Farrariwarner makes an important point. Unless terms are defined and agreed upon, there cannot be any basis for rational discussion. A common word many politicians use when trying to get their way is ''fair''. I would guess the word means something different for everyone. It sounds benign, but it can be a powerful and convincing word when someone is trying to get their way, as in enacting legislation.

If he had any understanding of Atlas Shrugged as anything more than "here now prediction of decline" he wouldn't be promoting altruism, collectivism and pragmatism in the article cited. He has no idea what Atlas Shrugged was about:

"I think most Americans would say that power and control are a necessary part of living together in common. What’s needed is a balance among those concepts. How much should we give? How much should we get in return? If I let you take control of this, then what am I going to be able to do or get in exchange for giving that up?"

"I don’t think America has lost its way; but I do believe there are those among us who would lead us astray.

"Why do they want to do that? For many of the reasons I stated above—mostly, putting self-interest and the needs and desires of a few ahead of the common good."

"Common-sense principles applied to serving the common good: this is how we can restore our balance."

I'm sorry, I was not impressed with his answers to the questions. If he had read "Atlas Shrugged" 3x and answered the questions more definitively I would have been impressed. In my opinion you can't get the full meaning of "Atlas Shrugged" unless you have read it 3x. Even now I keep it on hand as a reference.
Yes, he did recognize that the events as portrayed in the book parallel to what is happening today. I just wish he answered the questions in more detail.

Gary Johnson on Atlas Shrugged - 2012 interview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygqJk...

Please, someone send Gary Johnson a copy of "Atlas Shrugged"! He is another one not living in reality. I'll admit that this election cycle is a bit of anomaly. What amazes me is that how all the Republican politician candidates all wilted before Trumps on-slaught. Then we have HC bribing and coercing her way to the top as the Democratic nominee. Then the major media sweeps all her transgressions, criminal behavior, and lies under the rug. Just tonight, Sheriff Joe Arpio appears on a election ad stating that the Feds are after him again for supposed profiling illegal aliens, arresting them and then transports the illegals over to ICE. He stated that this was an hypocrisy. That HC is getting a free ride (verbatim). Please vote for me as your Sheriff. I don't live in Maricopa Co. but I do admire the Sheriff. I just wish the Sheriff in Coconino Co. was little more visible, I can't even remember his name. I'll just have to look it up on-line.
The Fed. Justice Dept.is still doing political correctness investigation on high profile Lawman who are just doing their jobs.

Right! Then Trump is not a candidate for the job ;^)

The Libertarian Party seems to just keep shooting itself in the foot. Here's an idea. Promote a Libertarian candidate - or at least somebody who openly wants to minimize government. Then, make sure the person doesn't act like a nutjob.

Glad I could help.

"The right thing to do would be to NOT be a looter, and pull the plug on the entire thing, especially if that means you won't get your Social Security"
Excuse me, but starving to death "for the common good" is not what objectivists do. Self sacrifice is not rational.
Just in case you have forgotten history, every younger generation in the past has had to take care of the older generation when they could no longer take care of themselves, and in addition they also paid to raise the younger generation (the children) until they were strong enough to take care of themselves. That is exactly what this older generation did. Please explain exactly how the older generation has caused this to come to be and how it is rational for millenials to think they should not have the responsibilities that every generation has had. Everyone must accept life's responsibilities. You want to stop the system from crashing by ending social security and other aged benefits, then the younger generations will still have the burden of supporting the aged, just as every younger generation has. TANSTAAFL.
If you want someone to blame, look at those who created the federal reserve system, the income tax, the alphabet agencies of FDR's New Deal (which only happened because of the depression caused by the federal reserve.) It is not any current generations at fault because they weren't even born at the time, but the current generations had to pay for it all their lives.

It's been 50 years since the biggest social program was changed from a Retirement Fund to a Welfare Program. 50.

The people that will bear the burden for its crash weren't born for at least 15 years since it was changed.

Knowing that the system WILL crash sometime in the near future, people have chosen to loot the system as much as they can, letting younger generations pay in and not receive anything. The right thing to do would be to NOT be a looter, and pull the plug on the entire thing, especially if that means you won't get your Social Security.

And Millennials are starting to realize this. It would be a winner for the Libertarian Party to do it.

Add to all this the fact that the looters are purposely inflating the currency which forces costs of support higher and higher, stealing from everyone as they age, making statist control of them easier, and creating the vile, irrational assumption that the older generations are stealing from the younger.

The only generations that didn't pay in as much as they took out are dead. The current generations have all paid in more than they will take out. You are blaming people who were conned by looters for insisting that the looters return part of what they stole in the con game. The looters stole more than 15% of the "generation" members' production for 45 years and promised to pay a portion back as support after they could no longer work. They were not allowed to keep their production so they could take care of themselves when they could no longer work because the looters wanted to be able to control them. Now that they can't work to support themselves and they were told to plan for a certain level of support in return for the 45 years of stolen production, they are not in a position to support themselves without those payments.
They are not looters stealing from the young. Their production has been stolen from them and used by looters to manipulate and gain more control. The older generation is not bankrupting the system. The looters in politics and the industries that government feeds are bankrupting the system. You are letting the looters lies mislead you. Its the typical misdirection of con-men and part of their plan: Get the people fighting among themselves about who is at fault and overlook the guilt of the con-men.

Unfortunately human beings do not live peacefully in any society without compromise. We compromise with our neighbors every day and we give up a small amount of our freedom. The important matter is what is compromised. The past 40 years of elections have proven that only a maximum of 1% of the voters support a "liberty" platform (i.e., libertarian party with little compromise) and Johnson decided that if there was to be any chance to have the principles of liberty be heard his campaign would not be as unwilling to compromise on some issues. I don't always agree with Johnson's choices, but I understand the reason for the strategy. What "Gary offers" might be viewed as a balance between freedom and power, meaning the citizens control their lives except in cases where they consent to a compromise that empowers the state to mediate. Unless you have power you cannot dictate changes. Like it or not the great majority of people who vote are (imo) brainwashed/addicted to government in control of many things that are not constitutional and will not vote to take back those powers immediately. Until the voters are re-educated not to fear people having freedom of control over themselves they won't vote for such freedom.

With that one, I disagree. Older generations have been told that they are bankrupting the system. Their response? It's fine as long as they get theirs.

You cannot compromise any liberty without immediately surrendering it. The first thing Gary offers is that there must be a balance between power and freedom, meaning that the state controls (enslaves) its citizens rather than the citizens controlling the state.

The common good and general welfare originally meant in contrast to using government for private interests. Today it means collectivism and altruism across the board, with rational thought deemed irrelevant.

They have enormous contempt for the people they pander, manipulate, and talk down to because they count on a culture that does not value the independent thought of individuals based on facts and objectivity to live our own lives. This isn't a result of 'dumb voters', it's the result of decades of intellectuals wrecking education at the deepest roots, from schools and universities to the daily news from the media.

Politicians talk the way they do because of the prevailing mentality they appeal to. A culture emphasizing reason, objectivity and the rights of the individual to live for himself and his pursuit of own happiness, and the necessity of thinking for oneself for one's own life, would not tolerate what we have today from all of them.

The "generations" aren't the looters. It's the so-called political leaders and the looting financial "leaders" who created the statist, socialist systems and the cartels (e.g., banking, defense, medical, education, agriculture) that benefit from them. The generations are at fault only for their naivete in believing the looting con men, and that is true of all generations. Libertarians have been among the loudest critics of all those systems.

Oh, I missed one. I created a list in my head, but couldn't remember the 6th for the life of me:

6.) Make a very clear case that older generations have "looted" the treasury for their own benefit, sticking younger generations (millennials) with the bill and the ensuing crash.


That would be the biggest thing different than the previous 20 years of Libertarianism.

The Democratic party is ironically less democratic.

I agree with your positions on the issues, but IIRC, they did number 1 through 4 for 20 years without any success. The legal drug issue was a non-issue with libertarians until the late 90s. Open borders also wasn't of any concern until looter socialism and the banksters wrecked the economy (after 1999.) They have acted like adults and it got them nowhere. Voters are just dumber than dung. Those who actually value liberty are a very small minority. Every election proves that.

Agree on the suspicion of anyone using the term "common good."

I agree. Trump hijacked the repub party, but he isnt really a repub. He is an anti establishment person, as was bernie sanders. Sanders tried to hijack the democratic party, but he found out how hard it is to crack into that.

All politics is power, so no matter how many parties struggle to achieve a level of power, only those power seekers who form enough alliances to reach dominance will have any degree of success. The reason why there have traditionally been a variety of "flavors" of two dominating political parties is a result of those mergers. Creating space for significant headway for even two parties has become exceedingly difficult with the gravitation of the media toward a Democrat view of the world.

If a figure like Bill Gates or Elon Musk decided to put as much financial backing into politics as they do into the other causes they promote, then a third party might have a chance of becoming credible. Sometimes even that isn't enough. Bloomberg and Soros have poured large sums into the process, and even backing one of the existing parties doesn't guarantee the kind of success they seek.

Given the proximity of the Green party's policy stances to those of Bernie Sanders, I'd say they stand a better chance of viability than the Libertarians if both find a sugar daddy to back them. Without the backing of the already powerful, both will remain essentially irrelevant.

we should have no less than a dozen parties. We have 320 million people, 2 parties cannot represent all voices. Every election should be a run-off. AND none-of-these should be an element of every ballot.

How about a free for all, where anyone can register as a candidate for a filing fee on an election website. Voters choose from that list, and the highest vote count wins. The winner must win by some small percentage like 1-2% to eliminate arguments over a few votes one way or another.

I would think that in this day and age of cmputerizaton, anyone should be able to be listed on the voting website for a simple filing fee. Then the people pick from the candidates on the website and the one who exceeds any of the others by some sort of percentage (lets say 1 or 2% to eliminate 'close elections', wins. If no one exceeds the other by that percentage, they could contest the election and ask for recount.

All votes would be counted electronically, no paper votes. Absentee votes could be entered electronically also. The internet is worldwide.