I was wondering if libertarianism can only happen in a society in witch the average Joe understand the principals of sound economics like the business cycle theory,the forces of the market and its relation to the scarcity of resources,the impossibility of economic calculation in socialism,the complexity of the structure of capital and the dangers of central planing. And its also willing to sacrifice his own comfort in order to protect his freedom from the next mobster preaching socialism.
Because if that’s the case I have low hopes for libertarianism in the future,specially in a society where most of the people not only don’t understand this issues,but are not even remotely interested in them.
An by libertarianism I mean libertarianism in its purest form (no state).
I don’t think that liberty will ever be achieved if people don’t have the motivation to do the things that are needed to obtain it and preserve it and that kind of motivation can only comet from knowledge and passion for freedom. If you disagree I’d like to know why.
But if you are not interested in explaining yourself, there’s no reason for you to keep replying.
You’re looking at this wrong. Liberty can be achieved when people are awakened to the fact that the market is not only moral, but it is profitable.
This afternoon, I re-watched the Rabbi Lapin presententation from ASC 2009. The message is profound. It is morally good to make money. Trade is not only profitable, but it is honourable and moral. That’s the message to push. Appealing to some vague notion of Liberty, Constitionalism, Nationalism, Anachronism isn’t philosophical, it isn’t moral and it isn’t practical.
Anyway, this is a tough go, and there might not be an intellectual revolution for generations. So am I going to give up? No. Because I know it is dishonest to stop caring about what I believe in. I might not change the world, but I am not going to let the world beat me down.
I’m sure a lot of them do, just like a lot of people cared about freedom in the Russian and Cuban revolutions, but without a well informed and educated majority that kind of things always end in disasters.
I don’t think anarcho-capitalism is possible, however moderate libertarianism IS possible.
18th and 19th century American history shows that if an informed mass of the people support a limited state, we can get reasonably small government.
The choice to be an anarcho-capitalist is a utopian one. It shows precisely how absurd the current institutions are, but practically all anarcho-capitalists resign themselves to accepting that their ideal world will never come about.
I don’t think a stateless society is utopian, in fact I’m sure its possible and libertarian theory have proved so, but I think it will take ages of social evolution.
On a side note, I find it ironic a guy with a Rothbard avatar is lecturing us that anarcho-capitalism is ‘Utopian’. Reminds me of Brain Police argueing he didnt believe in natural elites, all the while sporting his Mecken avatar.
Do average people need to know all about the fine points of Keynesian theory in order for the current system to continue existing? Of course not. Most people don’t care about economic theory because they simply have better things to do. This isn’t a bad thing—if everyone spent all their time learning about economics, there wouldn’t be much of an economy left to study.
Most people do, however, care about being morally right and virtuous. Much, if not most, of what the government does requires severe intellectual contortions to be seen as anything other than the activities of a criminal organization. That is why I am convinced that it is the moral, not the economic, arguments that will convince people to abandon their support for the state.
The choice to be an anarcho-capitalist is the only moral choice. Your position is that some violence and theft is permissible, even natural. I think the problem is that you are lacking conviction, not that we aspire to peace.
I see what you mean but I don’t think that the moral arguments will be convincing if the majority of people believe that doing whats morally right will lead society to chaos and poverty.
And you don’t need to spend your entire life studying economics to understand the superiority of the market economy, but you do need interest and motivation to do it, and that’s something I don’t see in many people.
[edited]: the current (Keynesian) system continues existing because people believe that it has intellectual legitimacy and that it can bring some prosperity (not to mention state coercion enforcing it).People wold have to understand that it is fallacious and inefficient first, in order to oppose it.
I find these types of arguments deluded. In practice no limited state has ever been created out of a more powerful state. The 18th and 19th involved violent revolutions to replace powerful states with different kinds serving different groups.
There is no blueprint for creating a minimal state whatsoever.