So, if a byproduct of not funding that is people dying, are you in favor of this?  These deaths can come from people who don't get money going off to increase crime that kills others, or end up dying through neglect and homelessness.

Like, how about the case of unemployment?  I am doing side project stuff, because I don't have money coming in (see the CADERS) website.  I used to get extended unemployment money.  Well, they money is gone, and I am still without paid employment.  I have a Masters in Information Systems and haven't worked in multiple years.  MAYBE I get lucky to land part-time office cleaning work for $10/hr or so.  What part of bad behavior is the government subsidizing here when they pay me unemployment money?

I give about 20-30% of my income to the poor and needy. I also contribute a decent bit of time to food pantries, homeless shelters, and the like as well.

How much do you contribute

The real issue is bad government, not government = bad. If you had a government which functioned better, without petty self interest of various parties getting in the way which if it does intervene in the economy sets explicit time limits on that involvement then most of the complainsts would simply evaporate.

You know, you have the worst tendency to make the most ridiculous assumption possible about where a person is coming from and, without even asking for clarification, just start flailing away at it. Granted, this was not quite as bad as that "libertarians think they own your cadaver if you die on their property" bullshit.

I didn't say all government spending is going towards subsidizing bad behavior. Only that it does happen. A lot. (And if you deny this, I'll pull a richardhutnik on you and assume you think the government has the right to kill anyone who's pulling down an above average income and redistribute their wealth.) A big part of the reason inner cities are so incredibly fucked is because of this kind of paternalism on the part of the government. Well-intentioned as it might have been, it's no coincidence that biological fathers don't see the need to hang around when government is expect to fill what had traditionally been their role. This - and not whatever Ayn Rand/Andrew Ryan style fictional dystopian nonsense you're so terrified of - is the real threat to civil society.

So, what exactly does government do that prevents people from not being so messed up and their society?  Also, what makes you think that biological fathers would bother to give a damn if the government pulled out?  Even today, with court systems that hold fathers accountable, they still skip out and don't pay.  In regards to this, tell me what part of the government drives individuals who can't afford to have kids, to go and have sex and women get pregnant? 

On thing I would argue here, based on what was said, is that I SERIOUSLY believe Libertarians put the cart before the horse.  You get more freedom when people take responsibility.  You don't just give people more freedom, and make them suffer greater consequences, and then expect them to all of a sudden assume more responsibility.  What part of cutting support to those in needs is going to drive the individuals to be responsible and law abiding citizens, and NOT decide that they should engage in criminal activity?  What part of nor helping is going to make things better?

richardhutnik said:

My main point regarding Libertarianism is that, it is insufficient to effectively provide for a better society, and given the nature of human beings to be subject to vices and sheer stupidity, that if it isn't tempered with other values, you aren't going to have much of a society.  The issues is for society to do more on its own, without government involvement, or you can't have Libertarianism in any form.

    It is the nature of human beings to act in their own interest and when people are told the basics of life are going to be taken care of for them, even if they can't take care of them themselves the downside of engaging in stupidity and vices is a lot less severe.  It's the basic concept of having "skin in the game".  If you have government housing and food stamps the prospect of a minimum wage job can, quite literally, be a step down...so what are you going to do in your crap neighborhood where everybody is feeling sorry for themselves?  Well probably like a lot of other people you engage in stupidity and vices.
    

You can also talk about curves maximizing wealth or "prosperity", but when other things in society get neglected, because of the drive for materialism, and corporations maximizing profits every second, at the expense of everything else, a society can suffer as a whole.

    In reply to this let me say I've given specific examples of how libertarian philosophy leads to prosperity and increased standard of living for ALL people.  In your reply here you are saying you think there are mechanisms through which libertarianism causes society to suffer as a whole....so what exactly are the mechanisms you see that would bring that about?

    The reason I ask this question is because your comment about "corporations maximizing profits every second" is implies you don't fully appreciate the concept of rational self-interest.  Put simply a corporation that 'maximizes profits every second' will be cutting employee pay, raising prices, lowering quality/quantity of products/services, and/or engaging in devious/nefarious tactics to sell its product or service.  Now if anyone actually thinks that any of those behaviors are in the rational self-interest of that company they have zero concept of what a long-term business strategy is.  That kind of scorched earth business practice will lead to the downfall of the company as employees seek better employment, customers seek better prices and/or better quality/quantity of products/services, and could possibly even lead to jail time for the companies executives depending on how nefarious they are.

    But I can go even further in rebuttal and say that you are correct that from time to time companies will do some or maybe even all of these things.  What I don't see from you is any indication, or justification thereof, that the behavior would become widespread and ultimately have a large scale impact on the economy and the society.  

    How do you figure that a myriad of companies engaged in awful business practices will find a way to survive?  Let alone one? How do you figure that consumers engaged in insatiable materialism without producing or innovating will somehow not go broke?  If you have a mechanism in mind that leads to any of this under libertarianism I'd like to hear it so I can either attempt to rebut it or perhaps I need to incorporate that idea into my views ...but until and unless you can think of and propose such a mechanism your reply here is really lacking in substance.


Also, you can just manipulate tax rates and spending, and expect it to manage alone.  In a nation with uneducated people, and individuals with severe health issues and short life expectencies, don't expect that changing tax rates will fix anything.  In a society like Inner City America, deck out with bling shops, and teen pregnancy and STDs running rampant, along with crime, don't expect that you can just cut tax rates and having things go well.  No amount of money is going to fit these things.  And people handling freedom badly isn't addressed by giving more freedom to them.  A society can drive itself off a cliff, and saying freedom is the answer, or less government, won't fix it.

    You're right that once the cycle is started it is not simply going to be broken by changes in welfare or economic policies.  But standing by while the next generation of entitlement babies are raised in that environment is pretty clearly not the right path.  Put simply, I don't claim that libertarianism has an easy pain-free solution for the vicious cycle of poverty, but given that nobody does I hardly think that is cause to look down on it.  

Take again the case of inner city areas, with high crime.  In these cases, would less government spending or more for law enforcement, be an answer?  Would the crime suddenly stop because there is now an optimal tax rate?  Or is it that you need there to be a level of security before things remain sustainable and you can have business?

    This is kind of an area where you agree with MrStick and I.  We both support the government being active in maintaining societal stability through strong law enforcement agencies and strong courts.  Limited government doesn't just mean "less of everything".  It means we want none of some of things (ie nationalized companies/industries), less of other things (ie multi-thousnad page business regulations), and more of still some other things (ie law enforcement, government transparency/accountability)
    
    

And then, let's say there case, as has been demonstrated, where wealth accumulation happens exponentially worse as time goes on, as a nation drives itself into a third-world status.  When the difference between the rich and poor grows so large, that you don't have much of a middle class, how is that society going to be able to even promise people a chance they will be able to make it?

    Yeah I'm not entirely sure my comments about wealth being relative and societal prosperity being absolute sank in =P I'll just give you a link that lists a whole bunch of reasons why worrying about the Gini Coefficient is a pretty silly thing to do:
    
    http://sabermetricresearch.blogspot.com/2009/03/gini-coefficient.html
    
    With that said extremes in the range of 0.75 and below 0.25, I think are worth examining a bit closer, but given the history of our nation and the massive disparity between rich and poor during that period I don't fret too much.  The reason is that this was the period we earned notoriety for being a nation where everyone can make something of themselves.  Wealth gaps need to be severe before they seriously start to effect the ability for people to make it.
    
    The true path to ensuring people can always "make it" is to jealously protect free market capitalistic principles.  They are what provide a path to prosperity for all people.

Personally, I find the argument that cutting back on government services is necessarily going to have a negative impact on individuals to be bizarre. Most governments are horribly inefficient organizations that are plagued with debt, have significant corruption, are subject to widespread fraud, and spend a large portion of their money in areas they shouldn’t be involved in. If the government was reduced to its core functions and focused on doing those efficiently while reducing corruption and fraud (and staying out of debt) you could probably run the government on 5% to 10% of GDP while the typical citizen didn’t notice any reduction of services.

I actually agree to an extent. I've always thought that since freedom and responsibility go hand in hand, people who aren't going to be responsible for their lives should lose their freedoms. For instance, as long as someone is on the public dole, perhaps they shouldn't be allowed to vote since they have a real financial incentive to vote for whomever is going to give them the most money and against anyone who proposes austerity measures. Or if someone is dependent on the government for their health care, they should be required to adhere to a strict diet and exercise regimen so as to minimize costs to the taxpayer.