Donald Boudreaux schools us on libertarian values
Trump Wednesday refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses in November. He is deliberately undermining confidence in the integrity of mail-in ballot results – mail-in ballots that are expected to favor the Democrats. According to a report in The Atlantic, the White House is laying plans to actively steal the election:
According to sources in the Republican Party at the state and national levels, the Trump campaign is discussing contingency plans to bypass election results and appoint loyal electors in battleground states where Republicans hold the legislative majority. With a justification based on claims of rampant fraud, Trump would ask state legislators to set aside the popular vote and exercise their power to choose a slate of electors directly. The longer Trump succeeds in keeping the vote count in doubt, the more pressure legislators will feel to act before the safe-harbor deadline expires.
Meanwhile, in the face of one of the most severe threats ever to American democracy, great libertarian defender of liberty Donald Boudreaux is busy lamenting the threat to freedom from COVID lockdowns. Honest:
Is it plausible that government officials have sufficiently accurate and detailed knowledge about how mandated restrictions on socializing will affect the economy, especially over time, such that these officials can be trusted to mandate only those restrictions that produce benefits greater than their costs? Is it plausible that, even if lockdowns in the specific case of Covid-19 pass some cost-benefit test today, the resulting expansion of governments’ powers will not be abused tomorrow? And is it plausible that a people bridled, broken in, and subjugated as never before by the Covid-19 lockdowns will retain enough of a sense of personal responsibility and desire for freedom that they will resist government overreach in the future?
OK, so he’s getting a bit hyperbolic about a policy he disagrees with. Libertarians do that. But isn’t he also beating the drum about the threat Trump poses to democracy? As far as I see, it’s nothing but crickets.
Libertarians wonder why people think they value property rights over democracy and human decency.
Libertarian=Kochs Someone has to rule, correct? So libertarians would give us rule by the Kochs. Small wonder libertarians can’t get voted for dog catcher.
Libertarianism is the political philosophy of middle school boys and arrested development. It is the apotheosis of solipsism. Why does AB dignify it with its bandwidth?
I am not sure who Donald Boudreaux is referring to, but I for one do not think I will lose my will for freedom because I have to wear a simple mask to help protect the health of those within my family, my circle of friends, and community.
ditto. Much bigger fish to fry such as kicking a president out of office after he loses an election and protecting the election and its results.
Could someone inform Boudreaux that COVID-19 is a highly infectious and potentially deadly disease? From his writings – he appears not to be aware of that.
Cost/benefit always seem a bit wonky when the people getting the benefit and the people bearing the cost are different people. But aren’t Libertarians always insisting that Utility is not comparable (so they don’t have to admit that redistribution might be welfare enhancing). Somehow, they don’t remember to be consistent.
I’m sure Boudreaux knows about the public health implications of masks. He just believes government has no role in public health. That’s because he’s a libertarian.
Libertarianism is the political philosophy of middle school boys and arrested development. It is the apotheosis of solipsism. I don’t understand why AB wastes bandwidth on libertarians.
Libertarians Are Total AHs, Part 9000
well, Eric said it so I don’t have to.
Boudreaux demonstrates two prongs of the Libertarian mental disease:
1: “cost benefit”… i.e. money is the standard of human value.
2: people will lose their sense of personal responsibility if we don’t hit them with a stick from time to time.
oh, well, 3: it is written that people are not allowed to work together to solve problems that can’t be solved by an Ayn Rand hero acting alone…. and charging a fair price for his services.
I tried posting twice on this thread and both posts disappeared.
You were in the trash. Why? I do not know.
Run, it’s probably Akismet.
some other wordpress site owner marked one of Joel’s posts as spam or offensive, and the wordpress software is enforcing that judgement across all wordpress blogs..
that happened to me years ago when i was in the habit of making trouble at Don Boudreaux’s and other right wing sites…i had to get someone from Akismet to get in there and change it manually…
rjs:
It is others also that I had to fish out of trash.
actually, i think i’m still in the same box if i use my blogger url as my website in comments here…that’s why i use my wordpress site at AB…
Akismet is the name of the wordpress software that puts comments in the trash…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akismet
Akismet is a spam filtering service that filters spam from comments, trackbacks, and contact form messages. The filter works by combining information about spam captured on all participating sites, and then using those spam rules to block future spam. Akismet is offered by Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com.
if that just started Run my guess would be they made a software change to Akismet that’s making it more sensitive to perceived offenses…hopefully, they’ll see the trouble and back out their “fix”..
facebook did the same thing last week, & over 200 environmental groups were suspended, including Greenpeace…they eventually reversed that…
censorship software will kill social media before it’s finished…
I agree. I will talk to dan. The trolls will accomplish our demise.
@Run,
I posted on another AB thread re:COVID-19 at the same time and that post stayed up. So the filter isn’t on me, it’s on the content, it seems.
Joel:
If you posted after I put up your old post it is because I had to approve you again. Once approved, there should be no conflict. We did not change anything. Dan is out. When he comes back I will ask him what is up. You were not the only one.
Donald Trump does not have to go peacefully. He just has to go.
It is all about the freedom of the leading covid spreader in chief. Some people are more equal than others.