BP isn’t presenting a false choice; he’s suggesting a scenario in which the two largest parties’ candidates are Obama and McCain. That’s expressed clearly enough in his phrase, “the election comes down to,” because whether or not Nader runs, the election will go to either the Deomcrat or the Republican candidate. What Ego does or doesn’t do is irrelevant to that outcome.
–Len.
We’re avoiding that to Ego, there may be a difference between the Democract or Republican candidate. And he can undermine one or both by his actions through a 3rd party.
We need to concentrate on “moderates”? I take the opposite perspective: the “moderates” are derailing the libertarian movement. Just look at what they did to the LP’s platform at the Portland Purge. Ron Paul was way too radical? He was actually too moderate for my taste.
I would proclaim that the statists have won precisely because libertarians have involved themselves in party politics, which allows the statists to infiltrate the movement and absorb it into its own structure.
Well I think that you’re living in la la land if you think that voting for McCaine even remotely would be a strategy for bringing about libertarian goals. You’re only speaking in terms of opposing the other guy, while the guy you end up supporting isn’t conductive to your own alleged goals whatsoever. And note that your decision between the two swings on one single issue rather than any broad principle. That’s the problem with democratic politics. I fail to see how electing a canidate who will continue an interventionist foreign policy and pretty much the bulk of the staus quo in general makes sense at all.
What do you think you’d be doing by voting? Selecting from a package deal that the statists throw at you. You lose either way.
You don’t have to make a pragmatic decision between bads.
So you’ll let someone else make it for you?
You also seemed to miss this part of my post:
For the record, the way libertarians have approached politics is hilariously bad.
Do you mean to imply that I implicitly consent to someone else making it for me by not voting myself? If so, you’ve conceded to the implicit consent premise of statism.
Nope.
You’re forgetting that libertarianism is an apolitical movement. Politics is defined as “the science of government.” As such, we will have nothing to do with any form of politics. We wish to abolish politics once and forever.
However, libertarianism is a socio-economic movement; its goal is a stateless society.
Agreed.
It’s been done.
I’ll be honest…that has just given me a lot to think about.
Dammit, when do we get to eat poor people?
Well, we’ll have to eat the poor once the evil free-market monopoly (the one that bought every company in the world) stops producing food.
I’m going to finish High School soon and have been deebating about what to persue in the rest of my education. I have grown an affinity towards economics in the last six months, but I’ve also been thinking about electrical engineering or computer science. Which of those choices would be more beneficial towards counter-economics assuming I dont opt to double major?
I remember reading story (on Wired, I think) about an engineer in NY who offered people on the streets a more or less free class on electrical engineering at some almost run down building, so I’d imagine you could easily do something akin to that.
Engineering would also be a very valuable skill to teach to people, especially with regards in counter-economics (enable people to build things, dissemble things, which would allow more people involved in Agora to be in a position to build infrastructure).
Computer-Science could also be valuable, in terms of being able to build web-sites (if you’re doing web design), or programming, as you could be an asset (or teach others) to be able to build virtual infrastructure, as opposed to prior mentioned physical infrastructure.
It really seems like a trade-off on which you prefer, imo.
The Agorist movement is such that the best thing for counter-economists and counter-economics is not so much what helps the counter-economy, so much as it is what helps the counter-economist thus delivering a great fortune to the counter-economy.
Agorism is a philosophy that encourages Agorists to do what they want, but to do it Agorically; it is also one that aims primarily to act as a support for those Agorists doing so.
Spread your wings to whatever field you wish to work in and you’ll profit. Counter-Economics is a truly, by the people, movement with no central authority looking to gain from the sacrifices of its constituents.
[:)]
…With respect to the http://all-left.net/ website…
I’m a bit surprised by some of the pictures there…I see Proudhon and Henry George but Spencer, Bastiat and Molinari are missing ? - That’s a bit weird.
I’m not sure, but I get the impression that there’s some anti-industrial, anti-bussiness slant to it. Also, I’m rather convinced that Proudhon was an anarcho-comunist, not a libertarian.
Proudhon was essentially the first self-proclaimed anarchist and developed “mutualism”, which is both anti-communist and anti-capitalist. Proudhon rejected the notion that property should necessarily be uniformly collectivized. As he aged, he became much more propertarian in his outlook and his work “What Is Property” is more nuanced then one may percieve at face value.
Anarcho-communism came quite a number of decades after Proudhon, with people like Bakunin and Kropotkin. So it is not exactly the case that anarchism was originally communist, despite any attempts at an argument from tradition. Anarcho-communism was a deviation from the comparatively individualistic nature of much of earlier anarchism.
Individualist anarchism grew out of mutualism. Individualist anarchists such as Tucker synthesized the ideas of Proudhon with other ideas and newer ideas. Unfortunately, most of the old individualist anarchist still held to some kind of labor theory of value, although it could be said that they thought that a free market would reflect it.
Add the advancements that have taken place in economics since then and a generally better understanding of economics, and you have contemporary market anarchism. So I think that there is a fairly clear progression that can be drawn from Proudhon to the individualists and all the way down to contemporary market anarchism.
What about Molinari who in 1849 proposed to make ‘government’ wholy voluntary ? I thought he was the ultimate radical libertarian and that, as a matter of fact, he ‘invented’ anarcho-capitalism ?
“The Production of Security”
http://praxeology.net/GM-PS.htm
V. APPENDIX: TRANSLATION OF THE “ELEVENTH SOIRéES”
http://homepage.mac.com/dmhart/Molinari/Thesis.html
(I get a bit surprised when people like Molyneaux come up with things like PDAs…I mean, the idea is 150 years old…)
Yes, I’m aware of Molinari and he is indeed an important contribution. But I don’t believe that Molinari was entirely conciously aware of the fact that he was essentially proposing a stateless society and I don’t think that he foresaw the broader implications of his own ideas. From his own perspective I would guess that he was just developing new economic theories, not inventing a new form of anarchism. And anarchism had not really been synthesized with Austrian economics specifically until Rothbard.
None of this belittles Molinari’s importance, of course.
Except… Proudhon despised Communism… And democracy.
There’s nothing anti-industrial about the website. Bastiat wasn’t really an Anarchist, nor is he a central figure to a group within the alliance, as Proudhon (Mutualist), Spooner/Tucker (Individualist Anarchist), George (Geo-Anarchism), de Cleyre (Panarchism), Rothbard/Hess (left-Rothbardianism), and SEK3 (Agorism) are. Molinari was an Anarchist, but his fame is less than these Anarchists within the Individualist Anarchist community, plus he falls into one of the several representations here and so would be somewhat redundant.