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I'm a "pragmatic libertarian."

Is that a contradiction?



Does anybody care?

I thought not.

   

I've decribed myself the same way. The rule of thumb I go by is let private investment, unless it can be shown that government can do it better (i.e. national defence, judiciary)

   

Yes because libertarianism contains a kind of transcentalism that is monologic. For details, read Cheryl Misak, Professor of Philosophy, University of Toronto:

-'Pragmatism and The Transcendental Turn in Truth and Ethics' Transactions of the C.S. Peirce Society, 1994.

-'Truth and Deliberative Virtue' in Truth and Public Space, K. Vanhemelyrck (ed) Routledge (forthcoming).

-'Truth in Science and Ethics', Science: A Challenge to Philosophy? H. Koskinen, S. Pihlstrom (eds), Peter Lang, 2006.

-'Pragmatism and Pluralism: A Reply to Talisse', Transactions of the C.S. Peirce Society, 2005.

-'A Peircean Account of the Truth of Moral Judgements' H. Parret (ed), Peirce and Value Theory: On Peircean Ethics and Aesthetics, John Benjamins, 1994.

http://www.unm.edu/~pragma/faculty.html

   

Exactly.

Default to individual choice through the market. When markets fail, governments intervene.

   

(national defence, judiciary) are not the best examples of what makes you 'pragmatic' compared to other libertarians. Those are the things written right into the Libertarian Party of Canada's statement of principles:

   

Libertarian = crackpot

Socialist = butt-munch

And ever the twain shall meet.....

   

Then you'd have a buttcrack?

   

Governments are defining both the means (the market for example) and the ends (welfare for example).

   

I hate the fact that in Canada we have a Conservative government that rules based on gut instincts and personal ideology (see Ottawa trying to shut down safe injection site).
And a Liberal government that is completely lost the plot.

A libertarian crackpot government that stics on the basics, or "classic liberal" for that matter would be a good opportunity for growth in these times. Keep trade flowing, but also keep your social ideologies in your own home, not in parliament.

As they say

Keep the right out of our bedrooms
Kepp the left out of our pockets

   

A libertarian is essentially a person who doesn't care whether or not you have stolen money in your pocket.

   

Funny, but incorrect. Libertarians bar the use of force or fraud as a means to and end. Stolen money was, by definition, acquired by force or fraud.

   

Well then I'll add air quality and power transmission. Libertarians seem to be all about property rights. My problem with orthodox libertarians is that they they seem to run out of answers in sitations where property rights cannot be practically defined or implemented (air being a good example).

   

No, property rights are very important to libertarians. A libertarian is someone who thinks their right to property is more important than your right to life.

   

The market will punish people who abuse air quality. Libertarians are as much about doing as you choose so long as you do not hurt others as they are about property rights. It wouldn't be inherently un-libertarian to punish someone unreasonably polluting the air. Big government is definitely not better at it. The only thing big government can do best is create bureaucrats to solve a problem, and have those bureaucrats use a lot of resources "trying to fix" a problem, but never actually fixing it (that would put them out of a job). Public service staff (managers anyway) spend most of their time trying to justify their existence.

   

Also untrue. Those people are just libertarian trolls. Most self proclaimed libertarians I've met are very decent people.

   

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