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[hector13]

I meant Buttigieg :p

[Folly]

I wonder if the people of the near future will use "post 2016" the same way we refer to "post 9/11."  As in a big political shift, obviously Trump being elected can't be usefully compared to a terrorist attack.

I've yet to hear any candidates running on the platform of wanting to impose new checks and balances upon the presidency. If such a person actually won, that could actually be a historical turning point.

[Dunamisdeos]

Probably way more than enough general support right now for that person to have success at that, too.

[Trekkin]

I think there's broad support for acting in accordance with the checks and balances we already have, but less for broad structural changes to the separation of powers -- in which case we might expect to see rhetoric about returning to regular order and so forth, but probably not specific promises that would take constitutional amendments to enact.

[MrRoboto75]

Anybody of the psychological mindset to pursue presidency isn't someone interested in having less power.

[smjjames]

You'd be looking for a Libertarian president, not a Democrat or Republican one.

From what I hear, it's mainly Congress that has to claw back the checks and balances it gave up rather than the Presidency.

The thing is that the checks and balances rely partially Congress not being a complete suckup to the President, so, when you get someone like Trump who doesn't give a damn and the party acts like hostages and does nothing, they aren't doing checks and balances properly.

[Cthulhu]

I'd never vote for a libertarian who wanted to be President.  That's what we call a contradiction.

Then again, I'd never vote.

[Reelya]

I'd like to see a total dystopia based on Libetarian beliefs.

For example, if people don't want to be locked up, there's a market for that, so we should allow the police to lock up anyone they like for any reason and you can pay to not have that happen. Police would be self-managed private vigilante units who could create and run their own for-profit prisons. It would be an entirely self-regulating law enforcement system without external intervention from a "government" distorting things.

[smjjames]

Sounds more like Mobster racketeering and protection extortion than a libertarian dystopia.

[Reelya]

Uh, yeah, but that's what in fact happens when you have unregulated markets. In this case a market for "protection".

[MrRoboto75]

Sooo I'd have to pay tax to someone in order to not be thrown in jail for tax evasion

[Trekkin]

Sounds more like Mobster racketeering and protection extortion than a libertarian dystopia.

Well, that's libertarianism for you: it's been used to refer to ideologies as diverse as anarcho-communism through anarcho-capitalism, because if you have a term for being pro-freedom, everyone wants to apply it to their ideology. That doesn't even get into the differences between anarchy and chaos -- but then, neither do most libertarians.

These days it's mostly a vector for edgy middle-class kids to complain about how The System is keeping them from achieving their dreams and brag about the machismo with which they'll shoot anyone who tries to make them eat their vegetables.

[smjjames]

Anarchy is just, no central government and mostly 'the strongest rule' and chaos would be, 'law of the jungle, tooth and claw', but even then, nature follows some basic laws (besides the laws of physics), which isn't even close to true chaos.

[Trekkin]

Anarchy is just, no central government and mostly 'the strongest rule' and chaos would be, 'law of the jungle, tooth and claw', but even then, nature follows some basic laws (besides the laws of physics), which isn't even close to true chaos.

Well, in the strictest sense, anarchy is the absence of hierarchy rather than government, that being the literal meaning of the word, and you can differentiate anarchist theories by how they approach enforcing laws (or their equivalent) without establishing a hierarchy -- or, if we include minarchy, what level of de facto hierarchy they consider necessary or inescapable.

[Cthulhu]

so we should allow the police to lock up anyone they like for any reason and you can pay to not have that happen.

We already have that, its called "the government"

If your vision of total dystopia is evolved bandits distributing unilateral violence to enforce laws they invented I've got some bad news for you

As for chaos, everybody knows chaos isn't disorder, it's just order that's inaccessible to human senses.