What is your point? Do you even have one (or are you just trying to outnerd me)?
I completely agree. Thank you Jaq for going back into Libertarians for Obama.
Thank you also for bringing up this crucial difference. I am under the impression that somehow these two concepts have been confused, perhaps because some conservatives also happen to be libertarians.
I am also under the impression that libertarians promote abstention because of a belief on a lack of a government, rather than endorsement to Obama or McCain.
Solomon,
I was by no means trying to outnerd you. I am the very first one frustrated for the change in the topic. I just made a comment and was forced to all these pointless explanations. I quoted that extract of Mathematical Philosophy on the request above from nirgrahamUK. I apologize to you if I failed to quote him at that post, because of course you assumed I was directing it to you personally when I was not.
Mea culpa.
If you think in terms of the “world’s smallest political quiz”, then it is possible that you could have conservative libertarians. I doubt that they will vote Obama. The conservatives who are voting for Obama are largely in the “centrist” block, or even more likely, in the “statist conservative” portion.
I don’t think you will find many of either of those categories here at mises.
Most of the time, yes. I think it would be a mistake to classify us all in such a way. The root of “libertarian” means “freedom”, implying that a human person is free to make whatever choice is deemed best for themself, by themself. Many libertarians will abstain, but many others will vote for Bob Barr, many others will vote for Chuck Baldwin, still others will write in Ron Paul. Some will even vote for Nader for various reasons, or McKinney.
You’ll get a few oddballs who will vote for McCain (“at least he’s not Obama!”), or else for Obama (“at least he’s not McCain!”).
Hell, I even registered to vote this year, so that I could vote for Ron Paul in the primary. I knew he wouldn’t win, which in my eyes made it a vote against the system; an “anti-vote” that I deliberately “threw away”.
I’ll be voting on Tuesday, because I promised my congressmen that I would, depending on his vote on the bailout. I keep my promises. I wouldn’t be voting otherwise. While I’m there, I will, excepting the bailout, follow this policy:
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If there’s an incumbent, vote against the incumbent.
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If there’s no incumbent, skip the vote.
For a while, Justin Raimondo, who’s a strict Rothbardian libertarian, gave his endorsement to Obama. He ate his words, and very apologetically retracted that endorsement very shortly thereafter, after Obama’s latest speech to AIPAC, but it’s illustrative of what’s possible. I won’t begrudge him, but I would have been rather disappointed in him if he’d not retracted.
(In fact, the first thing I did after I read Obama’s 2008 AIPAC speech was to flip over to antiwar.com and see if Justin had reacted. He already had, in quite satisfactory fashion.)
That’s SO true. My aunt is one of Obama’s zelots. She says she’ll stop talking to her husband if he doesn’t vote for Obama. Normally, he also votes Dems, but this time, being a physician, he doesn’t care for Obama’s healthcare plans.
I understand people who want to vote for Obama because they’re fed up with Republicans. But treating him like some kind of prophet? That’s downright scary.
It says something about who these people are, and what they perceive as answers. Religion and divine right replaced with democratic proselytizing.
This is why we have a huge challenge ahead of us to educate our less rational, more superstitious, under educated, uninspired fellow humans (if such behavior by grown ass people can be called “human”)
I find it quite fitting that eventually becoming a cyborg will be possible, as many in society already seem perfectly programmable. This election only further proves such a scary prospect.
I’m considering if either of them win, who would install Martial Law faster and/or stronger, as I would re-consider remaining in my current location.
Frankly, I’m worried martial law will be declared amidst very mild “rioting” at a few voting booths (being magnified by the media & white house propaganda, of course, as a state wide emergency) due to the outcome regardless.
Obama has united the planet!
From the Economist,
“Obama sweeps the world”
BARACK OBAMA has won at least one election by a landslide. Voters in The Economist’s Global Electoral College favoured the Democratic candidate over his Republican rival, John McCain, by more than five to one. Some 52,000 readers around the world cast a vote, with more than 44,000 votes going to Mr Obama. As candidates collected delegates according to the countries won (just as America’s electoral-college system allocates delegates by state), Mr Obama’s victory is all the more comprehensive: he claims 9,115 delegates, compared with a paltry 203 for Mr McCain.
Various patterns became clear during the course of voting. Candidates did best when they picked up backing from heavily populated countries with large tallies of delegates. Mr Obama quickly scooped support from readers in China, India and most of Europe, as well as from the United States itself. Mr Obama won the backing of an overwhelming share of voters in 56 countries—including the likes of Canada, Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Indonesia and South Korea—claiming the support of 90% (or more) of those who voted.
Rich countries tended to vote earlier than poorer ones (a reflection of where most online readers of The Economist are found), with African countries among the last to fall for either candidate. Unsurprisingly, countries where internet access is limited registered fewer votes. At least ten votes are needed within each country for its delegates to become available. North Korea did not express a preference, although Myanmar (Burma) did eventually give a view—first favouring Mr McCain, but then ending in a tie (in which case neither candidate gets the delegates). Zimbabwe was late in showing narrow support for Mr Obama.
The general result may look lopsided, but judging by opinion polls carried out in various countries, for example by the BBC, Mr Obama is widely considered to be the world’s choice. Considering the rapturous reaction that he received in Berlin, and elsewhere, when he toured the Middle East and Europe in the summer, Mr Obama (and America) would be right to expect more goodwill if he becomes president than that enjoyed by George Bush.
Mr McCain did garner support in some unusual places. Andorra, Macedonia, Cuba, El Salvador and Georgia were coloured red during the earlier weeks of voting. Nearer to the close of polls the Republican also saw Iraq, Namibia, Congo, Sudan, Algeria and a few other countries offer him support. It may be that Cuban exiles in Florida chose to register themselves as residents of Cuba, and wanted to express their support for the Republican. Perhaps American servicemen in Iraq were backing Mr McCain. Some Georgians may feel that Mr McCain would be a tougher commander-in-chief than his rival, and thus would be more assertive towards Russia. Macedonia perhaps backed Mr McCain in reaction to the hearty enthusiasm for Mr Obama in neighbouring Greece. In the end, however, the Republican saw just four countries fall for him (and by narrow margins): Iraq, Cuba, Algeria and Congo.
Readers have been keen to express views on the Global Electoral College: over 1,800 comments were posted in the course of voting. A few American readers are unhappy that foreigners were expressing a choice, regarding it as an intrusion into domestic affairs. Others grumbled that we offered only a choice between the two main candidates (where was Ralph Nader, or Bob Barr? And where was the chance to abstain?). Others asked whether some readers are “gaming” the results, for example by registering as resident in a country where neither candidate has won, and then casting a vote in an effort to pick up remaining delegates. No doubt this practice happened to some extent, but it is most unlikely that the overall result was affected.
Some supporters of Mr Obama feared that his overwhelming global popularity could backfire at home, with American voters preferring a candidate less popular with the rest of the world. That seems unlikely. For what it is worth, our readers in America also massively favoured the Democrat over the Republican, by 81% to 19%. One thing is sure: America’s voters, however enthusiastic they prove to be on voting day, will not support Mr Obama by such a margin.
A very good and close friend of mine, who claims that he hates government, even thinks that Obama is going to put this country back on track. From, Obama is going to reduce the size of government to if only Obama had the opportunity to switch out all the supreme court justices, I have heard it all.
In a recent, rather loud discussion, he asked me to pose the question here “what do the libertarians at mises think would happen if Obama could switch out all the supreme court justices”. I replied that more than likely, libertarians will not think that this is a good idea.
Personally, I think the country would be even worse off if a socialist got to decide all of the justices…any ideas?
Ruben, we all know how to find mindless Obama propaganda online. No one cares what The Economist says. It’s a pro-state magazine. I’ve already explained, most of us are anti-state, not big government socialists.
I dunno. I assume this is a minarchist question. Who is the better ruler? Who should be allowed to employ force? Who should have the monopolies?
I can’t think within that paradigm anymore. My horizons have changed.
I know that.
I just posted this to emphasize the point of what people around the world freely think on how it should be run.
And because a majority thinks it is right, that makes it valid? Is this more of the Tao of Subjectivity?
If the current world we lived in had no governments, & people suddenly decided “Ya know, this is awfully boring. Let’s start forcing people to do things & call ourselves mandated leaders for the hell of it.”, then yes, I would agree people are “freely” choosing how the world should be run.
They are indeed choosing, but it is nonsense to say they are doing it “freely”. In some cases, it would be “ignorantly”; in other’s, “submitting”, but neither ignorance nor submission implies freedom, save for freedom from responsibility.
I don’t really keep up w/ the SCOTUS decisions like I used to since really, it’s hard to see constitutional jurisprudence get any more effed up than it already is. Otherwise, it’s just federal law, and the remedial statutes passed by Congress are already so broad there’s no way to rein them in. And Obama is not going to appoint people interested in trimming government power, just as the conservatives on the Court have been no less enthusiastic in supporting the Executive branch during the past 8 years.
An Obama presidency–even w/ a Democratic Congress–doesn’t scare me so much. There’s just no money left for them to do a lot of social engineering with. Even if there is, if by some miracle our overseas commitments get scaled back, it will all just disappear down the gravity well of the US inner cities which we’re pretty good at insulating ourselves from. Also, the Third Way is all the rage now. Socialists are smart enough to know they can’t wreck the bond market or provoke capital flight. But to answer your friend’s question, Obama won’t make a dime’s worth of difference, and we are in for a four year orgy of PC/multi-cult mush.
McCain, OTOH, is a desperate old man. He knows he’s running out of time to fulfill his dream of being a wartime president. I think any marginal tax relief or rollback of regs we may get would be more than offset by him picking fights with Russia and Iran. The old lunatic wants to be FDR at Yalta. I don’t want him and his Protestant Zionist veep anywhere near the button, and I don’t care how doable she is.
And what is the market, then? Don’t consumers choose if they purchase brand A or brand B? If brand A is more popular and has more sales the market rewards the manufacturing company increasing its net worth while brand B might even become bankrupt if consumers do not purchase their products. That is market competition. Why is market competition accepted in this forum as desirable according to consumer preferences? and competition between political candidates according to voter’s preferences, why is it not desirable in this forum?
It seems to me that in politics democracy has some equivalence with market competition in economics.
No it doesn’t.
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It is coercive.
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It’s mob rule. If 51 people want blue jeans, then 49 people can’t get slacks. That’s not how a market works. For a higher cost, the minority can satisfy their needs in the marketplace. One cannot even secede (choose not to purchase) from a democracy and social contract they never agreed to!
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Equivalence. Ugh.
That’s precisely the reason why there is a separation of powers, checks and balances, and congresses and local governments with representations of the minorities. And after eight years of Bush, now what were previously the minorities will now have a majority government with Obama!
Even if this is true, it does not follow that this is in any way like a market, where the availability of resources is dependant on demand for those resources. Government assumes existence reguardless of whether it’s existance is wanted, a clientele reguardless of their demand. It is the opposite of free.