For some of you more progressive

[kccougar]

What if our government raised the social security age to some something higher? Those close to being senior citizens will take the streets.

Funny, there haven't been many old people in the riot photos I've seen.

[Jacob]

if the private sector doesn't produce a satisfactory choice at a reasonable price for all people, then there is nothing wrong with the people deciding to take care of those needs collectively.

Perhaps a more accurate statement for your beliefs would have been "I agree with libertarians sometimes."

[Uncle Ted]

Sure I am. Like most libertarians, I want as much free enterprise to be handled by the private sector as possible. But where we culturally have decided that something is important enough that all people should have access to it (education, medical care, police service, fire service, military, minimum wage, etc.), if the private sector doesn't produce a satisfactory choice at a reasonable price for all people, then there is nothing wrong with the people deciding to take care of those needs collectively.

So you like Glenn Beck! He claims to be a libertarian too.

[YOUTUBE]EsAvQe_oMrU[/YOUTUBE]

[YOUTUBE]57hcqsD_btg[/YOUTUBE]

[YOUTUBE]VIGBqu3Zh2I[/YOUTUBE]

[YOUTUBE]hkkXBSNe-84[/YOUTUBE]

[YOUTUBE]xVtJE890Jao[/YOUTUBE]

[creekster]

The French riot because they want a vacation. They usually spend two or there weeks away from work then they go back like nothing ever happened. The only casualties are a few hundred cars and maybe a building or two. I happens just about every fall and spring but it never happens in august because they already get that month off.

This is true.

[Moliere]

Funny, there haven't been many old people in the riot photos I've seen.

I have many favorite French riots/protests/strikes but my favorite of all time was when they were rioting because the government wanted to loosen the financial restrictions on a company after it terminated an employee. The government wanted to make it possible for some companies to cut low performers and not have to pay incredibly high taxes for doing so. It was mainly college students and young people who were upset and protesting as they felt that workers had a right to a job. This was during a time that college graduates were not finding jobs because companies couldn't terminate low performers. So long story short, the college kids were protesting the very government action they needed for them to find employment after graduation.

Another one of my favorite protests was in a city called Rouen in Normandy where a group of people were walking around centre-ville with a sign that read "Anti-Havre". They were protesting against people from Le Havre, which is the port city up the Seine from Rouen. I asked one of them why they were protesting and she didn't know but figured she'd join in as it got her out of class for the day. I have a picture of this protest that I'll try to find when I get home.

There is also a public transportation strike that usually happens around Christmas time in Paris. Again, they just want a couple days vacation so they find some dumb thing to go on strike about. None of the french people care as they are used to this. It's only the outsiders that make a big deal out of it. I remember having to walk from the the church in Neuilly back to the 7th arrondissmont since the metros were running so sporadically. Also, that same day before church, we were following up on some contacts. I had one near Pigalle and one on the other end of Blvd de Clichy. I decided to walk Blvd de Clichy, which if you have ever been to Paris is an area that would make the strip in Vegas seem like child's play (not talking about lights). I figured on Sunday morning it wouldn't be bad and it wasn't too bad. We just had to dodge the men staggering out of the clubs/shops after a long night.

[RobinFinderson]

Perhaps a more accurate statement for your beliefs would have been "I agree with libertarians sometimes."

Given the set of all people who call themselves 'libertarians,' the number of people who think that the fire department should be completely privatized is a SMALL FRACTION of the total. In other words, the vast majority of libertarians are like me. We decide what things we are going to define as communal concerns, and everything else is best left to the private sector with regulation scaled to the risk that private activity can harm people completely uninvolved with the private activity.

That is a working model of a libertarian, and I definitely fit within that model.