Libertarian Party Uk
- Thread starter Rohen
- Start date
Anyone got a link for a bit more info on that? I'm having trouble googling...
fractionMan
Custom Title
Haha. The guy round here who dressed in a ski mask and promised to send some random to parliament if he won got more votes than that 
Combustible
Well-Known Member
Anyone come across this lot yet?
http://uklibertyleague.org/
Seems mostly be a network of student RW Libertarians. And also seems to contain a suitable assortment of chinless wonders. Also mentions like to the Freedom Association and a load of RW think tanks.
http://uklibertyleague.org/
Seems mostly be a network of student RW Libertarians. And also seems to contain a suitable assortment of chinless wonders. Also mentions like to the Freedom Association and a load of RW think tanks.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Their twitter feed has a link to this radio 4 program.
Radical Economics: Yo Hayek!
http://ht.ly/3Pii5
Austrian school loonspuds think their beliefs are rehabilitated by the recent crisis and that they have the answers. They can be useful idiots in these times, in that they do identify some of the problems with the system, but they will continue to have rather large problems when it comes to turning their beliefs into policy because their solutions are completely insufferable. The free market fantasies will continue to influence the economic world, but will face many barriers due to how many basic human needs are not served well by the concept of markets.
Next Mondays program, a very different analysis by Newsnight's Economics Editor Paul Mason, sounds more fun.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Oh, I listened to that on Monday. The problem is too much regulation! Brilliant.
It wasn't entirely without merit. For instance, he correctly identified government guarantees of savings with private banks as a problem. Clearly it is a problem, privatising profit and socialising loss. His solution: withdrawal of the state entirely from bank finances, which will then take care of themselves as they will modify their behaviour accordingly. No word as to what happens if they still fuck up, just a 'trust me they won't'. And not even a consideration of the alternative solution – the nationalisation of the entire banking system.
It wasn't entirely without merit. For instance, he correctly identified government guarantees of savings with private banks as a problem. Clearly it is a problem, privatising profit and socialising loss. His solution: withdrawal of the state entirely from bank finances, which will then take care of themselves as they will modify their behaviour accordingly. No word as to what happens if they still fuck up, just a 'trust me they won't'. And not even a consideration of the alternative solution – the nationalisation of the entire banking system.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Well yeah, theres a reason I call them mentalists and Keynes thought Hayeks theories were crazy. I love the way they complain that their ideas are only unworkable because of politicians. No, because we are humans with a range of needs, some of which are not really compatible with markets at all, no matter how 'pure and free' these chumps think markets can be made. As if governments are the only ones who distort markets.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Yep. In the end, the Austrian school is little more than a declaration of faith. If there is a recession, there is nothing you can do about it. Any intervention will either do nothing or make things worse. The best thing to do is to completely leave alone. Again, he admitted as much in the programme, that they have no answers – because they believe that there are no answers. It is the ultimate statement that we are here to serve money and not the other way round. Money is god (or the devil, as dwyer would have it), and it is simply our place as humans to believe.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
I know Nobel prizes are a bit of a joke, but Hayek won one for this nonsense. It beggars belief really that people still pay any attention at all to his ideas.
elbows
Well-Known Member
I assume such ideas do not suffer from utter marginalisation because they have their uses for those who are not really believers but seek deregulation etc for other reasons.
Those with an obsession with curtailing only one particular kind of great power in the world are useful tools for those who yield a different sort of power and whose worst excesses may be somewhat thwarted by governments.
To paraphrase something Tony Benn said on a tv program about anarchy some years ago, 'I want to be free from the anarchy where the rich can do what they like and everybody else has to put up with it'. And so the libertarians are my enemy.
Those with an obsession with curtailing only one particular kind of great power in the world are useful tools for those who yield a different sort of power and whose worst excesses may be somewhat thwarted by governments.
To paraphrase something Tony Benn said on a tv program about anarchy some years ago, 'I want to be free from the anarchy where the rich can do what they like and everybody else has to put up with it'. And so the libertarians are my enemy.
nino_savatte
No pasaran!
Well, Ayn Rand has recently become the darling among neoliberals. Hannan and Carswell have admitted that they are 'fans' of Rand and that her <coughs> philosophy inspired their book,The Plan. Indeed both of them are also admirers of Hayek.
What a monstrous ego.
What a monstrous ego.
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
'recently'? I thought that she was the neo-lib pin-up along with Ann Coulter...
nino_savatte
No pasaran!
Certain Tories (Carswell, Hannan et al) have only discovered Rand in the last couple of years. Carswell was on Newsnight in 2009 singing her praises. I can't say I'd noticed any mention of her prior to that.
kyser_soze
Hawking's Angry Eyebrow
Ah yes, sorry all, neo+suffixx confusion.
Why neo-anything, is what I want to know. Actually I don't. This is a funny article about something sort-of related to privatisation type things:
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/10164/
claphamboy
The wheels on the bus go round and round....
Interesting that this old thread is still sort of alive, as I've heard from very reliable sources today that the OP is still very much part of an ongoing General Medical Council investigation into his crackpot ideas and quack-like advice.
No wonder he hates the NHS so much.
No wonder he hates the NHS so much.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
I see you'd nailed him a few years back...
Jeff Robinson
Marxist-Lentilist: Jackboots and Jackfruit
More details? Link?
dennisr
the acceptable face
Its a sneery article by a cunt from what I started to read before giving up
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
Look at the final line- these kids are the broken spoon of the contaminated mums protest of the wok metaphor that I have just invented. Crown me king of Spike.
So is the OP a nonce or just a whack job, what says the jury?
So is the OP a nonce or just a whack job, what says the jury?
nino_savatte
No pasaran!
He's a whack job. Any other takers?
discokermit
Well-Known Member
i got two paragraphs in and couldn't be bothered with any more.
Blagsta
Minimum cage, maximum cage
Total intellectual lightweights these "libertarians". I just tried to have a discussion on Twitter with bloke who runs Old Holborn blog. He kept going on about individual vs "the collective", so I tried to engage him in discussion on concept of individual, touching on attachment theory, and dialectics. He just couldn't handle it and kept ranting about being forced to work for "the collective". A total fruitcake, with zero intellect or debating skills.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Why bother? I banned myself from here for a while, but I just took to posting in the politics section of a physics forum I go to. I ended up having to argue everything right from first principles – freedom to act vs freedom not to be acted on, etc. It got tedious in the end. These were just mainstream US science geeks too. But they have completely unconsciously held prejudices that it is very hard to tackle.
Quite, Blagsta believes you can separate out social freedom and economic freedom. So wouldn't see how freedoms are restricted when the tax man starts taking more and more of your spending power away at the petrol pump and deciding how it should be spent for you.
I'm yet to see any explanation of how the collectivist redistribution will occur without the creation of a massive bureaucracy underpinned by state prepared to use physical force or coercion to impose it's system.
Total intellectual lightweights these "libertarians". I just tried to have a discussion on Twitter with bloke who runs Old Holborn blog. He kept going on about individual vs "the collective", so I tried to engage him in discussion on concept of individual, touching on attachment theory, and dialectics. He just couldn't handle it and kept ranting about being forced to work for "the collective". A total fruitcake, with zero intellect or debating skills.
I like twitter, but it's almost impossible to have a meaninful discussion on it. I'm not sure how much you can infer about "libertarians" based on a select experince of one or two either.
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