I have been telling libertarians and anarchists this for almost twenty years. They have convinced themselves that the state is always the greater evil even if private actors are inflicting the...
Let me be clear about what I mean. Libertarianism isn’t dead because libertarians lost elections or because their policies were tried and failed. It’s dead because the philosophy itself, when examined honestly, leads to conclusions its adherents claim to oppose.
If you take seriously the premise that property rights are inviolable and that democratic constraint on property is illegitimate, you cannot avoid the concentration of power in private hands. You cannot prevent the emergence of hierarchy. You cannot maintain anything resembling equal liberty for all.
The libertarian response has always been: “But the market will prevent that! Competition will discipline power!” But this is faith, not argument. History shows us repeatedly that markets, left unconstrained by democratic governance, produce monopoly, oligopoly, and systematic advantage for those who already have power. The invisible hand doesn’t prevent domination—it enables it.
I have been telling libertarians and anarchists this for almost twenty years. They have convinced themselves that the state is always the greater evil even if private actors are inflicting the same damage.
Markets never work as libertarians claim because the sellers lie to the buyers to increase profit. The buyers can’t possibly do enough research to make informed decisions even before monopoly and...
Markets never work as libertarians claim because the sellers lie to the buyers to increase profit. The buyers can’t possibly do enough research to make informed decisions even before monopoly and regulatory capture occur.
Would you break a law if you felt it immoral? If so, there's already an anarchist inside you. The rest is implementation details. And yes, the private actors are also the greatest evil. Any...
Would you break a law if you felt it immoral?
If so, there's already an anarchist inside you. The rest is implementation details.
And yes, the private actors are also the greatest evil. Any private actor large enough to act as a state falls in the same bucket.
No, I'm specifically talking about anarchism as it's described in political philosophy circles. Anarchists view the state as fundamentally irredeemable from their violently coercive natures....
No, I'm specifically talking about anarchism as it's described in political philosophy circles. Anarchists view the state as fundamentally irredeemable from their violently coercive natures. That's a fine notion to have only if you think power magically dissolves with the dissolution of the state.
In my opinion anarchists are fighting natural laws of the universe. Anarchism as described by anarchists is not a steady state solution and ultimately leads to feudalism and even more violently coercive relationships.
A lot of these thoughts are disjointed, but I figure I'd throw them out there. I'd say you have that backwards: The only natural laws are anarchy. I don't see tigers holding many parlimentary...
A lot of these thoughts are disjointed, but I figure I'd throw them out there.
I'd say you have that backwards: The only natural laws are anarchy. I don't see tigers holding many parlimentary elections.
Anarchy is great on a small scale (every single personal relationship should be), but the larger you get, the more complicated. The happy medium is probably on the order of a loose confederation primarily for self defense.
An ideal anarchal society is fairly small scale and geographically bound. It works well within the confines where exile is sufficient punishment and by and large only the society doing things in that area suffer the consequences of their actions. Technology throws a bit of a wrench in that, because a handful of idiots with guns and bulldozers can completely undermine it.
Ironically, I think the entire world would be anarchal regardless of whatever regional governments exist provided that there were no limitations on crossing borders. That solves the voluntary association problem independent of any governance at the regional level.
The problem is not the existence of the state. It is that there is no option to opt out of it.
It's not that anarchy isn't natural, it's that I don't think it's a steady state solution. Humans have lived in anarchy or near-anarchy many times across probably thousands of small communities...
It's not that anarchy isn't natural, it's that I don't think it's a steady state solution. Humans have lived in anarchy or near-anarchy many times across probably thousands of small communities across history.
Anarchy wants small co-operative groups to be the building blocks of society, but offers no enforcement mechanism to protect that. Worse, exploitation is perversely incentivized because the first group to start to dominate other groups prevents other groups from dominating it and also allows it to construct a hierarchy beneficial to the in group.
Humans living in anarchy will invent nations from first principles every time.
I don't necessarily believe that would be the case. I'm currently reading The dawn of everything and they generally agree that we lived in a fairly free situation for a long time. This also seems...
I don't necessarily believe that would be the case. I'm currently reading The dawn of everything and they generally agree that we lived in a fairly free situation for a long time. This also seems to be the consensus in other anthropological texts iv come across over the years.
If I am not mistaken Errico Malatesta addressed that point about self defense in his book At the Cafe. You can defend yourself from others who would want to take your stuff but then you wouldn't continue the conflict. At the end of the day if all groups have what they need then there would be no need to dominate another.
Personally I don't think Anarchy will work with our modern day world. We are too many and too big a society but I do think Anarchy provides a way of living in this world that has a more positive impact on the community. This is not to say whatever yours or others way of living isn't right.
I think that’s kind of my point — for how pervasive these anarchical micro societies were, effectively zero remain today. The ones that do so live under the umbrella and protection of a nation...
I think that’s kind of my point — for how pervasive these anarchical micro societies were, effectively zero remain today. The ones that do so live under the umbrella and protection of a nation state.
And I would disagree on resources as well. It’s not just about access to resources it’s also ease of access. If my food source allows for 4 hours of downtime to be spent doing other things vs your food source only allowing 1, I have a huge advantage over you that long term is going to propel me forward. Uneven resource distribution is inevitable and can lead to conflict.
There is also some strategy as well. In nuclear weapons theory, a huge amount of effort has been spent on the concept of primacy — what happens if one actor has unilateral access to nuclear weapons. This combined with the risk of cheating has prevented moves towards a “global zero”. The same thing exists in a purely anarchical world — the first group to technologically militarize has a huge first mover advantage they can use to shape their world in their benefit. Everyone is incentivized to militarize.
Ok why would everyone be incentivised to militirise instead of trade? With regards to the first point. Id imagine that doing away with the state would to some degree be better. Lets be honest the...
Ok why would everyone be incentivised to militirise instead of trade?
With regards to the first point. Id imagine that doing away with the state would to some degree be better. Lets be honest the state isn't exactly out there looking after your best interests. At best here in the UK they are making sure things run just well enough for them to profit off of the people. That's just the way I view it.
My honest opinion when I have these sorts of discussions and this is no shade thrown on you but people always seem to be afraid to dream of something better. I think I might lack the skills to express this opinion in written form. It's just this idea that we can never have anything nice because someone will come and ruin it which I think is what the state and ruling class would have us believe. I'm sure many people would gladly do away with our current form of governance and ways of doing things if we focused on strengthening community ties and doing away with capitalism.
The problem is it’s basically the prisoner’s dilemma. The first one to defect (meaning, the first one to become powerful enough to take everyone else’s wealth by force) dominates all the others...
Ok why would everyone be incentivised to militirise instead of trade?
The problem is it’s basically the prisoner’s dilemma. The first one to defect (meaning, the first one to become powerful enough to take everyone else’s wealth by force) dominates all the others who now can’t defend themselves, meaning that everyone is incentivized to militarize.
There are solutions to the prisoner’s dilemma. In small groups, humans are actually really good at trusting one another and doing what’s good for the whole instead of just what’s good for themselves. The problem is that when we’re talking on the scale of thousands of people (much less millions), trust breaks down because you can’t possibly know everyone, and so the solutions all fall apart.
HA so the prisoners dilemma has just popped up in my Environmental policy module so its good this was mentioned. It does make sense in our modern context because we are incentivized to be self...
HA so the prisoners dilemma has just popped up in my Environmental policy module so its good this was mentioned. It does make sense in our modern context because we are incentivized to be self serving and I will be writing an essay on this very soon with regards to national and international governance and how that effects cooperation.
Your second point is probably the thing that drives all this. There are just too many people currently for us to successfully solve any real issues. Most likely also made worse by social media driving everyone even further apart into our own bubbles.
Anarchism isn't exactly a cohisive political movement though. More of a moral framework to influence politics. I am free no matter what laws surround me. If I find them tolerable, I follow them....
Anarchism isn't exactly a cohisive political movement though.
More of a moral framework to influence politics.
I am free no matter what laws surround me. If I find them tolerable, I follow them. If I find them intolerable, I break them. I do this because I alone am morally accountable for what I do.
Well we assume they aren't using legal and financial loop holes to fund military groups to their own benefit. Its early in the am and iv just had my coffee but in seem to remember a doco about oil...
Well we assume they aren't using legal and financial loop holes to fund military groups to their own benefit.
Its early in the am and iv just had my coffee but in seem to remember a doco about oil companies funding armed armed groups in Africa to access resources. Sure that's not their personal army but it sure seems they were working well together.
Instead of Amazon, maybe we should talk about Virunga, Executive Outcomes, and the Wagner Group? Or maybe the scam centers being run on slave labor in Myanmar? Why do these terrible things happen...
Instead of Amazon, maybe we should talk about Virunga, Executive Outcomes, and the Wagner Group? Or maybe the scam centers being run on slave labor in Myanmar?
Why do these terrible things happen where they do? I imagine a lack of stable government has something to do with it.
oh yea 100% but i reckon we might run into a "chicken or the egg" scenario where is the gov unstable and therefore these corps can operate or do the corps destabilise the gov so that they can...
oh yea 100% but i reckon we might run into a "chicken or the egg" scenario where is the gov unstable and therefore these corps can operate or do the corps destabilise the gov so that they can profit? This is a rabbit hole id love to dive into more.
In ancient times, control of land (and the peasants who grow food) was wealth and conquest a source of both loot and land, but nowadays war is enormously expensive and disruptive, as we see in...
In ancient times, control of land (and the peasants who grow food) was wealth and conquest a source of both loot and land, but nowadays war is enormously expensive and disruptive, as we see in Ukraine. Maybe Putin thought Russia could profit from it, but so far, not so much.
In general, stable governments are better for business and trade. There are notable exceptions like mercenaries, but then you have to ask, who pays them? Where is the money coming from?
I mean, this subthread was about theoretical libertarian/anarchistic governmental frameworks. If the US government couldn't protect Amazon's interests, they'd pay someone who could.
I mean, this subthread was about theoretical libertarian/anarchistic governmental frameworks.
If the US government couldn't protect Amazon's interests, they'd pay someone who could.
I found this to be a very interesting read. The author makes some compelling points about how the devolution of American libertarian movements into fascism was probably inevitable and a direct...
I found this to be a very interesting read. The author makes some compelling points about how the devolution of American libertarian movements into fascism was probably inevitable and a direct consequence of libertarianism's core belief in inalienable private property rights.
The Libertarian Party had a power struggle that resulted in the Mises Caucus taking over and endorsing Trump over the actual LP candidate. Beyond that however, there’s the deeper issue that LP...
The Libertarian Party had a power struggle that resulted in the Mises Caucus taking over and endorsing Trump over the actual LP candidate.
Beyond that however, there’s the deeper issue that LP attracted a lot of people who were deeply cynical about politics, hated the system, or were wildly contrarian. All these demos have tended to support Trump.
I'll have to ask a genuine question that I realize is controversial, possibly stupid and perhaps will age like milk. Is Trump a fascist, or will his presidency cause USA to become fascist? How do...
I'll have to ask a genuine question that I realize is controversial, possibly stupid and perhaps will age like milk.
Is Trump a fascist, or will his presidency cause USA to become fascist? How do we know it while being in the middle of it?
You are asking if the man who is constantly seizing power for himself, breaking laws left and right, reforming an agency to use as his own personal military, and basically considers himself to be...
You are asking if the man who is constantly seizing power for himself, breaking laws left and right, reforming an agency to use as his own personal military, and basically considers himself to be a dictator is a fascist?
You can always look to people who lived through it already and pointed out obvious warning signs. It was hard to not see parallels to many of those in American culture and politics before Trump....
After I read scholar Robert Paxton's book The Anatomy of Fascism I was convinced that the MAGA movement is fascist and that Trump wants to lead a fascist state. If you want something shorter,...
After I read scholar Robert Paxton's book The Anatomy of Fascism I was convinced that the MAGA movement is fascist and that Trump wants to lead a fascist state.
Was Hitler a fascist? Suppose he had never published Mein Kampf, or he was such a well-known habitual liar that one could credibly argue we've never known what he actually believes. The answer is...
Was Hitler a fascist? Suppose he had never published Mein Kampf, or he was such a well-known habitual liar that one could credibly argue we've never known what he actually believes.
The answer is that nobody cares. Once Hitler executed the Holocaust, he was doing fascism on such a massive scale that his personal beliefs were irrelevant.
Trump isn't fascist, but the government he rules is, because it operates ICE if no other reason.
The fascism wasn’t the holocaust, things like the holocaust are the inevitable result of fascism. People confuse the outputs for the thing. The fascism was the deranged ideology that tries to...
The fascism wasn’t the holocaust, things like the holocaust are the inevitable result of fascism. People confuse the outputs for the thing.
The fascism was the deranged ideology that tries to RETVRN to an imagined glorious past, based on reactionary mythology and golden age thinking, through an authoritarian movement to synthesize all aspects of society into an organ of the state. Private industry, civil society, the bureaucracy, and subcommunities must all be fused into the state to pursue “national greatness” as interpreted as an authoritarian leader who embodies the national will.
That’s what fascism is. That’s what MAGA represents. It’s what Hitler represented. All of that is bad on its own basis, but it’s also a recipe for creating a society that is inefficient, preoccupied with inane personal grievances and prejudices, highly intolerant of deviance, and reflexively violent and corrupt. That all resulted in the holocaust. But that’s the outcome of the vices and deficiencies fascism breeds in society, you don’t need to have done it before you’re a fascist.
Trump is a fascist. When he says “he alone” can fix what’s wrong with America, and defines what’s wrong as minorities, and demands absolute obedience from everyone in society under his will, that’s fascism. I don’t care if he’s a moron because fascists ARE morons, that’s part of the personality profile of people it appeals to.
I don't disagree but you're missing my point. The holocaust is a clear marker of fascism, much like how a Scrooge McDuck money-vault is a marker of wealth. The point is that ultimately, only...
I don't disagree but you're missing my point. The holocaust is a clear marker of fascism, much like how a Scrooge McDuck money-vault is a marker of wealth. The point is that ultimately, only Trump's actions matter. Nobody gassed at Auschwitz would be made happy if they were instead gassed at Auschwitz for reasons of economic anxiety.
Fascism, these days, is more of a phenomenon than an ideology. When nationalism and violence is fetishized in majority demographics to distract an electorate from corruption and institutional...
Fascism, these days, is more of a phenomenon than an ideology. When nationalism and violence is fetishized in majority demographics to distract an electorate from corruption and institutional decay, that's most of fascism. When political discourse is entirely aestheticized, such that what individuals enjoy is treated as identical to political good, and it becomes acceptable to demand excision of the unpleasant on no further grounds.
I grew up in rural indiana, where the libertarian ethos is very strong. What the author is saying is exactly right, and he says it more eloquently than I, but it is a series of arguments that I...
I grew up in rural indiana, where the libertarian ethos is very strong. What the author is saying is exactly right, and he says it more eloquently than I, but it is a series of arguments that I have had hundreds of times. The arguments with self-identified libertarians never changed. I agree with the analysis by the author regarding the naturally ingest conclusions of absolutism with regards to property rights.
Overwhelmingly, libertarians that I have spoken with support Trump fully. Whether they see him as a means to an end, as some sort of libertarian messiah, or perhaps a monarch who will protect their property, does not matter. Only a small fraction have chipped off in the last decade. Those that have made a similar transition to the one the author describes for himself.
It is only anecdote, but I am inclined to say that it has happened.
No they didn’t “devolve” into fascism. That’s what the movement always was at bottom and they eventually terraformed society to make it acceptable to mask off/accept to themselves what it’s what...
No they didn’t “devolve” into fascism. That’s what the movement always was at bottom and they eventually terraformed society to make it acceptable to mask off/accept to themselves what it’s what they’ve always wanted.
At that time, there were very few corporations and they were largely government-created monopolies. Wealth largely consisted of land. Private power was mostly rich aristocrats or wealthy...
The Founders didn’t just fight the Crown—they fought the fusion of corporate and state power. They understood that private power, when sufficiently concentrated, becomes just as dangerous to liberty as government tyranny.
At that time, there were very few corporations and they were largely government-created monopolies. Wealth largely consisted of land. Private power was mostly rich aristocrats or wealthy individuals - including many of the founders. George Washington was the richest man in America.
Why did you omit the only other sentence in the paragraph you quote, which gives a specific example of the fusion of corporate and state power contemporary to the Founders?
Why did you omit the only other sentence in the paragraph you quote, which gives a specific example of the fusion of corporate and state power contemporary to the Founders?
And Madison understood something libertarians have forgotten: the British East India Company.
No particular reason for omitting it. The East India Company was never a normal company by our standards. It, too, was a government-created monopoly, over trade to the East Indies. And then the...
No particular reason for omitting it. The East India Company was never a normal company by our standards. It, too, was a government-created monopoly, over trade to the East Indies. And then the British government started taking it over in 1773.
I imagine that Libertarian skepticism of government power was inherited from Jacksonian Democrats, who were against both government power and anything that looked like the government granting special privileges to merchants, which is what pretty much all corporations looked like back then. Contrast with the Whigs who wanted the government to do things to improve the country, like national banks and the Erie canal.
Interestingly enough I think these arguments are also good to demonstrate why Liberalism is a bad idea. If Libertarianism is a roadmap into oligarchy and dictatorship, Liberalism is a roadmap to...
Interestingly enough I think these arguments are also good to demonstrate why Liberalism is a bad idea. If Libertarianism is a roadmap into oligarchy and dictatorship, Liberalism is a roadmap to Libertarianism. Both lib-isms have a strong focus on property ownership and in practice amount to people with the most wealth having the most power.
If one was to take this piece as a reason to believe in Liberalism, it has a fatal flaw. It says that government exists to serve the common good, but then outright refuses to define what the common good is. If the common good cannot be defined, than it can be corrupted. What is missing is a philosophy as to what the common good is. And without that definition we can get messed up ideas like “billionaires existing is a good thing for society”, a sentiment that is extremely common, sadly, in spite of the objective damage it does to society.
There is a part of me which believes that Liberalism can still work if we have a coherent philosophy - or perhaps more accurately, a set of philosophies - to define what common good is. The problem is that when you get to that point, usually the end result is something that most Liberalists hate: Socialism.
To be fair, this is probably an issue of “philosophical blending”: some people who claim to be Liberal hold surprisingly Libertarian points of view, and the power balances leaning hard to the “right” makes basic Liberal positioning seem Socialist. Acts of wealth redistribution absolutely can be justified based on Liberal ideas, but in practice any such attempt today is quick to be labeled “Socialist” or “Communist”. So in the practicality of politics (specifically in the current context of US politics), it’s much wiser for one to join under the banner of Socialism than that of Liberalism.
Here in the US, we actually do have a very popular answer to what the common good is, one that was embraced by the framers of the constitution: Egalitarianism. The idea that all people are equal. Regardless of where you are in the political alignment chart, issues are often framed in the light of equality. The only problem with that is that people have a hard time agreeing with what “equal” means. Those on the far right seem to believe that they are equal to billionaires. The poor are also equal under their eyes, and the only reason why they are destitute is because they are too lazy or unprincipled to grasp at success. Naturally, the further left you go the less likely one is to agree with such suppositions. And thus we have the failure of Liberalism; the common good is so poorly defined that it can be used as a weapon against actual public welfare.
Personally, I believe that such philosophical failure to construct a coherent goal is the singular cause of government failure. But that is reaching on my end; to prove it would need a significant amount of historical research.
I'm a communist and I think you're being a little harsh on liberalism here. Or at least you're woefully misdiagnosing its issues by excluding the parts of liberalism you think are good from your...
I'm a communist and I think you're being a little harsh on liberalism here. Or at least you're woefully misdiagnosing its issues by excluding the parts of liberalism you think are good from your definition of liberalism by calling them socialist. I realize it's a trend for leftists to call everyone who isn't as far left as them a liberal, but you're erring in the opposite direction here in a way that I don't think really reflects the pros and cons of liberalism super accurately.
Liberals have gone to great lengths to define what you are calling the common good, see e.g. Rawls’ Theory of Justice and the veil of ignorance / difference principle.
Liberals have gone to great lengths to define what you are calling the common good, see e.g. Rawls’ Theory of Justice and the veil of ignorance / difference principle.
By no means am I trying to imply that common good is not a thing that Liberals have not tried to define. That is why I brought up the concept of egalitarianism. The issue is that there are far too...
By no means am I trying to imply that common good is not a thing that Liberals have not tried to define. That is why I brought up the concept of egalitarianism. The issue is that there are far too many definitions and nobody really agrees on them, which means that in practice "common good" is difficult to implement and easy to dispel. There are countless people who think that the terrible things that Donald Trump is doing in the US is for the common good. If the common good is not common, what is the point?
I feel as if Liberalism when concerned with public welfare is more like Socialism for people who are kowtowing to the Libertarians/Feudalists/Anarchists/whoever. They are probably more concerned with personal property than they should. It's understandable: they were born into such a system, have had no choice but to invest into it, and are afraid of losing that investment. And while I'm not saying that personal property shouldn't exist, I do think it's something that should be far less important than the general welfare of society and the people who comprise it.
I've spent the majority of my life believing in Liberalism. But I've also spent the majority of my life seeing Liberalism failing. Not just in the US either; it's happening just about everywhere in the world.
This would also apply to every political theory, ever. I'll agree that liberalism has been on the backfoot for a myriad of reasons but I also think people ascribe all the modern failings of our...
The issue is that there are far too many definitions and nobody really agrees on them, which means that in practice "common good" is difficult to implement and easy to dispel. There are countless people who think that the terrible things that Donald Trump is doing in the US is for the common good. If the common good is not common, what is the point?
This would also apply to every political theory, ever.
I'll agree that liberalism has been on the backfoot for a myriad of reasons but I also think people ascribe all the modern failings of our society to liberalism which is in my opinion either misguided or intentionally misleading.
I'm trying not to be deliberately obstructionist, but I find a few of your points a bit confusing. I'm not sure if you're glossing over some of the philosophical underpinnings of liberalism...
I'm trying not to be deliberately obstructionist, but I find a few of your points a bit confusing. I'm not sure if you're glossing over some of the philosophical underpinnings of liberalism because that wasn't your point (if so, cool) or if you're simply not that familiar with them. As an example, you create a dichotomy between property rights and the general welfare of society, but liberal philosophers wrote exhaustively about why they think that personal liberty and property rights contribute to - or more accurately put, are the sine qua non of - the general welfare of society. So they would agree with you that the welfare of society is important, and for them it wasn't a trade-off with property rights, they thought property rights were how you get there.
And they have a lot of good points. As a relevant example to your broader point, classical liberals have argued that property rights are fundamental to social welfare because it is most often the poor and marginalized who are trampled by state power, and well-enshrined rights help them defend themselves.
I mention all this mostly for any other readers who may be less familiar with liberalism than you.
To expand on your point: Liberalism is rooted in a secular ideal, which in our democracies get reduced to materialism, as every other teleology is too nuanced or personal for election. The 'common...
To expand on your point: Liberalism is rooted in a secular ideal, which in our democracies get reduced to materialism, as every other teleology is too nuanced or personal for election. The 'common good' then is constantly being revised in ways that comport to demands of economy. Since it's the sole anchor, revision of the economic paradigm is slow and very susceptible to bias, not just from power holders but the whole of society, as the models drift out-of-sync from the physical reality they claim to mirror. In terms I don't love: liberalism, in the long term, always trends toward reaction.
Aside: I'm not sure you're using personal property in a way that's very common? If you maintain the personal/private distinction, (left/center) anarchists are entirely compatible with socialist coalition, and if you conflate them, then a whole lot of socialists believe in many shades of personal property ownership.
It’s Anarchism that I’m using incorrectly. For some reason I had thought that the author of the article was using it in the colloquial way (I.e. “Mad Max”), so I was using in a simelar way. I...
It’s Anarchism that I’m using incorrectly. For some reason I had thought that the author of the article was using it in the colloquial way (I.e. “Mad Max”), so I was using in a simelar way. I don’t quite know why I thought that!
In regards to personal property I was basically trying to say that my personal beliefs don’t reach as far as communism. People should be able to own things. There is a strong natural tendency for people to claim things for themselves, and to fight it seems like a difficult path to follow.
Calling this a "branch of libertarianism" is incorrect. "Libertarian socialism" as described in this wikipedia article is a branch of socialism that's libertarian in character under the broader...
Calling this a "branch of libertarianism" is incorrect. "Libertarian socialism" as described in this wikipedia article is a branch of socialism that's libertarian in character under the broader more international definition of "libertarian" within political science. Left libertarianism, one of the articles listed as a potential disambiguation at the top of the article you linked, is closer to what you described. However, even referring to left-libertarianism as a "branch of libertarianism" in a conversation that is otherwise dominated by use of the term "libertarian" to describe the specifically right-wing political movement present in the US is also misleading, as left-libertarianism as seen elsewhere in the world is not a subset or branch of the right-libertarianism described by the word "libertarian" in a US political context.
I think it’s more incorrect to call the modern Libertarian Party (United States) libertarian than it is to call libertarian socialism libertarian. Depending on your perspective “modern” could mean...
I think it’s more incorrect to call the modern Libertarian Party (United States) libertarian than it is to call libertarian socialism libertarian. Depending on your perspective “modern” could mean after the MISES take over in 2022, after Gary Johnson’s 2016 Libertarian Party nomination for President, or after the Ed Clark & David Koch ticket in 1980:
When asked in a television interview to summarize libertarianism, Clark used the phrase "low-tax liberalism," causing some consternation among traditional libertarian theorists, most notably Murray Rothbard. Clark's running to the center marked the start of a split within the Libertarian Party between a moderate faction led by Ed Crane and a radical faction led by Rothbard that eventually came to a head in 1983, with the moderate faction walking out of the party convention after the nomination for the 1984 presidential race went to David Bergland.
The block quote above is to connect this response to the linked articles critique of Rothbard and to demonstrate that there's been significant intra-party disagreement for basically the entirety of the party's existence. Relatedly, the party split a few years ago, so now there’s a Libertarian Party and a Liberal Party USA.
But if we’re only talking about the Libertarian Party, none of that really matters because there is a Libertarian Socialist Caucus:
The Libertarian Party in the United States is composed of various factions, sometimes described as left and right, although many libertarians reject use of these terms to describe the political philosophy.
As of 2025, notable caucuses within the party include the hardline and paleolibertarian Mises Caucus, the traditionalist and more left-leaning Classical Liberal Caucus, the mainly anarcho-capitalist Radical Caucus, and the left-wing Libertarian Socialist Caucus.
I've responded elsewhere to a comment, and the short of it is that I believe the author is correct. The book, "Late Soviet Britain: Why Materialist Utopias Fail," (described by the author on the...
I've responded elsewhere to a comment, and the short of it is that I believe the author is correct.
The book, "Late Soviet Britain: Why Materialist Utopias Fail," (described by the author on the market-liberal London School of Economics website, as the author is on their faculty) explains why market-utopias fail to achieve their claimed outcomes as much as socialist-utopias, and in a surprisingly similar manner. It's a fascinating read, and points out some of the contradictions inherent to market approaches, when those approaches are unmoderated by government intervention. In particular, just as socialist (and/or claimed communist) economies require miraculous levels of human understanding, goodness, and information sharing, so too do libertarian market philosophies. In worlds with incomplete information and imperfect logic there are similar outcomes and non-optimal economic outcomes, despite both claiming otherwise.
Two paragraphs from the article stand out to me:
The title of Late Soviet Britain may seem ‘‘strange and counterintuitive’’, she admits. ‘‘The Cold War and its aftermath taught us that Soviet socialism and neoliberalism (or Thatcherism in the British context) are absolute ideological opposites, and who could disagree: the everyday political values of these doctrines could not have been further apart. Ask how they understand the nature of political economic reality, however, and this dichotomy proves false.’’
On closer inspection, she argues, "both Soviet and neoliberal doctrines are based on closed-system reasoning about the political economy. They are built on purely logical arguments from utopian assumptions - axiomatic deduction - rather than on arguments from observation and reasoned analysis - or hypothetical deduction, more commonly known as the scientific method."
Ive had this discussion with my politically extreme friends so many times Ive given up. They are all suggesting grossly simple answers to endlessly complex issues and I just do not know how anyone...
Ive had this discussion with my politically extreme friends so many times Ive given up.
They are all suggesting grossly simple answers to endlessly complex issues and I just do not know how anyone who doesn’t intimately know how the actual system that we have in place today works can suggest any kind of fix for it.
Looking at you, basic income supporters. Ugh.
Sometimes I feel like I’m the only one asking questions still. Everyone else is just tossing out dumb ideas.
I'll defend that readily. Basic income is a fantastic alternative to replace pretty much all cash-assistance programs. It eliminates vast swaths of beuracracy and treats people more like people....
Looking at you, basic income supporters. Ugh.
I'll defend that readily. Basic income is a fantastic alternative to replace pretty much all cash-assistance programs. It eliminates vast swaths of beuracracy and treats people more like people.
Without a glance, I would fold in
Food stamps/cash assistance
Social Security/disability
Housing vouchers/rent assistance
Unemployment
Because every one of those programs would be rendered unneccesary by people being able to say with certainty that they'll have a consistent check coming every month.
However, in order for that to work, there need to be other systems in play:
Universal free healthcare
Strong tenant protections (ie landlords must petition local government to justify rent increases)
More stringent lending requirements (ie no 'basic income advances')
A reasonable minimum wage
A 'locked' hardship savings account that puts a small percentage of UBI payment which can be tapped into for extenuating circumstances
However, in order for that to work, there need to be other systems in play Our government was actually starving people because the democrats wouldn’t let them stop funding the tiny bit of...
However, in order for that to work, there need to be other systems in play
Our government was actually starving people because the democrats wouldn’t let them stop funding the tiny bit of healthcare assistance we actually have.
Basic income is a utopia idea. We’re so far away from this being an actual solution that its a waste of brain energy to ponder it and the one single candidate that ran on basic income was a total used car salesman of a candidate.
I get it. Free money for everyone cause everyone deserves their share of resources is an amazing reality to wish for. Humans just don’t work that way though. Best we can do is need based assistance which yes is a total waste of resources but so are political
Campaigns in general and like well most of the things we spend resources on.
I don't have the answer for this debate. However, one of the reasons Social Security in the US works so well as a benefit program, and is so hard to dismantle, is because it goes to such a high...
I don't have the answer for this debate. However, one of the reasons Social Security in the US works so well as a benefit program, and is so hard to dismantle, is because it goes to such a high percentage of the population. It's not needs based and so there are fewer accusations of fraud than there are with SNAP or TANF or other programs with strict income limits on who can receive them. It also avoids the perverse incentives of needs based programs where people who try to move from benefits to low paid jobs can end up doing worse, making it rational for them to give up and stay on benefits.
In other words: Once UBI is in place, weakening or dismantling it will be a one-way ticket to being primaried. The only reason Social Security damaging has gone so well is because they take care...
In other words: Once UBI is in place, weakening or dismantling it will be a one-way ticket to being primaried.
The only reason Social Security damaging has gone so well is because they take care to insure everyone still on it doesn't get royally fucked and thus preserves their voting base.
Yes, the current state of the USA is fucked. Getting any sort of policy at all is impossible right now, let alone good policy. We're still fighting for $15 minimum wage when it should be closer to...
Yes, the current state of the USA is fucked. Getting any sort of policy at all is impossible right now, let alone good policy. We're still fighting for $15 minimum wage when it should be closer to $25 now.
But that's not because UBI is not viable as a genuine possibility. It's "Social Security for All" the same way "Medicare for All" is. Yang gets at least a little credit for even getting it as a talking point during the zoo that was 'distract everyone away from Bernie 2020.' Come 2028 UBI would be a damn fine core policy rolled into a big platform ala Green New Deal. But gotta build support for the idea today.
Don't let the current nightmare distract from future good. Fascist regimes will fall, eventually. When the time comes, let's not pre-negotiate what is possible.
I haven’t given up trying to reach people. Its just frustrating. Its been ten years and I havent changed anyones mind about anything at all. I know there studies like “people do not change their...
I haven’t given up trying to reach people. Its just frustrating. Its been ten years and I havent changed anyones mind about anything at all.
I know there studies like “people do not change their minds ever” and I read those studies and I get it but I just have this hope that my friends are more intelligent than that and…. Its been ten years.
I still believe that people generally want to do good and want to make decisions that help others. We’re all just having trouble making our way through the onslaught of propaganda
I still believe that people generally want to do good and want to make decisions that help others. We’re all just having trouble making our way through the onslaught of propaganda
I have been telling libertarians and anarchists this for almost twenty years. They have convinced themselves that the state is always the greater evil even if private actors are inflicting the same damage.
Markets never work as libertarians claim because the sellers lie to the buyers to increase profit. The buyers can’t possibly do enough research to make informed decisions even before monopoly and regulatory capture occur.
Would you break a law if you felt it immoral?
If so, there's already an anarchist inside you. The rest is implementation details.
And yes, the private actors are also the greatest evil. Any private actor large enough to act as a state falls in the same bucket.
No, I'm specifically talking about anarchism as it's described in political philosophy circles. Anarchists view the state as fundamentally irredeemable from their violently coercive natures. That's a fine notion to have only if you think power magically dissolves with the dissolution of the state.
In my opinion anarchists are fighting natural laws of the universe. Anarchism as described by anarchists is not a steady state solution and ultimately leads to feudalism and even more violently coercive relationships.
A lot of these thoughts are disjointed, but I figure I'd throw them out there.
I'd say you have that backwards: The only natural laws are anarchy. I don't see tigers holding many parlimentary elections.
Anarchy is great on a small scale (every single personal relationship should be), but the larger you get, the more complicated. The happy medium is probably on the order of a loose confederation primarily for self defense.
An ideal anarchal society is fairly small scale and geographically bound. It works well within the confines where exile is sufficient punishment and by and large only the society doing things in that area suffer the consequences of their actions. Technology throws a bit of a wrench in that, because a handful of idiots with guns and bulldozers can completely undermine it.
Ironically, I think the entire world would be anarchal regardless of whatever regional governments exist provided that there were no limitations on crossing borders. That solves the voluntary association problem independent of any governance at the regional level.
The problem is not the existence of the state. It is that there is no option to opt out of it.
It's not that anarchy isn't natural, it's that I don't think it's a steady state solution. Humans have lived in anarchy or near-anarchy many times across probably thousands of small communities across history.
Anarchy wants small co-operative groups to be the building blocks of society, but offers no enforcement mechanism to protect that. Worse, exploitation is perversely incentivized because the first group to start to dominate other groups prevents other groups from dominating it and also allows it to construct a hierarchy beneficial to the in group.
Humans living in anarchy will invent nations from first principles every time.
I don't necessarily believe that would be the case. I'm currently reading The dawn of everything and they generally agree that we lived in a fairly free situation for a long time. This also seems to be the consensus in other anthropological texts iv come across over the years.
If I am not mistaken Errico Malatesta addressed that point about self defense in his book At the Cafe. You can defend yourself from others who would want to take your stuff but then you wouldn't continue the conflict. At the end of the day if all groups have what they need then there would be no need to dominate another.
Personally I don't think Anarchy will work with our modern day world. We are too many and too big a society but I do think Anarchy provides a way of living in this world that has a more positive impact on the community. This is not to say whatever yours or others way of living isn't right.
I think that’s kind of my point — for how pervasive these anarchical micro societies were, effectively zero remain today. The ones that do so live under the umbrella and protection of a nation state.
And I would disagree on resources as well. It’s not just about access to resources it’s also ease of access. If my food source allows for 4 hours of downtime to be spent doing other things vs your food source only allowing 1, I have a huge advantage over you that long term is going to propel me forward. Uneven resource distribution is inevitable and can lead to conflict.
There is also some strategy as well. In nuclear weapons theory, a huge amount of effort has been spent on the concept of primacy — what happens if one actor has unilateral access to nuclear weapons. This combined with the risk of cheating has prevented moves towards a “global zero”. The same thing exists in a purely anarchical world — the first group to technologically militarize has a huge first mover advantage they can use to shape their world in their benefit. Everyone is incentivized to militarize.
Ok why would everyone be incentivised to militirise instead of trade?
With regards to the first point. Id imagine that doing away with the state would to some degree be better. Lets be honest the state isn't exactly out there looking after your best interests. At best here in the UK they are making sure things run just well enough for them to profit off of the people. That's just the way I view it.
My honest opinion when I have these sorts of discussions and this is no shade thrown on you but people always seem to be afraid to dream of something better. I think I might lack the skills to express this opinion in written form. It's just this idea that we can never have anything nice because someone will come and ruin it which I think is what the state and ruling class would have us believe. I'm sure many people would gladly do away with our current form of governance and ways of doing things if we focused on strengthening community ties and doing away with capitalism.
The problem is it’s basically the prisoner’s dilemma. The first one to defect (meaning, the first one to become powerful enough to take everyone else’s wealth by force) dominates all the others who now can’t defend themselves, meaning that everyone is incentivized to militarize.
There are solutions to the prisoner’s dilemma. In small groups, humans are actually really good at trusting one another and doing what’s good for the whole instead of just what’s good for themselves. The problem is that when we’re talking on the scale of thousands of people (much less millions), trust breaks down because you can’t possibly know everyone, and so the solutions all fall apart.
HA so the prisoners dilemma has just popped up in my Environmental policy module so its good this was mentioned. It does make sense in our modern context because we are incentivized to be self serving and I will be writing an essay on this very soon with regards to national and international governance and how that effects cooperation.
Your second point is probably the thing that drives all this. There are just too many people currently for us to successfully solve any real issues. Most likely also made worse by social media driving everyone even further apart into our own bubbles.
If the only natural laws are anarchy, then don't you already have it? No need for a political movement.
Anarchism isn't exactly a cohisive political movement though.
More of a moral framework to influence politics.
I am free no matter what laws surround me. If I find them tolerable, I follow them. If I find them intolerable, I break them. I do this because I alone am morally accountable for what I do.
If by "greatest" you mean "the most powerful," governments are far more powerful than corporations. (Consider China.)
If laws were not a barrier, Amazon could fund a military force that could be in the top 10 in the world, tomorrow.
That might be an interesting story, but meanwhile in the real world, Amazon doesn't have a military and shows no signs of getting one.
Well we assume they aren't using legal and financial loop holes to fund military groups to their own benefit.
Its early in the am and iv just had my coffee but in seem to remember a doco about oil companies funding armed armed groups in Africa to access resources. Sure that's not their personal army but it sure seems they were working well together.
Edit: it was virunga
Another interesting article
Instead of Amazon, maybe we should talk about Virunga, Executive Outcomes, and the Wagner Group? Or maybe the scam centers being run on slave labor in Myanmar?
Why do these terrible things happen where they do? I imagine a lack of stable government has something to do with it.
oh yea 100% but i reckon we might run into a "chicken or the egg" scenario where is the gov unstable and therefore these corps can operate or do the corps destabilise the gov so that they can profit? This is a rabbit hole id love to dive into more.
In ancient times, control of land (and the peasants who grow food) was wealth and conquest a source of both loot and land, but nowadays war is enormously expensive and disruptive, as we see in Ukraine. Maybe Putin thought Russia could profit from it, but so far, not so much.
In general, stable governments are better for business and trade. There are notable exceptions like mercenaries, but then you have to ask, who pays them? Where is the money coming from?
I mean, this subthread was about theoretical libertarian/anarchistic governmental frameworks.
If the US government couldn't protect Amazon's interests, they'd pay someone who could.
I found this to be a very interesting read. The author makes some compelling points about how the devolution of American libertarian movements into fascism was probably inevitable and a direct consequence of libertarianism's core belief in inalienable private property rights.
You're saying that as if libertarians actually in reality devolved into fascism. Did that really happen, though?
The Libertarian Party had a power struggle that resulted in the Mises Caucus taking over and endorsing Trump over the actual LP candidate.
Beyond that however, there’s the deeper issue that LP attracted a lot of people who were deeply cynical about politics, hated the system, or were wildly contrarian. All these demos have tended to support Trump.
I'll have to ask a genuine question that I realize is controversial, possibly stupid and perhaps will age like milk.
Is Trump a fascist, or will his presidency cause USA to become fascist? How do we know it while being in the middle of it?
You are asking if the man who is constantly seizing power for himself, breaking laws left and right, reforming an agency to use as his own personal military, and basically considers himself to be a dictator is a fascist?
What criteria would you use to consider fascism?
Well, he would have to promote blind ethnic purity nationalism and amplify and stoke populist dissatisfaction through demagoguery.
Oh wait shi
You can always look to people who lived through it already and pointed out obvious warning signs.
It was hard to not see parallels to many of those in American culture and politics before Trump. Now it's full on freefall.
After I read scholar Robert Paxton's book The Anatomy of Fascism I was convinced that the MAGA movement is fascist and that Trump wants to lead a fascist state.
If you want something shorter, Umberto Eco identified 14 key features of fascist movements
Was Hitler a fascist? Suppose he had never published Mein Kampf, or he was such a well-known habitual liar that one could credibly argue we've never known what he actually believes.
The answer is that nobody cares. Once Hitler executed the Holocaust, he was doing fascism on such a massive scale that his personal beliefs were irrelevant.
Trump isn't fascist, but the government he rules is, because it operates ICE if no other reason.
The fascism wasn’t the holocaust, things like the holocaust are the inevitable result of fascism. People confuse the outputs for the thing.
The fascism was the deranged ideology that tries to RETVRN to an imagined glorious past, based on reactionary mythology and golden age thinking, through an authoritarian movement to synthesize all aspects of society into an organ of the state. Private industry, civil society, the bureaucracy, and subcommunities must all be fused into the state to pursue “national greatness” as interpreted as an authoritarian leader who embodies the national will.
That’s what fascism is. That’s what MAGA represents. It’s what Hitler represented. All of that is bad on its own basis, but it’s also a recipe for creating a society that is inefficient, preoccupied with inane personal grievances and prejudices, highly intolerant of deviance, and reflexively violent and corrupt. That all resulted in the holocaust. But that’s the outcome of the vices and deficiencies fascism breeds in society, you don’t need to have done it before you’re a fascist.
Trump is a fascist. When he says “he alone” can fix what’s wrong with America, and defines what’s wrong as minorities, and demands absolute obedience from everyone in society under his will, that’s fascism. I don’t care if he’s a moron because fascists ARE morons, that’s part of the personality profile of people it appeals to.
I don't disagree but you're missing my point. The holocaust is a clear marker of fascism, much like how a Scrooge McDuck money-vault is a marker of wealth. The point is that ultimately, only Trump's actions matter. Nobody gassed at Auschwitz would be made happy if they were instead gassed at Auschwitz for reasons of economic anxiety.
Fascism, these days, is more of a phenomenon than an ideology. When nationalism and violence is fetishized in majority demographics to distract an electorate from corruption and institutional decay, that's most of fascism. When political discourse is entirely aestheticized, such that what individuals enjoy is treated as identical to political good, and it becomes acceptable to demand excision of the unpleasant on no further grounds.
What do you think?
I grew up in rural indiana, where the libertarian ethos is very strong. What the author is saying is exactly right, and he says it more eloquently than I, but it is a series of arguments that I have had hundreds of times. The arguments with self-identified libertarians never changed. I agree with the analysis by the author regarding the naturally ingest conclusions of absolutism with regards to property rights.
Overwhelmingly, libertarians that I have spoken with support Trump fully. Whether they see him as a means to an end, as some sort of libertarian messiah, or perhaps a monarch who will protect their property, does not matter. Only a small fraction have chipped off in the last decade. Those that have made a similar transition to the one the author describes for himself.
It is only anecdote, but I am inclined to say that it has happened.
No they didn’t “devolve” into fascism. That’s what the movement always was at bottom and they eventually terraformed society to make it acceptable to mask off/accept to themselves what it’s what they’ve always wanted.
At that time, there were very few corporations and they were largely government-created monopolies. Wealth largely consisted of land. Private power was mostly rich aristocrats or wealthy individuals - including many of the founders. George Washington was the richest man in America.
Why did you omit the only other sentence in the paragraph you quote, which gives a specific example of the fusion of corporate and state power contemporary to the Founders?
No particular reason for omitting it. The East India Company was never a normal company by our standards. It, too, was a government-created monopoly, over trade to the East Indies. And then the British government started taking it over in 1773.
I imagine that Libertarian skepticism of government power was inherited from Jacksonian Democrats, who were against both government power and anything that looked like the government granting special privileges to merchants, which is what pretty much all corporations looked like back then. Contrast with the Whigs who wanted the government to do things to improve the country, like national banks and the Erie canal.
Interestingly enough I think these arguments are also good to demonstrate why Liberalism is a bad idea. If Libertarianism is a roadmap into oligarchy and dictatorship, Liberalism is a roadmap to Libertarianism. Both lib-isms have a strong focus on property ownership and in practice amount to people with the most wealth having the most power.
If one was to take this piece as a reason to believe in Liberalism, it has a fatal flaw. It says that government exists to serve the common good, but then outright refuses to define what the common good is. If the common good cannot be defined, than it can be corrupted. What is missing is a philosophy as to what the common good is. And without that definition we can get messed up ideas like “billionaires existing is a good thing for society”, a sentiment that is extremely common, sadly, in spite of the objective damage it does to society.
There is a part of me which believes that Liberalism can still work if we have a coherent philosophy - or perhaps more accurately, a set of philosophies - to define what common good is. The problem is that when you get to that point, usually the end result is something that most Liberalists hate: Socialism.
To be fair, this is probably an issue of “philosophical blending”: some people who claim to be Liberal hold surprisingly Libertarian points of view, and the power balances leaning hard to the “right” makes basic Liberal positioning seem Socialist. Acts of wealth redistribution absolutely can be justified based on Liberal ideas, but in practice any such attempt today is quick to be labeled “Socialist” or “Communist”. So in the practicality of politics (specifically in the current context of US politics), it’s much wiser for one to join under the banner of Socialism than that of Liberalism.
Here in the US, we actually do have a very popular answer to what the common good is, one that was embraced by the framers of the constitution: Egalitarianism. The idea that all people are equal. Regardless of where you are in the political alignment chart, issues are often framed in the light of equality. The only problem with that is that people have a hard time agreeing with what “equal” means. Those on the far right seem to believe that they are equal to billionaires. The poor are also equal under their eyes, and the only reason why they are destitute is because they are too lazy or unprincipled to grasp at success. Naturally, the further left you go the less likely one is to agree with such suppositions. And thus we have the failure of Liberalism; the common good is so poorly defined that it can be used as a weapon against actual public welfare.
Personally, I believe that such philosophical failure to construct a coherent goal is the singular cause of government failure. But that is reaching on my end; to prove it would need a significant amount of historical research.
I'm a communist and I think you're being a little harsh on liberalism here. Or at least you're woefully misdiagnosing its issues by excluding the parts of liberalism you think are good from your definition of liberalism by calling them socialist. I realize it's a trend for leftists to call everyone who isn't as far left as them a liberal, but you're erring in the opposite direction here in a way that I don't think really reflects the pros and cons of liberalism super accurately.
Liberals have gone to great lengths to define what you are calling the common good, see e.g. Rawls’ Theory of Justice and the veil of ignorance / difference principle.
By no means am I trying to imply that common good is not a thing that Liberals have not tried to define. That is why I brought up the concept of egalitarianism. The issue is that there are far too many definitions and nobody really agrees on them, which means that in practice "common good" is difficult to implement and easy to dispel. There are countless people who think that the terrible things that Donald Trump is doing in the US is for the common good. If the common good is not common, what is the point?
I feel as if Liberalism when concerned with public welfare is more like Socialism for people who are kowtowing to the Libertarians/Feudalists/Anarchists/whoever. They are probably more concerned with personal property than they should. It's understandable: they were born into such a system, have had no choice but to invest into it, and are afraid of losing that investment. And while I'm not saying that personal property shouldn't exist, I do think it's something that should be far less important than the general welfare of society and the people who comprise it.
I've spent the majority of my life believing in Liberalism. But I've also spent the majority of my life seeing Liberalism failing. Not just in the US either; it's happening just about everywhere in the world.
This would also apply to every political theory, ever.
I'll agree that liberalism has been on the backfoot for a myriad of reasons but I also think people ascribe all the modern failings of our society to liberalism which is in my opinion either misguided or intentionally misleading.
I'm trying not to be deliberately obstructionist, but I find a few of your points a bit confusing. I'm not sure if you're glossing over some of the philosophical underpinnings of liberalism because that wasn't your point (if so, cool) or if you're simply not that familiar with them. As an example, you create a dichotomy between property rights and the general welfare of society, but liberal philosophers wrote exhaustively about why they think that personal liberty and property rights contribute to - or more accurately put, are the sine qua non of - the general welfare of society. So they would agree with you that the welfare of society is important, and for them it wasn't a trade-off with property rights, they thought property rights were how you get there.
And they have a lot of good points. As a relevant example to your broader point, classical liberals have argued that property rights are fundamental to social welfare because it is most often the poor and marginalized who are trampled by state power, and well-enshrined rights help them defend themselves.
I mention all this mostly for any other readers who may be less familiar with liberalism than you.
To expand on your point: Liberalism is rooted in a secular ideal, which in our democracies get reduced to materialism, as every other teleology is too nuanced or personal for election. The 'common good' then is constantly being revised in ways that comport to demands of economy. Since it's the sole anchor, revision of the economic paradigm is slow and very susceptible to bias, not just from power holders but the whole of society, as the models drift out-of-sync from the physical reality they claim to mirror. In terms I don't love: liberalism, in the long term, always trends toward reaction.
Aside: I'm not sure you're using personal property in a way that's very common? If you maintain the personal/private distinction, (left/center) anarchists are entirely compatible with socialist coalition, and if you conflate them, then a whole lot of socialists believe in many shades of personal property ownership.
It’s Anarchism that I’m using incorrectly. For some reason I had thought that the author of the article was using it in the colloquial way (I.e. “Mad Max”), so I was using in a simelar way. I don’t quite know why I thought that!
In regards to personal property I was basically trying to say that my personal beliefs don’t reach as far as communism. People should be able to own things. There is a strong natural tendency for people to claim things for themselves, and to fight it seems like a difficult path to follow.
I see! Just wanted to clarify, thanks.
There is a branch of libertarianism that tends to reject the notion of private property (and rejects state control of capital): libertarian socialism.
Calling this a "branch of libertarianism" is incorrect. "Libertarian socialism" as described in this wikipedia article is a branch of socialism that's libertarian in character under the broader more international definition of "libertarian" within political science. Left libertarianism, one of the articles listed as a potential disambiguation at the top of the article you linked, is closer to what you described. However, even referring to left-libertarianism as a "branch of libertarianism" in a conversation that is otherwise dominated by use of the term "libertarian" to describe the specifically right-wing political movement present in the US is also misleading, as left-libertarianism as seen elsewhere in the world is not a subset or branch of the right-libertarianism described by the word "libertarian" in a US political context.
I think it’s more incorrect to call the modern Libertarian Party (United States) libertarian than it is to call libertarian socialism libertarian. Depending on your perspective “modern” could mean after the MISES take over in 2022, after Gary Johnson’s 2016 Libertarian Party nomination for President, or after the Ed Clark & David Koch ticket in 1980:
The block quote above is to connect this response to the linked articles critique of Rothbard and to demonstrate that there's been significant intra-party disagreement for basically the entirety of the party's existence. Relatedly, the party split a few years ago, so now there’s a Libertarian Party and a Liberal Party USA.
But if we’re only talking about the Libertarian Party, none of that really matters because there is a Libertarian Socialist Caucus:
I've responded elsewhere to a comment, and the short of it is that I believe the author is correct.
The book, "Late Soviet Britain: Why Materialist Utopias Fail," (described by the author on the market-liberal London School of Economics website, as the author is on their faculty) explains why market-utopias fail to achieve their claimed outcomes as much as socialist-utopias, and in a surprisingly similar manner. It's a fascinating read, and points out some of the contradictions inherent to market approaches, when those approaches are unmoderated by government intervention. In particular, just as socialist (and/or claimed communist) economies require miraculous levels of human understanding, goodness, and information sharing, so too do libertarian market philosophies. In worlds with incomplete information and imperfect logic there are similar outcomes and non-optimal economic outcomes, despite both claiming otherwise.
Two paragraphs from the article stand out to me:
I need to reread it.
Ive had this discussion with my politically extreme friends so many times Ive given up.
They are all suggesting grossly simple answers to endlessly complex issues and I just do not know how anyone who doesn’t intimately know how the actual system that we have in place today works can suggest any kind of fix for it.
Looking at you, basic income supporters. Ugh.
Sometimes I feel like I’m the only one asking questions still. Everyone else is just tossing out dumb ideas.
I'll defend that readily. Basic income is a fantastic alternative to replace pretty much all cash-assistance programs. It eliminates vast swaths of beuracracy and treats people more like people.
Without a glance, I would fold in
Because every one of those programs would be rendered unneccesary by people being able to say with certainty that they'll have a consistent check coming every month.
However, in order for that to work, there need to be other systems in play:
However, in order for that to work, there need to be other systems in play
Our government was actually starving people because the democrats wouldn’t let them stop funding the tiny bit of healthcare assistance we actually have.
Basic income is a utopia idea. We’re so far away from this being an actual solution that its a waste of brain energy to ponder it and the one single candidate that ran on basic income was a total used car salesman of a candidate.
I get it. Free money for everyone cause everyone deserves their share of resources is an amazing reality to wish for. Humans just don’t work that way though. Best we can do is need based assistance which yes is a total waste of resources but so are political
Campaigns in general and like well most of the things we spend resources on.
I don't have the answer for this debate. However, one of the reasons Social Security in the US works so well as a benefit program, and is so hard to dismantle, is because it goes to such a high percentage of the population. It's not needs based and so there are fewer accusations of fraud than there are with SNAP or TANF or other programs with strict income limits on who can receive them. It also avoids the perverse incentives of needs based programs where people who try to move from benefits to low paid jobs can end up doing worse, making it rational for them to give up and stay on benefits.
In other words: Once UBI is in place, weakening or dismantling it will be a one-way ticket to being primaried.
The only reason Social Security damaging has gone so well is because they take care to insure everyone still on it doesn't get royally fucked and thus preserves their voting base.
Yes, the current state of the USA is fucked. Getting any sort of policy at all is impossible right now, let alone good policy. We're still fighting for $15 minimum wage when it should be closer to $25 now.
But that's not because UBI is not viable as a genuine possibility. It's "Social Security for All" the same way "Medicare for All" is. Yang gets at least a little credit for even getting it as a talking point during the zoo that was 'distract everyone away from Bernie 2020.' Come 2028 UBI would be a damn fine core policy rolled into a big platform ala Green New Deal. But gotta build support for the idea today.
Don't let the current nightmare distract from future good. Fascist regimes will fall, eventually. When the time comes, let's not pre-negotiate what is possible.
That attitude will not serve you to keep asking questions, you know.
I haven’t given up trying to reach people. Its just frustrating. Its been ten years and I havent changed anyones mind about anything at all.
I know there studies like “people do not change their minds ever” and I read those studies and I get it but I just have this hope that my friends are more intelligent than that and…. Its been ten years.
I feel that. We can't let bitterness be our guide, though. It'll chain us to a radiator and break our knees if we let it.
I still believe that people generally want to do good and want to make decisions that help others. We’re all just having trouble making our way through the onslaught of propaganda