I may as well continue the self-promotion trend. I have written a few thoughts regarding Molyneux’s response to the Guardian article.
Too bad I am banned from accessing freedomainradio *and I doubt you would like my blog on there. Considering you didn’t even like my post.
I’ve heard that the censorship there is quite high. Thanks for pointing out you were banned, because you’re a pretty good poster here. Something doesn’t add up unless what I heard was true.
Thanks. That’s interesting reading. Scary though. I thought some people were being melodramatic by calling FDR a cult, but you and the Guardian make a convincing case that the behavior led by Molyneux is far from healthy or genuine.
Stef, it is interesting you post here on the Mises Institute forum, given what you have said about Mises, and others associated with the Mises Institute. Let me quote from one of your podcasts:
“when i have the most successful philosophy conversation in the world […] but when we have the most important, rigorous, deep, empowering, liberating, philosophical conversation i hink the world has ever seen [mostly because of the trechnology] then when people come in and say ’ you need to do more of what Mises did because Mises achieved less than nothing with his theories and you [meaning himself Stefan Molyneux] are achieving a $#@% of a lot with your theories, but you need to abandon your theories and you need to do what these other people did.”
#867 ‘Dismantling Leviathan’, 53:00
“Mises completely falied. Mises, brilliant fellow, absolutely. […] Mises wrote over 80 years ago and it has been an unmitigated disaster for freedom ever since, so saying ‘you need to do what Mises did’ is saying 'you need to spend as much time putting futile #$%@^#$@ together that is not going to convince anyone or if it does only convinces them in the abstract. so you need to do what these other thinkers have done and they have worse than failed. mises wrote virulently against socialism and socialism has expanded massively. […]”
#867 ‘Dismantling Leviathan’, 44:00
“not only did [Mises] not cure the disease but the disease spread more rapidly after he wrote. i’m not saying he caused it but certainly he did not stop it which was his own aim. everybody is like ooooh ‘road to serfom’, great book, i think badly written but a great book. but it didnt do a #%@%^$@ thing to free us. We’re far less free now.”
#867 ‘Dismantling Leviathan’, 54:00
and around 55:30, Molyneux’s summary of Classical Liberals: complete and total failures in terms of their objectives
And there is plenty more elsewhere, some of which considerably more vulgar
People get banned from your forum if they post on a different forum on which people strongly criticise and insult you.
So applying your beloved UPB for a moment: What on earth are you doing on the Mises Institute forum?
[By the way, 'Road to Serfdom" was written by Hayek, not Mises.]
Just out of interest, wht did Molyneux say about Long or Rockwell
Your reply to the Guardian, is qualitatively about as good as, your UPB:
[color=red]Links:[/color]
[color=blue]ANCAPS Discussion Forum[/color]
[color=blue]MolyneuxCultWatch[/color]
With all due respect, Giles needs to STFU. Partisanship is not the way to move libertarianism forward. Stefan is a respected libertarian on “teh internetz,” and insulting him (like saying he looks like a tool) is completely disrespective and uncalled for. If you disagree with him on some issues, that’s another thing, but using ad hominems won’t get our movement anywhere.
Short Seller, forum rules are no external links in signatures. Just sayin…
Thanks for the tip, I’ve edited my signature.
It’s nothing to do with partisanship, and everything to do with purging bad elements from a movment. Or at the very least, not associating ourselves with them. If you want to waste your time with fools like this who rant about the evil of the family and religion, do their best to make a cult out of themself, teaching and universities and insult any philosophy or economist who has done more than him (most) so be it. Me on the other hand? I’ll stick to the real libertarians, not the cult leaders. It’s not as if he has anything to offer anyway.
Please, uncalled for? You should look into the attacks this idiot has made on people. How appropriate a name FDR is all things considered.
I think it’s obvious that you have an irrational hatred of Molyneux and have turned it into an axe to grind. The idea that a particular market anarchist should be purged from the libertarian movement because they arent total cultural conservatives is ridiculous. You don’t even seem to make intellectual criticisms, its just a reactionary attack.
You returned I see.
It took you all of one line to get to the strawman.
Yes I do. You just choose to ignore them, “refute” them with a strawman or leave. It’s not my fault intellectual honest is beyond you.
You’re making wild claims or implications, like Stefan Molyneux not being a “real libertarian”. That’s silly sectarianism.
BP, where do you weigh in on the question of FDR being a cult?
Way to take it out of context. Any more of your intellectual dishonesty wisdom on offer? Or are we to be content with this for now?
Well rather than have this conversation be ruled by flying insults, let’s try to compose some coherent thought lines about why Stefan’s work is or is not successful, and whether his influence on the libertarian movement has been a good thing, a neutral thing, or a bad thing. I feel like I’ve done a pretty decent job of showing why his theory of ethics does not stand up to scrutiny, but as I have yet to hear one of Stefan’s students or followers attempt to rebut my analysis, I can’t be sure if my objections hit home. Further, I haven’t really explored much of his work outside of his book on Universally Preferable Behaviour, so I’m not really in much of a position to weigh in on his corpus as a whole.
Stefan’s influence as a cultural figure has also apparently been significant and, as the episode concerning the Guardian shows, controversial. Though Stefan has been accused of “cult”-like practices, I’m not entirely sure that the term has a precise enough meaning outside of its pejorative use to be particularly informative. QuestEon’s above linked blog post makes some pretty interesting arguments, and since I have had comparatively little contact with the Freedomain Radio community, it’s really difficult for me to evaluate what he’s said. However, the analysis he offers seems reasonable enough to me, and if he’s right about what’s going on, Stefan’s influence on young libertarians could be producing some pretty undesirable consequences. So that seems like something that could reasonably be discussed without too much vitriol.
As I’ve framed it, I think there are two conversations that could be had productively, and I’m really not sure which would be more interesting to the rest of you. If others feel like this thread should be split up, I’d certainly be open to that, too. I just feel like we should concentrate our attention on having a productive and educational discussion rather than a hostile argument.
I’d love him to explain in what regard Mises “failed”. Then again Mises does not have a sect of followers flocking around him… not even sycophants.
My take on FDR is that Molyneux has some great ideas and incredible proselytizing skills, but is unfortunately quite a narcissist and his followers seem all too willing to encourage his narcissistic tendencies. Go to the FDR board and try to have a rational discussion. If you start to prove Stef wrong on any particular point (and do a good job) he will use a bunch of evasive tactics such as: insisting that you only disagree with him because of childhood trauma, deflect the discussion to your childhood and begin a half assed armchair psychoanalysis, insist that you are being rude (even though he and his followers have probably been 10 times as rude to you) and refuse further discussion, or simply ignore the thread. If you persist then you get banned. If anyone is unsure of whether or not FDR is culty, I suggest you go over to their boards and try disagreeing with Stef on anything and see what happens. You’ll get a better picture of things when you see the sheep flocking to their mighty shepherd when he is questioned.
Here is my opinion on Stefan’s influence, for what it’s worth.
It appears that most of the young people drawn to FDR are emotionally distressed. It seems that young adults and teenagers generally have a problem with their parents telling them what to do. Parents doing their job has nothing to do with abuse. I often tell my daughter she can’t do certain things. I don’t see anything abusive telling my daughter that she’s not going to get a rabbit when we already have two dogs and a cat.
Continuously telling teenagers and young adults that parents are bad. That their father is the devil and their mother pretty much gave birth to them so she can hand them to the devil is lunacy. I have not read a single positive thing about parents on his site.
Let’s be honest, who amongst us hasn’t had some experience when they were young where their parents were yelling at them, got grounded or received a spanking. In Stefan’s world that was straight up abuse. I am sorry, while I most certainly am against any kind of spanking or physical punishment, I do not view the rest as abuse.
Raising a child is hard work. Children do not rules in place. Maybe you all think I am wrong on this, but I believe that there need to be certain boundaries established for children.
To get to the point, Stefan suggesting to these kids that their parents are evil and that they need to “defoo” is not helping us or the libertarian movement. All it does is turn the parents against the movement and especially against anarchy. I often have discussions with friends who think of blood shed in the streets and burnt out cars, robbed houses and raped women when I speak of anarchy. That is exactly what these parents think when kids, who are systematically told that they parents are evil eventually go up to them, full of anger and rage and pretty much tell them that they will never see them again.
He might think that he is promoting the NAP. You can’t tell me, that feeding you some b/s about how you were essentially sacrificed to the devil by your own mother won’t make you angry. Have 20 other “clowns” on the board feed you the same line, of course you are going to get angry and eventually let that anger out on your “foo”.
That is where I see the real problem. He might be a libertarian alright, but he’s pretty f*ed up in the head for his psychobabble crap that he puts out there. And the last thing we need are more people thinking that libertarians are all nut cases with low self esteem, flocking to a site to have some self proclaimed Wittgenstein reincarnation tell them what to do and how to life their lives.