Talk:Libertarianism/Archive4

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Tsk tsk

"You are reading this page using something originally created by the big, bad gummint."

CERN called. They said you were slightly biased in your representation of their work. 95.14.215.211 (talk)

The predecessor to the internet, ARPANET, was developed by and for the DOD and was released to the public by state colleges.--Just relax, and stay funny (talk) 16:07, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm sure the work of all those scientists from all over the world are nothing when the state funded and used their research. 95.14.215.211 (talk)

DARPA paid for the Internet as we know it. This is both widely accepted and actually true - David Gerard (talk) 22:27, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

They paid for it? I didn't know that, even though I stated it above! I'm sure you have more of a claim for it than the actual creators when you pay for it! Also, if you can't understand, sarcasm. 95.14.215.211 (talk)

The BoN is making the common mistake of assuming that The Internet = The World Wide Web. WWW is basically an application that runs on the Internet, like FTP, NNTP and so on. The original specs for the HTTP protocol, the underlying language of the WWW, were indeed designed at CERN, but a long time after the net itself started. rpeh •T•C•E• 15:47, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

CERN is also funded by government, IIRC. Many governments, but especially France and Switzerland on whose soil it resides. Nobody else can afford to build particle accelerators and other Big Science projects on that scale. EVDebs (talk) 00:41, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

ARPANET (the generally accepted predecessor to the internet) was developed with funds from DARPA (a branch of the DOD), partly by DOD officials, and for the express purpose of use by the DOD. It was first publicly used by state colleges. As EVDebs and Rpeh point out, HTTP and WWW were developed by CERN, which is a project funded partly by private donations, but mostly by various governments, especially those in Europe, and their locations are mostly on government land (as far as I know). Many common programming languages, such as the HTML used on this many other boards, were developed by governments, their branches, or organizations funded almost exclusively by governments. --Just relax, and stay funny (talk) 00:58, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Might be worth noting that particle physics research is nearly nonexistent in the private sector. Would Tim Berners-Lee even have been allowed to deploy WWW if he was working for a private company, given how many of them are so touchy about sharing their research? EVDebs (talk) 17:32, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, because free meerkat fairy farts rainbows. Didn't you get your daily dose of Mises? --Llegar a las estrellas^¿Dígame? 18:35, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Wasn't Bell Labs owned by AT&T when C was developed and not Alcatel-Lucent?

New complaints

The libertarianism page is ridiculous -- obviously written by hater(s) of the philosophy who made no attempt to be unbiased. Hope that's not the case with "RationalWiki" as a whole, but based on what I've seen so far...^{— Unsigned, by: Starchild / talk / contribs}

This is not the wiki for neutral point of view. This wiki has a snarky point of view. If you feel if there are any factual inaccuracies, you are welcome to talk about them on the talk page, but unless you bring some hard evidence that libertarianism isn't just ensuring that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, you're probably not going to change the main page. EnlightenmentLiberal (talk) 09:09, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Oh look, another special snowflake. WAAAAAAAAAAAH!!! RW isn't rational because it disagrees with my ideology!!! WAAAAAAAH. The name says it all. Fuck off, Starchild. --Llegar a las estrellas^¿Dígame? 20:58, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Well, it's nice to see constructive dialogue is alive and well. Wẽãšẽĩõĩď^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 21:03, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

I really don't see the point. Every month some bloody randroid crawls out of the woodwork with exactly the same arguments, and tries to turn the Libertarianism article into a puff piece. --Llegar a las estrellas^¿Dígame? 21:12, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Well, I just bumped into this website and it's distressing to read. If people of a strongly authoritarian-left-progressive-whatever bias want to write a wiki promoting that view, that's fine. But that's all it is, a mirror image of Conservapedia. The distressing part is the "Rational Wiki" name, as it's clear that these people actually believe they're being rational and objective. In the American parlance, this ought to be called "Liberalpedia" or something like that (the word Liberal having been utterly inverted in that country to mean the authoritarian, technocratic left). But in terms of "rational" it's somewhere in the same league as Breatharianism. Utterly disappointing. ^{— Unsigned, by: 82.71.30.178 / talk / contribs} 10:36, 8 July 2013

Drink! EnlightenmentLiberal (talk) 21:09, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

But seriously, do you have some specific complaints that we can talk about? We're not mind-readers. EnlightenmentLiberal (talk) 21:09, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

I do, insults and words are presented as axiomatic when arguining against libertarian subjects (words such as "evil" and "wing nut"). That's pure opinion, and a child's way of arguing (rather contradictory to "rationality" on which this site's name is based). You also say this site has a "snarky" style. I find this lacking in your collectivist associated subjects (on subjects such as Socialism and economists sympathetic to this point of view).

It weakens the quality of articles and it weakens the humour too. ^{— Unsigned, by: 86.9.226.177 / talk / contribs 2013-07-21T20:02:29‎}

See tone troll. Let us know if you have any relevant complaints besides tone, please. EnlightenmentLiberal (talk) 01:24, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

More Ad-Hominem I see, Ok, let's do this. Let's take the following paragraph from Hayek's article:

"Ironically, the most enduring and popular of his works today is not his strictly economic work but The Road to Serfdom,[4] a book describing how the slightest bit of central planning would become a slippery slope to socialism.[5] It shot to number one on Amazon when Glenn Beck mentioned it on his show.[6] This ought to have set off some irony meters as Hayek penned a lengthy essay entitled "Why I Am Not a Conservative."[7] It is perhaps more relevant now in explaining the thought processes of wingnuts than the possibility of a commie takeover in today's post-Cold War world.[8]"

There is so much wrong with this paragraph I'm not sure where to start. Rather than critiquing Hayek's argument's (I will return to this point), you are attacking people that might possibly have sympathy with Hayek's argument's, worse still you are attacking an imagined stereotype of a group of people that might agree in part with Hayek (i.e. to use your parlance "wingnuts").

Secondly, you clearly (or the author of the article) have not read the Road to Serfdom. The book begins by defining central planning, collectivism, the methods of collectivists, and how fascism and socialism are two forms of collectvism i.e. in summary the aims of fascists and socialists may by different, however the methods are almost indentical (e.g. the use of force to curtail freedom and competition).

Hayek then goes on to critique the fallacious arguments in favour of central planning. Hayek clearly shows that these arguments have little evidence backing them other than acceptance through repetition.

For example one of these arguments "as society becomes more advanced central planning and state monopoly are inevitable", Hayek shows to be clearly fallacious, and arguing rather persuasively that this is the result of political power, rather than as a consequence of technological progress. He lampoons a statement made by Mussolini, who stated that "We are the first to assert that the more complicated the forms of civilisation, the more restricted the freedom of the individual must become", by pointing outthat if that were surely true (including the necessity of monopoly and eradication of competition as technology advances), Britain would have been the first place in the world to see a rise of central planning and curtailment of freedom. Britain's technological progress and prospertiy was far in advance of Italy during the 19th and early 20th century, and yet it was the likes of much poorer nations such as Germany and Italy that were embracing central planning because their societies were supposedly "so far advanced".

Further, when Hayek discusses central planning leading to authoritarianism, he deals less with communism and instead focuses rather more on the rise of fascism within Europe and which renders the "commie takeover" to be a ridiculous, inaccurate, diversion. He also discusses with regard to the same subject, how central planning and planners replace the rule of law with arbitrary dictat (be they socialist or fascist).

This paragraph is slightly better, in that it discusses the economic calculation problem, and the business cycle, but again offers no proper critique other than weasel words and baseless assertions:

"Hayek's work expanded on Ludwig von Mises' work on the economic calculation problem, i.e., the inherent impossibility of pricing goods in a state-run economy (which itself was an expansion of Max Weber's statement of the problem).[9] His idea of prices as information necessary to solve the calculation problem was very influential, albeit limited in reality to cases where there is no collusion, price-gouging, etc. He also expanded on the Austrian Business Cycle Theory (ABCT), or more accurately, the "Blame the Fed" theory. ABCT was rather forward-thinking at the time for tying the business cycle to credit expansion, although Irving Fisher, a contemporary of Hayek, came up with his debt-deflation theory which did the same during the Great Depression as well."

There's no explanation of "price-gouging" or "collusion", and misses the point that a centrally planned/mixed economy (where prices are set by the state) consists of price fixing on a far grander scale.

The Business Cycle is not a critique of the Federal Reserve, rather it describes the cyclical process of the accrual of savings and then the spending of savings (and so on), and how this explains the observation of higher and slower periods of economic activity.

The business cycle can occur with or without the Federal Reserve and is an observation of human behaviour. Further, at a basic level, Irving Fisher's theory of debt deflation is a description of the contrationary phase of the business cycle. I would however disagree, with Fisher's assertion that re-inflation is required to remedy such an episode, which is exactly what was tried in the depression of the 1930s (albeit under Keynsian ideology), and contradicts with the depression of 1920-21 where prices fell by almost 20%, there was little to no government intervention, and yet activity and confidence recovered within 18 months.

The level of argument and intellectual rigour in the article amounts to little more than "don't read the Road to Serfdom, it's ugly, and people we think are ugly have read it, which will make you ugly too, and by anachronistic association anything Hayek has said is also ugly".

I could reference other articles, but this site absolutely littered with such poor, misrepresentative, poorly argued, brief, fallacious, articles, I just don't have time to list everything, and I'm not sure why I'm trying to help improve the quality when it seems far beyond rescue, and where far better reference sites already exist. ^{— Unsigned, by: 86.31.236.35 / talk / contribs}

I can't think of a wiki where articles don't need improvement. If RW is so execrable that all attempts to repair it are futile, don't worry, because RW will be ignored in favor of superior reference sites. --TheLateGatsby (The end of the dock ) 18:04, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

I'd say don't waste your time. Especially seeing as most fans of libertarian intellectuals who come on here to "improve" our articles with "intellectual rigor" really are only interested in putting a positive spin on them. Kind of like how every libertarian I've met on the net seems to think "debate" means "proselytize." This is for the most part an anti-rightwing website. If that makes us a bunch of idiot socialists in your eyes, so be it.ConfusedLiberal (talk) 18:14, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

I notice you've both ignored the intellectual arguments and would rather engage in emotive sillyness (like arguing over what you think, I may or may not be thinking).I would re-iterate, the article on Hayek doesn't address his arguments, it attacks imaginary groups of stereotypical people that may or may not be sympathetic to Hayek's ideas (on this point you cannot be sure because you clearly haven't read Hayek's work). It's equivalent to a rebuttal of Krugman on the basis that a drunken tramp once read "End This Depression Now". Do you really think this constitutes a proper argument, or the basis of a quality article? You can make the articles on this site better, but you don't seem interested. If the articles were better this site would be more relevant.

I'm not interested in a positive spin on libertarian articles, I'm interested in a full, honest, critique of the arguments. ^{— Unsigned, by: 86.31.236.35 / talk / contribs}

I ignore your "intellectual" arguments because I have no interest in arguing with you. Nothing I say will change your mind as to the "truth," and the same could be said for that which you say to me. Now I'm not telling or even asking you to drop it, I am just saying that if it's a fair critique of libertarianism you want, this is probably not the place to find it. I understand that very few non-libertarian intellectuals have addressed it in a way you like, and I'd like to see a more thorough and intellgent argument against it myself, but I must reiterate: you will not find it here. ConfusedLiberal (talk) 01:33, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Why come you don't post these complaints on Hayek talk page? This article doesn't even mention him. --Marlow (talk) 19:00, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm using it as an example of the poor quality of articles on libertarian subjects. Care to comment on the specifics? Or do you only do irrelevant minutiae too? 86.31.236.35 (talk) 19:05, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Naw, I'll stick with the irrelevant minutiae if you don't mind. --Marlow (talk) 22:26, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

A debate is taking place because this website calls itself RationalWiki, rather than Liberalpedia or whatever. "This is for the most part an anti-rightwing website." Ok, fine, but that fact is not apparent from the name of the website. That's why people get upset - they're expecting impartiality, facts etc and not just liberal grandstanding. I am not a socialist, but if someone asked me to compile an encyclopedia entry on socialism I would mention "public ownership of the means of production" and "equality". I would not immediately start off by saying "socialism is an oppressive system of total state control over all aspects of life. It aims to turn the planet into a political reservation/deathcamp." You might say objectivity in these matters is impossible, or not even desirable. Fine. But then let's not pretend to be writing an encyclopedia! ^{— Unsigned, by: Oldoddjobs / talk / contribs} 13:41, 2 March 2014

Nobody is pretending any such thing. RationalWiki is very explicitly not an encyclopedia. Please sign your comments. Ŵêâŝêîôîď^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 14:16, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

Programming language examples

Entirely wrong. C# was created by Microsoft so it's very much like Java. C++ development was almost 100% libertarian: the standard is only a post hoc recommendation. In fact, Java is LESS libertarian than C/C++/C# because 1.it's trademarked 2.its owner (Sun, then Oracle) enforces its specifications (they sued Microsoft, then Google) In the programming, C++ (which grew) and Ada (which was designed) languages are sometimes compared, because created at the same time for similar use. With C++ victor in the history. I am not arguing libertarianism is good, just this section is junk. Alliumnsk (talk) 10:07, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Oh god. I need to review the main page. This sounds atrocious. Too late now, so tomorrow. EnlightenmentLiberal (talk) 10:39, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

I don't see how trademarking and litigation would make Java less libertarian. Surely those things are part of the corporate culture which libertarianism encourages. Wėąṣėḷőįď^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 21:46, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Java is less libertarian than C/C++ which are not even trademarked. Even if C was designed by a guy who worked for government, he did it for his own use. Most known example of language created by gov REQUEST is Ada. Of which few have ever heard of.Alliumnsk (talk) 08:54, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

I've removed the sentence about C - if someone wants it back, they should write a version that isn't actually wrong - David Gerard (talk) 22:39, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Yeah... that kind of didn't make a whole lot of sense. Stopping with CERN is the right thing. EVDebs (talk) 06:49, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Concur - trimmed - David Gerard (talk) 07:15, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

The section is still selective POV -- it doesn't mention that Rationalwiki servers run MediaWiki (free), Linux (free) compiled with GCC (free compiler, often beats MSVC for speed optimizations), PHP (free) of course which are more substantial things than few protocols. Alliumnsk (talk) 08:54, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

And freeware is the exact opposite of libertarianism. Octo8 (talk) 09:40, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

Noooo... It's actually one place where small-l (and some big-L) libertarianism and liberalism overlap. (Please don't cite Eric Raymond as a rebuttal. He has no understanding at all of left-wing politics.) Proprietary freeware is still free of charge, and it's the author's prerogative (except in certain cases where vendor lockin is involved) to make it so. FOSS , whatever its ideological underpinnings, is basically a small-scale form of libertarian socialism. (It isn't a model that scales to politics, though.) EVDebs (talk) 21:39, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

I think very few ideologies would disagree with the notion that you can give your personal property away for free. Maybe patronage liberalism (in the European sense of the word liberalism)... but that is indeed rather for patronage's sake than ideology. But libertarianism to me seems to be best on the maxim that the public good is best advanced by pursuing individual interests - an attitude which seems to be best encapsulated in proprietary software. Octo8 (talk) 11:42, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

Factual error here.

"Many libertarians support having stricter immigration laws."

Not the ones I find on the blogosphere. By and large, most libertarians that I know of are in favor of open borders. I think you might be mistaking the libertarian position on immigration with the position of "libertarians" like the teabaggers or Neo-Confederates; they might look libertarian on the surface for all their laissez-faire rhetoric, but get really authoritarian in key places (especially where the religious right or racial minorities are concerned). I've been reading libertarian chatter on the net for some time now, so I will look for other inaccuracies and put them here as I find them. Since I'm still new to the site, I won't edit too much personally, as I'd like to discuss it first. ConfusedLiberal (talk) 09:38, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Addendum: Actually, I think it might be useful to include a section on this page to distinguish between libertarianism and "libertarianism" as practiced by neocons in denial. Then we could list and make fun of key pretenders (i.e. Eric Dondero. He claims to be a libertarian, but dutifully stumped for Romney after Ron Paul fired his ass. Though he's not a Republican either; he's just a dick.) ConfusedLiberal (talk) 09:41, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Sounds a lot like the 'no true Scotsman' fallacy. Economic libertarianism is a valid position, whether or not its adherents also practice social or foreign policy libertarianism. Wěǎšěǐǒǐď^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 11:09, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

I would say the vast majority of libertarians favour an open borders policy. Exceptions include Hans Hoppe--Oldoddjobs (talk) 13:41, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

historic use of the term & american libertarianism as corporate-fed propaganda

i did some edits early to mention that the association of the term with free market economics is an entirely recent american thing. it is important to add that it was first used in the late 1800's to advocate labor and union movements, syndicalism and Left Anarchism. i think its a pretty important thing to mention. another thing which i was adding was, that most libertarian think-tanks are corporate-sponsored propaganda machines, and the political corruption of the movement is pretty evident and important. i made some of these changes but was reverted, dont really give a shit anymore to go back and change it again ^{— Unsigned, by: Yousiv89 / talk / contribs} 01:14, 4 March 2014‎ (UTC)

Debate with Libertarian

I'm in the middle of a Debate with Libertarian at Liberapedia. Are any of you interested in following? Proxima Centauri (talk) 11:55, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Chomsky

>libertarian socialists,' a philosophy championed by Noam Chomsky Well I am pretty sure that this term existed before Noam Chomsky. ^{— Unsigned, by: 93.90.34.152 / talk / contribs} 23:13, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

"Championed" is not the same as "founded by". I think he's given as an example of a notable proponent.--ZooGuard (talk) 16:53, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

Misleading straw-man arguments

This article pretends that a consensus exists between libertarians on a great number of controversial issues, and then attacks the weakest possible position. The fact of the matter is that many of the positions against libertarianism stated in this article are not actually held by most libertarians, and are instead the topics of great debate within libertarian circles.^{— Unsigned, by: 129.79.242.49 / talk / contribs} 21:40, 5 June 2014‎ (UTC)

You actually expected a reasoned article? All these people ever do is tout the same political line and bash everyone who disagrees with them. Or, as they call it, "being snarky". They also neglect to mention that Radley Balko actually used to be on the staff of the huffington post. Burkean (talk) 08:04, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

• It's a conspiracy, Burkean. :) (No it's not.) When you find something which is not accurate in any article on RationalWiki, you are free to edit the page to correct the mistakes or use the Talk:: pages to discuss fixing the article. If people's proposed edits are supported by evidence, they get adopted. So it is with the extant page here. Damotclese (talk) 01:07, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

HTML

HTML was originally a subset of SGML, which was created at IBM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SGML#History HTML5, which this page is written in, appeared spontaneously on the free market in lieu of cooperation between the major players - the specs were created after the fact. This was preceded by failed top-down standardization attempts of XHTML. The "invention" of HTTP was a one man's job and followed other free market attempts of implementing hypertext, many other popular protocols were created in various places (XMPP - open-source community, IRC - a private individual, BBS - individuals for private needs). HTTP, like HTML was standardized after wide market adoption and later extended - SPDY is becoming it's widely accepted successor and will be standardized as HTML 2.0 (scrapping previous failed attempts). Creative stuff was always done by individuals and can't be institutionalized.

Apart from these inconsistencies, just because ARPANET, HTTP and HTML is something that the author heard about doesn't mean there aren't a zillion other things that happen when a user clicks the "Internet Explorer" icon on their desktop. Each of them create a set of problems that have already bees solved by the free market and the end-user never hears about any of them (apart from some marketing and government propaganda). Somebody not in the business just can't understand or regulate an invention into existence.

The other points in the article represent similar magical thinking, mixing conservative/right-wing and libertarian ideas, which are never settled and always open for discussion. Libertarians focus on decentralization and anti-authoritarianism thus enabling competition between those different ideas. Some of the people involved obviously have their own belief of what those are and which would win. I don't feel competent enough to edit this obviously very political and US-centric article because I'm just looking from the outside :)^{— Unsigned, by: 5.185.37.97 / talk / contribs} 16:55, 23 June 2014‎ (UTC)

The brand of Libertarian-ism practiced inside of the United States is absolutely pro-authoritarian / pro-fascism ideology. It may not be thus in other countries but within the United States Libertarianism as practiced is indistinguishable from right wing extremist Republicanism, a virtual mirror of Fascism as defined and practiced under Nazi Italy's model of Fascism. (i.e. corporations being the same as the ruling government, an ideology which U.S. Libertarians / Republicans embrace to the detriment of Democracy.) There is nothing "anti-authoritarianism" about right wing politics. It is entirely the ideology of obedience to the corporate State. Damotclese (talk) 01:07, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

You're a complete idiot. It was Roosevelt who admired Mussolini's model of government. Pretty much the opposite of a libertarian. Using state power to support big corporations was one of the favorite tactics of the original progressives in the name of efficiency and doing away with "endless duplication". The idea that Nazi Germany was a small government free market is pretty ridiculous. Corporations were given massive state power under Stalin. Does this make Soviet Russia capitalist? By your logic, it would seem so. There were strict laws on free speech, gun ownership, vice, and a large amount of people's money was confiscated by the Nazi state. Does this sound like Ron Paul's platform to you? Do you think Hitler or Mussolini would favor the decriminalization of marijuana or prostitution? Do you think Hitler or Mussolini would've protested the Iraq War, or spoke against the patriot act? Do you think libertarians would favor the holocaust? Burkean (talk) 06:45, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

Uh, dude, Stalinist Russia was widely considered to be state capitalist. You really don't know what you're talking about. I also find it really funny that you adore an implicitly authoritarian ideology while claiming to be anti-authoritarian. Who are the Kochs? Hur dur, the means of production being owned by an extraordinarily small class of people isn't authoritarian at all! Talk about woo. ^{— Unsigned, by: 24.243.62.225 / talk / contribs}

Sorry, thinkers who have been part of classical liberal thought for ages favored a smaller government and more private involvement than anything any libertarian would argue for today. Call it whatever you like, the forces of government seized and controlled massive amounts of wealth, wielding a power the dreaded one percent would never dream of. The idea that Russia was a capitalist society under the Soviet Union of any kind is not endorsed by mainstream center-left historians. Of course, the irony of all this is that wealth became more greatly concentrated when people who were supposedly progressives in the states gave massive state power to business. But you don't need to know anything about that because Koch brothers. Burkean (talk) 09:02, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

This is trivially disproven by comparing e.g. Smith and Rothbard. You appear to be delusional - David Gerard (talk) 09:31, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

Not really. Adam Smith was not the end all and be all of classical liberal thought. Bastiat and Say, not to mention David Ricardo were all closer to Rothbard than Smith. To pretend that radical libertarians of the small government variety were not part of the tradition in the 19th century would be both "trivial" and "delusional" Burkean (talk) 21:35, 4 July 2015 (UTC)

Looks like a moron has no idea what the history of the rise of Italian Fascism was nor, forthat matter, what Fascism is. What, you right wing Republican morons can't use Google? Damotclese (talk) 16:08, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

Looks like someone is in complete denial. FDR praised Mussolini's model many times, Mussolini, like Hitler, derided capitalism as decadent (and in Hitler's case, believed to be jewish). Mussolini was quoted as saying that fascism was "everything within the state, nothing outside the state". Some of you hacks, like Michael Parenti, have tried to claim that fascism was small government and free market and failed miserably. Thankfully, though I disagree with them much of the time, most people on rationalwiki acknowledge that fascism is completely different from libertarianism. Huge gun control, economic autarky, huge regulations, stirring people against the "capitalist class", not to mention all the vice laws in fascist Italy or Germany. I have yet to vote for a republican, and as a libertarian I would put both George W. Bush and Reagan near the very bottom of the list of our presidents. Not that google should be considered a reliable source, but I don't remember google saying that fascism was a cousin of free market libertarianism. So apparently, you suffer from the same affliction the right wing suffers from. Namely, neither of you can read. Burkean (talk) 18:56, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

Accusation of anti-semitism

Should we mention that the libertarian movement has been accused of flirting with anti-semitism (Reason magazine and holocaust denialism, Rothchild conspiracy theories being accepted as doctrine among "repeal the Fed" types). It's worth noting that a common retort to this accusation is that many libertarian thinkers (Friendman, Murray Rothbard) were Jewish, which seems to border on a Friends argument but I don't know. It seems worth bringing up somewhere though. ClothCoat (talk) 05:31, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

True of parts of it, definitely - David Gerard (talk) 11:37, 30 July 2014 (UTC)