I'm preparing a text refuting libertarianism and would like to collect your thoughts and perhaps some libertarian counterarguments on this specific topic.

1. Tax evasion is only illegal when you commit fraud, which means that libertarians are basically arguing that fraud should be legal.

Libertarians consent to paying income taxes when they sign a W-4 form agreeing to withholdings as a condition for getting the job. If you refuse to sign a W-4 form when applying for a job, you likely won't get hired, but no one from the IRS will put a gun to your head and force you to sign the form against your will. The only time people go to jail is when they commit fraud, i.e., if you sign a form agreeing to pay taxes, but then you lie about your earnings or expenses.

2. Tax evaders are innocent until proven guilty

Libertarians like to whine about tax law as a hypothetical abstraction involving false analogies with the mafia. In the real world, the presumption of innocence means that the IRS needs actual proof of fraud, and generally the only way for them to find that proof is if a victim reports it. For instance, undocumented workers who are paid under the table are almost never arrested for tax evasion, because there's no paper trail for the IRS to work with. Al Capone was famously caught with tax evasion, but that's because he literally had two sets of books for the IRS to compare, one real and one fraudulent.

The most common way for the tax evaders to get caught in the real world: Ann reports payment to Bob as a deduction, but person B fails to report it as income. If their stories don't match up, then one of them is lying, i.e., fraud, since Ann wouldn't have reported the deduction otherwise. Either Ann is trying to report a non-existent expense, or Bob mislead Ann on his willingnesss to report. If Ann had known that Bob wouldn't report, then she either would have gone with someone else, or she would use the lack of deduction to negotiate a lower payment.

3. You consent to taxes when you participate in the banking system

Libertarians often whine they still owe taxes even if they move overseas, but how would the IRS have any jurisdiction, especially with the presumption of innocence? Generally, the only way for that to happen is if they voluntarily move money through the US banking system. i.e., Bitcoin is generally untraceable right up until you try to exchange it for actual money. But again, no one is putting a gun to their head and forcing them to do that against their will. They choose to participate with the US banking system for the security and convenience, but this also carries the condition that suspicion of tax fraud can be reported to the IRS.

4. Libertarians consent to paying taxes by participating in the economy

If you don't pay taxes, then you're going to have a much harder time dealing with landlords, finding insurance, etc.

5. Without government spending, your bank account would be empty

Libertarians love to frame tax evasion as holding onto your own money, but if taxes didn't exist, there would be no money to hold onto in the first place. The US dollar is literally the product of the US government, and it gets distributed through the economy through spending. When the government builds a bridge, it takes on national debt to print dollars, then it distributes those dollars to pay construction workers, and those construction workers circulate those dollars throughout the rest of the economy.

In the absense of government spending, there are no dollars to circulate.

In the absense of dollars to circulate, there are no dollars in you bank account.

If libertarians are against taxation, then they should boycott the acceptance of US dollars altogether.

6. Without government taxes, your dollars would be worthless

Libertarians wrongly insist that the dollar is inherently worthless, but this is untrue: The value of the US dollar is backed by US law. It is no more "worthless" than a property deed or contract.

More specifically, the value of the US dollar is backed by tax law. Even if you personally think that a $100 bill is worthless, it still has value in the sense that it can be used to pay off $100 worth of tax obligations. As long as tax obligations exist, and US law has the power to enforce those obligations, then the dollar still has value.

If tax obligations ceased to exist, you would have plenty of dollars, then the dollar would be worthless. Wait, why does that sound familiar? Because it's basically the same condition as another libertarian boogeyman: Hyperinflation.

7. Libertarians simultaneously complain about too many and too few dollars

Libertarians frequently whine about inflation and national debt, but they also whine about taxes which keeps both of those things in check. Debt is created when dollars are circulated, and debt can be paid off if those dollars are removed from circulation. If the US took all the tax money from one year and set that money on fire to pay off the national debt, it would certainly curb inflation, but I don't think that libertarians would be happy.

Libertarians want more dollars personally but they also want few dollars overall. In other words: Got mine, fuck you. This might make sense if they supported a system of progressive taxation and wealth redistribution, but instead they usually demand the opposite: A system where the rich get richer and are rewarded for already being rich. That's the main argument for the gold standard, the idea that the people who start with the most gold see the biggest gains without having to contribute anything in return. Of course, those gains have to come from somewhere, and that's from the people from the bottom, who have to be punished so they'll have the motivation to become rich.

It would be nice if you just could tax the rich (morally questionable, but pragmatic. I must admit to that), but how are you going to do that without affecting the workers or the consumers?

we had everything libertarians wanted, no income tax, no regulations.

And people fucking hated it, corporations exploited it, the term snake oil came from people like Clark Stanley who exploited these lack of regulations.

Libertarianism means a million Clark Stanley's

Hello,

Many BTC maximalists celebrate so-called hard money, mainly because it is supposedly “honest” or “stable in value”. In reality, hard money is the most antisocial and dangerous monetary system that has ever existed. It leads to deflation, debt bondage, mass unemployment, and economic instability. This is not theory or belief, but repeatedly observed empirical fact throughout human history.

Whenever states introduced a gold or silver standard, brutal crises followed shortly thereafter. In England in the 17th century, in the USA in the 19th century, in Europe before the First World War. The patterns were always the same. The money supply was artificially restricted, debts could no longer be repaid, millions of people lost their livelihoods. Only the rich benefited because their assets increased in value. The state was no longer able to intervene. Graeber once summarized this perfectly: “The result was deflationary collapse… mass penury, riots, and hunger.”

Exactly the same would happen with Bitcoin, only worse. Bitcoin is a completely fixed monetary system. There are 21 million coins, no more. That means: the money supply never grows, no matter how many people live on the planet or how much the economy expands. Anyone who takes on debt must repay it in a currency that becomes increasingly scarce and valuable. That is economic madness and a moral catastrophe.

Bitcoin is therefore not money, but an extreme form of enslavement. It is a control instrument for creditors and speculators. Those who got in early hope for total power over everyone who has to enter later. The idea that BTC will “suck everything in” is nothing more than a modern form of financial feudalism.

In addition, Bitcoin is extremely unequally distributed. A few so-called whales hold the majority of all coins. It is neither “decentralized” just look at blockstream, nor “democratic”, nor fair, but highly antisocial, antidemocratic and expropriating for debtors. It is not usable as a means of payment, since hardly anyone spends their Bitcoin. Most people only hold it because they hope it will become even more valuable. This is not a currency, but a pure Ponzi scheme that is aggressively promoted by the masses and extreme shilling.

The truth is that societies need flexible, adaptable money, not rigid, artificially scarce nonsense that history has already proven to be harmful. People need jobs, access to credit, crisis support. All of that is completely impossible under hard money.

Hard money is not progress, but an extreme regression into old traps. It leads to brutal inequality, destroys democracies, and renders states powerless. Bitcoin is not salvation, but the path back to the Middle Ages, when the rich got everything and the debtors lost everything. Thanks for reading. What are your thoughts?

The reason why Coke isn't able to buy Pepsi right now, for example, is because it would be deemed Anti-competitive.

Same reason Disney can't buy Warner Brothers or General motors can't buy Toyota or Xbox can't buy Nintendo.

If the government wasn't regulating that, how would they prevent these things from happening?

And if you're going to say the business would just reject that acquisition, why?, Why would the Pepsi CEO refuse billions of dollars just to be competitive for fun?, Why not take the payday and retire on a beach?

and if somebody creates a competitor to this megacorporation, wouldn't they just be either bought out or bankrupted too?

It makes no sense

1: in order to have civil rights, you have to have somebody to enforce those civil rights.

If there is no cops or courts to enforce my civil rights, I am effectively at the mercy of whoever I live near.

If you're Jewish in the real world and a neo-Nazi attacks you, he's getting his ass thrown in prison for a very long time.

If it's in Libertopia, you better Hope you have a gun and he doesn't.

2: how do you handle fraud?, Stuff like Elizabeth Holmes, even if investors pulled out, she would still be extremely wealthy, it would literally make fraud a viable career path.

3: how do you do the census?, How do you make sure we know who's living where and their demographics and income and stuff like that?, We need to know if for example, the neighborhood population has dropped by half in a year so we can figure out why that happened, if a private company did it, how would they encourage people to answer while still remaining profitable?

4: how do you solve the simple disputes?, A noise complaint, somebody's garbage on your lawn, without violence?

5: how does money work?, If the answer is Gold, how do you prevent the people who own the gold mines from running everything?, If the answer is crypto, why would I take your specific cryptocurrency over anyone else's?

6: imagine emergency services being run like companies, there would be subscription plans for the firefighters.

7: what prevents a bunch of dudes with guns just coming in and taking over everything?, If they have more guns than you, they're in charge now.

8: if the only form of regulation for companies is public opinion, how do you prevent them spreading false news?, How do you make sure everyone is a conscious consumer?, Not everyone is looking into the history and supply chain of every product they buy.

Overall, Anarcho-capitalism would quickly fall into destruction, death, and tyranny.

Hi guys. I have only recently become interested in the libertarian ideology, mostly due to an Irish libertarian account that pops up in my feed. I have a very surface level understanding of politics and economics, but this and just general life experience tells me these people are just useful idiots for oligarchs. They talk about the free market like it’s magical and there’s always a more ethical or better place to spend your money. I don’t understand why they don’t see that their ideology in practice would lead to corporate feudalism. Specifically though how can I argue against the people who say that monopolies only exist with government intervention and that predatory pricing isn’t real?

I have a libertarian coworker. He knows where I stand and he's civil enough to almost never bring it up.

I was complaining about someone who was skirting the rules for expense reimbursement (don't feel bad for this guy, he makes like $250k he doesn't need it). I saw my coworkers eyes light up and he dropped a "well it's human nature, that when something is free then people will abuse it".

He had a smirk - it was honestly more playful than smug - so I decided to not let it slide. I just said "that's not true, most of the world has universal healthcare, people don't just line up to get free tetanus shots every week. Most of them spend less per person than we do [in the USA]".

He responded that there's plenty of people in Europe that hate universal healthcare. I let it go at that. I should specify that we work in healthcare.

But that's not a line I haven't heard before from libertarians. Like I'm sure there some folks from Poland or Argentina or wherever who will tell libertarians "oh yeah universal healthcare is terrible I wish we had private healthcare like in America". And no doubt, lots of people do have their complaints about their universal healthcare systems. But those are almost exclusively complaints about the systems being insufficiently funded or not being universal enough. As some who has worked internationally as well as like, uses the internet to engage with people from other countries, the idea that people who live with universal healthcare would give it up for a US system is ridiculous on it's face. Even people who love capitalism and are generally against "big government" in those countries don't want a US style system. But libertarians are convinced everyone secretly hates it I guess.

I’ve been interested in libertarianism for a while now. So interested, in fact, that I even read a book recommended by a libertarian called Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt. Some of his arguments against public housing, government loans, and rent control initially made sense to me.

I was also intrigued by the critiques of socialism and communism. And, for some reason, everyone who bashed those ideas using the Austrian School's Economic Calculation Problem and Local Knowledge Problem theories always turned out to be libertarian.

Unfortunately, there aren’t many good videos debunking libertarianism. But I wouldn’t be writing this if I hadn’t read 25% of a leftist book by Joseph Stiglitz called The Price of Inequality, which the New York Times called “the single most comprehensive argument against neoliberalism and laissez-faire theories.”

Why am I doing this? Because I’m concerned. Russia is actively destabilizing the West by boosting the far-right — with their Eurosceptic, anti-liberal, anti-democratic, anti-Ukrainian, anti-NATO garbage. I don’t want libertarianism to become mainstream. So yeah, let’s end the Right once and for all.

“Statism Is When Bad Things”

I remember the US Libertarian Party posting a meme on Twitter claiming we don’t live in a free society because the government puts cameras everywhere to watch us. Okay. So, “statism is when bad things.” But how exactly would anarchism solve this issue? Who’s going to stop corporations or militias from watching you?

The first question libertarians should ask themselves is whether the state is really the source of all problems — or if that’s just lazy thinking.

Taxation

Right-wingers love to believe that if the government taxed the rich less, they'd invest more in jobs, raise wages, and grow the economy. But when Trump introduced massive tax cuts in 2017, the debt ballooned, and the money didn’t go into wages or new factories — it went into stock buybacks and dividends. In short, the rich gave money back to themselves. Wages didn’t grow proportionally. Same story under Reagan and Bush.

Rich people tend to hoard wealth. Middle- and lower-income people, on the other hand, spend it — which stimulates demand and keeps the economy running.

The government has to step in and redistribute some of that wealth — into healthcare, education, and public infrastructure — to prevent radicalization, ensure stability, and increase worker productivity. Because, contrary to libertarian fantasy, markets don't always provide those things efficiently.

Inequality

I have a libertarian friend on Twitter who once posted this:

For libertarians who see GDP growth as a sign of national well-being — allow me to disappoint you.

In unequal countries like America or Argentina, GDP growth often reflects the gains of the top 1%. The median household can stagnate or decline even while GDP rises. The rich rarely reinvest that money in ways that benefit the poor.

Adam Smith believed the private pursuit of self-interest leads — as if by an invisible hand — to the well-being of all. But the 2008 financial crisis proved that unchecked self-interest, especially in banking, can destroy lives. Subprime lending, predatory practices, and speculative bubbles didn’t just enrich the top — they wrecked the bottom 90%.

Some inequality is tolerable and even necessary. But excessive inequality is a threat to democracy, social cohesion, and long-term economic health. I haven’t seen a simple explanation of why inequality is bad — it’s a whole book’s worth of issues. And I already mentioned which book you should read.

Minimum Wage Laws

Libertarians love to chant that minimum wage laws are “job killers.” But they’re parroting theory, not looking at real-world data.

Empirical studies show that when minimum wages are adjusted reasonably, they have little to no effect on unemployment. In fact, they can increase productivity and morale. Workers who feel they’re being treated fairly tend to work harder. If executives raised their own pay and cut worker wages, morale — and productivity — would tank.

Food safety

Let’s talk about food safety — my favorite topic.

We go to the store and just assume the food is safe. Why? Because it’s regulated. In the US, the FDA makes sure your cereal isn’t full of pesticides and your meat isn’t crawling with bacteria. Without that, you might be eating poison. Or your phone could explode like the Samsung Galaxy Note 7.

Regulations exist for a reason. Consumers don’t have the time, knowledge, or resources to test every product, because the people are stupid. That’s the same argument AnCaps use against democracy — so it applies here too.

Libertarians always argue that markets would regulate themselves through competition. But let’s take Ch**a as a case study. Even though it technically has food safety laws, enforcement is weak. That’s why you get piss eggs, sewer oil, worms in meat — and no, these aren’t just isolated cases. These things happen because producers care about cutting costs, not public health.

So what do you do if you're poisoned by food in a libertarian society? Sue them? What if you're broke? What if they're overseas? What if it’s too late? Boycott? Most people won’t even do that.

Monopolies

I remember watching a libertarian YouTuber (MentisWave) responding to a socialist’s (Second Thought’s) argument that monopolies can arise from free markets. His response was basically: “Haha, that’s nonsense, only the government can create long-term monopolies.”

But later, in another video, he seemed to change his mind and admitted that monopolies can arise from anti-competitive practices (like predatory pricing) — and even said that many libertarians and conservatives agree it should be seen as an act of aggression.

Except… how the hell does that work in an Anarcho-Capitalist society? In that worldview, aggression only means literal aggression — killing, stealing, or breaking contracts. But predatory pricing? That’s just a business strategy. So either your sacred Non-Aggression Principle doesn’t cover this — or your ideology doesn’t actually stop monopolies.

Enlightened self-interest

The problem with the right-wing is their belief that nothing gives them a benefit except ma****bating their own d**ks.

But if the rich paid their fair share, that money could be invested in programs that benefit them, too — through a stable, well-educated, healthy society. You get productive workers, functional infrastructure, and lower crime. That’s the kind of environment where a business can thrive.

Why didn't Amazon put billions of dollars into that? Simple: it isn't profitable.

Not everything that’s good is profitable. And not everything profitable is good.

The state doesn't make only bad things by nature, it's the one who can make unprofitable decisions that benefit all of our society.

The Civil Rights Act

Libertarians treat capitalism and liberty like a religion — just like communists treat justice and equality like one. That’s why they oppose the Civil Rights Act. Because… uh… “treading on muh freedom”? Perhaps there are some practical reasons for it? Maybe they think it’s unjust to force a racist to run a business that serves everyone? Or maybe it “kills jobs” because racist employers don’t want to hire Black people, and now their feelings are hurt?

But like… what about societal cohesion? What about the fact that discrimination divides society, lowers morale, and makes workers feel like crap? Didn't I already explain that morale affects productivity?

So yeah. Libertarians would rather defend the right of some white supremacist business owner to treat Black customers like garbage than admit that regulation might actually help society work better. Why? Because the Non-Aggression Principle. Because ideals.

Conclusion

Libertarianism is an idealistic ideology. Many libertarians aren't pragmatiс. They care about abstract ideals and principles, not outcomes. Why shouldn’t the government regulate food? “Because it violates the Non-Aggression Principle.” Why shouldn’t we restrict drug sales to protect children? “Because NAP.” Why shouldn’t nukes be under centralized control? “Because that's socialism!”

And the irony? Many self-described libertarians also support laws banning abortion. So who decides if abortion is aggression? The market? Good luck with that.

I wanted to write more — like how you can’t build roads without central coordination, or the consequences of removing all trade barriers free market fans don't like to talk about — but I’m tired.

So here’s my final point. Libertarians are better than Marxists in that they understand human nature and basic economics. But beyond that, they don’t grasp how complicated the world really is. That’s why their naïve ideology ends up serving the powerful — those who want a society not run by the people, but by oligarchs.

I’ve been scratching my head over this for a while. Libertarianism, at least in theory, is all about the individual. Not just in terms of being treated as an individual, but in the deeper sense that individual rights, autonomy, and self-interest are supposed to supersede any collective identity.

So why do so many libertarians spend so much time obsessing over racial and cultural group differences? Books like the Bell Curve make sweeping generalizations about hundreds of millions of people, grouped crudely by race or socioeconomic status. Even if it’s dressed up as “just data,” the focus itself seems totally at odds with libertarianism’s rejection of collectivist thinking.

If your whole worldview says individuals matter more than arbitrary groupings, why the fixation on race and IQ averages? Why even care about these macro-level group trends if individual merit and freedom are the core values?

160 houses of the procrear plan were to be delivered to the families drawn by lot. Instead of giving them to the beneficiaries, Patricia Bullrich gave them to members of the police. These things happen in Milei's government.

So, one of the core things about libertarianism as an ideology is that people will act in their rational self interest, people will act in what is best for them, this makes some sense.

However, they ALSO believe that if a business acts unethically, people will refuse to do business with them, and instead, choose more ethical businesses.

But, if you haven't seen the problem yet, it's very simple:

THOSE ARE CONTRADICTORY.

Why would I choose to spend more money on a more expensive more ethical product if i'm a rational actor acting in my own best interests?, it does not benefit me if child slavery is reduced because me and my family are not child slaves, it does benefit me if things are cheaper.

So either A: people will not always act rationally in their own self-interest, Or B: Boycotts are not an effective form of Self-regulation.

Hilariously despicable, 🤏 dwarf dick, gaslighty fucks. Imagine being this cucked by the government.

There isn't a single bone in these people's bodies that believes in human liberty, because human liberty has to be UNIVERSAL. Not just you, not just the rich, not just the elite, and not just THE STATE.

All bark, negative bite. Absolute dictator balls gargling.

Most of the big comments were mocking how stupid this was as well, many people still got hope rejecting right-authoritarianism, but anyone left in that community is 🐸 boiling frogs. Letting the dictator cuck mods piss in their ear.