I think it totally demolishes the idea of achieving freedom through the democratic process. It also exposes the contradictions in the modern libertarian movement. I think it is a must read for libertarians. For those who have read it, what do you think about it?
Wasn’t that impressed to be honest. Not going to bother critiquing it here by the way. Looking forward to his, How to achieve freedom though. When’s that out? Hopefully it’s better.
Do you know where I can read yours or anybody else’s critique of it?
Loved it. One of my favorite libertarian books.
I too have been waiting for “How to achieve freedom”, but I don’t think I’ll like that. Criticizing is easy, setting up alternatives much more difficult. And than again I don’t agree with Molineux’s view on statism in general. Still “how not to achieve freedom” was major.
I didn’t like it at all. His arguments about the alleged need of “testing” remind me of the “critiques” of Austrian economics by Keynesian and Friedmanite economists. The argument that “because Ron Paul didn’t win in 2008, that proves that libertarians can’t win in the election process” seems to me to be patently ridiculous. The Ron Paul 2008 campaign was premature, didn’t really get going until the election was already lost (in large part due to the awful ads that the campaign management wasted millions of FRNs on), and the core of his message were predictions of events that only began to come to pass in September of 2008, long after the campaign was over. The one undeniable success of the Ron Paul campaign is its role in making the Federal Reserve a debatable issue (without a Ron Paul 2008 campaign, it is unlikely that the Audit the Fed legislation would ever have passed the House). I think Ron Paul has a much stronger chance should he run in 2012 (especially if he gets a favorable December surprise right before the primaries).
Molyneux’s scare stories about the effects of attempting to implement libertarian policies are laughable. A libertarian presidency need not necessarily antagonize the bureaucracy, but could merely shut down the programs and continue to pay full salaries to the bureaucrats (and allow them to take private sector work). In all likelihood, most big government programs would be phased out (or competition would be legalized) rather than immediately abolished or privatized. Ron Paul has proposed exactly this for Social Security. Any true libertarian would take immediate abolition if it were obtainable, but I think our victory will likely come incrementally.
If it weren’t for the fact that “left-sectarians” (Rothbard’s term) like Molyneux are undermining the final goal. Rothbard defined a “left-sectarian” as one who considers the use of strategy, organization, or tactics that do not undermine the ultimate goal as a “betrayal of principle.” The “left-sectarian” has betrayed libertarianism every bit as much as the “right-opportunist” (beltway “libertarian”). I am well aware that voting is irrational and is usually ineffective (except in local elections), but I strongly reject the arguments that voting is a violation of principle.
I am interested to see whether or not Molyneux has any serious proposal for obtaining our common goal. At the moment, I don’t think liberty is obtainable except by taking over the government and incrementally dismantling it.
It is indeed.
And that’s why inflation has so much been eliminated nowadays, isn’t it?[;)]
The Ron Paul campaign achieved two things: by associating libertarianism with fundamentalist Christianity it attracted fundamentalist Christians to the movement and turned off the movement whoever was bickering at the time and was not a fundamentalist Christian (i.e. believed earth to be slightly older than 10;000 years).
This thread has some cool comments.
Are you serious? That would antagonize the people (we pay taxes for nothing!), which is infinitely worst. Do you think congress will put up with that?
And the average voter will of course be delighted to see senior citizens receiving a diminished pay every year (gradual abolition of social security). Or how would older citizens hope to face a decent livelihood when saving is impossible due to inflation? You see, in an inflationary regime, social security is the only alternative people have to working in their ’70 (as in ). And unions will of course be happy to receive a swelling number of aged worker to compete with them. Do you sincerely thing that people will tolerate the abolition or even the partial backroll of the program?
Or that the all-powerful beurocracy will tolerate a reduction in power? Even if they don’t instigate riots right away (they will) they will fund the democrats as crazy and everyone will just understand that staying with Ron Paul would be political madness (if anyone would be left with him at any rate, by that time).
But one only need to take a look at Tatcherite Britain so see what an even slightly liberal program could do to a country so heavily depended on the government. Do you think any politician has the balls Thatcher had to put up with riots for 20 years in order to achieve only very modest gains?
The way I see it that could only be achieved by : 1) running in a small, under a million people, country, 2) being totally badass and not giving a f**k about the people, ready to beat the hell out of protesters, impose martial law and generally having an overarching character and 3) being continuously on popular short wars to make up in national pride what is lost in internal consent. Now the is a very big country (hence unmanageable), neither Paul nor any politician has Thatcher’s character (the last politician to come close was Teddy Roosevelt), and there are simply no cheap wars around to fight.
So I must agree with Molineux on this: running for President is just plain stupid and invites abysmal failure.
No it didn’t. That association was already there.
You, Ragnar, Molenyeux and others completely miss the point - that even Ron acknowledges, he wouldn’t be able to change much in office at all. Voting in congress, does next to nothing - i.e bringing about change. Ron has also explicitly said this.
The point of running is education. The bigger the stage, the bigger the audience. It is one strategy / method and it should not be the only one. Yet dismissing it entirely, because it lends legitimacy to the system? lmfao - what? All Ron has done is destroy the modern concept of the presidency. So short sighted.
What Ron Paul supporters themselves fail to realise is that there is no chance of him winning. Even if there was, the parasitic elite have diebold - they have the voting machines, they have the MSM. Their not just going to give it up, never happened & won’t. But that’s besides the point… there is a different goal - and if his goal is to spread the message, which it is - how on earth can you possibly contend he failed? lol..
So both extremes fail - one side rejects it completely, the other clings to it as if it is all there is.
1.30… 2.09
Conza,
so if the actually got nominated by the RP, he would decline, wouldn’t he? Do you sincerely believe that?
I don’t know. I wouldn’t think so. Why should he? Getting nominated isn’t getting elected. He would have a bigger platform again to spread the message, to point people towards this very website.
Abolish the IRS, CIA, FBI, End the Fed, Income Tax, Dept of Lab, Dept of Education and abolish everything else not outlined in the Constitution is radical considering the level of statism today. It’d be his platform, as it was previously in the other debates.
If he does get Republican party nomination (and get past all these lifetime political hacks whose jobs they are trying to maintain), all that will happen will be an effort to try create a 3rd party (tea party) led by Palin or whoever, with Faux News drum beats to split the vote, with the goal of keeping Obama in power.
Again, abolishing the public office isn’t possible - even if the president were Ron Paul, and staff etc are all the austro-libertarian kingpins - not going to change squat, because with a monarchy, the king used to be able to do that (his decree stands), but not anymore with democracy.
What the Ron Paul supporters should be doing is starting at the local government areas, with an effort to obtain a majority of folks who back anti-democratic reforms and then go for secession. That’s another avenue that is possible.
I believed Mises when he was asked, 'What if you were president?" - and he said he would resign.
So, let me get your idea straight. You say that if Ron Paul wins nomination (let’s just assume, although I believe it is increasingly possible), he must accept it. And if he actually manages to win he should…resign?
If he doesn’t resign, he’ll open the flood gates of either 1) massive riots which he can’t control, let alone overcome or else 2) total inaction. In the later case, libertarian will be discredited for life, in the former he’ll only resign in shame, libertarianism in the US will be dead for good and the doors of martial law will be wide open for the nearest power hungry chap that happens to come by.
If instead he wins and just resigns the day after…the voters will be so abysmally angry (“it was all a plot to elect the unpopular VP!”) that libertarianism will again be stained for life: “What, can you talk with a straight face now that your candidate ran like a lady? Do shut up!”
Or let’s talk about the publicity he does to the movement. If he indeed has no real intention or hope of getting elected, than why does he conform by the rules of the politic debate, making clear his fundemantalist views on religion (denouncing evolution?! WTF!)?
He could just say, “My religious feeling are personal, and have nothing to do, nor shall they interfere with my term. I prefer to keep them to myself”. Normal politicians don’t do that (in the ) because they’d loose votes. But Ron Paul shouldn’t care about that. So why does he imprint this terrible image of libertarians as Christian fundamentalist? The damage he des to the movement might well be much bigger that the publicity he gives (just like the Nazi propaganda about Jews did them more harm than ‘publicity’).
So, if indeed Ron Paul would have used his candidacy to further a libertarian PR, he should have played it much more differently than he actually did.
The way he ran his last try, and will run this next one, will give him a chance of wining (especially if Obama keeps screwing up), and if, oh my, if he wins, its bye-bye libertarians. For good.
That’s why I belive that runnig for President cannot be but an stageringly stupid choice. Mises would have never run in the first place.
Yeah, total failure; if your only definition of “success” is to singlehandedly turn a trillion dollar empire into a free market paradise overnight. Personally, I think that’s a rather lofty goal.
All Ron Paul did by running was probably bring more people to Austrian Economics and/or Libertarianism than all the people on this forum combined. What a failure!
Yet how many more, especially foreigners where mildly attracted to libertarianism, and ever read some LvMI stuff and where taken aback from Paul who disagreed with evolution (I’m telling you, I myself would have never visited mises.org if I’d heard of that form Ron Paul)? Do you see that what his camping did? Probably to keep from joining sound minds and inviting fundamentalist? It only shifted the composition of new entries, from mildly religious-to-agnostics to fundamentalists. A contribution sure, but perhaps detrimental in the long run. But of course we cannot know for sure.
Are you seriously entertaining the idea that Ron Paul could be bad for the libertarian/Austrian movement?
Because that would be an ideal start to not achieving freedom.
Hm, let me see if we can agree to a few points:
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Ron Paul attracted people to the libertarian movement.
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those attracted by Ron Paul tended to be attracted by his overall showing, i.e. tended to be attracted by Christian fundamentalist ideas among others.
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Ron Paul lost some for the libertarian movement.
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those lost, yet on the brink of indecision prior to the campaign, tend to strongly disagree with his religious view: they tend to be less than Christian fundamentalists, i.e. anything from agnostics to moderates.
So, Ron Paul won us some, and lost us some others. To decide whether his camping was bad or good would mean to decide whether we would have valued more those he lost, ore those he gained.
I cannot speak for anyone here but myself, and I myself would rather prefer an handful of logic guys than hordes of “10’000 yearers”. This is precisely how movements begin to corrupt and break under the weight of masses. This was certainly not how Mises got the movement started in the States.
But than again, it’s just me. Everyone must make up his own mind yet, saying that even entertaining the possibility that Ron Paul might have harmed the movement is preposterous, well that would seem far from certain.
So essentially your argument boils down to the fact that you
a) dislike people who don’t share your religious beliefs, or lack thereof.
and
b) you dislike them to the extent that you would prefer to have fewer libertarians, if it meant less people who disagree with you on the origin of life.
As a “fundamentalist Christian” this strikes me as slightly offensive, not to mention incredibly counterproductive.
Whatever happened to the big tent?
If I really disliked people who do not share my (atheistic) religious beliefs I would indeed have little to do with this forum, amongst others.
But I believe that a person’s religious inclination is unimportant to this cause as long as a decent degree of logic is retained.
Let me show you what I mean: if a guy, living in this technological world, having at his disposal tons of information as well as the power of science, still believes that this earth was created 10’000 years ago, and that there never where any such things as dinosaurs, or that a single guy managed to get e couple of all animal species (what about plants? What about intra-species mutations? Which among the mutated pair got the ticket to ride?) within a boat built by one single family in a short time, well this guy is not particularly susceptible to logic at all. And it doesn’t matter an inch if he believes that 10’000 years ago it was God, Allah, Satan, Yahweh, Frank Sinatra, the Magnificent Etjon “Merlin” Basha I or indeed pure chance that created earth. As long as he tenuously refuses to believe even elementary scientific fact, he can be of no use at all to a very logic-intensive movement as libertarianism. How van you except him to truly get the libertarian idea? Fight for it?
That, my friend, is all I hold against fundamentalists and that’s why I believe they cannot help. Of course that doesn’t mean we should kick them out, all of the contrary, the Big Tend should indeed be preserved and expanded. But in this precise case, when we are “forced” to chose more fundamentalists against fewer non-fundamentalists, of whatever religious (or non-religious) inclination they may be, in this case I believe that choosing the former would be a mistake.
Again, please do accept my apologies if I sounded like ‘denouncing’ believers and all. You can easily believe in a Christian God who makes things as they are and be perfectly within the bound of logic (he can’t be proved, he can’t be disproved, hence science should be silent on the issue). There’ no problem believing that God made the earth and life…but 6 billion years ago, not 10’000! For heaven’s sake!
straw man, no self respecting Christian believes this.
family, just for starters…
**
the bible makes no mention of species however it does say “kinds” many times; there’s a big difference!
what about them?
Actually, I’d suggest it’s more like 6000
I wonder how I got them then…
I that is true, I take it all back and apologize to Ron Paul. But I’m afraid that denouncing evolution is saying that there never where such things as other species beside those we know. But please, do correct me if I’m wrong.
the bible makes no mention of species however it does say “kinds” many times; there’s a big difference!
[/quote]
The Bible, specifically the Old Testament in this case, was translated form Hebrew (itself a translation form Aramaic, most probably). As everyone that has an even cursory knowledge of Hebrew writ knows full well, the same bundle of characters could mean tens of different words. Add on top of that 4000 years and you’ll see that no translation of the old testament is possible. One has to read it in its original form to even pretend to have read it. So, whet specific term did some English translation is indeed unimportant to say the least.
I’ve always wondered myself. But I’m afraid we should ask Ron Paul about that:” What made you trust libertarianism, and please don’t feed us “it made sense” as we know that ‘making sense’ is a rare art for someone who disagrees with evolution.”
He can do what he god damn wants. He “musn’t (doesn’t have to) accept it”. Though I don’t see why he wouldn’t, nor why he shouldn’t. You’ve stilled failed to give any reason why he shouldn’t.
‘Should he win the presidency (lol, what planet are you living on?) he should resign?’ - I don’t believe he would accept it. You can see from the video before, that he’s even hesitant about winning CPAC, and mentioned it had gone to far. He has no desire for office, just to spread the message.
Baseless assertion. Care to back that up with reasoning? I know the argument btw, the unions - special interest groups won’t have any of it. But “statism is dead” right? 
So it’ll happen anyway. lol. Again, there is a reason why Ron is obviously hesitant of “it going too far”.
Congrats - again, you fail to understand the strategy. And yes, I’ve listened to stef’s podcasts on it, and yes - you are puppeting the exact same line. Stef is epic on everything else, but he levels strawmen at Ron’s strategy and you’re committing the same error - both he & other Ron Paul "supporters / “minarchists / constitutionalists” do.
Total inaction is bad? Discredited? Resign in shame? You can’t see him resigning out of principle? No epic speech about not wanting to run your lives, like he did in the debates? Get ya hand off it. [8-)] Again though, your whole doomsday scenario fails: “libertarianism in the US will be dead for good”…
Explain that to me thanks. Lew Rockwell.com perishes, Mises.org disappears, no more freedomain radio? lmao. You don’t even consider for a moment, it fails - top down political strategy doesn’t work (which we already know)… then what happens to the millions of folks, “Ok, Ron Paul was President”.. he couldn’t change anything. Besides most people at RPF’s natural reaction*… (“we needed Rand as vice president, that would have changed everything! haha [:D]”) …* you don’t there will be folks who radicalize and seek other means?There would now be the strongest argument to give up top down political activism, i.e washington think tanks, convince the intellectuals etc. and then it could possibly shift where it should be.
But this is all fantasy land stuff btw..but if it were to happen, then if anything the word libertarian would become dead, it looks like it’s going that way already - if Beck is a Libertarian etc. New word association then. Voluntarism etc.
And where did he do that?
Ron Paul: “I just don’t think we’re at the point where anybody has absolute proof on either side. So I just don’t…if that were the only issue, quite frankly, I would think it’s an interesting discussion, I think it’s a theological discussion, and I think it’s fine, and we can have our…if that were the issue of the day, I wouldn’t be running for public office.”
You think that is fundamentalist? I’m an atheist by the way, and I again get where you are coming from and I agree with stef on religion. Do you have a take on this though?
Strawman. What part of the above quote of his, do you not understand? He follows natural law, as do I. And the beauty about that is:
“The assertion of an order of natural laws discoverable by reason is, by itself, neither pro- nor anti-religious.[4]”
Religion has nothing to do with political philosophy, and everyone would be far better off if it was dropped from the discussion. It’s completely irrelevant & useless.
No it won’t. How delusional. Do you know anything about “Politics and the power elite”?
Yeah, stupid if your goal is to obtain power & try change things from the top down. Except that’s not the goal (not that, unfortunately, - many of his supporters, or opponents understand this).
Yeah, neither would Rothbard… or countless other people. Division of labor and specialization. We should all contribute, but in our own ways. If that’s going agorist, setting up businesses to support the intellectuals, or institutes / think tanks (not CATO or the DC crowd) then it should be done. Do what you think you can do best, that helps the cause. Find your calling.
"Just as rationalism implies the desire for system and completeness, so it implies political activism. To rationalists, human beings are above all rational animals. Their actions, and the course of human history, are determined by ideas (rather than by blind evolutionary forces of spontaneous evolution and natural selection). Ideas can be true or false, but only true ideas “work” and result in success and progress, while false ideas lead to failure and decline. As the discoverer of true ideas and eradicator of false ones, the scholar assumes a crucial role in human history. Human progress is the result of the discovery of truth and the proliferation of true ideas—enlightenment—and is thus entirely in the scholar’s hands. The truth is inherently practical, and in recognizing an idea as true (or false), a scholar cannot but want it to be implemented (or eradicated) immediately.
For this reason, in addition to pursuing his scholarly ambitions, Menger served as personal tutor to the Austrian Crown Prince Rudolf, and as an appointed life-member of the Austrian House of Lords (Herrenhaus). Similarly, Böhm-Bawerk served three times as Austrian minister of finance, and was a lifetime member of the Herrenhaus.Likewise, Mises was the nationally prominent chief economist of the Vienna Chamber of Commerce and advisor to many prominent figures during Austria’s first Republic, and later, in the U.S., he served as advisor to the National Association of Manufacturers and numerous other organizations.
Only Mises went even further. Just as he was the first economic system-builder, so was he the first to give the Austrian activism systematic expression by associating Austrian economics with radical-liberal-libertarian-political reform (as laid out in his Liberalism of 1927). Only Rothbard, who likewise served in many advisory functions and as founder and academic director of several educational organizations, accomplished something comparable. Proceeding systematically beyond even Mises, Rothbard accomplished —in his Ethics of Liberty[5]—to integrate (via the concept of private property) of value-free Austrian economics and libertarian political philosophy (ethics) as two complementary branches of a grand unified social theory, thereby creating a radical—Austro-libertarian—philosophical movement." —
I’m really not sure how Christianity denies the extinction of species; I certainly haven’t ever heard of the tasmanian tiger or the ivory billed woodpecker used as evidence against Christianity.
I would suggest that this is because it’s fairly obvious that they have absolutely nothing to do with each other.
And yet Homer reads quite well…but that’s the least of your problems.
Well alright then.
But in the interest of not hijacking this thread into a creation vs evolution debate, I will back out now. PM’s are welcome if you’re interested.