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In America, libertarian ideas are attractive to mostly young, white men with high ideals and no life experience that live off of the previous generation’s investments and sacrifice. I know this because as a young, white idiot, I subscribed to this system of discredited ideas: Selfishness is good, government is bad. Take what you want, when you want and however you can. Poor people deserve what they get, and the smartest, hardworking people always win. So get yours before someone else does. I read the books by Charles Murray and have an autographed copy of Ron Paul’s “The Revolution.” The thread that links all the disparate books and ideas is that they fail in practice. Eliminate all taxes, privatize everything, load a country up with guns and oppose all public expenditures, you end up with Honduras.

In Honduras, the police ride around in pickup trucks with machine guns, but they aren’t there to protect most people. They are scary to locals and travelers alike. For individual protection there’s an army of private, armed security guards who are found in front of not only banks, but also restaurants, ATM machines, grocery stores and at any building that holds anything of value whatsoever. Some guards have uniforms and long guns but just as many are dressed in street clothes with cheap pistols thrust into waistbands. The country has a handful of really rich people, a small group of middle-class, some security guards who seem to be getting by and a massive group of people who are starving to death and living in slums. You can see the evidence of previous decades of infrastructure investment in roads and bridges, but it’s all in slow-motion decay.

I took a van trip across the country, starting in Copan (where there are must-see Mayan ruins), across to the Caribbean Sea to a ferry that took my family to Roatan Island. The trip from Copan to the coast took a full six hours, and we had two flat tires. The word “treacherous” is inadequate—a better description is “post-apocalyptic.” We did not see one speed limit sign in hundreds of kilometers. Not one. People drive around each other on the right and left and in every manner possible. The road was clogged with horses, scooters and bicycles. People traveled in every conceivable manner along the crumbling arterial. Few cars have license plates, and one taxi driver told me that the private company responsible for making them went bankrupt. Instead of traffic stops, there are military check points every so often. The roads seemed more dangerous to me than the gang violence.

The greatest examples of libertarianism in action are the hundreds of men, women and children standing alongside the roads all over Honduras. The government won’t fix the roads, so these desperate entrepreneurs fill in potholes with shovels of dirt or debris. They then stand next to the filled-in pothole soliciting tips from grateful motorists. That is the wet dream of libertarian private sector innovation.

On the mainland there are two kinds of neighborhoods, slums that seem to go on forever and middle-class neighborhoods where every house is its own citadel. In San Pedro Sula, most houses are surrounded by high stone walls topped with either concertina wire or electric fence at the top. As I strolled past these castle-like fortifications, all I could think about was how great this city would be during a zombie apocalypse.

On a previous vacation abroad, I’d met a resident of San Pedro Sula by the name of Alberto. Through Facebook, we connected up to have drinks and share a short tour of his home city. A member of the small, dwindling middle class, Alberto objects to his city being labeled the most dangerous in the Western Hemisphere. He showed me a few places in the city that could have been almost anywhere, a hipster bar, a great seafood place (all guarded by armed men, of course). Alberto took me on a small hike to a spot overlooking the city and pointed out new construction and nice buildings. There are new buildings and construction but it is funded exclusively by private industry. He pointed out a place for a new airport that could be the biggest in Central America, he said, if only it could get built, but there is no private sector upside. Alberto made me see the potential, the hope and even the hidden beauty of the place.

For our last meal in San Pedro Sula, my family walked a couple blocks from our fortress-like bed and breakfast to a pizza restaurant. It was the middle of the day and we were the only customers. We walked through the gated walls and past a man in casual slacks with a pistol belt slung haphazardly around his waist. Welcome to an Ayn Rand’s libertarian paradise, where your extra-large pepperoni pizza must also have an armed guard.

Part of the reason this discredited, libertarian bullshit still carries any weight for Americans is because so few of us travel. Only 30 percent of Americans have passports, and if Americans do go places, it’s not often to Honduras. On the mainland of Honduras, we saw no more than a handful of Americans. I did see many more on the tourist-centric island of Roatan, but of course this slice of beach paradise is not at all representative of the larger country or its problems. It has nonstop flights from the U.S. directly to the island so you can skip all the needless reality.

One can dismiss the core of near-sociopathic libertarian ideas with one simple question: What kind of society maximizes freedom while providing the best outcomes for the greatest number of human beings? You cannot start with the assumption that a Russian novel writer from the ’50s is a genius, so therefore all ideas about government and society must fit between the pages of “Atlas Shrugged.” That concept is stupid, and sends you on the opposite course of “good outcomes for human beings.” The closer you get to totally untamed, uncontrolled privatization, the nearer you approach “Lord of the Flies.”

Pwns wrote:Honduras doesn't even rank in the top 50 in either major ranking of economic freedom.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... ic_freedom" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Also, I wasn't aware that libertarians loved heavily-armed and powerful policemen. That's a new one for me.

Cluck U wrote:Has this guy traveled to Detroit...that bastion of Liberalism and center of our government's War on Poverty?

No, of course not...he doesn't want his white, guilty body pieced by a bullet from a person who is on the receiving end of our government's tax distribution.

Nice try, kalm.

kalm wrote:

Cluck U wrote:Has this guy traveled to Detroit...that bastion of Liberalism and center of our government's War on Poverty?

No, of course not...he doesn't want his white, guilty body pieced by a bullet from a person who is on the receiving end of our government's tax distribution.

Nice try, kalm.

Yes, we've discussed Detroit's failings and liberal leadership many times. Then again, there's Seattle and San Francisco or, from a more nearby to Honduras example, Costa Rica.

Honest question: What are some decent examples of successful libertarian cities?

Pwns wrote:

kalm wrote:
Yes, we've discussed Detroit's failings and liberal leadership many times. Then again, there's Seattle and San Francisco or, from a more nearby to Honduras example, Costa Rica.

Honest question: What are some decent examples of successful libertarian cities?

Look at the list of the most conservative cities in the country and point out one that's struggling.

http://www.salon.com/2014/10/29/the_10_ ... a_partner/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

And doesn't the enlightened, diversensitolerant San Francisco have a problem with runaway gentrification which is lowering living standards for pretty much any household with a 5-figure income?

kalm wrote:

Pwns wrote:Honduras doesn't even rank in the top 50 in either major ranking of economic freedom.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... ic_freedom" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Also, I wasn't aware that libertarians loved heavily-armed and powerful policemen. That's a new one for me.

Private police.

CID1990 wrote:

kalm wrote:
Private police.

Thats IT?

Private police means Honduras is the failed state of libertarianism? I didnt even know privatized police were part of the libertarian mantra, but i guess you have acredible source for that

And yes, the guy is full of sh1t from the first paragraph. Maybe to an urbanite metrosexual journo with Slate or Huffpo the drive from Copan to San Pedro Sula is a jaunt into the heart of darkness, but Ive made a drive in that area and it is indistinguishable from a drive through Guatemala or Nicaragua (El Sal has better roads).

Plus, if this guy was really in Copan and didnt see literally a Honduran national police officer on every corner then he needs to have his press credentials pulled until he gets some lasik

I swear this is why people hate 90% of these clowns- theyre all liars

Selfishness is good, government is bad. Take what you want, when you want and however you can. Poor people deserve what they get, and the smartest, hardworking people always win. So get yours before someone else does.

JohnStOnge wrote:

Selfishness is good, government is bad. Take what you want, when you want and however you can. Poor people deserve what they get, and the smartest, hardworking people always win. So get yours before someone else does.

Same old same old. Somebody criticizing Libertarianism without, apparently, knowing what it is.

It doesn't hold that selfishness is good. It doesn't hold that all government is bad. It doesn't promote the idea that you can take what you want however you can get it. It doesn't hold that poor people necessarily "deserve" what they get or that the smartest, hardworking people always win.

JohnStOnge wrote:Well, I'd certainly say that being smart and hard working are factors in likelihood of success. But that's not what Libertarianism is about.

Liberalism would suggest the same thing. How does libertarianism differ?

JohnStOnge wrote:

Liberalism would suggest the same thing. How does libertarianism differ?

I think Liberalism "downplays" the extent to which intelligence, especially, plays a role in success. And it doesn't like measurements of intelligence because the results don't fit it's egalitarian assumptions.

Libertarianism doesn't even really concern itself with that. It's not about WHY you are successful provided it was by honest means. It just says that you should be left alone and not forced to take care of others if you are successful. Also, it doesn't say that you should be allowed to do ANYTHING in order to be successful. It doesn't say that you should be allowed to lie to and cheat people in order to do it. It doesn't say you should be allowed to steal from other people. So on and so forth.

Fair enough, and libertarianism downplays the importance of inheritance.

How does libertarianism address poverty or a baseline for hard work compared with wages?

Ivytalk wrote:Klam, you've out-trolled yourself this time. Who the hell is Edwin Lyngar? Someone who confuses a failed state with libertarian governance, obviously.

kalm wrote:

CID1990 wrote:
Thats IT?

Private police means Honduras is the failed state of libertarianism? I didnt even know privatized police were part of the libertarian mantra, but i guess you have acredible source for that

And yes, the guy is full of sh1t from the first paragraph. Maybe to an urbanite metrosexual journo with Slate or Huffpo the drive from Copan to San Pedro Sula is a jaunt into the heart of darkness, but Ive made a drive in that area and it is indistinguishable from a drive through Guatemala or Nicaragua (El Sal has better roads).

Plus, if this guy was really in Copan and didnt see literally a Honduran national police officer on every corner then he needs to have his press credentials pulled until he gets some lasik

I swear this is why people hate 90% of these clowns- theyre all liars

I think there was a bit more evidence than private police which btw, would be outcome driven but I appreciate your response and wondered if this might be the case.

In Latin America, cannabis is tolerated and/or decriminalized in most countries, with the exception of Bolivia, Ecuador, Honduras and Guatemala.

JohnStOnge wrote:Oh...and BTW...if you read about Honduras at all you will see that an awful lot of the problems that country has are associated with the fact that a particular dominant country in this hemisphere has decided to make recreational drugs illegal. I won't name names but I think you can figure out who that dominant country in this hemisphere is.

In other words. the problems Honduras has are associated with an over arching ANTI Libertarian approach. If Libertarianism had ruled for the past century there wouldn't be a bunch of violent drug gangs wreaking havoc today.

CID1990 wrote:

JohnStOnge wrote:Oh...and BTW...if you read about Honduras at all you will see that an awful lot of the problems that country has are associated with the fact that a particular dominant country in this hemisphere has decided to make recreational drugs illegal. I won't name names but I think you can figure out who that dominant country in this hemisphere is.

In other words. the problems Honduras has are associated with an over arching ANTI Libertarian approach. If Libertarianism had ruled for the past century there wouldn't be a bunch of violent drug gangs wreaking havoc today.

Well done.

kalm wrote:

CID1990 wrote:
Well done.

Many if not most liberals are pro legalization too.

Remember, libertarians are simply conservatives who like to smoke weed and get laid.

CID1990 wrote:

kalm wrote:
Many if not most liberals are pro legalization too.

Remember, libertarians are simply conservatives who like to smoke weed and get laid.

Whoa

THat's a QUICK turnaround... you did it in one thread

They aren't anarchists anymore?