Next advances in Libertarian theory - predictions

Economics Political Theory
21

By ‘vision’ I mean Libertarian Society.

Well I’m more talking in hyperbole than in formal debate. It’s impossible to employ the NAP without a reasoning response, but it’s just been my experience that there is a group (Kokesh, Molyneaux, etc.) whose singular defense of libertarianism is the NAP, which smacks of a near pavlovian response. They ought to arm themselves with knowledge and lay it down, rather than conceding nontrue effects of the ideology and creating an illusory dichotomy between morality and a ‘fair’/‘just’/‘desireable’ society.

22

Well, the NAP is the most effective moral argument we have, and when explained it’s something most people will intuitively agree with.

Perhaps they’re thinking something along those lines.

Are you also suggesting that this jingoism you detect is something like a libertarian jingosim among libertarians, rather than being a nationalistic jingoism? That would be interesting.

23

I agree it’s a good moral argument. But sometimes it backfires. Consider this scenario: an inexperienced libertarian and a well read leftist.

Lef: What about the Gilded Age coal miners? They dropped like flies, lived like dogs and had no other recourse! That’s the true face of Capitalism!

Lib: It was voluntary, therefore good.

Lef: We need to regulate mining companies for the good of the worker!

Lib: No that would be an act of aggression and morally wrong.

Lef: Well if it’s wrong to live in a world where the working man lives with dignity and parasitic executives can’t fatten themselves on the labor of the poor and middle class, then I don’t want to be right!

Yeah that’s the way I meant it.

24

Well, that’s just one more reason why we need to start arguing in deeds rather than in words. Show them a working libertarian social system, sans government, make our ideas realities, and their idea that a society can only exist regulated to the teeth will be utterly and laughably destroyed.

They’ll say, “We must regulate the market more!” and we’ll say simply, we don’t, and it’s working fine.

They’ll yell, “We must raise the minimum wage!” and we’ll simply say, we don’t even have a minmum wage, and look, our workers make more on average than yours do!

They’ll scream, “Your whole society is going to be abused by monopolies!” and we’ll look left and look right and say, there’s no monopolies here, monopolies after all are created by government.

They are so far from understanding libertarianism that it’s hard to believe. It’s like the difference between understanding classical mechanics and quantum mechanics. Between knowing geometry and knowing calculus. Between using a computer and programming a computer.

They are like the sleepers in the Matrix in a very real sense, they don’t even question the system they’re born into. Neo was ready because the question had fascinated him utterly. He didn’t merely encounter it and shrug it off. The question, for us:

What is freedom?

There are so many corollaries to that question, but it is foundational. We understand that true freedom is possible only in a propertarian context, thus property rights become the rubric of freedom, the progenitor of the economy, and also the touch-stone of ethics. Ethics becomes the basis for a legal system, and thus is born the NAP, and also a rational means of dispute resolution. And with those we can form a working society.

25

God I’m so afraid that this will happen. The scary thing is that it’s already happening to a certain extent.

What is so frightening about it?

26

The fact that it changes libertarianism into an ideology synonymous with racism. This would not only change its nature into something that I find much less appealing but it would also destroy its progress in the United States. It was bad enough when there were rumors that RP was a racist.

27

There’s already articles on the internet accusing Murray Rothbard of racism. Just look up “the racist history of libertarianism.” It’s this kind of crap that scares away people from the movement.

28

That’s only going to get worse as the United States becomes increasingly “minority” based

29

Please tell me what you mean by “minority based.” If it means that the U.S. propaganda all revolves around minorities getting involved in the “democratic process” or whatever the hell, then aren’t we already there?

30

I mean that in something like twenty years or so it’s estimated that more than half of all American will be non-white; they’ll be what we call “minorities”. I don’t know exactly how this will affect the political realm, whether or not it will mean that things like affirmative action will cease to be or increase dramatically. No matter who you are there is cause for concern.

The minority group most on the rise (the latin American population) is much more likely to be poor, grow up in bad areas, and be less educated. Whether or not you think that this is because of racially based IQ, culture, discrimination, the state ruining poor families, the f***ing capitalists, the public education system, any of the explanations given to explain this phenomenon, the fact that this will constitute a majority/ massive part of the voter base is very, very bad.

31

The fact that it changes libertarianism into an ideology synonymous with racism. This would not only change its nature into something that I find much less appealing but it would also destroy its progress in the United States. It was bad enough when there were rumors that RP was a racist.

That has more to do with the fact that “racist” tends to be a catch-all term for anything people don’t like. Libertarianism is not hostile to racialists because it allows for dissociation and secession, so naturally these people will be drawn to it. The entire ideology of egalitarianism in its current form is a state construct. People have simply been trained by the media to stop thinking when someone shrieks “racism”.

32

@ Neodoxy

Yeah. 99% (oops) of the people in those minorities who have arrived here and become poor won’t look to capitalism (being that that’s what we are, right?) they will look towards more…leftist…“solutions.”

33

@SM

Yep. It’s an exciting time to be a leftist, although the fact is that it should still be a scary time because, for the reason that I pointed out, every one of your programs is likely to get f***ed up through the wonders of democracy.

@John

Correct. Regardless of whatever the reality is, if libertarianism becomes increasingly racialist in its focus then it will become exceedingly unpopular and it will have practically no chance of reaching popularity. Libertarianism is also friendly to racists right now while it isn’t for or against their programs. What I’m talking about is a libertarianism that is more based and focused around that.

34

Oh yeah. If there’s one thing leftists hate (especially the loud-mouthed radical ones, i.e. MaoistRebelNews and AmazingAtheist), it’s neutrality on something like racism. Just saying “I’m not racist,” isn’t good enough. You have to want to hold a gun to a racist’s head in order to control what they say.

Penn talks a little bit about that here:

35

Correct. Regardless of whatever the reality is, if libertarianism becomes increasingly racialist in its focus then it will become exceedingly unpopular and it will have practically no chance of reaching popularity. Libertarianism is also friendly to racists right now while it isn’t for or against their programs. What I’m talking about is a libertarianism that is more based and focused around that.

I don’t think libertarianism will necessarily move in that direction. I think the populace at large will. People are still very familially focused, and a libertarian society will bring back to the forefront the importance of the family in dealing with adverse circimstances. But the current anti-racialist (I’ll distinguish racism as advocacy of state-backed aggression against other races) dogma will likely collapse without the support of the state behind it. It doesn’t even really benefit the state much, except to the extent that it can use it to foment the illusion of a “problem” to fix.

I would note that supposed minorities are not themselves anti-racist/anti-racialist. Besides, hispanics are not really a ‘race’ so much as a cultural grouping.

36

Oh, is this the worry? That racialists would be drawn to it for these aspects? I suppose they’d like secessionist aspects, but they’d simply run headlong into other aspects of libertarian philosophy counter to racialisms. Racialists have historically sought to use state power to get their way, just like everyone other statist group willing to fight it out for power.

By rejecting statism we reject racialism power over anyone.

I know the call for state’s rights / secession has been historically viewed as racist especially by the black community because they perceive the fed gov as the entity that ended slavery, and state’s rights as code words for confederacy.

Anyway, the thing about being a libertarian is that we can pursue paths that are not easily politically opposed because we aren’t playing the political game. They want us to play the political game in the established halls of power. As long as we continue to play that game, they are confident they can defeat us in those halls of power.

It’s when we begin acting outside those halls that they will worry.

If we’re against those halls, we shouldn’t be working within them. We would tear them down. So there’s no better time than now to start building effective parallel libertarian institutions.