Thank you, you hit the nail on the head.

Well spoke!

It is sad that some people are to lazy to find out what libertarian economic policy really is.

I would be just as much of a complete fool for looking at the apparent economic policies of the libertarian party, while ignoring the actual policies they advocate for, and implement, when given the chance, as well as what they state their true views and intentions are, when they visit blogs, and other avenues of discussion, and attempt to present their perspective on the policies, ideas, and problems being discussed there in, as I would be if I where to believe the stated goals of *any* Republican, or, sadly, most Democrats.

What is said **to** to public, as a means to present the best face of their ideas, and with the clear intent to convince others to support them, is rarely, if ever, an accurate reflection of the actions already taken, or which would be, by the same people. Libertarians, and in this specific usage I mean those who are actually elected on such a platform, or claim leadership of the moment, seem to live in a world of cognitive dissonance that is almost as severe as that of many religious people. I am reminded of the Fox News idea of, “Token liberal”, on one of their shows I once watched, in which this individual spent two minutes giving a perfectly sensible set of statements, about the situation under discussion, and what should be done about it, and ended with a defense of that position that sounded like the worst, most absurd parody of liberal thinking. In other words, the ideas sounded fine, but the reasoning for *why* to do them where bloody stupid, irrational, and nonsensical, even from the stance of me, the liberal who, until the moment he stuffed his foot down his throat, was amazed that Fox would “allow” someone to say such reasonable things. Of course, they didn’t.

I have, time and again, faced the same thing with libertarians. They start out with more or less sensible ideas, mostly. The problem is, they then do two things that are insensible – 1. They ignore all the known, possible, and/or entirely plausible things that could, or already previously did, go wrong, when attempting to do what they suggest. There seems to be a complete lack of ability to recognize that failure is even possible. 2. They present a justification for why it will work that denies history, the existing facts, the existing flaws in the economy, and the government, which created the problems, and quite often even worse, that the root cause of the failures where, in how ever small a measure, the result of policies that are nearly identical to their own.

If there are libertarians out there that don’t do these things then.. they are not the ones presenting themselves in arguments about policy, at least to liberals, who, frankly, should be their more natural allies, save for the now common, and absurd, cause that they share with conservatives, with regard to the government (another absurdity that was brought about by first sabotaging the government, for the cause of making it more conservative, then complaining when the result broke it).

I stated, on another blog, the position I see them as holding, when contrasted to another naive system, as thus. Once a man declared that if we gave all men all things, their natural tendency would be the rise above their petty differences, and work together as a unified whole. He called this naive proposition – socialism. Libertarians, by contrast, assert that, given maximum freedom to claim, buy, or otherwise gain, all that they could ever want, with minimum restrictions (should you ever manage to nail them down on just what slippery, intangible standard that is), they would naturally rise above their personal petty differences, and work for the common goal of people with whom they share ***nothing at all*** in common, whether that be problems, bad luck, upbringing, education levels, class, medical conditions, sex, gender (not the same things), height, physical or mental prowess, etc.

Which of these propositions is truly the more absurd and improbable?

To be honest, I would love to see them as allies. They, when they are sensible, have much better idea that the people that they seem to keep siding with (or at least have been recently, i.e. conservatives), but.. first, the vast majority of them, especially the ones that seek to become, and present themselves as, leaders, need to F-ing grow the F up. Sadly, I see this to be about as likely as the New Atheists suddenly becoming real feminists, or having a sudden epiphany that social issues are a necessary to fixing what is wrong with the world, and not a “distraction from the more important goal of getting rid of… a few dusty books, and the silly ideas in them?” As one person put it – religion as a hobby wouldn’t be a problem, its the damn problems it causes that we need to be fighting.

I would give the same message to libertarians – Reagan was bloody wrong, the government isn’t really the problem at all, its our willingness to allow it to be corrupted, both by those doing the wrong thing, with clear and undeniable intent. But, also, doing the wrong things, while absolutely convinced, in the face of all evidence, to the contrary (or, just as bad, in the face of no evidence of any kind that their “better” solution will work either), to do what they are convinced in the “right thing”. The road to hell, as they say, is paved with good intentions. In the case of our government, the pavement may be made of good intentions, but its been those with bad intentions taking that raw material, and laying out the direction of the road.

Reducing government, or haphazardly implementing reductions in regulation, while ignoring the advice of silly reasons so many of them where created in the first place, or the real reason they don’t do what they are supposed to. Hint – 1. Loopholes, added intentionally. 2. Tacked on laws that undermine the regulations 3. Complaints that it cost money, even in cases where they spur innovation, and gain the companies involved a, over the long term, greater profit (this is one the energy industry, or at least parts of it, profited from. Why didn’t they all? Because no one has spent one freaking dime of much of anything in, say, oil and gas, beyond improvements that came from *someone else*, like computer technology. When the blow out happened with BP, they, literally, had no tech, of any kind, that had been improved, or developed, to handle the problem, since practically clear back in the days when they first started drilling in the first place. No one *required* them to develop it, so, despite drilling in new, more dangerous, conditions, with unknown risks, they chose not to spend a dime to study what could go wrong, or develop a single bloody thing to deal with any new issues.)

Imagine what might have happened if someone had applied some “useless” regulation, requiring that they spend at least a minimum on developing new processes, and safety measures? And, what *every* libertarian politician would say about even suggesting such a thing… I can see the gnashing of teeth, and the whining about unfairness, and loss of profits, already. All hail the Ferengi and the rules of aquisition…. Sigh..

It is sad that some people are to lazy to find out what libertarian economic policy really is. You here us say that the government regulations do more harm than good, you assume that we want to get rid of all regulations and let people do what they please regardless of who they harm.

Libertarians believe that people should be held accountable for there actions and if they harm someone either by accident or on purpose they should be forced to make that person hole again as much as possible. We also believe that what is wrong for one person to do is also wrong for a group of people to do, regardless if they are called a government or corporation.

With government regulations, people claim that because they were following the rules any harm done is not there fault and then the government lets them off the hook and forces the taxpayers to foot the bill. So is your solution to this problem to make the government make more rules so that only the rich can do business and the poor are left holding the bag.

Ours is not a perfect solution but is is better than what we have now, and I’m still waiting for a better answer.

Nicely said. I believe that sex workers have almost always been available to people for their opinions on the subject (Margo St. James’ group, COYOTE, also comes to mind, which kinda dates me), so the only thing that’s necessary is for people to be asking.

Small libertarian parties like this one do nothing but help put conservatives in office.

Yep. The so called “Tea Party” is socially conservative, religiously.. bordering on puritan, and economically libertarian. This is like a feces sandwich on cardboard, with throw up for mayo, which whole swaths of gullible people have let themselves be convinced looks tasty. Economic libertarianism is just a “me me me” ideal. Religion is often a bane, instead of a boon, especially when it denies our humanity, instead of reflecting it, and you can’t make social progress when “demanding” that everyone conform, like sheep. But, this is the Republican party right now, and.. there is a good bloody reason why “small libertarian parties” end up feeding the beast:

http://freethoughtblogs.com/iris/2016/08/10/guest-post-that-half-baked-thought-experiment-cooked-up-by-self-entitled-pricks/

Election years are opportunities for otherwise ignored populations to be heard by the government. However, when it comes down to it, all any of them are really concerned about is votes and they are more than willing to throw throw anyone under the bus to get them. When we take a realistic look at who is voting in this country, we will see why the Green Party took the stance on sex work that they did.

There is hope though. THIS IS A THEORY. I AM NOT PRESENTING IT AS FACT. The two parties that matter in the election have not and will not discussed sex work in their campaigns and that is not necessarily a bad thing. If America was actively against sex work, they would speak out against it in order to get votes. The truth is that both the government and the public have absolutely no accurate knowledge of sex work. The government knows that they spent a lot of money and man power on “Operation Cross-Country” looking for sex trafficking victims that turned out not to exist. They know that they were given information that was not even based in fact and all their nationwide investigation revealed was consenting sex works, a small percentage of whom turned out to be underage. The government knows that it was their ignorance on the matter that allowed people come out of nowhere and give false info that led to public hysteria and the creation of policies that are having negative effects domestically and worldwide. However, the federal government can never admit they got scammed, nor will they say anything that takes legitimacy from real sex trafficking victims. They know, like we have always known, that sex trafficking does happen, but not on the scale that everyone was led to believe. They know they basically got scammed by assholes that profited significantly by exploiting people’s horrifying experiences and the ignorance of the American public and the government in regards to sex work.

Basically, I’m saying the Green Party is totally irrelevant so we shouldn’t lose sleep over their opinion of us. They do not hold one seat in the legislative branch (house of reps and senate), which means that there is a lot they do not know and it will be a cold day in hell before one of them is elected president. The people that do matter have a little more info about what’s really going on, but after that whole mess, they need a little time away from the issue. It is up to us advocates and defenders of sex worker rights to put in the work necessary to undo the damage that was done.

In light of being given false info, there has been a spike in media and research interest in gaining more accurate info. It will take a while for the info they collect to reach the number of ears and eyes the sex trafficking agenda managed to. Sex workers need to make themselves available to speak to them. Our silence allows people with absolutely no knowledge of the industry to speak for us and spread lies that hurt us. We can win this, but it will take time and effort.