil, they'll keep getting evil. If you don't like the way things are, how do you change it by voting for more of the same?

Ideology vs pragmatism (Score:4, Interesting) by Charles Dodgeson (248492)

Libertarianism certainly is an appealing ideology, but are you concerned that ideological based politics (whether yours or others) often precludes the adoption of pragmatic solutions to real problems?

I guess that depends on the ideology ;-)

Seriously, all politics is ideology-based. Unthinking majoritarianism, Machiavellian strategizing and centrist compromise are ideologies too. If they weren't ideologies 100 years ago, they are now, because they are the lodestones which guide our politicians' every action. And you see where that's gotten us.

I'm not an impractical man. I know that I can't snap my fingers and get the results that I want without consequence. I realize that my ideas will face resistance in implementation. The extent to which I am willing to compromise is that I'm willing to fight for what I can get, and wait for the rest only as long as absolutely necessary. What I'm not willing to do is abandon my goals or trade them away.

My approach is geared to a single criterion -- does this policy or that action serve freedom? I'm willing to be pragmatic in pursuing policies that affirmatively answer that criterion. I'm not willing to compromise that criterion away.

Are some free trade restrictions necessary? (Score:5, Interesting) by toasted_calamari (670180)

Regarding your description of free trade vs. state corporatism at your website, How can we prevent the propagation of Multinational corporations without resorting to government regulation? Is that form of Government regulation a necessary evil, or is there a method for preventing the formation of huge multinationals and monopolies without the government restricting free trade? If so, how would this method be implemented?

"Free trade," like any other term, is often coopted to mean something other than what it should. In the context of modern America and the globalization phenomenon, it is often used to refer to a web of regulations, restrictions, subsidies, government-created monopolies and privileges. That's not free trade.

First, let's look at the nature of corporations. They come into existence with the grant of a government charter. They sell stock under the auspices and pursuant to the rules of the Securities and Exchange Commission. In court, they are treated as "persons" with "rights" -- and for purposes of liability, their stockholders are held harmless beyond the value of their stock itself.

A market in which single proprietorships and partnerships must compete against what are essentially mini-branches of government, with all the attendant privileges and immunities, isn't a free market. It's a rigged game.

I don't oppose growth or success. I support unrestricted trade across international borders, and I support companies developing themselves internationally. But the fact is that corporate growth today isn't natural market growth. It's growth encouraged and enhanced by government-dispensed privilege. It's artificial, and it distorts rather than serves the market.

We need to restore justice to the system. Stockholders are owners, and should be liable for the consequences of that ownership like any other owners. I have no doubt that the market will come up with "portfolio insurance" to protect the stockholders from ruinous claims, but that in itself will provide a market check on unrestrained, unaccountable growth -- companies which act irresponsibly will find that their stockholders can't buy, or have to pay unreasonably high, insurance premiums, and therefore aren't interested in having the stock.

Corporations don't have rights and don't face consequences. People do. Tinkering with that has been disastrous. It's time to get back to full responsibility for individuals instead of government privilege for corporations.

Intellectual Property (Score:5, Interesting) by geoff313 (718010)

As the official Libertarian party candidate for president, where do you stand on the issue of intellectual property? Should it be considered the same as traditional property, or should IP be not subjected to the same protections that physical property is? And do you feel that your personal views on the subject reflect the views of the majority of the party itself, or is this an issue that has the potential to polarize your party much the same way that abortion does for the Democrats and Republicans?

I think the issue is moving too fast for true polarization within the Libertarian Party. Libertarians hold disparate views on intellectual property, but we also realize that it's an issue that will resolve itself as time goes on.

The Constitution empowers Congress to protect intellectual property with copyright and patent laws. Sans a constitutional amendment, they'll continue to grapple with the problems that the new technologies represent. And they'll probably make mistakes, like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

But, ultimately, the marketplace will decide how intellectual property is handled. The "file-sharing wars" are proving that. How much money have the older firms put into trying to pour new wine -- MP3s, CD burners, peer-to-peer networks -- into the old skins of copyright law? They've done some damage, but they've been completely ineffective in forcing the market into their preconceived notions of how it should operate.

I can't give you a more substantive answer about intellectual property. It's an issue that I've thought about a lot, but the only conclusion I've come to is that freedom will out -- and that we'll know what that freedom looks like when the smoke clears.

Induce our vote (Score:5, Interesting) by tod_miller (792541)

What are you views and hopes for privacy and security for the citizens of the internet age, and how do you proactively aim to safeguard and give back our rights that have been eroded away. (INDUCE act, PATRIOT act, et al)

I'm firmly on record as opposed to the PATRIOT Act and the INDUCE Act. As president, I'd veto those acts or renewals or extensions of them, and I'd direct the Justice Department not to avail themselves of their unconstitutional provisions and to fight them in court where necessary.

In the larger realm of privacy, it's already apparent to me that the good guys are going to triumph. Strong crypto, a robust movement to provide privacy solutions to ordinary people by the Free Software Movement and others, and ongoing resistance to invasions of privacy are winning the battle. It's just hard to see that right now, when there's so much blood on the floor.

As a politician, my job is to sign the surrender papers -- to get government to stop trying to ride roughshod over your rights. You're going to win either way. I'm just the candidate who recognizes that, who thinks it's a good thing, and who's ready to proclaim the ceasefire.

How do you enforce rights in an ownership society? (Score:5, Interesting) by zzyzx (15139)

As we've learned over the past few decades, free speech only applies to public property. Private owners can evict anyone they want for whatever reason. If there is no public property, how are free speech rights protected? Would there be any free speech rights at all in a Libertarian world for people who aren't well off enough to buy property?

You seem to be referring to what we call "real property" -- land. There are all kinds of property. The Internet connection I'm using to post these answers is my property in the sense that I have purchased that part of the bundle of rights attached to it for the purpose of sending my answers over it.

Even in a libertarian society where all property is privately owned, there will be distinct incentives for its owners to allow, even encourage, free speech. It's not a matter of me owning an acre and telling you that you can't talk there.

If I want sell you a piece of pen and paper, will you buy it if I say "you can't write a political tract on it?"

Will you buy your Internet service from me if I prohibit you from pointing your web browser at Slashdot?

And if I do either of those things, do you think it unlikely that you'll be able to find someone else to sell you those things without those restrictions?

In a libertarian society, more people will own more things than ever before. But owning something doesn't reduce it to a static, unchanging quantity. Things are used -- they're traded on the market -- and the desire to profit from doing so is the best guarantor of all that property owners will encourage free speech. It's just good business.

PATRIOT act (Score:5, Interesting) by keiferb (267153)

What's your view on the Patriot act? What, if any, parts do you think need to be changed, and why?

The whole thing needs to be repealed.

The PATRIOT Act removes the "governor" from the engine -- it lifts needed restrictions on the use of government power. It makes law enforcement and the bureaucracy unaccountable for their actions.

In my view, the bounds set by the Constitution are entirely compatible with the powers that law enforcement legitimately needs. Letting government run outside those bounds doesn't enhance our security -- it just compromises our liberty.

Where are we headed? (Score:5, Interesting) by QuantumRiff (120817)

Where do you see America in 5/10/15 years under its current leadership? Where do you see America in the same timeframe with you as the president? What broad steps will you take to get us there?

David Nolan, the founder of the Libertarian Party, is fond of pointing out that history seems to run in cycles of 70 years or so. We rebelled against the British and set up our own nation. 70 years later, we fought the War Between the States. 70 years after that, the Depression and the New Deal. If Nolan is right, and I don't find any fault in his logic, we're about at the end of a natural societal cycle. Barriers are breaking down and new things are coming.

To put it bluntly, I don't think that sticking with "our current leadership" is an option. Look at the questions you're asking me. Do we ditch the electoral college? How do we handle intellectual property? What about globalization? How do we reform our method of choosing those who govern? Those are questions that reflect a society in the throes of change.

As my friend L. Neil Smith puts it, "a great explosion is coming." As a matter of fact, we're right in the middle of it and it's hard to see what shape things are going to take when the smoke clears.

I see the next decade or so as a time of change, whether we like it or not. If Americans try to stick to the old way of doing things, the dislocation will last longer, be more disruptive and possibly tip us over into totalitarianism or some other nightmarish societal paradigm. If they adopt the libertarian way of doing things, it will be shorter, not as disruptive -- and usher in a better era to follow.

The broadest step I've taken is to run for the presidency. With the support of my party, I'm offering Americans a chance to peacefully transition back to policies that served America well for more than a century -- free trade, a non-interventionist foreign policy, minimal government, minimal taxes, maximum freedom -- rationalized into the paradigm of the 21st century.

If I'm elected, I'll do my utmost to implement those policies.

If the current leadership continues in power, they'll continue their efforts to snuff out what remains of American freedom in the name of national security, health security, job security, social security. They're offering you the security state. I'm offering you freedom.

War on Iraq and other dictatorships (Score:5, Interesting) by philipdl71 (160261)

Do you believe that the U.S. Government has the right to invade countries run by dictators like Saddam Hussein and liberate the people by establishing a free society even if those countries do not threaten the United States?

In a nutshell, how does the libertarian principle of non-initiation of force apply to foreign dictators? Who or what has the right to unseat these dictators?

If Iraq had posed a clear and present danger to the United States, and if Congress had declared war and thus empowered the president to act in the nation's defense, that would be one thing, although some of the corollaries to that action might still be problematic.

But Iraq didn't pose a clear and present danger to the United States. It didn't pose a danger to the United States at all. And the US has not, in fact, "liberated" the people of Iraq. They still have a dictator. For awhile, his name was Bremer. Now it's Allawi. And the US has the innocent blood of thousands of Iraqis and more than 1,000 of its own young men and women on its hands.

If you or I want to unseat or kill a thug like Saddam Hussein, we're morally free to do so. He's a tyrant and a murderer. We'd only be acting on behalf of his victims.

Once we bring other people unwillingly into the equation, it gets more complex. We don't have a right to kill the innocent. We don't have a right to pick our neighbors' pockets to finance the project. We don't have a right to conscript their children into our army, as some in Congress are now advocating.

As an aspiring president, my interests have to be the interests of the United States. As a Libertarian, my priority has to be pursuing those interests in a manner consistent with freedom and without initiating force -- against anyone.

One of the questions above mentions pragmatism, and this is an issue where it comes into play. From both a pragmatic and principled perspective, the best foreign policy is one of non-intervention: Refusing to interfere in the internal affairs of, or intervene in the disputes of, other nations. From a pragmatic perspective, it's the best approach for the security of the United States. From a principled perspective, it avoids violating the rights of others.

That doesn't mean that I have to like Saddam Hussein. It just means that the legitimate interests of the United states are not served, nor are the legitimate rights of Americans and Iraqis respected, by invading and occupying Iraq.

Nuclear proliferation (Score:5, Interesting) by SiliconEntity (448450)

What would you do about the spread of nuclear weapons and other WMDs? Iran is now working on the bomb while Europe wrings its hands. North Korea has the bomb. What is the Libertarian position? Would you ever support attacking Iran to prevent them from going nuclear?

I think the nuclear issue is somewhat overblown -- no pun intended.

The nuclear cat is out of the bag. That's the way it is. The world is therefore a more dangerous place, but let's not lose our heads.

If you look at history, only one country has ever used atomic or nuclear weapons in war. That country is the United States.

The Soviet Union had nuclear weapons and considered itself the arch-enemy of the US. Yet they never unleashed nuclear weapons on us. Ditto for China.

Pakistan and India have a history of 50 years of conflict. They're both nuclear powers. Yet they haven't used those arms. Israel has nuclear weapons, is surrounded by enemies and has had to fight for its very survival, yet has not used them.

The fact is that becoming a nuclear power entails a certain "growing up" on the part of nations. They suddenly realize that the stakes aren't a transient gain or a temporary loss, but the destruction of their entire nation. And so they keep those weapons as a deterrent and those weapons are never actually used.

I don't see any reason to believe that North Korea or Iran will be exceptions. They'll rattle their nuclear sabres to enhance their influence in their respective regions. They'll hold them up as a deterrent to attack by their enemies. But they won't just start popping nukes because they have them.

The real proliferation problem is the possibility that terrorists will acquire nuclear weapons. And the best solution, although not a perfect one, to that is to not give marginal nuclear powers reason to fear us and to want to support those terrorists.

The Environment (Score:5, Interesting) by Sotogonesu (705553)

Mr. Badnarik, I see that the Environment didn't make your web site's issues list. If elected, what would you do to help preserve the planet?

Actually, there's a section on my web site which specifically addresses environmental concerns:

http://www.badnarik.org/Why/Environmentalists.php

I also have a new position paper on these issues. It just hadn't made it up on the campaign site yet when you asked the question. Here's a URL for it at the League of Women Voters' site:

http://www.congress.org/congressorg/e4/dnets/?sid=103952&id=119699

The short answer to your question is that I'd work to get the government out of the business of polluting, selling "rights" to pollute and protecting polluters from suits for damage. I'd also work to get wilderness lands into the hands of private groups who want to preserve them.

Privatizing Education (Score:5, Interesting) by EvilJello203 (749510)

The Libertarian Party platform advocates separation of education and state. How would you go about reforming the nation's educational system without a massive disruption to a student's schoolwork?

I don't think that a transition from government schooling to market schooling would be particularly disruptive in that respect. "Public" education has been such an unmitigated disaster that most children would almost immediately be well ahead of where they had been when the transition took place.

Ever since the inception of government schooling in the 19th century under Horace Mann, the US has been on a downward trend in literacy, numeracy and science learning. Sometimes that trend is briefly halted, but it always continues. To the extent that there might be some mild upheaval, it seems to me that the more quickly we exit the downward spiral, the shorter the climb back up will be.

What's your position on outsourcing/immigration? (Score:5, Interesting)
by Whatsmynickname (557867)

What's your position on illegal immigration and/or outsourcing? I would think a libertarian would say "keep the gov't out of it". However, at some point, doesn't having too much of either outsourcing or illegal immigration ultimately impact our national socio-economic stability?

We have two -- actually three -- separate issues here. I'll handle outsourcing first.

Capital migrates to where it is most profitably invested. That's just a fact of the market. If I can get a 10% return in Country A and a 25% return in Country B, you know where I'll be investing.

We can deal with that reality, or we can fight it. If we fight it, we'll lose. The future is not in trying to restrict trade or outlaw outsourcing -- it's in allowing innovation and competition, and in removing government impediments, like high taxes and expensive regulation, to keeping jobs here.

When a particular job or skill _does_ move offshore, all other things being equal, it merely frees Americans -- the most productive workers in the world -- to develop the NEXT job or skill or to come up with a more efficient, profitable way of providing the old one. And those innovations are make us the wealthiest country in the world. Instead of wondering where our jobs sewing soles on shoes went, we should be looking to what we can do that the sewing machine operator in Korea CAN'T do yet.

People also migrate to where they can make the most for their labor. Once again, that's just a fact of the market. One can hardly expect a Mexican agricultural laborer to work for $2.00 a day in Guadalajara when he can make $8.00 an hour in the San Joaquin Valley.

And, once again, we can deal with that reality or we can fight it -- and if we fight it, we'll lose.

Legal immigration is a net economic benefit to our country. The fact that workers come here to pick our crops, work in our poultry plants, -- even take coding jobs at computer firms -- lowers the cost of the goods and services we buy, and frees us up to pursue ever more profitable opportunities. That may be cold comfort to a particular worker who's just been sent home while an Indian on an H-2 visa sits down at his old workstation, but it's a fact. If that worker hadn't come to the job, the job would have gone to him via outsourcing -- or it would have gone undone because the profit margin was unattractive by comparison to other investments in labor.

I advocate lifting all restrictions on peaceful immigration. Immigration is not something we can stop. We might as well get the benefit of it instead of tying ourselves into knots fighting it.

This brings up the third issue: Borders. Some people believe that lifting immigration restrictions implies "open borders." That's like saying that an invitation to my house means it's okay for you to crawl through my bedroom window at four in the morning.

Immigrants should be welcome to come here -- as long as they're willing to come in through the front door. They should enter the US through a Customs and Immigration checkpoint, identify themselves, and let us verify that they aren't terrorists or criminals.

People who come across our borders at remote locations under cover of darkness, when they were free to enter through the front door, aren't immigrants. They're invaders. Illegal immigration creates an industry of "coyotes" to guide people across, and it provides cover for the non-peaceful -- terrorists and criminals -- to enter the country.

The border is a national security feature. I propose to treat it as such. In tandem with lifting immigration restrictions, I'd free our military to defend the border against invaders. And those invaders would no longer have a place to hide among real immigrants, or an underlying infrastructure of support for getting them across, because the peaceful immigrants would be entering legitimately.

Thanks for the chance to respond to Slashdot's members. It's been a pleasure!

Whether or not...

[tekiegreg]

I support all his views (I don't) or would vote for him (still thinking about where my vote is best placed), there is definitely some well thought out answers to these questions. Is it just me or does he sound better than either Bush or Kerry? Though I suppose he has to, being the underdog means being the one that needs the louder voice to be heard...

Give me something tangible, not bullshit.

[garcia]

From this [badnarik.org] position paper on Industrial Hemp:

while the government contends that hemp can be useful as camouflage for marijuana growth, even laymen can easily distinguish between the two.

Are you going to provide the funds for the manpower required to manually search help fields? You can't exactly fly airplanes/helicopters over the area and expect to make easy identification without some on the ground work.

Raw hempseed oil can be used, without any modification, to power diesel engines.

Yeah, I have heard it can. It supposedly is a lot more efficient than canola/vegetable oil. First big problem I see is that not many respectable news outlets are promoting this fuel alternative. Google returns a page of hits that includes many sites showing off hemp leaves as their backgrounds.

As your President, I would open the way for free-market exploration and exploitation of industrial hemp. I'd veto legislation funding enforcement of laws against it, and I'd lobby Congress to repeal those laws.

We live in a time that supports conservative views and this would certainly not go over well. You won't get into the White House with this on your ticket and you certainly wouldn't win anything if you ever got there. As someone mentioned on a different thread: put a frog in boiling water and they will jump right out but put that same frog in cold water and slowly raise the temperature...

Honestly, if you want some advice... Tell me what you are going to fix and exactly how you are going to fix it. Do not gloss over important issues with a simple "I am going to do X for the American public!" It doesn't hold water anymore. We have heard enough bullshit fluff from the main parties. You aren't going to walk into the White House and successfully veto anti-Hemp legislation. Tell me how you are going to get Congress and the rest of the public to support your ideas.

Give me something to believe in other than the typical 10 word canned lines. You would get my vote if your plans were thorough and possible.

Public education in other countries

[mind21_98]

Considering that the public education system in other Western countries is much better than the United States', I have to wonder if removing it entirely is the right approach. Making it non-compulsatory would remove the people who don't want to be there, yes. It'd also make it easier to permanantly kick people out who are disruptive. Yet it won't necessarily do much to change the fact that we've already gone through at least several generations of public education, with most of our current teachers having been in it themselves. We wouldn't really see much of an improvement for at least a generation or two, if that, IMHO.

Republicans for Badnarik

[ortcutt]

I'm sure a lot of Republicans have more in common with Badnarik's "The market can and will solve all problems" approach than the the Bush administration's combination of big-spending on unnecessary conflicts, corporate welfare for drug companies, and violation of our individual liberties. I would encourage those of you who are Republicans to take a good look at Badnarik.

Multi party government...

[here4fun]

Today, the Libertarian Party -- and other third parties, of course -- have to fight to get on the ballot. In some states, we have to gather enormous numbers of signatures. In others, we have to drag the state to court.

It has been this way forever. We have two parties, and they don't want any competition. My feeling is anyone who can get X signatures on a petition should be put on a ballot. In some ways, getting on a ballot should be just as important a right as the right to vote, otherwise we are like China when they have free elections, but only one candidate.

Having said that, I would never vote for a libertarian. They fail to see one aspect of humanity. Power corrupts. There is greed. If left unchecked, the powerful will enslave the rest of us. It is human nature. For example, around the time of the revolution 1% of the USA population owned 10% of all wealth, today that 1% owns over 40% of all wealth. There is something wrong when wealth can be concentrated into so few people, that the rest of the USA is left with less. Someone mentioned earlier that the previous generation could survive with one income. Today many families need two incomes to make ends meet.

on the environment

[i_should_be_working]

I'd also work to get wilderness lands into the hands of private groups who want to preserve them.

That sounds like government intervention. Who decides which private group really wants to preserve a wilderness? What if they are just lying about wanting to preserve it? What if the private group that does not want to preserve it offers the most money for it?

Looks like really preseving a wilderness area would require government intervention and regulation. Which goes against this party's policies.

Re:Give me something tangible, not bullshit.

[DaveInAustin]

Are you going to provide the funds for the manpower required to manually search help fields? You cant exactly fly airplanes/helicopters over the area and expect to make easy identification without some on the ground work. Dude, he wouldn't even try to search hemp fields. He would stop wasting our money on fighting a war against one of the US' largest cash crops. That's not because he wants everybody to smoke pot, it's because he doesn't want to waste money and distort the economy by fighting the "war on drugs".

You changed my vote.

[Facekhan]

I was planning to vote for Kerry or Alfred E Neuman (whats the difference?). I want Kerry to win over Bush but being in MD, its pretty likely that Kerry will murder him here so I may as well vote my conscience.

I was not too sure about you since I had not seen any Ads and have not been very active in watching the LP as opposed to last election when I voted for Spear Lancaster for governor.

Your views on the unnecesary protection afforded to corporations is a 100% match for my view on the matter. In fact your words were almost precisley the same that I wrote in an essay recently arguing that corporations are by nature unnaccountable sociopaths.

I will be voting Badnarik for President.

Re:Of course

[Anonymous Coward]

Well if you're not voting for a candidate on his merits and how he gels with your issues, than what is the point?

The point should be that you should vote for a political. candidate based on a combination of views you agree with and fitness for office. Just one of these two is not enough by itself. And prior governmental experience of some sort is a vital component of fitness for office.

Third party candidates have a tendency to make their argument solely based on rightness of views, with zero justification of fitness for office. Those voting for major-party candidates often do not totally agree with the rightness of the views of those they vote for, but they at least the major party candidates have a campaign with both a views aspect and a fitness aspect in which both aspects are justified to their voters to some degree..

Why I am a Libertarian

[Archangel Michael]

I have only ONE beef with the libertarian party (not going to mention it here), however, this guy's well thought our responses are a clear indication of WHY he will not be invited to the debates. George Kerry, and John Bush wouldn't have a clue how to respond to thoughtful answers.

Yikes...

[Tickenest]

One of the questions above mentions pragmatism, and this is an issue where it comes into play. From both a pragmatic and principled perspective, the best foreign policy is one of non-intervention: Refusing to interfere in the internal affairs of, or intervene in the disputes of, other nations. From a pragmatic perspective, it's the best approach for the security of the United States. From a principled perspective, it avoids violating the rights of others.

There is definitely something to be said for this approach.

Unfortunately, it allows things like the genocide going on in Sudan right this minute to continue.

Teach a man to fish

[stinkyfingers]

... But first, teach him that to start with a fish smaller than a great white shark.

I could buy into a lot of what the Libertarian Party has to say. I realize that a lot of it only borderline practical for the real world, but I *could* buy into it to see what it's realization would look like.

Unfortunately, the Libertarian Party (and other third parties) consistently go about their goals the wrong way. If America truly is ripe for change, then the Libertarian Party should be working from the ground up. Start with the local/state governments. The worse consequence of Ross Perot and Jesse Ventura's quasi-success is that the Libertarian Party still hasn't figured out that once it controls mayors, county councils, and governors, it'll always be a fringe movement.

I mean, let's say we do end with a Libertarian President in 2004, somehow ... he'll still have to get his proposals through Congress.

Re:Well, I know who I'm not voting for

[Zan Lynx]

For your restatements of Badnarik's positions to make sense, it would have to be true that:
1. The war in Iraq is a war against terrorism.
2. Gun rights equal no gun restrictions.
3. The PATRIOT Act is actually needed to fight terrorists.

None of those three points are straight true/false. Each one is open to argument.

Re:Lol

[wishus]

They need to skip the national elections and work from local elections up. A top down approach doesn't work (a la trickle down). They need some more state representatives, govenorships and congresscritters first. President is a stretch.

Running a presidential candidate gives visibility to the party, helping all those local and state candidates win their races. More libertarians hold public office than all other 3rd parties combined. No one honestly expects Badnarik to win the presidential election, but the fact that the LP is running candidates on all levels helps the lower levels succeed.

Re:on the environment

[nomadic]

It's a cop-out. When he says "work" he really just means "will suggest to private parties". Is he going to sell government land at a lower price to conservation groups than he would to private investors? Of course not, the free market is the bestest thing in the world according to these guys.

Re:A libertarian over 18 is a social misfit

[Arker]

Privatise the FDA and companies will rely on people dieing from lethal drugs and the class action lawsuits in order to get themselves together.

Who's being naïve here? Do you really think those companies are more afraid of the FDA than they are of ruinous lawsuits? The FDA is a captive agency, it shields them from liability and leaves them far less afraid to screw up and kill people. On top of that, take away the ridiculous immunities vested in corporations qua corporations, as Badnarik discusses above, and you're talking about a situation where the consequences would be far more deterrence than anything the FDA could ever provide.

Re:Support

[envelope]

I've voted Libertarian in the last 2 presidential elections. I don't worry that the Libertarian candidate isn't going to win - I want my vote to be counted for him. I want people to know that at least some voters are hoping for a real change.

experience is contrary to the process and freedom

[l4m3z0r]

Badnarik has no political experience whastoever, only two failed attempts at running for the Texas State House of Representatives. This is the general problem with third party candidates.

I think this is the general problem with politics today. We seem to think its the norm to have a career politician. I think the founding fathers would have intended a baker, a butcher, a sailor, and a bank owner to all be equally feasible politicians. These individuals don't like something so they say their ideas and if people like what they say the office selects the person. The way we have it now, the politician(which is a valid "career") looks around for offices that he/she is likely to win and they go for it.

Example: In the old days Americans,"founding fathers" decided that George Washington would be a good president. Washinton wasn't really interested in the position but support for him to become president was just so overwhelming that he was forced to take office. This is how we find a good president someone who gets the position not because they dog it relentlessly in order to gain power and influence but a person who solemnly accepts it because Americans demand that this person have the job.

This notion that experience matters is utter crap what we are doing is just facilitating the current power structure and making it harder and harder to affect meaningful change. If you want someone to continue giving us the status quo with no innovation and no passion for the position continue to select someone with "experience" I however will not.

Ballots

[cpt kangarooski]

Of course, the "major" parties don't approve of anything that might threaten to break their shared monopoly on power. That's why they've instituted the Australian ballot and draconian ballot access laws.

Not entirely. The Australian ballot is important in order to have a secret ballot. In the age of party-printed ballots (where you would put the party's ballot into the box), you could be observed putting a ballot that was clearly belonging to one party or another into the box.

If you want a secret ballot, then they can't be distinguishable. This does present a problem of ballot access (since now we have the government printing the ballots, and therefore, determining who will be on it when it comes time to print them), but I think that this can be rectified without compromising secrecy. For example, we could merely have a deadline, which was the last possible date to go to press and print enough ballots, and let anyone on who who was eligible, if they filed prior to the deadline (probably in October). And permit write ins for anyone that missed the deadline.

Other interviews?

[thesupermikey]

Is there any plan in the works for interviews with other 3rd party or major Candidates?

Re:A libertarian over 18 is a social misfit

[HeghmoH]

Convince me, then. Why should I trust the same government that has conducted secret syphilis and radiation studies to watch over the food I eat?

A hard-core libertarian might call you naive for apparently believing that government is more trustable than private industry. Instead, let's all grow up and acknowledge that things are complicated and that people (gasp!) can have different views without needing at least one of them to be stupid.

Libertarianism's Failures...

[MarkedMan]

I flirted with libertarianism when I was in college, but soon realized the fundamental problem with it: all success is predicated on people behaving a certain way, a way which 10,000 years of human experience shows is antithetical to human nature. (This by the way, is true of many ideologies - communism, facsim, etc.) As an example, the libertarian view on pollution (in a nutshell) is that government should not be involved. The marketplace will triumph because people collectively will boycott companies that pollute, and individually sue companies that pollute their specific air or land. But how does word get out that a specific company is polluting? Easy enough to make sure newspapers and television that do this kind of investigative reporting don't get ad dollars - under libertarianism there would be nothing to prevent corporations generating a blacklist of media outlets to kill. And if a multibillion dollar corporation says, "hey, my twenty highly paid scientific experts say that pollution didn't come from my drainpipe", how does a $30K/year individual marshall a lawsuit against them? Especially if it is legal for the corporation to call in favors from other corporations and have that individual fired, their mortgage forclosed, their health insurance dropped, and their kids kicked out of school. Public approbation? How does the individual talk to "The Public"? If a few people do get wind of it, the polluters will run some happiness-and-fluff commercials about how they really care about the environment and are working hard every day to protect it, and any tiny disturbance in their bottom line will be reversed (anyone else remember those bizarre 1970's era commercials that showed a thoughtful, intelligent Mom making sure her kids got only the nutritionally best snacks: Hostess Twinkies"?)

Bottom line of the libertarians: "Well, if people aren't willing to fight for something, then the market has decided, and they have to accept the consequences." The problem with that is the little guy did figure out a way to fight the big corporations without having to spend all day every day monitoring and coordinating. A strong representational government. But the first thing the libertarians want to see killed is that government.

Well thought out?

[ahfoo]

I don't know. He seemed to avoid the issues presnted to him in a couple of places.

This question:
How do you enforce rights in an ownership society? (Score:5, Interesting) by zzyzx
Was right to the heart of things and well placed as just a few questions ahead Badnarik had just spoken rather ambiguously about his position on copyright.
Badnarik went from saying it was too early to say what was right in the copyright game to switching around and talking about how important intellectual property was comparing it to the importance of real property as though the latter was a minor point in comparison. Then, to top it off, instead of addressing this glaring issue about how a Libertarian government would protect free speech, he trails off talking about how the market will take care of it. Huh?
Then a few questions later he says that literacy in the US has declined dramatically since the nineteenth century. Wow. I wonder where he got that statistic. Whodda thunk?

Re:Of course

[HeghmoH]

This is the general problem with third party candidates. They tend to offer amenable political views, but no solid evidence of leadership, capability to serve in a political office, or past track record we can use to judge how they actually act when in political power.

Unfortunately, neither of the two major candidates have any solid evidence of leadership, capability to serve in public office, or a decent past track record either. If this is what "political experience" gives us, save us from those with political experience!

Re:End of limited liability?

[Mongo222]

Your fears only make sense in an envirornment where the billion dollar lawsuit against the company exits. Under a Libertarian leadership thing such as that wont exist. It's like when car companies got sued because some of thier SUV's had higher center's of gravity and people with no common sense and bad driving skills went out and treated them like they were a sport car. You can't play Indy 500 in a high center vechicle like that... They flip over. The problem is that they didn't blame the drivers pushing the vechicles beyond common sense and thier designs, they blamed the auto makers. Uner a libitarian style system you blame the person who's at fault, not the entity with the deepest pockets.

Re:Of course

[twiddlingbits]

And he conveniently forgets that the President alone cannot set the actions into Motion. The US House and Senate have to go along, and if they are "traditional" then no way his ideas fly. Plus there are the Agencies that would be affected as well. Massive beauracracy to overcome as well among the Federal Employees. For a Libertarian to be elected it would have to be a time of massive change (I think he says that) similar to that in the early days of the Republic.

Re:I respectfully disagree.

[Cro Magnon]

Unless you live in a battleground state, there's no reason NOT to vote for Badnarik (assuming that you support him).

Re:Well, I know who I'm not voting for

[goldspider]

You're more than welcome to stick to your own narrow and ignorant interpretation of Badnarik's words as reason to not vote for him. You might learn something, though, if you abandoned your prejudices and took the time to try understanding him.

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[account_deleted]

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Re:PoliticalCompass.org

[Coryoth]

Libertarianism seeks to minimize the extent and regulatory powers of the state and deny special interest groups from achieving political power. Noam Chomasky, Ralph Nader and whonot wants to increase the state's size, reach, power to legislate over private life, forcibly redistribute income, and turn a blind eye/allow union transgressions against both their own members, non-union employees and employers.


From dictionary.com

libertarian: One who advocates maximizing individual rights and minimizing the role of the state.

Chomsky is very keen to maximise individual rights, he just focuses very heavily on social rights - so privacy rights, and civil liberties etc. - and is less interested in economic rights.

I think if you actually read Chomsky you would find that he would be quite keen to drastically reduce the size of government, and its role.

The only real points you disagree with Chomsky on are those of economic rights. He would seek to maintain some level of socialist infrastrcuture to attempt to maintain equity, you would not. Really, that's one issue. It may be an issue you feel strongly about, and hence would never support Chomky or his views, and that's fine, but that one issue does not stop him being a libertarian.

Jedidiah.

Disgruntled Republicans, Vote Libertarian!

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a "Republican" and was going to reluctantly [loyally] give my vote to Bush, but I think I would rather vote for this guy. Bush has gone way too far to the center and I want to send him a message. My biggest beef is with how big the government has gotten under him and all of his wasteful spending.

Re:Of course

[maxpublic]

This is the general problem with third party candidates. They tend to offer amenable political views, but no solid evidence of leadership

On the other hand, our current career politicians have made it quite clear to us that most of them lack any leadership skills whatsoever. Including both candidates for the presidency.

Max

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[account_deleted]

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Re:A libertarian over 18 is a social misfit

[Edward Faulkner]

The FDA is responsible for a vast number of deaths. Consider - their approval process adds an average of 7 years to the development time for a drug. How many people will die in 7 years?

But of course approving a dangerous drug is bad too. Since drug effects are highly variable in different people and difficult to measure, there is really no good way to objectively decide what is "safe". The only sane solution is to give doctors and patients as much information as possible and let them make their own choices.

If the illusion of FDA protection is removed, people (especially doctors) would suddenly care a lot more about the reputation of a given drug manufacturer, and one that tried to push a dangerous drug would be doomed, because everyone would be afraid to touch their stuff forever after.

Re:Of course

[archen]

Do we really need political experience? We've had good and bad presidents with and without experience. People seem to have this bizzare belief that the president makes every decision himself and understands every fascet of the entire nation. Realisticly it only requires that you have some common sense to hire good advisors who really understand what the hell is going on. Probably the thing that helps a president most is foreign experience which helps dealing with other nations - but again with a collected head you can do just as well.

It's hard to say that any of the two party candidates have much leadership ability since they're basically puppets of their respective parties anyway. And when you elect a politian that isn't just a bullshit generator, cut the ties with the two parties, that's basically all you have left - someone you voted for because you actually believe in the person and their views.

Re:I respectfully disagree.

[maxpublic]

Except that you can't tell these two horses apart. The only point in voting for Kerry that I can see is that it might have some small chance of deadlocking the government and preventing it from doing any more harm to my civil liberties over the next four years.

Bush is just as bad as Kerry, but since he's playing for the same team as the majority of Congress it's much less likely that the deadlock will occur, and that atrocities like the INDUCE act will pass.

Max

Re:Of course

[Daniel Dvorkin]

The thing is, I suspect (I have no way of knowing if this is true, of course) that running a Presidential candidate does more harm than good. First, there's the obvious problem of limited resources; I have no idea how much the LP is spending on the Badnarik campaign, but I honestly think ever penny of it could better be spent for local candidates.

The second problem is more a matter of PR: third party candidates have become a kind of perpetual joke in American politics, this slate of unknown names at the bottom of the ballot that everybody knows don't have a snowball's chance in hell of winning. (And on the rare occasions that they get popular enough to have an impact -- Anderson, Perot, Nader -- the Big Two react with fury and horror, which usually ends up hurting the cause of all third-party candidates for years to come.) So if the campaigns are seen as a joke, inevitably that comes to be associated with the party itself.

Better, it seems to me, would be for third parties to concentrate entirely on below-the-radar races (city council, etc.) and then move up one step at a time. Because if at some point there are three or four third-party Representatives, and maybe even a Senator ... at that point they will emphatically not be a joke, and then will be the time to think about going for the big prize.

Re:Teach a man to fish

[Anonymous Coward]

"I could buy into a lot of what the Libertarian Party has to say. I realize that a lot of it only borderline practical for the real world, but I *could* buy into it to see what it's realization would look like."

Actually, libertarian ideals have been tested in the real world, and they work. For example, in "Swede and Sour [techcentralstation.com]," Johan Norberg gives a brief account of Sweden's transition from a poor and tightly-regulated country, to a wealthy libertarian country, and back to a poor socialist country.

List the wealthiest countries in the world, and you'll see that they are the most libertarian in that they have the smallest government expressed in percentage of GNP. Granted, to a "real Libertarian" they all leave a lot to be desired, but the point is that the freest countries are the wealthiest: United States, Canada, Great Britain, Singapore, Switzerland, Australia, Hong Kong. The poorest countries are the most heavily regulated: Communist China, Brazil, a handful of African dictatorships.

The real-world laboratory has proven that freedom creates wealth, and big government creates poverty.

Re:Ah, an easy one

[hackstraw]

Industrial Hemp and marijuana are different plants. You tell whether industrial hemp growers are growing marijuana in the same way you tell whether any other piece of farmland in the U.S. is growing marijuana.

Its much more complicated than that.

1st hemp legislation is blocked by established companies, mainly paper companies. Companies don't like any rock to their status quo. Just like the zinc industry pitches a bitch every time the thought of doing away with the worthless penny comes up. (Prior to that 1982, pennies were 95% Copper and 5% zinc.. After 1982 the composition became 97.6% zinc and 2.4% copper. Yet the zinc people act as if zinc was always in pennies).

Also, one of the reasons hemp is pushed so hard, is because stoners push it. "Normal" people could care less. Hemp and marijuana being illegal are both BS. Hemp is illegal to grow because its illegal to grow marijuana. The US used to be covered in hemp. When they 1st proposed making marijuana illegal, many people laughed saying it was as difficult as making oak or pine trees illegal, but somehow it got passed and all of the hemp was killed off. Hemp products are legal in the US, you just can't grow them. And it would be _very_ difficult to tell the difference between a hemp field and a marijuana field. And if hemp were legal and marijuana illegal, people would plant hemp all over the place for camoflage for growing marijuana, because hemp will grow wild anywhere with no maintenance or care needed.

We need to keep pushing the hemp issue... Vote libertarian (or at least vote).

Re:A libertarian over 18 is a social misfit

[Edward Faulkner]

Well, once we've pulled our forces out of the over 150 countries they're stationed in now, we get two big security benefits:

1. Lots of people freed up to guard borders, infrastructure, ports, etc, from the existing terrorists of the world. It is called the Department of *Defense*, after all.

2. The elimination of all the free recruiting propaganda we generate for the terrorists by messing around in their countries.

Re:Of course

[endus]

Yes, because if the state of our current leadership proves anything to us, it's that leadership abilities and "political experience" are what we need in a president.

"Political Experience" is better understood as "the ability to lie with a straight face" or, "the ability to take bribes and make it seem like you're just accepting campaign contributions". The idea of electing politicians based on their "political experience" in the US, at this moment in time, is like saying you want a prison run by a convict because they have "prison experience".

But then again, if you're not a libertarian (or advocate of another 3rd party) already you probably see nothing wrong with career politicians, taking bribes, approving spending on programs which will never do anything, and invading sovreign nations for no reason at all. That mound of garbage is what "political experience" has brought us. I say it's time to let taxpayers and citizens run the country rather than the elite and the good bullshitters.

Re:End of limited liability?

[Daniel Boisvert]

Badnorak[sic], in his response to free trade, proposed that shareholders be responsible for the company's liabilities beyond their investment in the company. I take this to mean an end to limited liability.

What a horrendous idea. It's not enough that a shareholder lose their investment. They have to lose their house as well.

You seem to be missing a pretty fundamental concept here, namely that we're each responsible for our own actions. It's all well and good to pretend that public corporations are vehicles strictly for financial gain, but this becomes highly dangerous when you remove responsibility for their actions, as we largely have here in the US.

If I pay somebody money to kill you or to dump toxic waste on your land, I'm responsible for doing so. How am I less responsible by paying money into a corporation that does the same?

You can complain all you want about not being able to accurately assess risk, but if you can't accurately figure out where your money is going or what it's doing, you shouldn't be trusting it to somebody else. Ending the limitations on liability and restructuring the corporate veil would promote corporate responsibility on a scale I'm not sure I can even fathom anymore.

Although this might improve accountability, this would drive the small investor right out of the stock market.

There is no entitlement to double-digit gains in the market. If you want to achieve gains in the market, you'd have to do 2 things:

1. Take the risk that you'd lose the money, just as you do today.
2. Pay attention to what your money is doing. If the corporation is behaving badly, PULL YOUR MONEY OUT. Nothing motivates corporate types like investors running the other way.

A world where people are held responsible for their actions and corporations have motivation not to do underhanded things? That sounds pretty good to me..

Re:Multi party government...

[maxpublic]

For example, around the time of the revolution 1% of the USA population owned 10% of all wealth, today that 1% owns over 40% of all wealth.

You've just argued that the current political-economic system in the United States is utterly, completely ineffective at preventing this transfer of wealth, and that a radical solution is required.

Sounds like you have more in common with the libertarians than with either of the mainstream parties after all.

Max

Darn...

[Paulrothrock]

He didn't answer the question I most wanted answers: What happens to the losers in a Liberitarian society? What will happen to the people who, through no fault of their own, can't find a job or become productive members of society? Or those who become invalids?

Two examples: My fiancee worked hospice care for mentally disabled adults. One of them was a guy who got blindsided by an SUV while he was on his motorcycle. He went from being a well-paid metal worker to a grown man with the mental skills of a two-year old. Would the burden of his care be placed on his family, or the family of the person who hit him? Neither of them could support his care.

My future brother-in-law has muscular dystrophy, and has gone from walking around and caring for himself to a wheelchair and complete dependence on others in six months. He gets some help from MDA, but without government assistance my future mother-in-law could not afford treatments for him that could extend his life so he could be cured in the future. Does he deserve to die because he was born with a congenital disease? And I don't trust that a donations-funded organization could provide for him. What happens when they have a bad year? Would his medication be cut? Would his therapy and school aid be dropped because they can't afford it?

Re:Yeah.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

On everything other than the offshore outsourcing and open borders, I like what he had to say. I'll still be forming a third party in 2008 though- because automation, immigration, and offshoring will need to be addressed, and in a way that doesn't use the free market system- because we're well on the road to having anywhere between 25% and 75% of our workers kicked out of that system entirely, not because somebody in Korea can do the job cheaper, but because robots can do the job even cheaper yet. And if we don't want a violent revolution, we're going to have to do something with those people. What exactly, is the question, and the reason I'm going with a hack of marxism as opposed to libertarianism.

I'm also a Get Bush Out Voter- but I'd encourage all slashdotters whose states are polling at more than an 8% difference between the candidates to vote Libertarian NOW!

Re:Give me something tangible, not bullshit.

[endus]

The libertarian platform includes ending the (corrupt, useless) drug war. So who cares what they are growing or not. Either way...do you honestly want to prevent the development of a major renewable source of energy simply because a couple more people might get to smoke a joint because of it? Does that *really* make sense to you?

The libertarian platform is competely thourough and possible, it's just very minimal. The reason it doesn't seem possible is because we are so used to the idea of a huge, monolithic government which permeates every single aspect of our lives that we can't possibly imagine what we might do if we had to think for ourselves once in a while...

Re:Yeah.

[Anonymous Coward]

And in 2008, they'll say, "Vote [third party] in 2012. Get [Bush/Kerry] out now, but vote [third party] in 2012."

There's no time like the present.

Re:Wouldn't it be cool....

[philipborlin]

We can, it's called voting.

Re:It's all about balance.

[maxpublic]

What we need is enlightened leadership, which acts in the interest of the people.

The problem here is that what you think is "in the interest of the people" is almost certainly different that what I think is in the interest of the people. The very fact that you used that line pretty much convinces me that we'd be diametrically opposed on most issues.

And I don't want you using the government guns to force me to act (or not act) in a certain way to fulfill your ideas of what 'should' be done any more than I want the DemoRepublicans to do it. The only solution that doesn't involve one of us seizing control of the government and using it against the other is to make the government so weak that no matter who has control it can't be used to stomp all over the rights of everyone else.

Max

Re:Republicans for Badnarik

[Paulrothrock]

Republican: "I would encourage those of you who are Democrats to take a good look at Cobb/Nader."

Democrat: "I would encourage those of you who are Republicans to take a good look at Badnarik."

Re:experience is contrary to the process and freed

[rycamor]

Thank you, yes!

It continually steams me that a person who has never held a regular job (such as Clinton), would be considered the person who best serves the needs of all those people out there with regular jobs.

Yes, political experience is good, but a politician with no other experience is NOT to be trusted. I will add that politicians whose only "regular" job has been as a trial attorney or some such is almost as suspect, because they deal in the same currency as politicians.

When the experience of the incumbents is simply a lifetime of learning how to trade more and more of our rights for power, then I agree that experience is crap.

Re:"Iraq wasn't a threat to the United States"

[Anonymous Coward]

Pre-emptive!? God you yanks are messed up. Saddam was your man in the region for a long ass time!

Re:Of course

[micromoog]

Isn't it ironic that New Hampshire, the current target of the Free State Project, is one of the two states where the Libertarians couldn't even get on the 2004 ballot?

Re:Support

[Zeinfeld]

Don't look at it as throwing away your vote, but rather as placing your vote with the person that you agree with. It's not a horse race; you don't have to bet on the winner, but rather choose who you would like to see in office the most and let the counts fall where they may.

The downside to this plan is that the result may be another four years of Bush. Another four years of increased government, decreased civil liberties and how many more wars?

If you want to build a third party then look at the way that third parties have been successful in other countries. You have to make an impact at the local level before you deserve still less can expect a hearing at the national level.

The best hope for the libertarian party is to eject Bush from office. The GOP is split between the religious fundies who support Buah and the libertarian small govt. types. This made sense when the two sides wanted the same thing, but has become an unholy alliance under W. Once the GOP loses power the fight between the GOP factions will make the Bush vs Kerry 'smearboat veterans for Bush' tactics look tame.

Worst case outcome in this situation is the religious right 'win', split the party down the middle and the rump join the Libertarian party. Best case outcome is that the religious right lose and the GOP drops the attacks on civil liberties.

Re:A libertarian over 18 is a social misfit

[Tony Shepps]

This is not just an offhand remark you've made, but a specific blind spot of the L Party. Where an easy answer doesn't work, they get stuck. And foreign policy is one place where there's often no easy answer.

Free trade amongst nations makes everyone richer, I'm sure Badnarik would agree. But a global economy requires global security; for example, the US protects the straits between Indonesia and Malaysia from terrorists and/or pirates who would otherwise mess with oil shipments there. I'm sure this is really good for the economy of all the nations that depend on that oil, and it's something the US military can do with its eyes closed. (For training an exercise in real-world non-drills that make the US Navy stronger!) With the first result that a few Asian economies are dependent on the interests of the US.

Maybe those countries would buy the services for security. Maybe they do buy them in other ways I don't know about. I'm not an expert but I do know, there are many places where the US couldn't just walk away without massive and serious repercussions.

The Badnarik deus-ex-machina is that he knows he is unelectable, and can admit so freely, and thus doesn't have to really think hard about such matters. Hey, I don't really have to do any of those things because I didn't really get elected. Well guess what, that's just not good enough. If you're gonna play with the big boys, you better not start by advocating policies that could cause global depression. I know they aren't Americans but some of them do buy stuff from us, and it's actually cheaper to fill those outgoing container shipments with *something*.

Re:Multi party government...

[Russ Nelson]

They fail to see one aspect of humanity. Power corrupts. There is greed. If left unchecked, the powerful will enslave the rest of us.

You're wrong. Libertarians acknowledge that power exists, and seek to set power against power. The reason that libertarians favor market competition is because it sets the powerful against each other.

There is something wrong when wealth can be concentrated into so few people, that the rest of the USA is left with less.

There isn't a finite amount of wealth. If one person becomes wealthy, that doesn't mean that someone else became poor. Where did you learn about economics? Remind me not to go there.
-russ

Lizards

[sbowles]

All I can tell the "lesser of two evils" folks is that if they keep voting for evil, they'll keep getting evil. If you don't like the way things are, how do you change it by voting for more of the same?

Makes me think of the Douglas Adma's So Long and Thanks for All the Fish ...

"The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people."
"Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy."
"I did," said Ford, "it is."
"So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't the people get rid of the lizards?"
"It honestly doesn't occur to them. They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates the government they want."
"You mean they actually vote for the lizards."
"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."
"But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"
"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard, then the wrong lizard might get in."

Re:End of limited liability?

[Eric Savage]

You seem to be missing a pretty fundamental concept here, namely that we're each responsible for our own actions. It's all well and good to pretend that public corporations are vehicles strictly for financial gain, but this becomes highly dangerous when you remove responsibility for their actions, as we largely have here in the US.

If I pay somebody money to kill you or to dump toxic waste on your land, I'm responsible for doing so. How am I less responsible by paying money into a corporation that does the same?

You also seem to be missing a fundamental point here. Limited liability is not what encourages people to invest, it's what allows people to invest. If you have a typical 401k, you are part owner of hundreds of companies via mutual funds. Do you have time to make sure that each and every one of those is staffed only by lawful, good people? No, so if you were liable, you would be forced to invest in maybe one company, and you would still be unable to make informed decisions. No investment, no innovation, no growth, and we are back to a mid-1800's economy.

Your analogy also falls short. If you are a landlord, and your tenant kills someone in their apartment, are you liable? Stockholders don't run companies, the board and the officers do. I agree that these groups should have liability, but stockholders are not involved in the day-to-day operations, which is where all the nastiness happens. There are no shareholder votes to use unsafe machinery or dump chemicals in the river.

Re:End of limited liability?

[Sloppy]

Limited Liability is just another way of externalizing a cost. It's a way of making someone else involuntarily pick up your tab. It's unfair.

Although this might improve accountability, this would drive the small investor right out of the stock market.

What's so great about the stock market? If it can't survive as a real market, then maybe it shouldn't be thought of as one. You'd still be able to invest in bonds. You'd still be able to invest in stock too, you would just have to care about it instead of treating it as a bunch of abstract numbers.

Adding to the problem is the arbitrariness of law suit damages that are now being awarded.

Then fix that problem.

One thing that constrains law suits is that you can't get a billion dollars out of a million dollar company. Removing limited liability, so that the lawyers can sue the shareholders, would make the Oklahoma land rush look like a trickle.

If I damage your car, such that it will take $1000 to repair, is it ok if I only pay you $1?

Re:Yikes...

[mshiltonj]

Unfortunately, it allows things like the genocide going on in Sudan right this minute to continue.

What's stopping _you_ from going over there and putting a stop to it? If you care so much, hop to it.

Don't be so willing to send other people to go die for a cause in your name while you surf slashdot.

You're assuming a lot.

[pb]

I live in NC; I don't expect it to go to Kerry, but I'm still going to do my part. I've seen the margin between the two go below 5%, and I know enough not to trust polls, especially on election day.

I think all bets are off this time around; it'll likely be a close race, and with a surprising amount of people voting, especially given that it's a US election.

As for supporting Badnarik, he sounds more reasonable than some Libertarians out there. I give him credit both for supporting approval voting, and for not giving corporations a blank check. I'm not sure about privatizing education, partially for that reason.

However, I think there are some substantial differences between Bush and Kerry, and I don't think a third party candidate has a reasonable chance in this election. So I'm going to vote the way that my vote can potentially do the most good.

And if NC goes to Kerry, you might have me and people like me to thank--people who didn't give up because someone told them it wasn't supposed to be a "battleground state".

Destroying the environment is evil.

[theamarand]

He didn't say "sell at fair market value," he said "get...into the hands of." Seems to me he's saying that he'd make them untouchable...unpurchasable by those large groups that would pay so much more for the land then go on to rape it of its natural resources with not a single reason to care for the destruction of the environment (habitat for animals, plants, ourselves) and the extinction of said living creatures. A seller can put restrictions on the use of any real estate, and the government can take away the land and give it to these groups for a song, contingent upon preservation. It's something that could happen, but then again, I'm not sure what the ramifications of effectively taking someone's corporately "owned" property and giving it to someone else would be.

Re:End of limited liability?

[Daniel Boisvert]

I recognise that altering the liability structure would have effects on all sorts of financial vehicles that people have come to know and trust today. Doing so will likely restrict the number of companies you can invest in, and may make mutual funds and annuities really bad ideas (assuming that fund managers aren't willing to contract for responsibility for the companies they invest in).

The next thing to realise is that in the Libertarian financial world (as I understand it), the rampant inflation that effectively forces you to invest or lose purchasing power wouldn't exist (due to financial policies explained at length elsewhere). Without that constant inflation, the money you earned 20 years ago would be worth just as much as the money you earned yesterday, and therefore you could stick it in a bank or under your mattress, and wouldn't incur a loss of purchasing power.

These days, everybody sees numbers saying they MUST invest, or else they won't hit that $1.5 million they need to survive their estimated 30 years of retirement starting in whatever year. Insurance companies are very good at making a convincing case that you need to buy their products in order to have a comfortable retirement. This is largely predicated upon inflation, which puts the fear of $DEITY into people.

Get rid of inflation, and your need for those 401k's goes down, and you gain the ability to be more judicious with your investments--allowing you to pay attention to the companies you invest in and their actions. I agree that company management should have responsibility for (mis)deeds, but I believe it's important that shareholders also retain responsibility for the actions committed in their name and with their money.

I can.

[pb]

I know Kerry won't have Cheney for his VP, and will have a different cabinet, justice dept., etc., and therefore I would expect that fully one third of the gov't would end up in saner hands. I think voting against Ashcroft (which the people already did once, mind you) will help prevent harm to your civil liberties.

Also unlike Bush, Kerry might actually use his veto power to prevent bad legislation from going into law. So that should help check the legislative branch. Finally, in the event that one or more Supreme Court justices retires in the next four years, it will be Kerry and not Bush who gets to pick the appointee. So I've covered all three branches!

Personally I think Bush is worse than Kerry, because Bush appears to trust his staff implicitly, and his staff is not to be trusted. Kerry, on the other hand, can make up his own mind about things. He can also change his mind, which is a strength when you'd otherwise be doing the wrong thing.

Re:Related maybe interesting link

[Trolling4Dollars]

I get the same reaction every time I hear some libertarian spout off crap. When I saw his take on education, the first question that came to my mind is, "What are you going to do to ensure that EVERY child in this country recieves a nominal education if their parents CAN'T afford private schooling"? I'll be the answer is that it's the parent's responsibility to get rich enough to eduate their kids and it's their fault if they can't provide. That's a pretty stupid view in my opinion.

Re:Where have I heard this before...

[DuBois]

Because, when I read that statement, it is not an example of pragmatism, but an excuse for moral cowardice. While it may be pragmatic to ignore the internal policies of genocidal dictator, is it right? Is is a desirable policy for the US to take?

Cowardice? What's cowardly about taking up your own arms and going over to Yugoslavia and stopping the genocide on your own, as Badnarik himself suggests here:

If you or I want to unseat or kill a thug like Saddam Hussein, we're morally free to do so. He's a tyrant and a murderer. We'd only be acting on behalf of his victims.

And if you don't think Americans haven't done this, consider the Lafayette Escadrille. [geocities.com]

Badnarik's point (and mine) is that interventionism is bad policy for These United States. It's clearly not bad policy for individual Americans, or groups of Americans.

Interventionism in WWI brought us the devastation of the Versailles Treaty, which led directly to Adolph Hitler's rise to power. Interventionism led These United States directly into the quagmire of Viet Nam, and now Iraq.

Interventionism just isn't a good way to make international friends or influence people to not blow up our buildings with airliners.

Re:Free Trade

[Anonymous Coward]

We can't have free trade with the likes of China, because of massive subsidation.

Subsidation by who?

If chinese citizens want to subsidize my widget so that I pay less than it costs, I ain't gonna argue with them.

Re:experience is contrary to the process and freed

[autumnpeople]

Many of us have thought that all along, that the only people fit for office are those smart enough to know they don't want the job in the first place. I tend to vote for the people who have real jobs and have to pay the bills. Why would we ever want someone who only does politics running the country? We talk about how screwed up the system is, then turn around and re-elect all the same people for another term. If we want change, we should probably start with those representing us and not their careers...

Re:Darn...

[wynler]

Charity! Libertarianism advocates taking charity out of the hands of the government and putting it back into the hands of the people. United Way, Childrens Miracle Network, etc. Americans aren't as selfish as popular opinion would have you believe. Personally 15% of my income goes to charities of my choice, and a lot more of it would if I wasn't taxed so heavily.

Re:Darn...

[Anonymous Coward]

Every other western nation give more to charity PER CAPITA than the yanks do. You are cheap bastards.

Re:Definition of each Political Party

[Jherico]

I quite dislike these analogies. People will look at them and laugh at the mocking of opposing ideologies, shrug of the mocking of their own, and come away with the reinforced idea that opposing political views are stupid because they don't come up with the 'common sense' solution to any given problem. This actually detracts from the real situation.

Politics and governing isn't some giant set of easy to solve problems with common sense solutions. Its a bunch of very hard problems, some with extremely counter-intuitive solutions. And what might seem like a good solution for a problem on day 1 might turn out to kind of suck on day 1000 when you find out you've starved 20% of your population. Whoops!

Take communism for example. Everyone thinks of the soviet union when they think communism, but the USSR wasn't a communist state in much other than name. That's not to say they didn't try to be communist. But what the Soviet Union became was what you get when you try to actually implement communism.

I suspect what you would see with an implementation of libertarianism would be a return to things like child labor, wage slavery and the obliteration of the large middle class. When you place the ideal of the free market above everything else and assume it will naturally shape itself to solve all problems, you rapidly discover that the free market serves not the will of the people participating in it, but the will of the free market. People should be able to see this in the mis-behavings of large corporate entities today. Libertarianism only strikes me as taking off whatever shackles currently restrain corporations from totally ass-fucking everyone they can to improve their stock price. If any company on earth could double their stock price merely by clubbing the last baby seal of earth, nothing could keep them from finding a way to do so. That's corporations, no matter if 99% of the employees are saints.

The only way you're going to see the quality of life improve for the majority of the population is when you make that your goal. Not by abandoning the difficult task to some high minded concepts like 'free markets'.

I don't disagree with Bardonik on everything. I think the war on drugs is a counter-productive failure. In fact I agree with him on a lot of social issues. But the libertarian free market ideal, while it might even make the economy grow, would do so at the expense of the citizens.

Re:"Iraq wasn't a threat to the United States"

[frankie]

get some of the more minor dictators to HELP us get rid of the worst abusers

The USA has a great history of doing just that... School of the Americas [google.com], Iran-Contra [wikipedia.org], Saddam Hussein [google.com], Efrain Rios Montt [google.com], Manuel Noriega [google.com], Augusto Pinochet [google.com], Gustavo Alvarez [google.com], Roberto D'Aubuisson [google.com], Samuel Doe [google.com], Apartheid South Africa [google.com], Osama Bin Laden [google.com]. And many others [google.com].

Don't you find it at all problematic that our own pawns in one game become enemy kings in the next? Sooner or later we'll be at war with Allawi (or his successor) in Iraq. This is not a good strategy.

Re:A libertarian over 18 is a social misfit

[WindBourne]

I don't know much about Libertarians, but what exactly do they suggest we do after we pull our troops back home out of half-ass-baked countries?

How odd. We have troops all over the world, had bush at the helm for most of a year with plenty of warning and we were still attacked. Since then, We have had nearly 3 years in which we had the ability to capture bin ladin and stop al qaeda, yet we all but pulled out of where he was based at to go fight for other reasons. How do you propose that placing troops everywhere, causing more civil wars, invading other countries, and causing the enemies numbers to swell 10 fold is going to increase our security?

Since Democrats, Republicans, and even Putin's appoach does not seem to be working, perhaps Badnarik has it right.

Re:Related maybe interesting link

[dfn_deux]

Has it ever occured to you that the federal beuracracy isn't doing it's current job of ensuring an education for every child in this country... It seems like a straw man argument to say that Badnarik's untested proposal wouldn't work when you are arguing for a system which has been proven not to work.....

Re:I was going to mention that same group

[Martin Blank]

Perhaps, but the idea of me owning the property also works on the premise of having enough money to pay for top-notch attorneys to fight those that would try to go around me.

Iraq *wasn't* a threat to the United States

[Anonymous Coward]

The guy violated UN sanctions for over a decade, and nobody seemed to care.

Every time I see this blatant troll it makes me wanna holler. If that's a good excuse, guess who we'll invade next? That's right--Israel. That is, after we finish invading the United States.

Whoops. There goes your stupid argument.

Re:Have you listened to radio or watched tv lately

[tehdaemon]

*SIGH*

No.
There is a third option. That people are too lazy or stupid to excercise the power to decide what they watch/read/listen to.

Do you remember this article? [slashdot.org] The whole point of this book was to show how the government and the corporate types had taylored the public school system to produce exactally this kind of 'citizen' (using the term rather loosely) Try reading some of the book. I did.

Re:Related maybe interesting link

[Kwil]

Heh. Nice troll, but just in case some others are emulating your short term thinking, here's the response:

Okay, now you've got a non-educated waif out there. What happens to him? Well, being as he's uneducated in a society that increasingly requires education for legitimate employment, he turns to illegitimate employment instead.

So congrats, you've saved money on your education taxes, just to have to put it into a private security firm and increased theft insurance instead.

Instead of the kid becoming a productive member of the society, creating products and helping people get what they need cheaper, he's become a destructive member, forcing people to pay more for no real benefit.

Re:Darn...

[Anonymous Coward]

Something else to add on the charity point is that people don't necessarily give to charity because they are selfless, in many cases they give because they are selfish. At some point money stops mattering and the very rich end up building monuments for themselves in the form of hospital wings, libraries, grant and trust funds, etc. OSS people should understand this better than most since it's a driving principle behind why people will code for noteriety instead of money.

Re:Related maybe interesting link

[Haeleth]

What are you going to do to ensure that EVERY child in this country recieves a nominal education if their parents CAN'T afford private schooling?

Had you considered that the government is not the only body capable of providing free schooling?

Put simply, it is in the selfish interests of the rich for America not to have an underclass of unemployable illiterates. Because if everyone in America is employed productively, America gets richer, and rich Americans get richer still. Not to mention that there seems to be some sort of correlation between crime and lack of education...

Therefore, in a Libertarian America, I presume you would see something pretty similar to what you had before the state began to provide education. Wealthy philanthropists would pay for scholarships and endow schools. Companies would pay for their employees' children's schooling, just as today they pay for health insurance and sometimes housing. And for the children of the unemployed, the unfortunate, or - yes - the lazy, there will always be charities and religious organisations ready to provide basic schooling.

Lest you mistake me for a Libertarian zealot, allow me to add that I'm a left-winger who believes in publicly owned services, a welfare state, and tax increases (where necessary) to pay for them. Hmm... not exactly Badnarik's idea of heaven, eh? But the fact that I disagree with their policies doesn't automatically mean I have to believe that a Libertarian society would be worse than hell. As a thought experiment, it's actually quite fun to look at something near the opposite end of the political spectrum now and again and try to see past your ideology and work out where they're coming from. You should try it.

Re:Related maybe interesting link

[Nutria]

Okay, now you've got a non-educated waif out there. What happens to him? Well, being as he's uneducated in a society that increasingly requires education for legitimate employment, he turns to illegitimate employment instead.

The problem with your statement is that there are already lots of non-educated waifs out there, even though said waifs have been in school for 10+ years, and ~$100,000 have been spent on his education.

Re:"Iraq wasn't a threat to the United States"

[Nutria]

wasn't Nazi Germany also pretty harmless for a while?

You're kidding, right?

Lemme guess: you went to one of those failed public schools, didn't you...

Re:Darn...

[KevinJoubert]

All you really need to ask with any question of this nature is.. What did people do before the Federal Govt did it for them?

Just because I believe the Federal Government should live within the limits of the constitution and I call myself a libertarian doesn't mean I am an anarchist.

What did we do before there was a Deptartment of Education? What did we do before there was Medicaid and Medicare?

Did you ever see the TV show, "Little House on the Prairie"? Who paid the doctor when he delivered a baby? Who paid the school teacher to teach the kids? Maybe it was the members of the community? Maybe the "town" did? I don't know, but the fact is, this country BECAME GREAT before it had this much federal government involvment in our daily lives and its losing its greatness everday we allow this involvement to continue.

Just because I don't think the federal govenment can't effectively manage education or medical care at the national level, doesn't mean that all levels or government are the same. Just because a Federal Department of Education or some form of Healthcare is unconsitutional and doomed to failure doesn't mean that something at the local, city, or county level would suffer the same fate. Maybe one state or city would be completely privatized by choice, maybe another would be marginally, maybe another not at all. Then the market could determine what is successful and what gets adopted. Liberals could live where they wanted and conservatives where they wanted.. and the federal government could be expected to live within the boundaries of the document that provides its power and framework.. the Constitution.

Look... what is supposed to be going on here is one school, one neighborhood, one community, one city, one state is supposed to be able to compete against the others to be a more desireable place to live/study. The state of Maine is supposed to be able to say "Hey, if you guys want private education and public healthcare, move here, thats what we have" and the state of Colorado is supposed to be able to say "If you want private healthcare and public education move here". But none of that happens today. We have NO CHOICES, because federal government enters every aspect of our daily lives.

It shouldn't even matter to half the people in this country WHO gets elected president. It shouldn't matter because it shouldn't affect most people's daily lives... BUT IT DOES.. and thats wrong and its a clear indication of how overreaching the power of the Office of the Presidency is.

Re:Related maybe interesting link

[kaladorn]

Badnarik is correct when he compares the two major candidates' views, essentially saying it does not matter for whom one votes. Policy is close enough that it is the same.

True enough. Even true here north of your border, though you would have to put some different names out there. However, it is evident in democracies these days that a centrist viewpoint gets you a greater appeal and more votes. So everyone moves to the center.

Yes, that does make them look very similar. But looking *different* is not necessarily looking better. It would be a bit naive IMO to believe that different = better necessarily. The reality is different is different, maybe better, maybe a lot worse.

In this case, I have to say that I fancy myself a moderate libertarian in politics, not too well represented in the Great White North. But having said that, National Parks, helping out international organizations instead of having your head buried in the sand, and naively (IMO) assuming that corporate entities and large groups don't have a power to exploit individuals is rather an unsophisticated and inaccurate perception of the real world.

To say "you wouldn't buy a paper if someone said you couldn't write X upon it" is perhaps true if X were *really* a big loss and you didn't really need the paper for other reasons. In truth, these things work by erosion - X starts out small, and works incrementally larger. It's why most of us sign EULAs that say "you can pretty much install what you want, download whatever data you need, and limit my usage as you desire" because we really don't care - we want the other features of the products or are forced to by circumstance. That won't go away in a Libertarian future and if the Libertarian philosophy involves everybody and their cousin wising up to the nature of things... well... I wouldn't be holding your breath for that change....

I'm glad the libertarians exist. Taken in moderation, they've got some good ideas, like many parties. Taken entire, they give one pause (again, like many parties). This seems like the political equivalent of the technology argument in favour of heterogenous product suites for greater security....

Re:Related maybe interesting link

[dfn_deux]

I'm not saying that I believe that Badnarik's ideas will be successfull, I'm just saying that it seems foolish to discount the feasability of a proposed change that has the possibility of success in favor of an existing system that has shown time and again that it is unable to produce positive results in relation to it's cost and administrative problems...
Education has always been a largely state/local issue. The increasing federal beucracy has added a shitload of cost to the system of education and hasn't provided any sort of measurable benefit on a national level. Furthermore the split jurisdiction of a federal/state/local administered educational system has shown that the federal government will time and again use it's budget to create bueracracy to develop mandates for the state/local educational system while not providing the necessary resources to fullfil those mandates.
While I don't blindly follow the libertarian party line, I do consider it a viable (and in my eyes preferable) option to the current muck of government and think that it at least has a chance of solving many of the current problems.
There will always be a divide between what the rich can afford and what the rest of us can afford, but that same gap in services that you cite already exists... The rich are already sending there children to privates schools and using the power of the market to get school to compete for there dollars. These same schools are forced to provide results in the form of an educated student body to ensure that parents will continue to enroll their children. The poor are not currently afforded this option as their choice is being made for them, the government is providing a framework for schools using public funds and basically granting a no bid contract for them to provide education to everyone who can't afford private school.
My solution would involve moving the bulk of the educational beurcracy back to a local level where a pool of local tax funds could be used to pay for an educational system provided by a qualified NGO that would then be forced to provide a competitve education lest they be ditched in favor of the next NGO able to provide a better cost/benefit ratio.
As it stands everyone complains that public education is under funded, but everytime they get more funds we just see them get more and more mismanaged. Effectively throwing money away on a broken system. More money is not the solution if the problem is beuracratic bloat, mismanagment, and poor product...

Re:Related maybe interesting link

[Rei]

How much do wealthy philanthropists currently give to help the poor with their education, compared to how much the government spends on education? 1%? 2%?

Lets just accept the silly notion that everyone will become wealthier under Libertarian America (instead of the more realistic scenario from when we actually *had* corporate deregulation and no bracketted taxation, known as "The Industrial Revolution", whose injustices the current system of regulations were designed to stop), for the sake of argument.

Lets say that the number of millionaires double, and so does the number of billionaires. Lets say that millionaires tend to give 1% of our educational needs in the present day, and billionaires give 3%. Then, in your libertarian utopia, we'd be providing 8% of our educational needs through philanthropy.

Lets say that your libertarian utopia provides some sort of sense of needed comradery, instead of instilling an intense competitive drive, and people feel more of a need to help their fellow man - and charitable giving, *compared to wealth*, doubles. In this utopia of a doubled number of millionaires, a doubled world of billionaires, and doubled giving, you're still only at 16%.

Re:Related maybe interesting link

[Civil_Disobedient]

Wealthy philanthropists would pay for scholarships and endow schools.

So we're left at the beneficence and charity of others? If you'll pardon the pun -- God help us.

Companies would pay for their employees' children's schooling, just as today they pay for health insurance and sometimes housing.

Please. I don't know what magical land you live in, but in bear times like these, it's amazing for a company to even offer basic health. Housing?! Perhaps for some select few, but the vast majority of this country pays for their own housing from their own paychecks.

Wait, wait, let me guess! In a free and open society, companies would be forced to compete for the best talent, and thus would offer these wonderful incentives to employees to get them to work for them, right? Just like what's happening now all over America, where good jobs with good benefits are given to the talented and hard working.

Of course, if there are similar hard working, talented people in more dire situations, they'll probably accept a lot less, and as our friend Mr. Badnarik so clearly explains, a company is going to go for the cheapest option that's available -- you can't fight it. Would these same companies pay for their employees' education if said employees were located in, say, Africa or India?

As a thought experiment, it's actually quite fun to look at something near the opposite end of the political spectrum now and again and try to see past your ideology and work out where they're coming from.

You're right, and there are a lot of aspects of the Libertarian platform that appeal to me, particularly election reform and decriminalization of victimless crimes. But their economic platform will only lead to a further concentration of wealth. Particularly their ideas on land ownership.

Re:Yeah.

[Anonymous Coward]

we're well on the road to having anywhere between 25% and 75% of our workers kicked out of that system entirely, not because somebody in Korea can do the job cheaper, but because robots can do the job even cheaper yet.

Do you honestly think that it is a bad thing if robots/computers can do the work of 25% to 75% people? Would you be happy working a job that you knew didn't have to be done by you?

Sure, it looks bad on the surface. People wouldn't be getting paychecks because of this new technology. But what if it meant that food became so cheap that feeding those people became almost free. What if it meant that their houses and clothing and anything else they needed could be created cheaply by robots?

You would hold back this kind of progress? If a robot wants to do my job for me, im fine with it. I'll be out by the pool if it needs me.

Re:Darn...

[koreth]

What did we do before there was Medicaid and Medicare?

We died younger. Pretty easy to take care of the elderly population without government intervention when there are hardly any old people. Are you suggesting we return to the good old days?

Re:Whether or not...

[homer_ca]

This is normal. In the '03 California recall campaign there was only one debate that Arnold decided to attend. It really was a sad sight. Arnold, Arianna Huffington (D), and Cruz Bustamente (D) bickering, name calling and shouting over each other like it was Jerry Springer. Compared to them Camejo (Green) and McClintock (very conservative Republican) were absolutely dignified and spoke intelligently from their ends of the politcal spectrum. I really believe the campaign managers have decided that intellectuals just don't play well with the Average Joe voters. More than anything else this dumbing down of the political debate is poison to our democracy. To be fair it's happening on all sides, but it's most blatant with Bush's plain talk and simplistic arguments (You're either with us or against us.).

Re:Darn...

[Qzukk]

But if the government wasn't so confiscatory we'd have charity hospitals

This is the only problem with the Libertarians I have, and its keeping me from voting for this man this year. This single concept has to be the biggest bunch of hoo-haa the Libertarians spout. It sounds great, and I'm sure it gives the Libertarians warm-fuzzies but then you realize that if you look at the current tax laws, we'd already have these charity hospitals.

One of the easiest "anticonfiscants" (also known as a "tax deduction") is CHARITY. So, where are our multimillionaire funded hospitals? People should be fighting tooth and nail to give away their money for the tax deduction! These people can deduct up to 50% of their annual gross income in donations to public charities and 30% to private ones.

In reality, it seems to be the Libertarian version of "passing the buck":
the people: This system will suck! We'll be defenseless against big powerful corporations who will revert to abusing the little people like the industrial revolution proved they would!
the Libertarians: Not our problem. If the big powerful corporations don't donate money back to help the little people they screw over, then they're doodoo heads, but its entirely not our fault.

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My Point Zero Two Dollars

[thelizman]

I consider myself a Libertarian-Conservative, which is what I think attracts many people to the Libertarian party. I myself have remained registered as a Republican, though I've supported Libertarian candidates and even helped more than a few get on a the ballot. However, whenever a Libertarian gets foisted onto the shoulders of a crowd such as /., I have to leer squinty eyed at them and poke holes in their statements. I make no bones about why I'm still a registered Republican instead of a registered Libertarian: many outright leftists have sallied to the libertarian party because the core principles of the LPUSA form a perfect populist base for their radical agenda (kudos to anyone who kept track of all the propaganda power-word cliches in that one liner, I count five). So, without further adieu, there are a few points where I have to disagree with Senior Badnarik.

How can we change the system so people have the choice between multiple candidates and not just two?

Okay, this really isn't a beef with Badnarik, but with the question which itself presupposes that Americans at large are denied a choice. While one could argue such, the evidence rarely bears this out. In most cases, its simply because what every political scientist knows, that American is fairly well homogenized in terms of the sociopolitical spectrum, and there's only really room for two major candidates. We've had a decade of third party candidates now, and all they really do is siphon the votes of disaffected independants who would otherwise support a major candidate.

For that reason, I want to actually give kudo's to Badnariks support of Approval voting (although I oppose IRV, and if anyone mentions Condorcet I'll shoot 'em in the ass). Approval voting would allow people to express a mandate for a third party candidate or platform while letting them make a strategic vote for the candidate that both most represents them and has a real chance of winning. We may find that people are happier with their choices under approval voting, and I suspect that more people will participate, though thats only my opinion.

If the "wasted vote" argument ever held any water, it doesn't any more. The two major parties have moved toward a weird, non-existent "center" for the last 50 years, to the point where it's difficult to tell them apart.

We could argue all day about whether Bush or Kerry is the "lesser evil." The fact is that they both support the war in Iraq.

Kerry changed his mind this afternoon. For the third or fourth time in as many months. To say that it's "difficult to tell them apart" is a matter of opinion. For the average joe working his or her 9 to 5 job, yes. But that average joe isn't concerned about the issues that people who are attracted to minor parties is. Of course, I'm of the opinion that it is the responsibility of the electorate to research and make up their own mind on candidates and issues, but most people are inclined to let the mainstream media feed them the issues and then make snap decisions. Regardless, I think it's disingenuous for any minor party candidate to disparage any other party, even the big two, because it takes away from the quality of political debate in this country. That tactic is just pandering to the same sentiment that have disgruntled the votors into exploring minor parties to begin with.

Lastly, I don't think the "wasted vote" is an argument, it's a sentiment. People who are faced with supporting a minor party candidate, but still want their vote to count do in fact feel that their vote is wasted if they don't go for the electable candidate who best fits their sentiment. But that's academic.

That doesn't mean that I have to like Saddam Hussein. It just means that the legitimate interests of the United states are not served, nor are the legitimate rights of Americans and Iraqis respected, by invading and occu

Re:Darn...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, as others have pointed out, who would have looked after him before we had social security?

True answer: nobody. He'd be dead.

I find it incredibly naive of /. readers to think that a 19th century social safety net will work in this day and age. Back then, if you got sick, you usually died; end of cost to society. Today, you're kept alive by all manner of amazing, *expensive* techniques. You can actually live a long life with conditions that would have killed someone even 30 years ago, but it'll cost a lot of money.

And it's dumb - just astoundingly, mind-bogglingly dumb - to think that most people will give even the slightest shit about people they don't know. Back in that wonderful utopia that was the 19th century, we had such brilliant examples of social enlightenment as slavery, child labour, and a total absence of workplace safety. Quite a caring, sharing place, huh?

The LP are a great example of a US disease: wishful thinking. It drives your whole political system these days, and the LP is no different.

Morons.

Re:Libertarianism's Failures...

[smithmc]

Easy enough to make sure newspapers and television that do this kind of investigative reporting don't get ad dollars - under libertarianism there would be nothing to prevent corporations generating a blacklist of media outlets to kill. And if a multibillion dollar corporation says, "hey, my twenty highly paid scientific experts say that pollution didn't come from my drainpipe", how does a $30K/year individual marshall a lawsuit against them?

One could question whether, in a libertarian state, there would even be such powerful corporations in the first place. Badnarik himself addresses this issue in his answers - corporations, he says, are way too powerful, in large part because they operate under the aegis of the state. Corporations, as they exist today in the US, are an aberrant abomination that blur the line between private enterprise and government power.

Re:Related maybe interesting link

[Thing 1]

How would YOU personally propose that a private education system would ensure that EVERY child in this country will get a quality education with no difference in quality regardless of living in a slum or in a gated community?

I smell a straw man. We don't currently give EVERY child a quality education. So there's no reason to assume that a replacement would do so.

A replacement would be worth it if it saved as little as 1 penny over what we're currently spending, and got the same educational results.

A much better replacement would get better educational results while presenting a savings in the double-digit percentages (i.e., over 10%).

Personally, I don't know what's perfect but I do know that what we have is broken, so it is worth it to explore other methods.

Re:Monopoly on force

[mshiltonj]

What are you talking about? I'm not talking about Tickenest, or anyone, taking independent action in the name of the U.S., or in my name.

I'm talking about him, personally, taking action to solve a problem that he, personally, perceives -- on his own terms and with his own resources, representing himself, taking responsibility for his actions.

And yes, it most definitely *is* in the interest of Americans to act based on their own conceptions. That's what people do.

I'd much rather have that than a group of people implementing foreign policy based on the conceptions of a right-wing nutjob with a messianic complex -- in my name, no less. I'd feel much better if the people of Iraq knew that the occupation of Iraq was not being in my name.

People should be able to act on their own, and face the consequences of their own actions -- not force other people to act in their stead and die for it.

These efforts can and are being done both collectively and voluntarily through organizations like The Red Cross [icrc.org], Doctors Without Borders [doctorswit...orders.org], International Crisis Group [crisisweb.org], and scores of others if you care too look. I don't know of any armed groups that act in defense of helpless people, but there should be. I'd much rather support that than what happened at Abu Ghraib.

The point is that there is a bulk of organizations with history and a wealth of experience that works with volunteers and donations that practice what what you call "foreign policy" -- not in the name of government, but just because they want to do good in the world, and care enough to do something about it. It *could* be done. The infrastructre and experience is there.

I think it's a good thing. I'd like to see more of it.

Re:Scratches head, thinks...

[JohnnyX]

I personally find Badnarik a bit... I don't know... idealistic isn't quite the word. His ideas are mostly good, his background research seems to be good, his disclaimers are encouraging but I'm left with the nagging suspicion that he seriously underestimates the power of bureaucratic inertia and much other self-interested short-term thinking which keeps the USA in this current unhappy homeostasis. OTOH, possibly that's entirely appropriate for a candidate who doesn't genuinely expect to win this time around.

His chances of winning are directly proportional to the mnumber of people who are persuaded by his ideas. My personal opinion is that he's so honest and honorable that I don't care that I don't agree with him 100% on everything. I'm damn sure I agree with him more than Bush or Kerry.

Yours truly,
Mr. X

...vote for what you want...

Re:Related maybe interesting link

[PastaLover]

Actually I wasn't talking about America, but your comment does show a problem with public education. The select few that actually come out on top think everything is not that bad since, hey, they made it so why wouldn't somebody else be able to make it?

A better education for every child might be a possibility if people would start caring about their children's education and less about the president who cuts the most taxes IMHO. When it comes to banning violent games, everybody is up in arms. But when the president diverts money from schools to war funds nobody says a thing. Off course most low-income families (those that are most likely to end up in bad schools) probably don't even vote, and they don't vote because they think it doesn't matter, and they think it doesn't matter because nobody ever taught them it did, and nobody ever taught them it did because, basically schools suck. Classic.

Re:Iraq *wasn't* a threat to the United States

[Anonymous Coward]

"I can't seem to find any sanctions against the United States"

Might it have any relationship with those two facts?
1/ USA can veto any proposition
2/ USA "tend" not to sign a lot of proposals that would obviously lead to sanctions (remember Kioto or Berna?)

Point 1 can be directly applied against Israel. And then, Israel doesn't face sanctions, precisely due to the "double standards" policy USA imposes over UN council. *ANY* other country in the world except for USA and Israel would face sanctions for a lot less that is already done by those two countries (like, to pick one, Israel invading -and retaining, Golan Highs; they don't even try a strategy like telling it is somehow an historical Israel land; all they have said is "we need that foreign land to protect ourselves, so what").

Re:Related maybe interesting link

[m.h.2]

"Okay, so we're in a society where both parents basically have to work to survive unless one of them has managed to get educated him/herself and found a decent job. So who's staying home to educate the kids? In the libertarian world, where those without food have no relief to look back on, what do you give up first, feeding your kid, or having the time to educate your kid?"

You act as though there is no choice for parents. Well there damn well is! If you can't afford children, don't have them. It's just as simple as that. Take responsibility for your own damn actions! I didn't get to enjoy having sex with the mother of your child. Why should I have to participate in raising him?

If the government keeps robbing citizens to support the children of parents who can't afford to do so themselves, then this madness will never end.

Re:Related maybe interesting link

[Fjandr]

If you think back about the worst cases of land rape through the course of US history, you'll find that almost none of them occurred on private land.

They happened on public land where the government sold rights to corporations for tax dollars. Most of the "private" land cases came from the government giving public land to a company wholesale in exchange for taxes.

Now, you see private land being stewarded, even by larger companies. These same companies will rape public lands, but no their own. Do some research, you'll find it to be true.

Also, like another reply to this said, read what he actually wrote. He said nothing about selling all lands on the market or auctioning them. Even if that happened, we wouldn't end up with environmental disasters, because the immense costs that these lands (coupled with the loss of laws that shield corporations from liability) would require those companies to manage the lands they purchased sustainably, or face bankruptcy.

We're not talking about chump change here. There are world conservation groups with vast reserves of capital and large member populations who would have more money to give (with reduced taxation). You really think they won't be able to compete with the giant companies, or at least make it so expensive for them that they'd have to maintain the land purchases' workability for many years to come in order to recoup the cost?

You should look into the major multinational environmental groups. They've got more money than you obviously think, and can draw on tens of thousands of supporters. The companies they compete against only have the upper hand as a result of current laws, laws that would go away at the same time these lands were transferred. Loss of governmental protections would be a great equalizer.