<snip ... pretty much agree with these points>
They support the economic suicide of re-instituting the gold standard. A monetary system that has always required a considerable amount of national government regulation to be put into place and to keep in place. They want to accomplish this by relying on the goodwill of all involved to put in in place and to prevent bad behavior, instead of government regulation. ***
Agreed, the only merit of a gold standard is to act as a check on government abuse of the printing press.
Abuse of the printing press is so rare that providing a check on it is not worth the pain of the gold standard constraining the growth of the economy.
They may or may not support the idea of transcendental property. The current 5 to 6 trillion dollars of such property that currently exist, ideas represented in patents, trademarks and copyrights. Their ideology doesn't point the way to decide if these things have to disappear or not.
So why should we think they want to make it disappear?
Some further explanation is required. Libertarians believe in strong property rights. (Any who don't believe in them don't understand the philosophy very well at all.) Most believe that the concept of the government owning property is not acceptable, that only individuals and private companies should own property.
Intellectual property is government created property. The government defines what is and what isn't intellectual property. And the government defines how long it exists. Patents expire and the property no longer exists.
For this reason about half of the Libertarians don't believe that intellectual property should exist at all. It is a logical extension of their philosophy about what the role of government should be in society.
But this runs up against the interests of the wealthy who support the Austrian* economics schools in the US. So this line of reasoning and the conflict that arises from it within the Austrian/Libertarian economics schools are suppressed for fear of losing this financial support.
And it is why those who believe that Austrian/Libertarian economics is completely bat shit crazy constantly bring up this conflict.
* Austrian economics is the basis of the Libertarian economics philosophy.
They want to eliminate Social Security and to leave its functions to private enterprise but it is inconceivable that any private insurance company would be able to write policies to replace Social Security. Its risks are too high for any private company to take on. For example, what would happen to a private company if a cure for cancer or heart disease extends the lifetime of seniors by five years? ***
And lifetime annuities don't exist now?
Yes, they exist now. But they are based on morbidity, how long the average person is expected to live from the age that the annuity is issued to an individual. If there is some increase in the lifetime of the average person after the age of 65 the insurance companies would have to pay annuity payments for this extra time. All that I am proposing is that a sudden increase in the life expectancy after 65 by some miracle drug would bankrupt the insurance companies. This is in the realm of possibilities.
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I have to concede that Libertarian positions are much more pie in the sky and unrealistic than my simplistic Republicans who do drugs conveyed. Much more unrealistic than the Republicans' positions.
Can someone explain to me what a "True Republican" is?
A true Republican is a Republican from before the neo-con/religious-right takeover.
A True Republican™ is a moderate. Just like a True Democrat™.
No one should take any pride in being called a conservative or a liberal. We have to return to the days when we ignored self-described conservatives and liberals, when we considered extremists not to be worthy of consideration.
If we go back to all of us being moderates, which is what we all are really, then we can't be called out to man the barricades against one another under different flags, liberal or conservative. If we are all moderates we have to concede that other moderates have points that are worthy of consideration. That if we all moderates that there aren't an entire list of beliefs that we have to assume in order to earn our political label. That we actually have to listen to what people say and that we can't assume what they believe because we all are moderates.
And that we all are progressives. We all believe in progress. That we just sometimes disagree on what constitutes progress or how fast progress should proceed.
