[walrus01]

Every gun collecting, gadsen flag waving self-described "libertarian" I have met in real life, curiously, also sported things like thin blue line stickers on their pickup truck and was a huge supporter of their local sheriffs department.

[mionhe]

Libertariansim is about people being able to exercise their rights however they want, as long as that doesn't infringe on someone else's rights. If you believe in that, you need law enforcement to enforce people's rights when someone is infringing on them.

[bediger4000]

That doesn't seem realistic. Even good faith believers will have disagreements.

Who decides how a disagreement gets resolved? Even if you do contractual everything, what happens if a contract dispute arises? Sometimes contracts are done based on misunderstandings, or someone tries to press an advantage in a way the other party doesn't like.

Beyond all that, the "if you believe in letting everyone exercise rights as long as they don't infringe on someone else's rights" sounds a lot like the wishful thinking that goes along with advocating communism. If everyone believes in from each according to ability, and to each according to need, you don't need legal systems and law enforcement, either.

[badnotation]

I'm always confused why this seems hypocritical.

One can take any large-change political idea - communism, libertarian, anarchist whatever - won't there be a transition? Does even the most hardcore supporter believe you can upend society in a day? That seems straw manning a true Scotsman to me - where if you don't support the sudden, radical change of society you are not a true Scotsman.

You can run the experiment yourself. Sh/would a communist see private land ownership as the first thing to go? Or sh/would it nationalize business? Sh/would a libertarian want police gone first? Or licensing for lawn cutting?

[mindslight]

As a self-described libertarian -

I respect the job the police do, and I wouldn't want to have to do it myself. But that is completely orthogonal to holding individual police officers accountable under the same laws as everybody else. Agents of the state summarily executing people is one of the most egregious violations of individual liberty possible - larger than "licensing for lawn cutting" or most anything else. The "thin blue line" flag is a counter protest to the call for police accountability, and it is blatantly hypocritical to call yourself a libertarian while opposing a major libertarian critique.

[DarylZero]

Libertarians should want Taft-Hartley and other wage-suppressing regulations abolished first. They don't because free markets are really just code for making sure owners win and workers lose.

[Ourgon]

There's nothing odd about that, seeing as how law enforcement and national defence are some the few tasks relegated to the state in a libertarian society. Now if you were talking about anarchists sporting such stickers you'd be right but libertarians are not anarchists. They want as little government as possible, not "no government at all". In other words, there is no incongruity in having both a Gadsen flag as well as some Thin Blue Line piece of marketing material on a truck.

[base698]

The internet variety of Anarcho libertarian is quite anticop. Frequently see things like, "a cop will enforce any law up to and including the execution of children".

[mistrial9]

wouldn't a key word there be 'gun' ?

[jcims]

You meet a very peculiar brand of libertarian.

https://www.lp.org/issues/crime-and-justice/

https://old.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/search?q=Police&restric...

[walrus01]

the rural eastern WA / OR / ID ones, mostly.