I have a mixture of capitalist free-market views and socialist ones, depending on what the issue happens to be (causing some confusion as on one website I can be branded a socialist who hates rich people whereas on the other I'm called a heartless, religious defender of the free market and greed).

Nevertheless, it does seem to me that to rely too heavily on the State betrays a retention of the need for somebody else to take care of certain aspects of life on one's behalf. With God being refuted, a substitute is sought. Obviously I'm using broad brushstrokes here; many people support a large State WITHOUT worshipping it, but the fact remains that at some level, the phenomenon is the same - that of *letting someone else do it*. Be it God, politicians, employees, friends who owe favours - it is human nature to try to weasel out of hard work.

For just about all of that you'll find no argument from me, but my main points about whether to allow government to act in the industry and how much to allow is based primarily around this central principle: The government/state can settle on market alternatives that the free-market will not/cannot on their own, or can shape the free-market in a direction, that while ultimately benefical, would not happen on it's own.
The benefits of free-markets are vast; from encouraging work ethic, innovation, creativity, and always shooting for better in a way that benefits everyone involved on top of being able to make sure people who don't feel like doing work do not get rewarded for it. However, there are a number of downsides as well like people not starting out on a level playing field oppertunity wise, poverty tending to be a self-reinforcing cycle, overuse of commonpool resources, corruption, formations of monopolies, pollution, and in some cases, a harmful abudance of choice.

The state as well has these pros and cons; a state can settle on more efficient outcomes that individual firms cannot, can protect against market failures that a free-market has no solution for (i.e. overfishing, pollution, monopolies), and can work to level the playing field in terms of oppertunity so poverty becomes less of a reinforcing cycle. The downside of course is that the state is not run by people who are all knowing and infallible, so regulations and involvement can be misplaced and/or not implemented properly. In some cases, because of regulation failure on the part of the state things can end up worse than before (or not as good as they could be).

Worshipping the market is theoretically possible, but it's about as sensible - and as likely - as worshipping Darwinian evolution, for the simple reason that a similarly evolutionary principle is what drives it.

Worshippers of anything economic, and in many other types of worship I can think of, make the same mistake of confusing what is with what they feel could be. In those who worship the free-market things would just always work themselves out just fine if the government would just leave everyone alone (especially britney). For those who worship the state everything would work out just fine if people were just told what to do and all got along with each other. For those social darwinists out there it's that society would be perfect if everyone would just breed out all traits they find personally distasteful. In all cases, it's the naturalistic fallacy. When it comes to christians or jews or muslims, everything would just work out fine if everyone obeyed their teachings flawlessly.

In all cases, it seems like the perfectly natural human thing to do in to prade our personal views around as better than all others, and in all cases, try to make ourselves look better, understand things better, and be righter than everyone else; in other words, trying to make people view us as better or special.

Er, right.

It's not even a question of whether the State has been given a democratic mandate to violate the rights of 49% of the population - which of course it has not - because that would still be a crucial departure from Libertarian principles, causing the entire Gedankenexperiment to vanish in a puff of smoke. For the Libertarian, self-ownership is a non-negotiable absolute, and that's that. If that principle has been discarded somewhere - anywhere - along the line then we are evidently NOT in the Libertarians' "best of all possible worlds". You can't, to coin a phrase, get HERE from THERE without at some point violating the fundamental "law" of Libertarian, namely total rights over one's own property including the body.

Mrnaglfar: Collectivist and Communist are not the same thing by any stretch. Nevertheless, it does seem to me that to rely too heavily on the State betrays a retention of the need for somebody else to take care of certain aspects of life on one's behalf. With God being refuted, a substitute is sought. Obviously I'm using broad brushstrokes here; many people support a large State WITHOUT worshipping it, but the fact remains that at some level, the phenomenon is the same - that of *letting someone else do it*. Be it God, politicians, employees, friends who owe favours - it is human nature to try to weasel out of hard work.

The same might, of course, be said of those that consider the free market an all-knowing entity (consider the "Invisible Hand" image - does it catch falling sparrows, I wonder?, but the difference here is that the basics of free-market economics are inanimate principles that can be verified by experiment, so no human element is needed, no knowledge at all. The market is not all-knowing any more than gravity is all-knowing. It is the only system whereby the tendency to weasel out of hard work can be tapped and put to use, thus benefitting society as a whole.

Finally, I'm deliberately defining Libertarian much more widely than is usual; if it bothers you to be lumped together with American Christian gun nuts, perhaps you'd prefer the less controversial term "Liberal". To me, that's simply a subset of Libertarianism, although I suppose one might argue that actually the two terms are distinct points on a spectrum of "Not Hating Freedom".

Worshipping the market is theoretically possible, but it's about as sensible - and as likely - as worshipping Darwinian evolution, for the simple reason that a similarly evolutionary principle is what drives it.

It must be quite a navigational challenge seeing everything in terms of black and more black.

you've merely transferred your "God" into the form of the State. That's a positive step, of course, but you're still looking at the world in very much the wrong way. For all your talk of Individualism, at the end of the day if you're not some breed of Libertarian (defined broadly as one who believes in personal and economic freedom) then it's all a lie and you're as Collectivist as a Christian commune.

Nice stance; either we have to agree with you or we're a communist that worships the state despite that exact sentiment being denied by myself, Ebon, and many, many others throughout the site. Matter of fact, I believe there's an entire series on the cite entitled "Why I'm not a communist".

Furthermore, the "you're free to leave" argument only really works when there exists somewhere to escape TO. Vis-a-vis taxes, this is not currently the case, so I feel it is uncharitable to haul the Libertarians over the coals for alleged hypocrisy.

Why is Libertarianism relevant to an Atheist website anyway? Somebody told you "Libertarian" meant "gun-toting Texan Christian" and you just believed them because it sounded right, perhaps?

The fact of the matter is that small (I don't say NO) government is the most enlightened type there is; the free market, if you actually study how it works, is the best (indeed, the only) means ever devised of making people that hate each other's guts cooperate despite this. The economics aren't hard to grasp, and to be honest if you feel the need for a powerful State to run things for you, keeping things and people in their place, then I'm sorry to say you haven't weaned yourself off religion at all; you've merely transferred your "God" into the form of the State. That's a positive step, of course, but you're still looking at the world in very much the wrong way. For all your talk of Individualism, at the end of the day if you're not some breed of Libertarian (defined broadly as one who believes in personal and economic freedom) then it's all a lie and you're as Collectivist as a Christian commune.

Libertarianism is a nice idea that seems to assume things like inheritance, prejudice, and simple bad luck don't exist and ends up making promises as unrealistic as any Marxist would.

I totally agree with that statement. Libertarianism, like most governmental philosophies, breaks down when human nature is involved. One of the reasons Trotsky was ousted from the party, he lived in a Communist dream world ruled by Marxist dogma. Stalin, even though he was evil, was a realist.

Steve

By the way, I am not a Libertarian!