Wanted to get some opinions on this topic. which do you consider the biggest threat to your personal liberty, authoritarians on social issues, or authoritarians on economic issues?
Social democrats by a long shot I think. They are more “fashionable” and "hip "and have better control on the way information gets presented.
Authoritarians on economics issues.
First of all, I wouldn’t equate “authoritarians on social issues” with “neo-mercantilists.” That said, I’d say that both social conservatives and mercantilists are better than social democrats. Social conservatives might ban a few of our social liberties (e.g. drug use, sodomy, swearing in public, etc.) and mercantilists might restrict trade in a few areas (e.g. impose a few tariffs and provide subsidies to domestic businesses), but social democrats always will continue to add onto their agenda. Theirs is a machine which never fails to churn out new and worse policies.
Both to an equal degree. The economic authoritarians are hip in the cities and on campuses but the social authoritarians are the heartbeat of every “right-thinking individual” in the center of country. I would beware them all and live amongst the caribou of alaska.
Neither of them are ever really libertarian on the other issue; so it doesn’t matter. They all hate freedom.
Agreed.
I don’t hate freedom, I just don’t value it as much as you do.
Those who control the ends control the means. Thus, authoritarians on those who control the ends. Still, both working in conjunction is what I consider even more dangerous.
Do you freely choose to value freedom as such or did someone coerce you into saying that?
I chose.
What the heck are “social issues”? Banning drugs, alcohol etc. seems to be interventionism in commerce to me.
Social Democrats, by a mile. They hold all the cards, and really have since WWI. The so called ‘Neo-Mercantilists’ are simply the Social Democrats useful idiots.
Some of the neo-mercs. used to be social democrats.
Or vice versa.
To be sure. That’s why I think they are both wrong for liberty and why any safety found in one is totally cancelled out by this fact.
Well perhaps, by my point was that social democrats have held basically all state power the world over since WWI. The protectionist class hasnt been much of a factor since the 1930s, and even giving them a second thought is quixotic.
True. To an extent, I kind of (in a not serious way) liked hitler, mussolini, etc. for their willingness to put a stop to social democracy and its plan for world governance.
Of course the fascists wanted to replace that world governance with their own and they were unjust to their people so in that sense it’s like defending the confederacy from the union -an intellectual no win scenario.
Yeah no one takes neo mercantilists seriously, its a philosophy that’s been dead an buried for 2 centuries now, just about the only economic fallacy which will stay dead in economic circles, but your post doesn’t match your title.
Certainly social Democrats however as there is far less resistance to them and economic authoritarianism often leads to social authoritarianism
I would say social democrats are better than conservatives. For the most part, social democrats have libertarian ends but nonlibertarian means, whereas conservatives have few libertarian ends. Hence social democrats are closer to libertarianism. As Molinari wrote in his “Letter to Socialists”:
We are adversaries, and yet the goal which we both pursue is the same. What is the common goal of economists [i.e., classical liberals] and socialists? Is it not a society where the production of all the goods necessary to the maintenance and embellishment of life shall be as abundant as possible, and where the distribution of these same goods among those who have created them through their labor shall be as just as possible? … Only we approach this goal by different paths…. Why do you refuse to follow the path of liberty alongside us? … If you became certain that you had been mistaken as to the true cause of the evils which afflict society and the means of remedying them … you would come over to us.