I will propose the premise that to be a legitimate political school of thought requires both a guiding ideology and a basis for implementing that ideology through policy.  For example, as a first order approximation, I would say that modern progressivism is based on an ideology that places the greatest value on social liberty and equality.  Policy is sought that increases governmental capacity to enforce social liberty at the expense of economic liberty (e.g. general welfare programs and death panels funded by progressive taxation).  Modern conservativism, on the other hand, might be described as based on the idea that personal freedom is the paramount value of a society, and is implemented by reducing the role of federal government in peoples lives (e.g. cutting welfare programs and reducing taxes).

Okay, now libertarianism.  I suppose the ideology is that the promotion of all freedoms and liberties (rather than the prioritization of social/personal/economic) should be sought.  I think it’s safe to say, at least in reference to current political climates, this is a fairly extreme stance.  How, then, does one propose to implement this in policy?  What you seem to hear fairly frequently from people claiming to be libertarians is that all policy is bad, in that there is always increased restriction of freedoms as a result.  How, then, is this distinct from anarchism?  Without some guiding principal towards policy, libertarianism should be strictly relegated to crackpots like Rand Paul.

Not all is necessarily lost.  Though I’m not aware of such a policy directive of libertarians, that’s not to say one does not or cannot exist.  If I were a libertarian (which I’m not.. usually), I would say that not all freedoms and liberties are equal — there are different values that the individual or society places on its various freedoms.  For example (here’s where Paul comes in again), consider the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  Yes, that limits my freedom to racially discriminate.  Yes, technically, I will grant that that does in fact represent a restriction of liberties.  However, at that expense, all persons now have the freedom to, say, sit anywhere on a bus, or drink from whatever water fountain they please, or become the God-Damned President of the United Fucking States.  If I were a libertarian, I would say that was a net gain.  I would say, fuck yeah, let’s get us some more of that.  (As it turns out, that’s what I say anyway, because I’m, you know, sane.)

So back to the original question.  When someone says they’re a libertarian, what exactly do they mean?  What are the stated goals and policy directives of American libertarians?

(…and I don’t mean upper-case ‘L’ Libertarians.. them bitches be crazy.)

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Unfortunately, Republicans are apparently unaware of this one, since recent legislation in both Arizona and Oklahoma rather clearly violate what is stated here.  Granted, it is all the way down the page at number 14… maybe they didn’t get that far.

…a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.

Sound familiar?

It was bad enough when Obama was running, and everyone was wondering if he was “too black”, or “not black enough.” You know what? Don’t care. Well, now we’ve got Sotomayor. She pronounces her name weird. She’s Puerto Rican. She’s from the Bronx.  Hey, guess what? Don’t. Fucking. Care.

I know it’s way too much to ask from the infantile mouth-breathers who make up the vast majority of our political arena, but can we please spend just a little more time on her actual qualifications, and a little less time screwing up any hope of good race relations?

I’ll save the rant on speculation for later, and focus on day traders. Day traders make their money (or lose it, as the case may be) by making many, many trades, for fairly small profits… a good trade might be one or two percent over the course of minutes or an hour, with the majority of trades being far less (<1%). With a 0.5% round trip tax on trading, the profitability of day trading ceases to exist, and they all go away. The result of this would be a very dramatic drop in trading volume. See, the nice thing about having those day traders around is that they provide liquidity of equities — that is, when Joe Schmoe wants to trade a stock in his 401k, there’s always another trader around willing to snap up those shares. With volume and liquidity come ‘fair’ prices and easy trading. Without it, you will see large spreads (such as in low-volume options, where the bid/ask spread can be as high as 10-20% of the options price, or more) and even more and larger price gaps between close and open of markets.

Ostensibly, this tax would have the ‘bonus’ of cutting down on manipulation. Riiiiight. That’ll work.. except not. The other thing about high volume and liquidity is that it makes prices much harder to manipulate. For example, take a look at the following chart for SDP, a fairly new and thinly-traded ETF based on utility prices:

This thing has been whipped around like bronco on meth. Now, imagine if this was happening with S&P500 companies. What, you thought we already had too much volatility? Pussy.

One final note. There are a lot of people out there who have been trading on the side for years, and are pretty good at it. Recently, some of these people are finding themselves out of a job, and are trying to make it on their own, trading for a living. It’s already hard enough to pull a profit; please, let’s not make it worse, and put another nail in the coffin of the American Dream.