Liberalism vs Libertarianism on the question of Free Will

I've been trying to understand the liberal vs libertarian divide on a philosophical level (I am a liberal BTW). I think (and I'd like some feedback) that at heart most liberals are determinists and believe that individual effort alone should not be the basis of allocation of goods, whereas libertarians are at heart believers in contra causal free will and that they deserve all of the fruits of their labors. Does anyone think that is reasonable?

and from which we are largely powerless to deviate.

I know few liberals who are determinists. Most do recognize, however, that misallocated resources and limited opportunity stunt the wills of people at the bottom (which now means about 80% of us) and rendering the exercise of free will an exercise in frustration.

A better allocation of resources and widening of opportunity have always been liberal ideals, both processes increasing the possibility to exercise free will, not stunt it.

Perhaps you need to do more reading and thinking on this subject.

and as a matter of fact, it is you who need to do some reading. All determinism says is that we live in a causal universe, and that is all. There are implications with that world view, but one of them is that we are not self-determined creatures. Since we are not self created, we cannot be held morally responsible for who we are.

As a matter of fact, the belief in contra-causal free will does imply a supernatural element which goes counter to the way science tells us the world works. The "little god" of free will implies an ability to make decisions outside the normal chain of events, which is really absurd when you think about it.

You might consider being a little more cautious before shooting off a misinformed (and extremely condescending response) next time. For some good reading to get you started, why don't you try this. http://www.naturalism.org/determinism.htm

The attitude in the '20s and '30s (and later) was that all of man's ills were societal ills: That if you fixed society, you'd automatically fix man. By having a corrupt society, you made for corrupt citizens. It was fairly deterministic, even though it left unanswered the question as to how the leaders could be uncorrupted in order to create, by fiat, a good and just society.

We're a stubborn and ornery species and some of us will be lazy and others will be greedy. However, fixing distribution and spreading out opportunity can aid the people who are not lazy or greedy into realizing their potential instead of keeping them locked into an underclass.

The lazy and greedy will always be with us. The challenge is to design a system that will limit their ability to foul the rest of us up.

95% of our human ancestry was hunter-gatherer nomadic bands and tribes and if it wasnt for their high level of cooperation we wouldnt be here today. They had little concept of property or wealth so this selfishness of Libertarianism is very unnatural.

but this streak of radical individualism seems to be too common. I believe it must also have evolutionary (and natural) basis too.

,tool makers, gatherers and entertainers probably had more progeny but the accumulation of wealth and property no.

Libertarians operate in a fantasy world in which everyone gets a fair shake, there is no racism or sexism that negatively impacts others, those who have problems are morally inferior.

I see libertarianism as a sort of puritanical belief system - the sort of christianity that thinks that anything bad that happens is the fault of that person.

if you get ill, you must have brought it on yourself - if you have a child with a developmental disability, you must have brought it on yourself and that person is inferior and not deserving of a decent life.

That seems much more deterministic to me than the liberal idea that there is a common good, there is a need for community because there are people like that person with a disability who are part of our lives by our association in a society.

The issue is not that liberals think people don't deserve the fruits of their labors. The reality is that liberalism recognizes that some people are greedy narcissistic fucks who don't know how to recognize that "there but for the grace of god, or the mixing of chromosomes or a job skill that got outsourced go I." And if someone wants to be a part of a society, they do so by contributing to the common good in order to provide access to roads, education, job retraining and other basics of infrastructure that keeps a society functioning.

Libertarianism, to me, is an immature view of the world.

In a sense, I agree. Perhaps libertarians don't believe in free will, do in fact believe that we are fully determined, and still don't give a shit about other people. Either way, I agree with you that libertarianism, at least the American Randroid/Paul version, is inherently juvenile and unserious.

as a mainstream political ideology seems to be uniquely American and tied to the idea that the common good and the individual good are exclusionary.

Liberals believe in a common good --shared benefits and shared
responsibilities.

Parts of both philosophies can intersect. They can arrive at
a solution while coming from different positions. On some things
they will never agree.

while I was reading through the posts upthread, I was considering how I would answer the OP. Then TA DA! - I came across your post.

Individualism is the Libertarian golden key, which is why so many of them are attracted to the Randian philosophy of "Selfishism."

They are theoretical concepts that fall apart quickly when dealing with real people.

In theory, everyone has the same chance to succeed and should keep what they make. In the real world, that doesn't happen.

These are not competing philosophies, liberalism is truly a modifier, not a political/economic ideology in itself. For instance, you can be a liberal capitalist, a liberal socialist, a liberal libertarian even. The closest "opposite" to libertarian is probably socialism. Libertarians are at the core concerned about the freedom of the individual and socialists are concerned about the health of the society.
Basically, we (humans, not just Americans) are individuals who live in social constructs. Neither extreme will ever work for long. In many ways, democratic capitalism as practiced in the U.S., is a framework designed to slide between those poles.