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No market emerges without a government already involved.
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Incorrect. They emerge without govts all the time. They're a necessary element of modern human existence. And they predate modern govt.
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If you buy and sell something, you do it against a backdrop of law and enforcement that makes the market possible. The idea that you can somehow have a "normal" market that doesn't involve the government is a fiction.
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You can. But because most states have govts, yes, it's not a likely thing.
However, where there's a will (say, to sell illegal arms), there's a way to have a lawless state wih a very robust market:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transnistria See also: Aghanistan's warlord controlled areas, Somalia.
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They may be intertwined in your mind, but they are different things. If you are locked up in a room, you are not at liberty to do much. You may or may not have a right to get out, but you don't have liberty. If you're locked up in a federal penitentiary, your rights under federal law are very relevant. If you're locked up because your brother locked the basement door and went to the movies, those rights are less important. Either way, though, you lack liberty.
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That you cannot buy something you'd like to buy does not mean you are deprived of liberty. Say I'd like a Faberge egg. Even if I had the cash, my "liberty" to purchase that egg is constrained, as they are not available. Or maybe I'd like to buy beachfront property in Iowa. Well, my liberty's a bit constrained there.
I don't think you can get to where you seek to arrive.
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Here is the crux: That "liberty" is utterly specious if the market gives you only one choice. It really isn't a liberty. It's a right -- a meaningless, useless right.
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See above.
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You are the guy, shipwrecked on a desert island without food or water, who says, this is great! I am finally free of onerous FDA regulation!
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No. Once the market has been established, the govt will step in and regulate things to make sure they are safe. (I'd prefer the minimum of that, yes, which is a different discussion.) But regulating things for safety is a much different thing than directing that a certain product be provided to consumers.
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Whose liberty? If you have a market that's going to tip, no one really has the ability to offer products that other people want to buy. That's not liberty.
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Only if you define liberty to mean that, in the absence of the market providing you what you want, the govt must compel it to do so.
The govt can also step in and provide the product here: Medicare Expansion.
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Ah, the old slippery slope argument. Like the many, many other things that government does, deciding these questions involves balancing different, often incommensurable interests and reaching a compromise.
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Medicare Expansion.
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Again, you are not reading what I'm saying. If you get rid of the requirement to offer maternity care (for example), insurers will not be able to offer it, because the only people who will buy it are the people who need it. The producer can't offer it, the consumer is less likely to be able to afford the care, the doctors and hospitals won't be able to provide as much care, and so on. All of those people are harmed in a real way that you are blind to.
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That being an enormous market, it will be serviced. There is no scenario under which insurers would not market such a product.
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This is pointless intellectual gamesmanship. You see a harm from having to give money to another private party, but not from paying the government?
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Yes. That's a disturbing precedent. We're already corporatist enough. Do we want to invite other corporations with the power of health insurers to follow suit in other arenas?
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Fine, we'll set up a government broker that you have to use when you buy insurance, so the money goes only to the government. OK, so that's more gamesmanship. We'll set up single-payer, where the government provides the insurance itself instead of using private markets. Under your cramped concept of liberty, we are all freer without the option of using something like the current system, and being forced into socialized medicine to get maternity care. More "correct," more rights, but fewer choices and less actual liberty.
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The private market will always service maternity care. But yes, as to everything the market will not service, Medicare expansion. It's also administratively 100X simpler.
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For the person who wants to buy meaningful health insurance, your concept of liberty is nonsensical.
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For the person who wants to buy meaningful health insurance, it will provide more choice. And for the person who fits into the Medicare expansion bracket, it will make life a lot simpler.
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There are some nice things we can't have without government regulation. For example, national defense, air travel, and Social Security. Good health insurance too.
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Medicare expansion for that which the market will not provide would do that. You're arguing with me against a single payer alternative? In favor of a precedent that could potentially be abused by corporations to compel people to purchase things in other areas?
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So we could get healthcare reform by saying that if you want to drive on public roads, or use public water or electricity, you have to buy a certain health insurance. By your way of thinking, not a problem for libertarians because all of those things are "privileges."
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I think you could make that argument. I'd argue that the cost imposed has to be tied to the privilege against you, but that'd be an interesting case.
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The government certainly subsidizes those who drive cars by building and maintaining paved roads, which other people don't need. But that's not really the issue -- the point is, you're not even trying to defend these various rules for cars as libertarian. Once they become well established, you become blind to the things the government is doing and accept them as part of the background. In that way, you're conservative -- you don't object to much of what the government does, you just object to changing it.
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Oh, no. I never said that. I'd gut so many things from govt control I doubt we have the bandwidth to list them all. This is part of my distaste for conservatives. They're just a different flavor of unnecessary govt intervention. Liberals and Modern Conservatives are pretty much indistinguishable in terms of govt spending. It's just who gets the goodies. Both want to use govt to constrain social behaviors they don't like, both want to give things to people doing things they do like, and neither really wants to shrink the govt. They both just want control over it.
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In this, too, you're a typical conservative. Instead of defending libertarianism, you attack the Left, which we weren't discussing.
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To defend Libertarianism, I'd have to be blunt about holding live and let die views that would trip the emotional triggers of a lot of people. That's not a conversation worth having.
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I don't think I have an ideology. I'm pretty pragmatic. I believe that markets usually work pretty well, and that government intervention is warranted when they don't. I also think that institutions produce better results when they make decisions with input from a variety of viewpoints -- that in itself is anti-ideological.
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I think you do. You're exceptionally open minded and understand concepts at a level way above 99.9% of people. But you lean left. Not emotionally, but based on logic and compassion. I think we differ in the most simplest of ways. I do not view govt as mostly a force for good results. I view it as a lamentably necessary referee when people fail to create good results. The only place I struggle with that view is research and development, where the govt really does kickstart some of the great advances we enjoy. It's impossible to conclude govt intervention in science, tech, and medicine haven't vastly improved our lives. Thankfully, realizing Libertarianism, like Liberalism, and Conservatism, is a necessarily flawed concept, I don't claim to follow it 100%. I'd just like to see more of it incorporated.
Most people are such a mix of numerous ideologies, labeling them becomes absurd. I'm a liberal on some things, conservative on others, libertarian on yet others.
