Depends on.
At best you get people like Pipkin Pippa, who’s actually way more progressive than your average conservative, but has the same flaws as other similar people, such as
- not understanding “the paradox of tolerance”, thus tolerating more than a few nazis in her audience, which ultimately lead her being accused being a nazi (which she seems to be angry for, both at her fans who have clipped her out of context (save for the antisemitic joke, which is a real bad look even if just meant as a joke), and the people that ran with it);
- really likes the Tu Quoque fallacy (argument from hypocrisy), especially when it involves social issues, but at least she upholds conservatives rather than painting their hypocrisy as “humanity” instead;
- and having her own biases that are normal for the other more conservative libertarians except she doesn’t actually want to outlaw such activities.
(I really hope it’ll only poorly age in a positive way)
Then you have people like Áron Ecsenyi, leader of the Hungarian Le Az Adók 75%-ával Párt (Down with the 75% of the taxes party), whose only libertarian view is whining about taxes and techbro stuff (he had an EV project that went nowhere), otherwise he is a bitter incel, really likes the censorship laws of Fidesz (especially the “child” protection law, as he likes to whine about gays in media), and his party is likely just there to test the waters for Fidesz whenever selling the healthcare to friends and family. Yeah, he also thinks the abysmally low age of consent of Hungary is somehow too high.
Then you have various actual nazis, like Richard Spencer, Hans Christian Graebener, etc., who don’t even believe in free speech anymore.
Outside of the US, yes, there are real libertarians.
American Libertarian policies from that article:
Its cultural policy positions include ending the prohibition of illegal drugs, advocating criminal justice reform,[14] supporting same-sex marriage, ending capital punishment, and supporting gun ownership rights.
Conservatives have over the last couple years taken to labeling themselves as Libertarian to avoid the stigma of being Republican, but have never actually voted for a libertarian.
The problem being that they’re also fully in favour of allowing businesses to do whatever the fuck they want. Even an ideologically “pure” libertarian would support your right to gay marriage while also supporting the right of your landlord to kick you out onto the street for being gay. They’ll support legalization of all drugs, but also support your workplace being allowed to fire you for posting about weed on your social media.
Paying lip service to socially progressive ideas is meaningless if you also want to institute a neofeudalist society where every freedom is only really afforded to the wealthy.
Full disclosure, let’s not pretend that Libertarians are any good, even if they are in favor of some good things.
We should eliminate the entire social welfare system. This includes eliminating food stamps, subsidized housing, and all the rest. Individuals who are unable to fully support themselves and their families through the job market must, once again, learn to rely on supportive family, church, community, or private charity to bridge the gap.
The party supports ending the public school system.[161] The party’s official platform states that education is best provided by the free market, achieving greater quality, accountability and efficiency with more diversity of school choice.
The party also contends that free markets and property rights (implicitly without government intervention) will stimulate the technological innovations and behavioral changes required to protect the environment and ecosystem because environmental advocates and social pressure are the most effective means of changing public behavior.
The Libertarian Party opposes all government intervention and regulation on wages, prices, rents, profits, production and interest rates and advocates the repeal of all laws banning or restricting the advertising of prices, products, or services.
The Libertarian Party favors a free market health care system without government oversight, approval, regulation, or licensing. The party states that it “recognizes the freedom of individuals to determine the level of health insurance they want, the level of health care they want, the care providers they want, the medicines and treatments they will use and all other aspects of their medical care, including end-of-life decisions.” They support the repeal of all social insurance policies such as Medicare and Medicaid and favor “consumer-driven health care”.
The party supports the right of free persons to associate or not associate in labor unions and believes that employers should have the right to recognize or refuse to recognize a union.
The party supports the right of free persons to associate or not associate in labor unions and believes that employers should have the right to recognize or refuse to recognize a union.
If the company can simply ignore a union, then the union has zero power…
