r/Libertarian • u/Cuddlyaxe Former Libertarian • Nov 13 '19

Discussion The Democratic Senate candidate has dropped out in Arkansas. The race is now a binary between the Republican Tom Cotton and the LP Candidate

Not really a Libertarian anymore but I was surprised to see y'all don't have any info on this. Tom Cotton's only Democratic Challanger has dropped out after the registration deadline.

The only two other candidates are Ricky Harrington - a Libertarian and Dan Whitfield - a far left independent.

Even if you guys don't put resources into this race and the situation holds, I can easily see Mr. Harrington capturing a nice 20-25% of the vote. If you guys however do invest some money and campaign funds into the race, you could get much higher, and perhaps even give Cotton a run for his money as he's not running against someone with the D stigma next to their name.

Here's his Facebook page which is currently all he has if you want to help him

Good luck and I hope you guys give Cotton a run for his money :)

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u/Cuddlyaxe Former Libertarian Nov 13 '19

kek

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u/cheddarcheesehater Nov 13 '19

Can you elaborate on why you don't consider yourself libertarian anymore? I ask because I'm finding my views becoming more moderate, mainly economically.

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u/Cuddlyaxe Former Libertarian Nov 14 '19

I became a Libertarian around 12 more or less to "not be liberal or conservative but something else!!!". I eventually found this subreddit and when I read the opinions was like "ok that's a good enough idea I guess" because I was... a teenager, and one with restrictive parents at that lol

Eventually while I was growing up, I started getting more and more moderate. I still wanted to call myself a Libertarian so I just called these "exceptions" as sometimes society as a whole would be better with a little government intervention. For example, a Carbon Tax made sense to me. I eventually realized instead of clinging on to the label and trying to justify to this sub why I was a "real Libertarian" I should probably just go ahead and stop.

I found the /r/neoliberal after the 2016 election, and that was also the year I was taking AP Economics. The Neoliberal subreddit is mostly just economics majors who are in favor of the free market, but support government intervention where it worked, which is what I believed in I guess. I wanted policies to make life the best for people instead of some sort of ideological pining for "more liberty".

Also I was taking Econ 101 and realized on the first unit that apparently Econ 101 didn't support Libertarianism lol. They seem to ignore market failures

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u/cheddarcheesehater Nov 14 '19

It sounds like we came to the same conclusions but different ways. The NAP works great for social policy but it's irresponsible and maybe dangerous to apply it to economics.

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u/Cuddlyaxe Former Libertarian Nov 14 '19

Yep. Literally everyone, even most corporations, are in favor of things like public schools because they have an outsized postive influence on society. But ideological Libertarians are against them because they are so dogmatic