Ridiculous Claims Thread

Miscellaneous General
1

Sometimes I can’t believe what I’m hearing/seeing. I’m sure this happens to some of you.

So, in order to vent some frustrations, why not have a thread consisting of the most ridiculous claims of libertarianism?

I’ll begin:

  • We had libertarianism in the late 19th century, which lead to worker exploitation and bubble/bust cycles.
  • Toxic waste dumps, polluted air, and Hurricane Katrina situations would become rampant.
  • Government came to the rescue, saving children oppressed under evil “child labor.”
  • Libertarian “pseudo-economics” will be a disaster

If a thread like this exists/has existed already…Oh well lol

2

If the United States had a free market, many Americans would starve to death.

Related ridiculous claims are:

  • Without minimum wages or unions, many people would be paid extremely low wages.
  • Without work-safety regulations, people would be forced to work in dangerous conditions.
  • Without working hour regulations, everyone would have to work 80+ hours a week.
  • Without Social Security, nobody would ever be able to retire.
  • Without Medicare, the elderly would die off.
  • Without Medicaid and welfare, the poor would starve to death and/or die from lack of medical care.
  • Without medical licensure, everyone would die from attending unregulated doctors.
3

If it weren’t for government, there’d be no roads!

4

If it were not for the government, many things would not have been accomplished, like getting phone lines out to the boonies.

5

That the current economic situation proves that “free markets” (and therefore libertarianism) have been proven not to work!

6

The Fed is a free market institution.

Ron Paul is a neoliberal.

Government shrank from Reagan till Bush II.

We’re all equal.

7

If the government didn’t get involved in the Progressive era, we would all be crawling around in the mud while the capitalists exploited us with ever decreasing wages.

8

The separation of powers in the constitution provides a system of checks and balances on government.

If you legalized drugs, everyone would do them all the time and society would collapse.

That mainstream news is not an oxymoron.

9

That Wikipedia is a bad source for your college papers. Just ignore the all the references at the bottom of the Wiki page.

That government stats are reliable.

10

I’ve had teachers state, as an absolute fact, that the US has been moving towards limited government and deregulation since Reagan.

11

Here’s a few:

  • The economic crisis in which we are now in was caused by deregulation
  • The economic crisis is now over
  • We are now in recovery mode
  • Government debt is “owed to ourselves”
  • Austria’s GDP is small in comparison to any major power, and, therefore, its economists must be irrelevant
  • Without the U.S. military engaged in numerous foreign excursions, we would have been attacked again
12

Government builds and maintains the interwebs. Without them we couldn’t Google!

13

If government did not monopolize utility provision (electricity, gas, water, landline and cable service), we would suffer from monopoly utility providers.

14

Major media outlets aren’t even reporting on the economy. ccn.com and foxnews.com don’t have the words “economy” or “recovery” in their front pages.

Apparently cnn thinks that armstrong’s battle with cancer and a rape case are more important. Fox news thinks that 5 year old bodybuilders and Sandra Bullock’s (who is this?) battle with a pornstar is more newsworthy.

Sheesh.

15

I’m firmly convinced swine flu was a story deliberately blown up to distract people from the failure of Keynesian economics. It came at an awfully convenient time and went away a few months later, despite people screaming it would be the Apocalypse.

As for ridiculous claims..

  • Herbert Hoover was a laissez faire capitalist, and Roosevelt fixed the economy.
  • Patents and intellectual property encourage innovation
  • George W. Bush was a laissez faire capitalist
  • The Group of 20 is a radical capitalist institution
  • The US healthcare system is free market
  • If the government hadn’t bailed out (insert politically connected corporation here), the economy would collapse!
  • We are freer now than we were 100 years ago
  • Without government education, we would not have an educated workforce!
  • Frankly, virtually anything with the words “social”, “public”, “national” or “interest”.
16

People can’t be trusted to run their own lives, but politicians and bureaucrats can be trusted to run those lives for them.

Aggression is necessary in order to protect rights and property.

Without IP no one would create anything.

Democracy is freedom.

“I am a libertarian, but I think we need some sort of government”

Objective law

17

And the sister claim: People are inherently stupid and irrational (and/or violent), therefore we need the state. Which is run by people…

18

^ I find that one especially annoying: “People are irrational, so we need the state.” But the state is run by irrational people who can impose their irrational rules on everyone, including the rational, thereby forcing the rational to be irrational.

19
  • The free market is a theoretical construct.
  • The exploitation theory of interest is valid, but the LTV is not.
  • Socialism is defined as an economic system where the ‘workers’ own the means of production.
  • Human beings are ‘social animals.’
  • There are no economic laws, just specific historical phenomena.
  • Human beings are stupid, and therefore irrational.
  • Ludwig von Mises and Hayek merely tried to defend their bourgeois ideologies, and failed.
20

India is a poor country, 60 years after independence, because the British looted all our wealth before granting us independence.

Banks can’t lend money under 100% reserve banking.