Libertarianism

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ELI5 what libertarianism is.
 * Question
 * Answer by /u/AmazingSyco

Best answer
Every day, you go buy lunch in the school cafeteria and sit with all of your classmates. While you're at lunch, you can do whatever you want with your food. You can eat it all, or you can throw it all away. You can trade it with other kids. You can give some of it to another kid who forgot his lunch money, or you can tease him because he doesn't have any by eating it in front of him. Now, you can't do something that would hurt another kid or ruin something he owns; you can't throw food at him or steal his food, because if you do, you'll get put in detention by the hall monitors. But as long as you aren't being mean, you can do whatever you like. And these rules are the same for all the kids. Pretty great, right?

Now, what if you were in a school where many kids forgot their lunch money often, and didn't have a lunch to eat? A lot of kids would go hungry, and that wouldn't be good. So the hall monitors institute a new rule. Every kid must give up a third of their lunch money to the hall monitors. Then, hopefully, the hall monitors will fairly give it out to the kids who didn't bring their own, so they can buy a lunch. Maybe those kids didn't have any money, maybe they forgot it at home, or maybe they just stopped bringing money because they know they can get some from the hall monitors every day.

That's not fair! You bring your own lunch money every day! Under these rules, you have to give up part of your lunch every day just because some other kids can't take care of themselves. Now, to get the same amount of food, you now have to bring even more lunch money, which you might not have. If you were a nice kid, you'd surely help out someone who truly didn't mean to leave his lunch money at home. You don't need the hall monitor to be nice to someone. But because they took your lunch money from you, you have to hope that they're giving your money out fairly. And they don't always do the best job at it.

Source.

/u/WingedOx

 * >This is good, but a fair bit biased towards Libertarianism.

BECAUSE your constructed story assumes that every kid without lunch money are so because of some form of irresponsibility or negligence (ie. they forgot it). Whilst this almost completely necessitates your claims and conclusions, it does so because you ignore other reasons that kds might be without lunch money and because its an oversimplified example that doesn't completely reflect the reality of the situation for every kid without lunch money - but of course, that was your intent, because if their lack of lunch money is ALWAYS a result of negligence than its difficult to justify making others pay for their irresponsibility. To be more thorough however, even if you think that its wrong to redistribute any sum from those who have their lunch money, you would need to include other reasons that kids might come to school without lunch money. It would be far more genuine and honest of you to admit that some kids might not have lunch money because of other reasons and not simply slip "maybe those kids didn't have any money" in there without so much as a further explanation of their situations:

1) What if the childrens parents lost their jobs because of downsizing, outsourcing, or relocation and they lost the ability to give money to their children for lunches? 2) What if the child's money was stolen that day? 3) What if some of the children are from families who don't have money because the families of the children that do have the money have become so wealthy that scarce resources have become more scarce. 4) What if its because the families of the children who do not have their lunch money are from ethnic communities that have had long histories of degradation and oppression and drawn out struggles for equal treatment and acceptance into society, which could also then be shown to have a significant impact on their ability to have the money to bring both now and historically? 5) What if its because the families of the children who do not have their lunch money just lost everything to a financial crisis or natural calamity? 6) What if its because the parent(s) of the child are disabled and cannot find or maintain gainful employment? 7) What if its because the children who did not bring money are from families where the parents do hold down regular, full-time jobs but they don't pay well enough for them to afford to give the child the money for lunches?

Now, of course, there are many more other scenarios, but then it gets really nuanced and the stories muddy the waters. Which would also provide a pretty good argument for why its not helpful nor is it intellectually honest to try and explain libertarianism or any other political philosophy for that matter, by using a trite and oversimplified example such as this. Perhaps its a reflection of the elementary, oversimplified, and emotion-driven reasons behind your reasons for thinking this way.

Source.