Reply #7: Want To Expose A Libertarian? [View All]

Here's how you do it. Start them talking about healthcare reform. They will, quite predictably, be against it. They'll give you all sorts of reasons why they're against it. Somewhere in that huge, steaming pile of horse dung, they will inevitably "inform" you that the private sector does everything better, and that the free market, where everyone competes against each other, always results in the best product for the cheapest price.

Then you hit them with this: "Oh, so your FOR free market competition, then?" They'll say yes.

Now bury the hammer right between their eyebrows: "And you don't want the government to enter the free market and provide a lower-cost alternative for people who need it............WHY? You just told me competition in the free market ALWAYS results in the best product for the lowest price. The healthcare providers will have to either start providing a better product or they'll have to lower their prices. How is this a BAD thing?" They'll stammer out something about rationing and substandard care and about how the government will put all the private health insurers out of business (or any combination of those). To which you reply: "But if the government screws up everything they touch, how would they put the superior care provided by private health insurers out of business? If government-run healthcare is so bad, wouldn't it cause the people to go running TOWARD the private insurers, kicking and screaming? That's like saying if I open up a terrible restaurant and serve rotten food for next to nothing, I'll put the best restaurants in town out of business. You don't actually BELIEVE that............DO YOU???" If government care is so bad, the free market will soon put them out of business, right?

Now you've caught them in the middle of two separate lies that contradict each other. Either government care is substandard, in which case the private insurers have nothing to fear, or it's superior and will put the private insurers out of business. But not both. Either way, the free market HAS, in fact, provided Americans with the best possible product at the lowest possible price. The free market has worked just as Adam Smith had envisioned. Don't you agree, Libertarians?

Since they certainly WON'T agree, you've just exposed them as right-wing hacks who fear change and/or corporate shills. But almost to a man, I've found that people who claim to be Libertarians are nothing more than people who don't want to pay taxes. That's generally the extent of their deeply-held political beliefs in Libertarianism.