I didn’t think it was defensive. I’m strictly on offense from now on. But there is a difference. I don’t oppose moronic viewpoints. I will promote valid ones. Opposition is just a battle for engagement. I want to win. Break the enemy ranks. See them driven before me, hear the lamentations of their women and all that good stuff.
Well, it is successful. And it is pro-state, pro-corporatist as Carson would have us believe. Leftists identify themselves as such. It is rare, or even never that I see “rightists” discuss themselves as being on the ideological right here at Mises or even on blogs. It’s a left fascination to identify themselves as such, and brand everyone else a conservative or right winger, whether they fit that profile (whatever it may be) or not.
But note, so-called non-left-libertarians are successful. Left-libertarians are not. Much like how little came out of Rothbard’s alliance with the left in the 70s, and the results of his work with the old right AmConMag crowd, and Ron Paul.
Niccolo was banned for being a jerk, not a leftist. He had a serious deficit when it came to social skills. He made my point about parasitism off of the right to promote the left.
I’ve moved closer to your position in the last 6 months, how much closer have you moved to mine? It’s easy to ask for the common ground when your feet are rooted in one spot.
The truth is the common ground. It’s what attracted me to libertarianism. Not the “what could be” of soft socialist dreamers and closet social doctrinaires.
Your on fire in this thread LS. I like that the truth is the common ground, I will have to remember that. Margaret Thatcher once said that compromise is what occurs in the absence of leadership.
<…*kind of a long post, I apologize to the OP for continuing the tangent here…>
I still don’t think niccolo wasn’t be any less of a jerk than this forum has seen before; although, in all fairness, others have been banned before as well. I don’t think it was unwarranted to suspect his criticism of Lew Rockwell might’ve been the straw that broke the camel’s back, but whatever, I won’t force others to believe it
I don’t really measure nor care about well my position is aligned with others; I think it is all a power trap, with those involved having to defend positions & alliances, etc. etc. etc. to the point where it all seems we are all separate, little states involved in meta-arguments & meta-bickering about arguing & bickering about topics that seemed to get derailed frequently. More sickening is that I cannot say that I have not taken part of this myself.
Then again, I’ve been prone to cynicism (and various todd may writings) as of late, so this jaded state may be unique for me, I dunno.
It all seems completely counter to those who claim to either fight against state coercion (which involves minarchists, who advocate the state never going beyond a limit), or those who claim against hierarchy (with the persecution of other’s perceived alliances & associations with certain individuals, in concert with the use of terms, used against them in argumentative power plays).
I stopped having petty conflicts when I realized minarchism is not going to prevent anarchism anymore than either of those, by themselves, is not going to be able to stomp out Statism (in short: both are required, power is not purely repressive, power concentrates at various points, etc. ).
I supposed I’ve taken on a more of a meta or a longer than long term view on things, as of late. I only wish I could explain myself a bit more, but reading 10 different books at once (averaging 1 to 5 pages every other day for all total), amid trying to sustain a standard of living with minimal b.s. from the state’s monopoly of the maintenance of one’s life (as well whatever social life one might garnish), does eat up a bit of time (getting sick, traveling every once in a while & other spontaneous stuff included).
As for “what could be”, & I’m assuming by proxy you mean those that engage in writing & developing theories relating to libertarianism & anarchism, they are important.
I think it is silly to get hung up on accusations of socialism, however, as a free-market would have to respect voluntary socialism & alternative competing ideologies, but only insofar as they can compete with others (such as market anarchism, etc.)
Also, truth may be the common ground, but there is also more than one truth. There is more than one answer too, methinks. If that makes me a coward, the odd man out, or whatever, so be it, I guess.
Well, libertarians with more vulgar tendencies have a bigger, more active presence on the web, anyway. I fail to see how anything remotely libertarian could really be called “successful”, of late.
To the degree that what you say is true, it is true largely because the corporatists propose a less radical change than more consistent libertarians. Face it, people like their big, flashy, megacorporate consumer culture, where your status is displayed in the brand of your jeans. Principled libertarian theory says such things would be radically diminished, if not disappeared in a truly liberated society. Corporatists think that somehow, you can have all the business structures of State persist without the State. I guess we’ll see.
Vulgar tendencies. I love it. You make it sound like they are all into dirty sex or something.
I don’t buy this. More consistent? You mean the people who break Macy’s windows or blog about philosophy? How about, they don’t actually engage in productive behaviour, and (I’m guessing) if not for the anonymity of the web, we’d see that many of them do not work, or barely work, or actually live of the state in one form or another.
I haven’t met the principled libertarian Nostradamus. What does he say about my prospects for finding true love?
Anyone who says they know what a libertarian society will look like is either full of it, or doing some amazing drugs.
Corporatists need the state to be corporatists. I will ask again. Who is this anti-state pro-state libertarian? Is he a fictional character, or has Kevin Carson actually discovered a new breed of hypocrite, like pro-war libertarians?
Kinsella appears to be one. Austrians in general do, really. I’m not sure about you, Lib. You might just be sensitive to the lingo because of a rightist (fascist) background, one which I relate to, believe me.
I was ignorant, but I was never a fascist. I was a conservative and I tend to have conservative perspectives. I have always been for peace and personal liberty, I simply did not have a consistent philosophical and ethical framework to base those perspectives upon.
The absence of the state is a free market. In a free market, anything can (and likely will) happen. People might start up corporations. People might agree to do business with corporations. Corporations will have to survive without the governmental largesse that allows them to grow beyond an efficient size.
Who knows?
However I would argue that it is vulgar to believe something is possible in the absence of the state. Wrong-headed, misguided, uninformed, optimistic etc. But to imply that they are less of a libertarian because they see a potential for different constructs outside of a state paradigm, well… That’s just plain mean.
And besides, the left-libs like BP and Juan who seem to think that racism won’t exist, well I think that’s sorta vulgar then. Who are they to tell me that people can’t and won’t be allowed to discriminate? Damn social planners. Now that’s VULGAR!
They aren’t saying that racism won’t exist, they are saying that racism shouldn’t exist, and that anti-racism should be a part of any libertarian agenda.
Could you clarify? I don’t quite get what you mean.
Why? It has nothing to do with libertarianism. Why conflate an anti-racism social agenda with libertarianism? I have no interest in -ANY- values you try to promote as part of libertarianism. My understanding is that adherence to the NAP is enough. The market will sort out failed or successful ideologies.
Well, I want to know where the self-proclaimed leftists get off calling other people vulgar, just because they don’t share the left-libertarian social agenda. Everyone in a free market can have a different agenda. There will be freedom of religion, freedom to discriminate, freedom to do all sorts of things and it will all be libertarian EXCEPT where it violates the NAP.
So why am I labelled vulgar (iirc, you did this to me as well) just because I don’t share your social values? Is this an authoritarian manifestation of weak-wristed ostracism?
Left-libertarians, for the lips service they pay to social equality, sure seem to be pretty intolerant of alternative views.
This is more than a left vs. right debate, then; it is a thin vs. thick debate, which is an entirely different story, as there are a large number of thick libertarians of a rightist persuasion as well.
The definition of vulgar libertarian is someone that defends the results of statism/corporatism as being “free market”; that is, someone who defends, say, Wal-Mart or Microsoft as being the legitimate outcomes of a free market, when both (in their current form) in fact depend on the existence of the state. Anyone who is calling other “vulgar libertarians” merely because they aren’t left-libertarians or because they are social conservatives is using the term incorrectly.
Incidentally, the opposite tendency, called “vulgar liberalism” by Carson, is attributing to the market the results of statism. It goes both ways.
I don’t recall calling you vulgar. If you are thinking of what I think you are, the post was meant to be a joke, and was not directed at anyone in particular, least of all you.
Although you did end up calling me a Marxist… [:)]
See, here, we agree. Anti-racism and such have little to nothing to do with the central libertarian message. Where I differ from most Austrians is a little in what should be, but mostly in what I think will be.
I suspect that in some senses, a truly liberarian society will be more racist. It is easily observed, even amongst people who all get along, that people tend to congregate nearest those who look the most like them. It is a natural tendency, and not one we should advocate fighting on libertarian time, as it were.
Now I’m confused. On the other hand, I never claimed to be Left. I think that maybe, for my part, people are reading certain things into my characterization of other viewpoints that aren’t actually true. I am not even sure what a left-libertarian social agenda is. I just consider myself a pure libertarian, and am hopeful about what structures will actually form when people are truly free. That happens to be very local, small-scale production and a tremendous amount of economic, along with other areas, self-sovereignty. I look forward to the return of the Artistan.
This is why while I think the term is completely valid on this point, but it’s obvious the term has been abused or stretched considerably (I’ve probably done this a few times myself, actually…).
I would not hesitate to use the “vulgar” term to describe an anarchist if the situation (what their misconception is regarding the market and/or free-market) merited it. I’m not surprised but have yet to read of Carson using the term “vulgar liberalism”. Out of curiosity, do you know when & where he started using it?
So… basically… if it were not for state protectionism of Wal-Mart, Microsoft, et al… they would all wither and die? [8-)]
Indulge me for a moment: could it not be the case that the success of the aforementioned is due to a combination of protectionism and good entrepreneurial skills, and hence an effect of both the market and the state?
Well, let’s take a look at Wal-Mart for starters: here is a company utterly dependent on very distant and large-scale production of goods. It uses established roads with extremely heavy, road-damaging loads to get its goods from place to place. In order that those roads might be long enough and wide enough, particularly to carry freight to all the places Wal-Mart needs it, required immense takings through eminent domain, and continual maintenance which, clearly, government is having trouble keeping up with even when they can steal money to do it. For Wal-Mart to be considered at all viable in a free market, you’d have to not only be able to establish that an immense network of very large stores could be supplied, but that it would be affordable for a large enough market to get there to shop that they’d be profitable. Without socialized roads, I doubt Wal-Mart could exist.
Microsoft has many of the same issues, though maybe not to the same degree. However, their business model is highly dependent on invalid intellectual property protections; protections that would be simply unenforceable in a free society.
So no, the those particular corporations could not exist.
Who defends the results of statism? Who are the vulgar libertarians?
No it doesn’t. Guys like Carson are for the IWW. They are socialists with some free market rhetoric. They are the left ideologues who think that a free market experiment can, no MUST, turnout with their vision of a world without organized business, only organized labour.
I didn’t find your joke funny. There is nothing libertarian about the Wobblies.
