Are these "nice" philosophies which simply won’t work on a large scale due to human nature?

Yes, both only work with 100 people member tribes or less.

I’ve been on the net for a long time, and I’ve been on politics a long time. The libertarian stance seems to have gained a whole lot of momentum in recent years. It seems to me that is has been over the last 4 years that they have really been becoming popular.

Why now? Why not say, 20 years ago?
Ron Paul certainly brought a lot of attention to libertarianism during his 2008 run for president. Were there other precipitating events?

It has been slowly building for a while, but most were not overly concerned with its philosophy until this Congress was seated.

Many Americans who were tolerant of Government, became alarmed when this Congress (others before this with TARP) started proposing and passing certain pieces of Legislation that enlarged the Government or its role in American society. It was allot and fast, and this caused a surge in many who probably where leaning Libertarian to start off with, to reexamine and commit to it, such as myself.

Libertarians have morality, reality, the laws of economics, and now even momentum on their side (thanks to a certain doctor from Texas who is running for president). They offer the obvious answers to each and every problem that we face. All competing ideological systems have been discredited (70% of America has rejected the Neo-Con argument for aggressive war and the Soviet Union collapsed, fulfilling the predictions of Ludwig von Mises that socialism was doomed to collapse because it cannot perform economic calculation due to not having a price system). When the liberals were supporting the march to war with Iraq and repeating the president’s propaganda and talking points, the libertarians were opposed to the war and fighting to keep it from beginning and to end it once it started.

Is it now inevitable that libertarianism will eventually achieve a total victory?
The most absurd thing anybody can do is to bring up GDP or other fatally flawed government statistics to attack laissez-faire. The Republican Party is not laissez-faire, but merely has hijacked the rhetoric.

Libertarians are anti-Federal Reserve and pro-sound money, and therefore you get deflation, not inflation under libertarianism. Historical evidence proves that the "War on Poverty" made poverty worse and that welfare policies do the opposite of what they are supposed to do (everybody except the socialist true believers admitted that by the 90s). GDP includes government spending as income and therefore is useless as a statistic because all government spending hurts, not helps, the economy. Inflation-Adjusted incomes are the exact same after a century of Keynesian Socialism, but the (mostly) laissez-faire 19th Century was an era of unprecedented growth.

Besides that, sound economics are theoretical, not empirical and based upon praxeology, not unrealistic models.

Libertarianism is, and will always be, on the fringe, and "on the verge" of victory. The latter keeps the faithful faithful, decade after decade, but the theory is too doctrinaire, too inflexible, to work in the real world. It is to politics what Scientology is to religion.

At the other end of the political spectrum, Marxism has the same problem. Neither system appeals to the average citizen, any more than Scientology does, probably because they’re so "out there" that people don’t see a smooth path to getting to these proposed alternate universes. The transition to Marxism, certainly, hasn’t gone smoothly for anyone. Becoming a Scientologist is less lethal to bystanders, but still pretty disruptive to one’s personal and financial affairs. Nobody’s even tried libertarianism yet, at least not on a large scale. Maybe some libertarian communes (or is that an oxymoron?) have been attempted, but success, if any, has not been widely noted.

One wants grassroots governments and if you look closely, so do anarchists…Just because you don’t want a bureaucratic government doesn’t mean that you are for total anarchy…

When I speak to a libertarian, I find that they just sound like more organized anarchists. I am a green libertarian but you might as well call me a green anarchist if you want also.

Libertarians believe in the hierarchy of representative wealth (currency, etc.)
They believe in the caste system of the corporate world which is itself a form of government.
Aside from "policy" difference, our thought processes are completely different.
To make it simple, consider us the right and left of the "no government" spectrum, at least as far as social consciousness and societal structure is concerned.

Consider – we oppose the requirement of sacrifice from us for any "greater good" – but we don’t expect any such sacrifice from anyone else either. Nor do we attempt to define for others what is in their best interest, collectively or individually – we leave that up to them.

Isn’t it more selfish to think you know what’s best for everyone in the aggregate and then expect everyone else to sacrifice what they deem best for themselves to meet what you consider to be in the collective good?

Libertarianism is the least selfish, and the most supportive of freedom – personal and collective.

To quote one of the original libertarians, "The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others." – Thomas Jefferson

I use a small "l" in libertarian because, if you use a capital "L", you are associating yourself with the party, not the principles…

Just get rid of the government, and all problems will magically solve themselves – yeah, sure. Then, when the economically disenfranchised are all totally subservient to the corporate elite, we’ll have "freedom," which seems an awful lot like what most sensible people call slavery.

Do these people actually expect to be taken seriously?

It’s based on theoretically sound principle, but it basically amounts to social darwinism.

im not that much into politics but this topic we discussed in govt class today was pretty interesting and i want to know what you guys think.

These words and concepts have divided americans. For ex. one feel the need to identify with one group and often will put down the other one without trying to look for the positives in the other concepts.
That’s my idea of how these concepts influence americans.

I’m still trying to understand objectivism and I constantly hear libertarians being followers of ayn rand but they don’t consider themselves objectivists. Could someone clear up the distinction?

A libertarian may be an admirer of the writings and political theories of Rand. An Objectivist usually has a small shrine to Saint Ayn hidden somewhere in their house.

Seriously though, objectivism does have some good intellectual points, but the 1st poster was right, its members are quite cultish in their attitudes and thinking. Ayn Rand is not just admired intellectually, she’s practically worshiped.

I have this question for a college paper and am struggling to get through it. Could you please help me and give me a basic explanation of Libertarianism

Libertarianism would NOT argue that determinism threatens the existence of free will. That which does not exist cannot threaten that which does exist. Determinism says, and I quote from the determinist website http://www.centerfornaturalism.org/ and from its sister site http://naturalism.org/

"We are all caused to be what we are." (Awwwwwwwww, doesn’t that sound so sooooooooothing! Just think; we are what we are because we were "caused".)

Libertarianism says we take those causes and we do with them what we will, and the only will we have to call "free" is the freedom to think, or to not think, and then to act. Determinism wants us to believe that because we cannot change those things which cause us to act (like running from rain to stay dry; jumping off the tracks before we get hit by the train; eating when we are hungry) our will is not free. If it was "free" the way determinists define it, we would be free of causes.

But libertarianism says to be free of causes would be to free of existence instead of embedded in it, and therefore we could have no will at all if we were free of existence. What else is there to act on but existence?

Note – I don’t mean liberal in the US ‘bleeding heart liberal’ sense, I mean classic/neo-liberal as in Milton Friedman etc. Are libertarians just more extreme in the emphasis they place on individualism and the free market, or are there other differences? Thanks, will give ten points

Short answer: Liberalism in the classical sense is the same thing as libertarianism.

Austrian economists and social commentators such as von Hayek and von Mises often described themselves as liberals, but they were almost always against any kind of government intervention in private or economic affairs. If we go back through time, the same can be said about the French philosopher Voltaire.

Perhaps some years after WW2, socialist lefties have hijacked the term and used it to describe themselves.

So as not to confuse others, the real liberals call themselves libertarians instead. Indeed, the USA Libertarian party site suggests that it holds the same philosophies that von Hayek held. I fail to see how libertarians are more extreme.