The majority of poor people wouldn't be poor if they weren't lazy. Public school is free. Get educated, do good in school, and get scholarships for college.
I NEVER REALIZED HOW EASY THIS IS
Because obviously everyone is born equal, right? Just about everyone that's smart gets full blown scholarships! It's just lazy peopel that are poor. No one is born poor and therefore has to work early just in order to eat and therefore can't keep their schoolwork up enough to get full scholarships, no one has parents that can't instill the importance of learning into kids. It's not like there's an entire subculture that promotes dropping out of school and being a thug that kids look up to as early as they can.
If someone is lazy enough that it'd affect them economically, then of course they'll generally be poor. But whenever I see a libertarian arguing, they usually phase it as "poor person doesn't want to work so he demands free money", which is such a ridiculous statement that I don't want to reply because it shows that they have no idea what they're talking about. It's like when someone claims to be well informed about current events, but only gets everything through a blog and is surprised to find out that Neocon wasn't made up by the author.
I was very interested in libertarianism, and looked into it, but after a talk with Eric I just can't agree with it economically. If Socialism dissolves the upper class into the middle and low class, then Libertarianism dissolves the middle class into the lower class. I can't agree with something that is based off such an insane idea that an entire class is made up of "lazy" people, while everyone else is hard working and smart. To be honest, it seems borderline racist. Social libertarianism is something completely different, I tend to agree with it. Not so much as some as I don't think heavy addictive drugs should be legal, but otherwise then yes.
A large problem with debating libertarianism is that the degree of it changes. There's people that basically want anarchy, those that just want to abolish the department of education and so forth, and those that just want less government control in the economy but no major upheavals.
My Ayn Rand and Ron Paul stuff was a joke. Well party, I do think Ayn Rand is a terrible terrible author and her philosophy is even worse, and her herself was a bigoted *****. Ron Paul I don't agree with because he seems to think that every problem just solves itself.
With that said, I don't think Socialism is a good alternative. Socialism is too much of the collective over the individual, while full-blown libertarianism is too much of the individual over the collective, in which both eventually wipe the underdog out. People don't always act in their best interest. The government doesn't always either, of course, but that's why I think there should be a balance.
For example, let's say a farmer wants to get the most profit out of his land within five years. So he just rips through it and farms it, and at the end of the five years the soil is useless, so the farmer leaves, and does the same elsewhere. He gets the most profit, but when the farmers do that on a large scale basis then we get trouble. Now Libertarians would say that the farmers would realize that and not do it, but that would be under the assumption that they'd work in their best long term interest, which is not how people act. People work for their best interest only if the cause and reasoning is clear and close. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that global warming is real. And now let's take away the governments ability to stop regulating. Do you really think that enough people will stop in order to affect it? Even if there was 0 doubt of global warming existing?
In the end I just think Libertarianism is an unrealistic approach, just like how socialism is unrealistic in the idea that socialism doesn't kill the work ethic and freedoms of a civilization.
And Lew Rockwell killed Jesus
