Like all ideologies out there, there are those within libertarianism who see the, how should I put this… the modest reach of our ideas to the general public as bad marketing, or insufficient awareness. That people would like liberty if the right message reached then. This view is also shared by other ideologies. Every time the majority rejects some policy or other, someone complains about the message being bad or propaganda from the other side or whatever.
But is it really marketing? Do people support liberty – actual liberty — but don’t know it? I sincerely doubt it. Granted, the libertarian message has more limited reach than the others, less exposure in schools, media and such. Also granted, there are people in the movement who couldn’t sell water in the desert, let alone an idea which is mostly counter-intuitive to many. But will a better message make a huge amount of difference? Some *cough* sites out there seem to think so and do their darndest to make the message more appealing. Colour me skeptical.
Liberty, baby
Most people claim to like liberty, even support it. It does not sound good to say you are against it. Then … well, then that pesky little but comes in. And one can usually stop listening. People don’t like liberty as it is, they like a better class of liberty, improved to their standards, of course. They want moderate amounts of liberty, a little here, little there, liberty that is just right. Preferably organic, GMO-free, without anything unpleasant attached. They often like liberty for themselves, but not for others. They certainly don’t approve of unrestricted liberty or the consequences of being free. Consequences can be bad, you see, and we can’t have any of that.
What is liberty, some haughtily ask, on an empty stomach… Well, in my humble opinion, it is pretty much the same as on a full stomach, no more nor less, as the fullness of one’s innards does not define liberty. In fact, there are choices in life that lead you to sleeping rough and hungry. If you are not free to make those choices, you are not free. If you are free and are saved from those choices by government, it is at the expense of resources that come from someone else and their liberty. You are not free unless you are free to make bad choices and suffer the consequences.
Dying doing something you love
There are extreme sports out there that lead to many or even most practitioners to smash their skull on a big damn rock. But if you are free, you should be free to smash your head against a rock. Now, many of these sports are not banned. At least they died doing something they loved, am I right? But then, why ban other so-called dangerous activities? If you can smash your head on a rock you can choose to overdose on heroin. Well, this is a step too far for so-called pro-freedom folk out there, they cannot take it.
Liberty within reasonable limits, what more can you want? I think that fella Kim Jong Un is also all for liberty within very reasonable limits.
In the attempt to avoid saying I don’t like liberty, some people do the classic split between stuff they like and stuff they don’t. Separate certain aspects of life from others, in order to still support their preferred flavour of government intervention. The most common manifestation of this is to separate economic activity from other aspects of life, or better said financial outcomes.
Some who support let’s say gay marriage but government involvement in every single aspect of those married gay dudes lives, call themselves social libertarians or civil libertarians. Glorious, glorious modifiers. Social liberty, social justice etcetera.
The economic side is no less part of your life as the person you choose to have sex with, hell you usually spend more time doing the former rather than the latter. Almost everything a person does is an economic decision. The bread you buy the beer you drink is an economic decision. Procreation, sex, food… whatever
You cannot be free economically just because the taxes are small if you cannot spend your earnings as you wish – let’s say doing drugs and doing whomever you choose. As such, it matters not that Saudi Arabia has small taxes, for example.
But you cannot be free in your private life if the money you have earnt and the way you earn it are controlled by the state. If you cannot decide what to do for a living, how to use your money, how to raise children or plan retirement how can legal weed – but not heroin, never heroin – and gay marriage make you free. Or is it free birth control that makes you free? I forget…
You are free to do a job the government allows you to do – with the proper licencing and bureaucracy off course, we cannot have people working willy-nilly; you are then equally free to keep whatever amount of the money you earn the government sees fit to allow you to keep, and then are quite free to buy from a list of government allowed products at government inflated prices. Clean, nice, government approved liberty. Ain’t liberty grand?
So how many people would think about this and say hmmm that does not sound like liberty to me? I’m not gonna sugar coat it, I think the answer to that is very few. In the minds of most, the only alternative is pandemonium, chaos, anarchy. Do you want people to have Guns? and Drugs? Guns and Drugs at the same time? Insanity!
And after all, government is the same as society, and society is us, so government is us. As such, no one is really restricting our liberty; we just choose to limit ourselves. It is obvious, to the reasonable common sense individual, that bureaucrats are just doing what is best for us, and they know better anyway. We really need more government micromanagement, if anything. Oh not in this area I care about and anyway I want to be left alone, but everywhere else.
So, as a libertarian why keep arguing then? Well, it is human nature to argue and debate, especially with all this internet everywhere, it can be entertaining albeit aggravating, and maybe you make a little bit of headway. Maybe. Also, you get to say fuck off slaver a lot, which is always nice. But just don’t expect libertopia to kick in anytime soon.
Liberty need big tits, short shorts, and a seductive smile.
Tonight’s Google porn search selected
http://www.barstoolsports.com/boston/wake-up-with-kristina-mendonca/
model or…….
http://www.barstoolsports.com/boston/barstool-local-smokeshow-of-the-day-emily-from-fairfield/
…..college girl
College girl? Is she dancing to put herself through?
College girl. Final answer.
yeah really, with those boltons. jeez.
Model. Nice ass and no stupid duck-face pics.
I like the second hooker better. I didn’t see any college girls though
Do you want people to have Guns? and Drugs? Guns and Drugs at the same time?
Yes, actually I do.
Monster
OOH! OOH! I know the answer: no, and no.
Thats a bingo
The answer to the first question is in the article: Everyone wants SOME liberty. Therefore the answer to the second question is, in many cases, yes, they want more liberty than they have. And since anybody selling any amount of liberty is libertarian (maybe not a RADICAL libertarian, but someone promoting liberty), then the person to sell it is a libertarian.
So that’s the question. When you’re selling, are you a flop if you don’t sell the entire inventory to the first person you see? If you can sell just one item to just one person, you’ve accomplished something, if it wasn’t something they were about to buy anyway. The problem is when somebody was about to buy, and you actually dissuade them.
The correct answer is that most people want liberty for themselves, but they don’t like them other fuckers having it.
I have pretty much come to the conclusion this pretty effectively illustrates most people’s appreciation for liberty.
People want freedom until they realize it means they can’t have free shit at other people’s expense., and they have to take care of themselves.
They an also don’t want people doing our having things they don’t approve of.
That’s obviously the case for a few things, but really very few. If you look around at the vast panoply of things in the world that an individual could have or do, only a very tiny few are begrudged. Every minute of every day, everyone has stuff and does stuff, and could have other stuff or do other stuff, and nobody objects. it would be fatuous to think otherwise. Consider the myriad of choices WTF made in writing the comment you replied to. WTF could’ve written “persons” instead of “people”, “desire” instead of “want”, “liberty” instead of “freedom”…choices, choices, all over the damn place, that nobody objects to.
That’s why the quote in a recent thread of the official who said you can do only what the town specifically allows by ordinance is ridiculous, because the number of things one could possibly do is vastly greater than could be written. In fact, the town edicts prohibit only a tiny few things compared to all the things you could imagine being done.
Is there some point to this semantics drill?
This sounds like the start of some ‘Bo Cara’ bullshit line of goal-post jousting.
It’s just perspective. Things are far better than they seem to many observers here.
This is where fascism gets its power. A large number of people trust themselves to do the “right” thing, but think the other guy should be constrained.
They also want guardrails to prevent them from doing the wrong thing.
Some examples:
1) A relative whom I love very much is very upset by the whole transgender thing. She is convinced that if a biological male goes into a ladies room, rape is a high probability. She doesn’t have a problem with men cleaning women’s bathrooms (although anyone can dress as a cleaner and go in). After listening to her fret on several occasions it basically became clear that the fears of rape were a rationalization. What bothered her was the idea of people going into the wrong bathroom full-stop. She would support laws regulating the practice.
2) A high school classmate is adamant that the state should dictate how private owners of natural resources manage them. He worries that if owners of forests are left to their own devices, they will destroy the forests because of idiocy and selfishness.
3) Similarly, a friend is an adamant supporter of the the orwellian CFPB. She is very worried that if they don’t dictate what securities financial advisers are allowed to offer to her, she – not knowing anything about finance – would be at the mercy of predators. The state tells her what is OK and wholesome and then if she doesn’t pick the best option, she will still be picking something that’s pretty good.
4) Another relative and I got into a huge argument about school choice. Without the government controlling and regulating school curricula, some schools would teach the wrong things! And sure, the state could make a mistake, but if everyone is forced to go to the same school, and the state is run democratically, the mistakes will be identified and eliminated more quickly!!!!
The state provides the guardrails that permit them to be less vigilant in what they purchase and how they organize their lives.
Tell your HS friend he can go fuck himself. My family has had timberland for 5 generations and I have spent a great deal of my life managing it. It will be in the family another 5 generations. We have planted millions of trees, harvested millions of board feet of lumber. I make sure there is a good mix of species and maintain stands near water to prevent erosion. We do a much better job than the state who focus hard on monoculture and whose contractors cut every stick in sight. I dont think your friend understands the industry or the incentives involved and he should keep his fucking hands off of my property.
You’ve come to the wrong conclusion, actually a silly one. Nobody in the world is like that except for a few cases in which people agonize over a choice, because of fear of regret over having made the wrong choice. Yeah, life gets that way sometimes at least for some people. But those are the minority of circumstances. In the great majority of cases, people don’t resent the possibility of choice.
I beg to differ. See the anti-school choice movement. It’s large and powerful and has a lot of adherents.
That movement is a minuscule fraction of the billions of people in the world. You consider them a big deal only because they draw your attention. And consider where they’re going: no place, practically. What was school choice like in the USA 50 yrs. ago compared to today? How about 25 years ago? It keeps increasing!
That movement is a minuscule fraction of the billions of people in the world.
For being so few they sure do seem to wield a lot of power.
Right now, if I do not send my son to a government approved (not necessarily owned) school or teach him a government approved curriculum in my home, I will go to jail.
But was that any less true in the same place in the past 25 or 50 years? Meanwhile you have many more ways of satisfying the requirements than you used to. Home schooling was illegal in most states when I was a child; now it’s legal everywhere. Some states had laws licensing private school teachers that they no longer have. And look at how many places now have public school choice, where previously if you wanted to use a government school, you had no choice of which one. It’s immensely freer than it used to be.
The billions of people in the world do not share a single polity, so they’re kind of irrelevant to political discussions.
So? There are similar things of concern in all their polities, just emphasis on different things.
Do you want people to have Guns? and Drugs? Guns and Drugs at the same time?
If I’m not free to shoot my gun while whirling blindfolded and drunk and high on a merry-go-round in a park filled with children, then goddammit, I’m not really free.
[insert gratuitous “FUCK OFF, TULPA”]
OT : People in one of the recent threads were talking about “the age where boys develop empathy,” I found this Atlantic article on Psychopathic children to be pretty darn interesting.
Sigh, there’s a first time for everything. Forgot to hit “submit” on the link markup.
This is some good reading!
“When she was about 20 months old, living with foster parents in Texas, she clashed with a boy in day care. The caretaker soothed them both; problem solved. Later that day Samantha, who was already potty trained, walked over to where the boy was playing, pulled down her pants, and peed on him. “She knew exactly what she was doing,” Jen says. “There was an ability to wait until an opportune moment to exact her revenge on someone.”
“I don’t know what you call this emotion, but it’s what people look like just before you stab them.”
James H. Fallon is a world renowned neuroscientist who, upon doing some research on himself, discovered that he has the genetic and neurological correlates for pyschopathy.
Of course, he is a libertarian.
correlates for pyschopathy. — Of course, he is a libertarian.
Is there a discernible difference?
I think they call you a libertarian until you get laid.
there are people in the movement who couldn’t sell water in the desert
*looks around furtively, kicks pebble*
Water in the desert is a right
So is beer tbh
I work in an office of rabid Proggies/Team Blue partisans. Liberty is bad because people make dumb decisions. Therefore, boot on the face is good to keep them from making those bad decisions.
Right thinking people.will make your decisions for you
Nice article. I’ve come to the conclusion that most people, or at least a sizeable percentage, just don’t want liberty. I still can’t fathom why any sane person would voluntary join an HOA and introduce yet another layer of authoritarian bureaucracy in their life but statists gotta statist I guess.
My wife and I gave up trying to change the bureaucratic hellhole we lived in and took our taxpaying asses out to the country where we can live like kings for a fraction of the money it takes to grind out a meager city existence and, more importantly, be pretty much as free as possible in this country short of going to the Alaskan wilderness. I found that out here people are more like minded in terms of minding your own business and letting you live your life. Not that’s it’s perfect but it’s night and day better. There’s really nothing I’d like to do that I can’t.
There’s really nothing I’d like to do that I can’t
To clarify, this in terms of local government. My wife signed on board for emus but is still balking on the spider monkeys to ride them drunk while packing six shooters.
I can’t see my closest neighbor’s house from mine. I lived in town (small town) for a few years when I was in my early twenties and hated it. I can’t imagine living in an actual city. The laws are the same where I live now as they are in town, but I am much much more free out here. I wouldn’t trade that for anything.
I still can’t fathom why any sane person would voluntary join an HOA
Some of us have no interest living in a rural area.
Some of us have no interest living in a rural area.
All urban areas are mandated HOA zones?
It’s not always practical to insist on living in a stand-alone building in a large city. And once you share some of the walls with other people, an organization of the owners becomes useful.
Most new construction is.
My old house in Louisville wasn’t in an HOA because while my house was relatively new (late 90s) the neighborhood wasnt. The oldest houses on my street were 80+ years old, the newest were younger than mine and we had some from every age in between.
All around us was new construction (last 30 years) with mandated HOAs.
Both houses I have had in BG have been in new neighborhoods with HOAs. I don’t like having to be in one, but I like my neighborhood.
It seems to be the trend. We have one and it’s never been a problem. If you get to know your nighbors and work to – you know – cooperate, it doesn’t have to be shit-fest.
I live in an HOA, but its a small one (around a dozen actual members, could get to 18). I find that a small group like this has a pretty instinctual understanding that what goes around will come around real fast-like. Haven’t had any trouble with it, and don’t expect any.
Having a no-HOA policy can really restrict your options in some parts of the country, almost like saying “I won’t live anywhere that unless it isn’t incorporated into a municipality.
“Few men desire liberty. Most men wish only for a just master.”
…Gaius Sallustius Crispus
Your point has been recognized for a long time.
This site’s tolerable, but…what’s the point? It’s much in the same vein as BellGab.com (formerly GeorgeNoorySucks.com), a Web board founded to discuss or complain about a radio show that lots of listeners used to like but didn’t like any more. It seems the commenters here are even less interested in commenting on the blog subjects than they are at HyR. Everything descends to either chit-chat or meta-meta-bloggery (I erased one meta, it’s not that bad).
20+ years ago Libernet-d (discussion via e-mail list) was interesting, but it seems they ran out of interesting material to discuss. The blog-and-comment format that’s been developed since churns the topics artificially — fine when there’s a news hook, but it’s obvious in many cases that there really isn’t one, so a hook is attempted to be manufactured.
Then don’t visit this site or participate in its discussion fora.
De gustibus… and all that jazz.
I see very little in the way of complaining about the other site here. As long as folks are having a good time what does it matter. There are plenty of sites out there if you don’t looked this one. I think once you’ve opined on the issues of the day over and over after a while you just don’t want to type it all out again. I think that’s why the memes and cliches with there way in. Most people here probably don’t need to hear my thoughts on topic because that already know them. The names change but the statism is repetitive.
I hope whoever designs the self driving car algorithms are different then those who design autocorrect programs.
BAMN – BY ANY MEMES NECESSARY
SEIZE THE MEMES OF PRODUCTION
KEKISTAN FOREVER FREE
Get busy, write something interesting. This is a user contribution site. The more that is contributed, the better. That’s the point. I like the place.
What’s the point of you asking what’s the point of this site?
Trying to gauge where users want to go with it. What attracted them to begin with, and what would they be enthusiastic about now that they’re here?
If you want individual responses, I can’t even remember why I went to Reason to begin with (about 4 years ago), but I enjoyed the articles and the comments. I noticed, over the past 18 months-ish, I enjoyed the commenters greatly, but not so many articles. It got to the point where I was skipping right to the comments without even a glance at the FA. Then, when the commenters decided to decamp, I learned where they went, which was here.
I think they’re doing a great job with the content as it is, and I’m interested to see where it goes. Hopefully some video content is coming down the road. I can’t wait to get my hands on some Glib swag.
Yep. I was late to the other site but saw a marked downturn in the editorial direction since Amerikkka happened. I used to visit and comment over at Slate for years but now I just come here instead. Better links and less Trump-Rapture-rousness.
What attracted me was that these people and their comments were the things that had kept me going to Reason even as it slid ever more towards the DC liberaltarian dream. If I didn’t have to subject myself to Shikha’s idiocy and ENB’s lauding of the noble goals of social justice to read the commentary, so much the better.
Yes, there’s a lot of idle chatter and throwaway jokes. There are also a lot of thought-provoking comments and interesting ideas that I haven’t read elsewhere.
I can get a more lively or interesting conversation or points about libertarianism here than I can from the 90% of clickbait articles that Reason produces nowadays. Hell, some of the writers can’t even properly articulate libertarian philosophy.
“Hell, some of the writers can’t even properly articulate libertarian philosophy.”
There is a Reason for that.
*ducks*
Also, just to compare and contrast, read Heroic Mulatto’s article about academic and educational censorship here and compare it to any of the dozens of articles Soave has written on the subject.
One articulates a libertarian ideal while contextualizing the problems with freedom of speech and academia historically and provides a solid breakdown of the overall conflict. The other does not.
To be fair, a drooling microcephalic Zika baby could out-write Robby.
Yes but that also speaks to the quality of the magazine when they continue to employ said Zika baby.
I blame KMW; she is a mother.
I think we covered that ad nauseum the first two weeks of the site.
I need to see the archives, I guess. I glanced when the announcement was first made, but that was all until recently.
I’m here for the same reasons as the others are giving. But it’s still somehow not satisfying.
I’m just here for the navel-gazing.
And the chicks.
Trying to gauge where users want to go with it.
I’m sure we all have different ideas about that. Just look at the articles – some are scholarly, some are goofy, some are more think pieces. I like the mix, myself.
What attracted them to begin with, and what would they be enthusiastic about now that they’re here?
To begin with, I came here because my commenter community was here, and I like that community. This is actually the realization of a suggestion I made to Reason – let the commenters write some articles. What would keep my enthusiasm up? More of the same, frankly. And some swag.
See, this is the problem with the blog-and-comment format: its asymmetry. On Libernet-d, anybody could write an article, start any thread, and there was no pressure pushing any thread off stage by the new stuff coming. It didn’t come on any schedule, just as people wrote it. Similarly in other forums, as on Usenet, BBSs, and so on, but they weren’t as good, content-wise.
I used to read all different blogs and actually read the content and took it all serious.
Then I started reading Reason comments and they were a lot more fun, frankly more like an “image board” style good times shitposting community than a group of arch-serious “libertarian” bloviators. There was a strong presence of (mostly a handful of) dedicated trolls, but there were a lot more people ignoring them or counter-shitposting funny stuff. There were always technical difficulties and literal spam comments, but it was tolerable for the large volumes of lulz.
I didn’t really think the qualitative nature of the stories was that important until the comments started being more about the deficiencies in the content than any interesting riffing off it. Around the same time, the technical difficulties got worse and the Reason staff arguably went much harder on Trump than Clinton… and so the revolt/exodus happened.
I tried it out over here and like the content a lot more (some of the historical stuff has been REALLY interesting!) and the comments have even more of the funny and the trolls are kept at bay. I especially like that its group nature illustrates the very libertarian principle of voluntary co-operation towards a shared goal.
The only things I personally find missing are :
1) comment upvotes/downvotes and a sort-by votes
There’s a lot of times where I’d like to just say “me too” but I don’t have anything else to add. I know I like getting comments upvoted too, it’s a nice way to participate without having to comment.
2) Better support for inline images in comments. Obviously with a CSS option that allows auto-hiding by default for people who are at work and prefer to have lower risk of meme-based misunderstandings there.
As a final note, I once had a long plane flight and so I loaded a bunch of Reason comment threads up on my computer and spent a few hours reading them. I can’t imagine doing that with the comments on pretty much any other site.
3) better CSS for the threading. The current stylesheet has super wide margins and ends up reading “long” and not very-visually indicating threads. It’s ok on mobile, I guess, a little awkward but better than reason by far?
5) The plugin to keep track of unread messages is kind of passable, but whenever I make a post, the page will refresh and all of the 200 comments I haven’t read yet will show up as read. I guess it can’t be helped but it makes it hard to hold a conversation, or make more shitposts.
there were a lot more people ignoring them or counter-shitposting funny stuff.
Sockpuppeting as one of the trolls (Tony especially) was always fun, in the pre-registration days. They would try to do it back, but weren’t very good at it.
Glibertarians had a lot more comments per article last I checked, a week ago. That changed significantly? And people were barely talking about Reason before; now they are?
It seems in the case of this article, my timing was just bad. I seem to have jumped on early, when there were only 5 comments; others were being written as I was writing mine. It seemed like a great article to discuss, yet hardly anybody was discussing it. Most of the comments were perfunctory, brief, boring, and off-topic.
Maybe it needed me. Or maybe if I’d just waited a few minutes, it would’ve been better.
Can we get a cat butt over here?
And I also thank Glibertarians for introducing “cat-butt” into the parlance.
Cool story, Rob.
I would argue that this claim is only true if you delimit it to the West, and even then you could quibble as to its truth value. I keep thinking back to an episode related by my homeboy V.S. Naipaul in his travelogue Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey, where he discusses the concept of personal freedom and liberty with a Malay Muslim. The Malay argues against it using the metaphor of a goat. If a goat is not contained in a pen or tied to a stake, he argued, it will wander off to its inevitable death at the hands of a cruel Mother Nature.
For many people, both in the West and outside, liberty is frightening; it represents a clear existential threat. These people seek totalitarian ideologies, in their most literal form, be it Islamic Theocracy, Communism, Fascism, etc., as they remove the fear of choice. If you follow its prescriptions to the letter, you will always make the correct choice. The risk involved in personal freedom, entrepreneurship, experimentation, capitalism, the competition of ideas in the intellectual marketplace…all of these come with the chance to be wrong, to fail.
They actively seek and call for their own enslavement, for they deem it rational based on their own twisted risk/reward evaluation. And I believe this to be so because 99 percent of humanity hasn’t been given the intellectual tools to compensate for their own cognitive biases, such as anchoring, mental accounting, reference dependence and loss aversion, etc.. Now, I’m not saying that a hyper-rational, Yudkowskyian übermensch would necessarily be a libertarian, but it must be recognized that due to evolutionary pressures, our brains have been, in a sense, hard-wired against liberty.
I admit i was refering mostly to europe and i assume the US
But not Canada, right? We have to have some standards.
But sometimes people from those kinds of countries have been known to emigrate to a free country and do better than many of the “natives.”
Indeed.
I remember that people leaving europe to immigrate to the US in the 1800’s were asked why they were doing it. The vast majority of people answered the same way – some version of “They dont have kings in America.”
America is different from the rest of the world in a very real way.
My maternal great-grandmother left Poland to escape an arranged marriage to a schmuck.
So there’s that.
My family came here because the English burned them out of Ireland.
America is a collection of non-conformists who have direct experience with tyranny and found it intolerable. At least we used to be.
My catholic ancestors came to America in the 1880s from Germany/Poland to escape state sponsored oppression.
Dutch farm hands, early 1900ish, who wanted a better life. And, based on my grandmother’s memoirs, they succeeded.
America
iswas different from the rest of the world in a very real way.We are living through the painful process of regression to the mean.
I hate when comments like that are spot fucking on. It’s like I always say, at least I get to die one day.
Sadly you may be right.
Mines a bit different. In 1853 an arbitrary line was drawn across a town in northern Mexico due to a railroad’s desire to build a line in the southwest. Apparently, building the railroad further north would be more expensive due to the terrain.
Thankfully, somebody I am related to happened to reside on the north side of that town (Nogales).
This brings up an important question…
Does the algebra of coming to America to get away from something, vice coming for something actively affect the outcome and assimilation of those émigrés?
Like Californians infecting local politics in Montana?
I’ve talked to some people who think being “safe” is human right, and will use any club they can get their hands on to beat someone who might make them “unsafe”
It’s interesting to ponder what is the threshold threat level between NAP and do unto others before they do unto you.
Ask a cop?
Sadly, I think HM is completely right. Freedom, real actual freedom, is frightening to most people. What if someone else takes drugs and then kills me in some high rage? What if the guy across the street buys a MG and shoots into my home in a state of drunkenness? What if, what if, what if? You give people rules and boundaries, they feel more comfortable. Sure, some will complain that the boundaries are a little too restrictive because it stops them from doing something they want to do. But they’d hate it even more if those boundaries were gone. What’s to save them from their own or someone else’s idiocy? Personal responsibility is too hard. Much easier to continue living like a child.
That comment reminds me of an experiment I heard about once.
They had this playground space that had no fence, and set schoolkids free to play in it. And they more or less stayed in one little area. Later on (a week? a month? don’t remember), a fence was installed and the kids thereafter played all over the playground.
Makes sense, doesn’t it? Where do you want to play? Where other kids are. How do you know where other kids are or will be? If there’s a fence, you know they’ll be inside the fence. If there’s no fence, the only thing you can do is look for the other kids and stay close to them.
Most people don’t like to be told what to do. At that very shallow level, they think they want to be free.
But, they also want the State to pave their roads, pay for their healthcare, give them an allowance when they are old, etc… They get perplexed if I point out that all these things involve curtailing freedom – and literally sending armed teams of Treasury Agents to arrest those who refuse to comply.
Somehow it has gotten into people’s heads that it’s a great thing to make the Federal Government into a giant charity – and their won’t be terrible repercussions.
HM, I’d very much like to see you write an article on this. An expanded treatment would be well worth reading.
There’s a large percentage of the population that wants freedom without consequences, and/or freedom for themselves, but not for others. Because others wouldn’t use it properly, while you would of course. Except for the whole ‘wanting no consequences’ thing too.
There’s also a percentage of the population that simply like being told what to do, how to function. I think Aristotle was entirely right about the concept of Natural Slaves, he was just too broad and too specific at the same time.
Aristotle of Gor?
Outlaw of Gor?
Is Jack Palance the most notable actor to appear in more than one MST movie, or is it Peter Graves? You make the call!
People want order and the illusion that they control it.
No doubt. Government order is an illusion. It’s basically throwing money down the toilet.
i don’t know about that. I mean, look at the previous story, of the married-to-powerful-people sexting guy getting clemency, and the slightly-less-connected govt-servant-guy getting 20 years (to life)
that’s not an illusion. its just not a one-size-fits-all order.
what i mean by ‘order’ is the belief that someone, somewhere, is in charge of this shit and is has some rules to make things work.
Its sort of like how you go to school at age 3-4 and you’re told when to sit and when to stand and when to shit, and the teacher makes the rules. You stay in that system until you’re 22 (assuming college), and then go to a job where the same structure is replicated. And the vision of government is just an extension of that imposed order.
Ugh. I had to escort a friend’s daughter to uh…some kind of government health clinic for a baby check up or something. I was horrified. The place had the definite feel of a prison. There were lines on the floor forbidding people from standing too close to the receptionist, signs telling people where to sit, not to eat, no talking etc etc. That is the first thing I thought…they start this shit in school. It is about making people into sheep…cattle. It is fucking disgusting.
That place creeped me the fuck out. I will never go back. If I ever find myself in need of their service I think I will crawl off into a ditch and die first.
Imagine John Dewey’s boot stamping on a human face – forever.
I guess what I’m getting at is that having cops doesn’t make you safe, having health inspectors doesn’t mean the restaurant kitchen is clean, child protective services doesn’t protect children etc etc. It’s all an illusion that most people buy. Government is wonderful because they protect me. Not only is that an illusion, it’s a dangerous one.
“No, I want freedom and liberty. They’re both good, I need the freedom to pursue my dreams, and the liberty to do it. That means that I need others to support my freedom by paying my way, I know if I had the money, I’d support them following their dreams.”
“Of course I should be free to do what I want, but we need to protect some people from themselves, we can’t count on them to make the right decisions.”
/Average person
Practically everybody TO SOME EXTENT. But since we’re looking from an extreme perspective, we exaggerate the degree to which we see the anti-liberty in other persons. Everybody wants things to be somewhere on the spectrum. I think there’s a lot of potential, pretty much everywhere in the world, to move things to at least some degree towards more freedom than people there have right now, just by taking advantage of people’s libertarian tendencies while getting them to sublimate their authoritarian ones to some degree, even if only a slight degree.
Things change. Why do they change? Some of it is beyond human control. However, much of it is a product of human intention. And those intentions can lead in any direction, any time, anywhere.
Specifics, son. Cough ’em up.
Not hard. Practically everybody wants their taxes cut. So satisfy ’em. Cut any tax you can think of, and make more exceptions/loopholes in the remainder.
A lot of the things that bother people, it’s the sight of it that rankles. Street hookers, for example. So get officials to stop UNDERCOVER enforcement operations. The hookers then go behind closed doors, nobody sees them any more, people are happy. Never acknowledge the lack of enforcement against discreet operations, just don’t do it. Pretend everything’s as it was before. The mayor gets re-elected. Stealth liberty. Some investigative reporter digs out PROSTITUTION IN YOUR OWN TOWN!, there are ways to “fix” that reporter, not least being to destroy hir credibility.
The problem is that they don’t want spending cuts to go with those tax cuts. So instead of taxes, we get debt, which devalues the money that everyone uses. That leads to people demanding more government solutions. And exceptions/loopholes in the tax code build resentment, which leads to the same place.
I don’t know what your definition of liberty is, but mine includes freedom of the press and a concomitant understanding that the government will not use its legitimate powers to undermine that freedom through subterfuge.
Debt doesn’t devalue money. Only money devalues money.
Examptions & loopholes in the tax code build resentment? Good! More reason to cut and/or resist taxes!
You can have freedom of the press, but that doesn’t mean zero consequences! And I’m not against subterfuge if it’s pro-liberty. If they’re the aggressors, they got some “subterfuge” coming! Plus, subterfuge can be fun.
Debt doesn’t devalue money.
In fractional reserve banking, new debt IS new money.
Government debt does.
It increases M3+ by definition.
It increases M0 in practice since the Federal Reserve creates money to pay for debt service.
Government takes on debt to pay for government programs. Those programs are, generally, unproductive.
More money, less productivity = inflation.
Please provide an example when this has actually happened in American politics.
If your goal is to stifle freedom of the press, then it doesn’t much matter what your intentions are, because you’re stifling freedom of the press.
With fractional reserve banking, debt increases “money” (credit or its appearance) only when it’s new. If all the money’s already on deposit, the only way you can increase it is by decreasing the reserve ratio.
Borrowing doesn’t devalue money, only new issue does. Borrowing only takes money from one place or purpose and puts it to another. It doesn’t increase its supply. The credit on one ledger is the debit on another, and vice versa. If borrowing increased the money supply, then two people lending each other money would do so. But it doesn’t, because to get the bond in one’s hand, one must lend that amount to the other.
Maybe you just picked bad examples, but your basic premise seems to be to achieve liberty in underhanded ways. That may be a successful short-term strategy but the history of democracy indicates that it is not a successful long-term strategy and is if anything counterproductive. People eventually “wake up”, start paying attention to what’s going on, and feel cheated and unrepresented. Underhanded libertarianism is no different from underhanded socialism or underhanded cultural revolution; it is one populist revolt away from being reversed entirely and replaced with something worse.
Everything is only a populist, or anti-populist, shout away. I don’t want to play fair, I want to subvert the game. Because why should there even be a game? But as long as there is one that you can’t opt out of, play dirty, it’s more fun and effective. That includes bribery, whispering campaigns, Swiss bank accounts — just about everything that’s on a special event card in Illuminati classic.
There has been “a game” as long as there have been at least two human beings.
Have you ever heard the expression “hoist by his own petard?”
I hope whoever designs the self driving car algorithms are different then those who design autocorrect programs.
Where’s your sense of adventure, you big sissy?
Good article.
Maybe the answer is to have people have to enforce their own preferred laws. I don’t know how you would go about implementing it, but I think if people were to have to go up to someone and point a gun at them and say “I’m with the government. We want to make you pay more. Now hand it over.” (left) or go into someone’s home and explain to them that they need to take little Johnny and stick him in a rape cage because he was a druggie (right), they might have a little more reticence about doing so. With government, they get to do it anonymously. They get the illusion that those people they’re ruining or bullying aren’t really being bullied or coerced. They get to treat their authoritarianism as effecting statistics, rather than people. Perhaps having to stare at the flesh and blood of their interventions might give them a different take.
Same people are surprised when it turns out that the cops and federal agents they hired to do the bullying – are actually psychopathic bullies.
Interesting discussion, but a lot of either/or thinking.
Dare I suggest that there’s a continuum? You have Kim Jong Un on one end and the Libertarian Party platform on the other end…and (at least in this country) you have people in between who are closer to the LP platform than to the North Korean ideal.
Yet they make exceptions which a libertarian would not make.
So best to but them in the same basket of deplorables with the North Korean leadership, eh?
I’ve raised the question before as to what is the inviolable core of libertarianism; the line in which once you cross, you are no longer in the libertarian section of the continuum.
I’ll hold off on my thoughts, as I’m interested in what others have to say first.
Thicc or thin libertarianism?
Believe it or not, I like my libertarianism pretty thin.
oh gawd, not another deep dish or thin crust pizza discussion.
I know, but the pun presented itself and I had to m make it. I remember some of your debates on thick vs thin with Nicole.
Terrible wordplay aside, the distinction does matter. If you judge libertarianism solely as a political ideology based on the NAP the line is much further out than it would be for thick libertarians. I’m not sure where the line is in either case, but I generator prefer a big tent.
I think it’s the last part of my response to The Fusionist. It’s when you find yourself supporting a law because fuck them.
Who owns you? The line is pretty simple and clear.
Advocating for violating other people’s self-ownership puts one firmly on the wrong side of the line.
This. The sovereignty of the individual is a pretty hard and fast rule, in my mind.
“inviolable core of libertarianism”
Freedom with responsibility. A core belief that you and everyone else has the right to do as you please and the obligation to deal with the consequences.
I would say it’s once you push for any positive right, at that point you’ve decided the collective is more important then at least one individual.
Even if it is a positive right that the government has to fulfill? Such as a speedy trial, a jury trial, or habeas corpus? All of those but positive burdens on the government, but I’m fine with someone calling themself a libertarian and for those.
“In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right…to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor.” – Sixth Amendment
I don’t think that burdens imposed on government should be considered positive rights. Agents of the government are in their positions willfully. They know what the obligations are when they enter the government and willingly took on those obligations.
The rest of us, not so much.
To a point, I can see your argument. But what about court appointed lawyers, our jury trials? Those require non government employees, and some of them will not be willing. Are those still OK, or should we go without? Everybody already hates jury duty anyway.
That’s a little trickier. When is government coercion justified? Perhaps when the coercion is minimal and the coercion is a net benefit to liberty.
In my Libertarian paradise, Lawyers, court appointed or not, would be largely unnecessary because there would be so few laws that any layman would be able to understand and abide by them.
That’s close to my definition, the belief that the individual is the fundamental unit of a society. Not family, not tribe or clan, not the nation – the individual.
as we’ve discussed before, i think the problem with this sort of approach is that it assumes people’s actions and beliefs are consistent with abstract ideas.
in my experience, they’re not.
people will *say* they believe that there may be hard-lines on X or Y issue. but they do so to convince themselves they’re part of a team. when put into practice, those ideas compromise with reality.
Who is the “more” libertarian? the one who admits they don’t really know what they believe, but then acts in ways that respect basic liberty of all…. or the one who regularly professes devotion to abstract principles, but finds a millions excuses for them whenever confronted with problems?
i don’t really think the question of who “is” or “isn’t” libertarian matters. What matters more is that people think about these issues and understand them. If people engage with the ideas and reflect on them a lot, it changes their attitude and behavior in increments. there is no ‘final’ perfection where one’s beliefs and actions are in perfect harmony. its an endless process of testing and revision and reconsideration.
That’s basically my point. What is the source of libertarian behavior? If you want to frame it as descriptive vs. prescriptive, then sure. I will, however, argue that one would not and can not act in ways that respect basic liberties without a belief, acknowledged or unacknowledged, deep down inside, that the individual is the basic unit of society.
hm. Maybe, maybe not. I’m not sure people all think the same way.
i am reminded of this.
Most people’s rationales move between stages depending on how “personal” the issue is. I think your idea where ‘people acknowledge the primacy of the individual’ isn’t an either/or thing. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes it rains.
I agree that people aren’t rational in their decision making due to cognitive biases.
So perhaps the answer lies in defining libertarianism as a “verb/adverb” and not a “noun/adjective”. We can say a person is acting in a libertarian manner when they engage in a specific behavior, regardless of the motivations behind taking that action. Kind of like the pre-19th century conception of homosexuality. It was commonly thought that people could engage in homosexual acts, but homosexuality, per se, as an abstract fundamental character trait that defined a person wasn’t a thing.
I don’t think that’s exactly what i was suggesting. tho its good enough. the kohlbergian model is more about how the nature and constraints of individual moral reasoning evolve (or not)
people can be perfectly rational according to their ‘stage’; its not bias so much as structural limitation on how people think. Maybe, unlike bias, its not something you can really ‘correct’ for, but need to simply acknowledge.
ps.
I think your idea of the “more like a verb” makes a lot of sense to me and the way i think about ‘how libertarianism actually works’
i don’t think you “are” a libertarian; there is no existential beingness of ‘having the right ideas’. There’s only actions and arguments you can make which try and advance liberty. Doing those things is libertarian.
“I will, however, argue that one would not and can not act in ways that respect basic liberties without a belief, acknowledged or unacknowledged, deep down inside, that the individual is the basic unit of society.”
I keep thinking about the Democratic convention 2012. “We all belong to the government”
That is a clear indication that the democrat party today is a very real danger to liberty. The problem is rooted in the very core of the party. It couldn’t be plainer. Ok, there were Obama’s constant attacks on individualism and inalienable rights. Oh, and Clinton’s promises to crush the bill of rights.
People’s actions and beliefs are not consistent with ABSTRACT ideas, but they do go by SOME ideas. People do think. They respond to external as well as internal conditions, and what makes them so different from other living things is that they think about the future and anticipate consequences. Not only that, but sometimes they even think about what other people think! People love (not a typo) in ways that probably few other living things do, because of this.
If an (non-human) animal is sexually attracted to other animals, is that animal a furry?
*speaking of “ideological rigidity implemented in the real world”
i’m reminded of my athiest friend who makes of point of saying, “No thank you” when you say, “God bless you” (if he sneezes)
I really don’t think he’s “more” atheist than me because of this. In fact i think he’s possibly less so because his concept is more about merely making ostentatious gestures of rejection of any sign of religion. For him his doctrinaire posturing is more of a fashion statement than mature intellectual engagement.
I am also reminded of libertymike, who had a habit of calling anyone with govt jobs “slaves”? something like that. I think HM once said, “he’s not wrong”. and perhaps he’s not. but that sort of posturing, where one waves ‘ideas’ around in order to advertise your own conceptual purity? seems to me nothing but a vehicle for stroking one’s own ego, and otherwise absolutely useless as far as promoting libertarian ideas, or advancing liberty. yadda yadda
seems to me nothing but a vehicle for stroking one’s own ego, and otherwise absolutely useless as far as promoting libertarian ideas, or advancing liberty.
See also the people (again a libertymike example, but it’s not uncommon in libertarians) who say the United States is a fascist or national socialist country. Which to people outside of libertarianism only either discredits you or normalizes those concepts.
Sometimes it’s necessary to call a spade a spade. It could be bong hit wankery, or, it could be intended, like a Zen koan, to shock one out of one’s unexamined sensibilities. You should judge that case by case.
Pretty funny. I am also an atheist, and someone telling me “God bless you” is about as meaningful as them saying “Furniture bless you” or “Antwerp bless you”.
Declining God’s blessing is quasi-acknowledgement of his existence, no?
Can’t you just settle for a simple “gesundheit”?
Oh, I’m fine with whatever you care to say after I sneeze; it’s Gilmore’s buddy with the problem, not me.
I have been around those kinds of atheists before. It is annoying as hell. I annoy them back with “Ya’ know, it sounds more like you are pushing god away than simply not believing he exists. I think you just admitted that you believe he exists but you reject him.”
Its usually good for at least one curse word.
It’s like on OKCupid for religion…
“Atheism, and laughing about it”
vs:
“Atheism, and very serious about it”
Avoid the latter.
“the line in which once you cross, you are no longer in the libertarian section of the continuum.”
I think in terms of electoral politics, it’s about moving the Overton Window in a liberty direction. People vote for the things they agree with, and when you deliver on those and improve their lives, they are willing to listen to the next idea. You’re not gonna win an election running on heroin vending machines and the smashing of Social Security. But you might win one on marijuana federalism and allowing people, if they choose, to switch to “Social Security Silver” where they pay half the taxes in return for forgoing half the benefits, and then adding an opt out provision entirely for workers if they choose.
I expect a libertarian candidate to be uncompromising on free speech, because free speech is a keystone of liberty, and also enormously popular across the American political spectrum. I expect a libertarian candidate to be an A+ rated NRA man, because the 2nd Amendment is both vital to liberty and as popular as it as ever been in America. It’s a winner both morally and politically.
My ideal libertarian candidate is a combat veteran (a real one, not the coterie of JAG and intelligence pukes who spent a couple tours in Qatar or Kuwait. I want an O-4, retired, with a CIB and a Purple Heart) from the late unpleasantness. This is a guy no chickenhawk Republican on a debate stage can impugn with the peacenik slur.
He should have then been a successful entrepreneur or small businessman taking over a family enterprise, someone who can speak to the realities of the tax and regulatory environment’s incredibly destructive nature without being smeared with the “BIG KKKORPORTATIONS KOCHTOPUS!!!”. He needs to be a guy who knows economics, knows business, and knows what it’s like to feel the twin squeezes of the market and the government, and can articulate that to the voters.
A godly man, of impeccable moral character and absolutely squeaky clean. Someone that cannot be smeared as anti-family or some kind of licentious atheist because he wants the War on Drugs scaled back. Someone the Deep State can’t leverage with youthful indiscretions.
Someone who can sell libertarianism to the American Public by being the most serious guy in the room, but who also knows how to strike the chord of righteous anger and who understands just how fundamentally anti establishment the mood of the nation is and how to tap into that. He also needs to have that fire in the belly and be willing to do the vulgar showmanship of politics.
I don’t think anyone here is saying its not a continuum. The problem is that, once you start making exceptions for your particular allowances to diverge from the principle of liberty, you find that other guy that you don’t like’s deviation from principle gets the green light. Oh, and that third guy’s. And then people go with other deviations because they don’t like the consequences of the other guys’ deviations and screw them. And you wind up with liberty getting eroded at an accelerating pace.
Also, when libertarians are vastly outnumbered by those who are on the other side of ‘the line’, don’t expect the outcomes to actually be libertarian. That’s how you get things like pot as a taxed vice to benefit the state.
See, you have this idea of something’s “being libertarian” only in a total laissez faire sense. Something is libertarian to the extent it tends toward or is part of movement toward MORE liberty. Pot as a taxed vice to benefit the state is MORE libertarian than pot as an untaxed, but fined and confiscated (possibly with other penalties) vice that benefits nobody. If it’s legal but taxed, you can still choose to do business regarding it in an illegal, untaxed way, but you have another choice to do it legally with tax. More choice = more liberty = libertarian.
No it is not. It is the state granting you permission to do something because it deemed acceptable to do in a controlled matter. A permission it can withdraw at any time for any arbitrary reason. The idea that receiving permission to do something in a controlled matter is ‘more libertarian’ and something to be celebrated is disgusting.
That’s stinkin’ thinkin’…what Bob Wilson meant by, “Convictions make convicts.” If you’re disgusted by quantitative comparisons as regarding liberty, then you’re a problem.
Liberty is about here and now. So what if there might be less of it in the future? The future could bring earthquakes too. How can you get the most liberty feasible at any given time? Permission is the inverse of prohibition; to get less of the latter, you need more of the former. You can never get total freedom forever, because you can always postulate someone in the future fucking you over. So it’s ALWAYS about permission or forebearance of some sort, as long as human beings have the power to do damage to or threaten or restrain each other.
I tend to agree with Robert on this one. Taxed/regulated pot is more libertarian than prohibition pot (just like repeal of alcohol prohibition was the libertarian move at the time).
Now, you can get into tactical arguments about how to decriminalize/legalize. Example: medpot was incrementally libertarian, but it also created a baptist/bootlegger dynamic that has successfully thwarted further liberalization of pot laws.
Would no laws at all on pot or booze be even more libertarian? You bet, but that option isn’t on the table, and if you oppose anything short of that, you are now effectively and tactically an ally of the prohibitionists (the baptist/bootlegger dynamic) and may be preventing incremental increases in liberty. Success in political endeavours is about being incremental and compromising, not binary.
I don’t have a problem with taxed pot overall, what I have a problem with is the idea of presenting it as a libertarian victory or quibbling about it being ‘more libertarian’. It is not. The state deemed something restricted, and then decided it was not and that it could generate revenue from it.
How wonderful of the state to permit you to do something as long as they get a cut. That is not libertarian, that is controlled behaviour determined by your betters, and it should be recognized as statist in nature, not qualified as ‘more libertarian’.
How wonderful of the state to permit you to do something as long as they get a cut. That is not libertarian,
I don’t think of libertarianism as drawing a line and saying in a binary fashion that everything on this side of the line is libertarian and everything on the other side is not.
Something is libertarian or not depending on the direction of change and the options actually on offer. Taxed and regulated pot is a change in the right direction from prohibition, and completely unregulated pot is not an option currently on offer.
Now you can’t go to jail for something you used to be able to go to jail for; how is that not more libertarian?
Pundits anticipated a Baptist-bootlegger dynamic in the case of movement from med to recreational mj, but there wasn’t one of any great clout. For the most part, medi-mar worked the way both its proponents and opponents anticipated/feared: as a kind of propaganda by deed. It normalized marijuana, making further liberalization easier to get, as seemed to have happened. It made those who were already “pro” think, hey this is achievable, and it made those who were on the fence say, if this is safe enough for even sick people to use, maybe it’s safe for everyone, plus it brought out of the closet many examples of people who became known to be pot users and in whom an absence of ill effects were seen.
Pundits anticipated a Baptist-bootlegger dynamic in the case of movement from med to recreational mj, but there wasn’t one of any great clout.
Here in AZ, a coalition of prohibitionists, medpotters, and big pharma killed legalization. I wouldn’t say it lacked clout.
OK, so I guess it worked out differently in Ariz. than in Cal. The solution is to cut them in on the action. Work out something so everybody’s on the side that favors liberty more than it disfavors it. What you need is somebody good at brokering deals — like a Trump maybe.
Someone left the sidebar on.
> If you can smash your head on a rock you can choose to overdose on heroin.
If you can dodge traffic, you can dodge a ball.
> Guns and Drugs at the same time?
Didn’t they show us it worked with surfing & skeet shooting?
See, movies have the answers to all these issues. But seriously, folks:
> you get to say fuck off slaver a lot, which is always nice.
No, it’s never nice. It’s insulting to the one you say it to, and depressing to the one saying it.
I usually advise people that if they dont like being called a jerk, stop being a jerk.
I think giving them that advice only encourages jerkiness. Niceness encourages niceness.
Infringing individual rights isn’t nice. People who do so are slavers and must therefore fuck off.
People who respect individual rights get invited to parties and are rarely told to fuck off.
So simple, really.
Did you ever think that some people are un-nice (whether slavers or otherwise) because others have been un-nice or anti-nice to them?
Take, for instance, the guy I’m living with. He’s a sourpuss, and it’s been hard getting along with him. But he’s had a hard life, his wife and only child fucking him over mercilessly, and then he moved in with a ne’er-do-well under very adverse conditions. He got a fulminant case of diabetes, lost a lot of his vision in a short time (killing his hobby of photography and threatening his livelihood as a handyman), and his kidneys failed; he’s now on maintenance hemodialysis.
If he actually took in one or more real, actual crack-the-whip-on-them, keep-’em-in-shackles slaves, I couldn’t blame him, and would probably not interfere, I feel so bad for him. How do you know the metaphoric slavers you’ve encountered don’t have similar stories?
Ah, I’ve been punked.
Ciao!
As to marketing…while I wouldn’t claim you can sell people stuff they *really* don’t want, there are *some* freedoms you can sell them on with semi-competent marketing.
Then we have Gary Johnson and Bill Weld.
So there were people during the Obama administration who were outraged at the violations of two constitutional amendments – the 1st and the 9th – when it came to freedom of association. And overseas wars that suck. And a war on guns. What a marketing opportunity for a party which believes in economic and social freedom!
So Joe Sixpack, a guy who likes his guns and his Bible, and who is patriotic but doesn’t trust the people sending American boys (and girls) off to war, wonders what political alternatives there are.
There’s Trump bashing political correctness. “Hey, sounds good,” says Mr. Pack.
And then there are the Libertarian Party candidates babbling about the evils of religious freedom, common-sense gun control and how awesome Hillary is.
Then libertarians talk about how Americans hate freedom and are basically like Kim Jon Un.
But is that really a problem with libertarianism so much as it was a problem with Gary Johnson and Bill Weld. I think a lot of libertarians rightly criticized Johnson for being pretty flawed on his commitment to libertarian principle.
I thought we were discussing marketing.
Fair point.
But I think, at this point, it’s debatable to what extent Johnson and Weld were marketing anything other than their own candidacy (if even that).
As the LP is never going to win the POTUS in the foreseeable future, their candidate should be the guy who can best market the principles.
GJ failed to do either thing.
And Weld seemed to be a fucking saboteur.
It’s not just that. If you’re going to run candidates, run good ones, and I mean good as candidates, even if you and they are Nazis. This is a value-free determination. Gary Johnson was a lousy candidate on the national stage before, and he still is, regardless of what stance he’s pushing.
And there’s going to be LP people saying, “look, we nominated these responsible centrists and the hicks still wouldn’t vote for us. No more compromise – next time let’s nominate someone *pure.* Don’t stop Belize-ing!”
I really couldn’t understand what happened to GayJay in 2016. If 2012 GayJay ran in 2016 things would’ve been better for the party.
I remember the eye-rolling at GJ’s “purist” critics.
“No, I’m not a ‘purist,’ I just think the candidates suck (at least the 2016 version).”
They would have had to improve quite a bit to just ‘suck’.
GJ in 2012 was lousy. He was crap in 2011 running for the GOP presidential nomination. He may have played well in the sticks of New Mexico, but in the debate I saw him in on TV, he came across as a wet washrag, wet blanket, and wet noodle — yet still seemed unappeizingly dry!
At this point the word ‘libertarian’ carries so much baggage that I dont refer to myself as one to people I know. Most people here probably dont think of me as one anyway, at least not a hardcore one given some of the party planks I disagree with.
Yeah, the Johnson/Weld campaign was a real cluster.
“Centrist” is my “Go To” descriptor, Comrade.
My own brand of libertarianism (or “Leave-me-the-fuck-alone-ism) is not based on any deep intellectual roots; discovered by reading Hayek, Bastiat, Locke, Rand, or whomever. Instead it predicated on simple concepts that I think, dare hope, are universal concepts:
Do unto others…
Theft is immoral
Servitude is immoral
The right to privacy
The right to live my life in a manner I find appropriate
and a few others that don’t come to mind (it is Friday afternoon, after all!)
Those concepts, combined with the idea of American individualism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Religion, and the notion that a person should be able to defend themselves against tyranny, aren’t alien ideas, but it does seem as if the world at large is returning (to paraphrase Coolidge) towards an older, more reactionary time “when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people.”
I have quoted it before, but here is my brand, take from CS Lewis, from Willing Slaves of the Welfare State:
I actually think he equivocates too much in those last two sentences. Take out the almost and might.
From the next paragraph.
Don’t do unto others tastes differ
Exactly.
The silver rule is the libertarian rule.
Good point. Although libertarianism has a pretty rich and deep intellectual basis, it can pretty accurately be summed up as “Don’t hurt people and don’t take their stuff.”.
I would add:
Envy is immoral and unhealthy
Or for you Jews and Christians – The Tenth Commandment is just as important as the rest.
You are not free unless you are free to make bad choices and suffer the consequences.
You mean, you aren’t free unless you are free to be wrong?
Something fishy is happening
It’s friday
*borrows Swiss gaze*
CATHOLIC PRIVILEGE!
No, it’s never nice. It’s insulting to the one you say it to, and depressing to the one saying it.
[insert non-gratuitous “FUCK OFF, TULPA”]
For me, it boils down to this:
People don’t really want liberty because they are selfish and short-sighted.
Selfish, because few people actually want to be controlled (to be prohibited from doing something they want to do, or required to do something they don’t want to do), but are delighted to have others controlled.
Short-sighted, both because they fail to comprehend that if others can be controlled today, they can be controlled tomorrow, and they fail to see the most obvious outcomes of coercive government (all that wailing about “unintended consequences” that were perfectly obvious from the beginning).
they fail to comprehend that if others can be controlled today, they can be controlled tomorrow
There should be some kind of metalic law stating this.
I think many people are aware that Bad Things will happen if people from a different faction or group attain power – and often it’s precisely for that reason that they seek to gain power for themselves so as to stop the other guys.
It’s the political golden rule – do unto others before they do unto you.
I don’t think this is very moral, but it’s not irrational.
Consider the studies that where social trust collapses, support for big government goes up.
Because if you think people out there are trying to screw you, then joining your own group to screw them first seems like a survival strategy.
I think that’s a spurious correlation that’s falsified by the example of Japan. Japanese society has a high level of social trust, yet, historically, it has preferred autocratic ruling schemes. Even with the post-WW2 constitution, the level of personal liberties in the country, as well as the influence the government has on daily life is huge. Our cronies have wet dreams over Japan, Inc..
I could always be wrong. It’s happened.
But suppose a voter who believes that They (other races, the 1%, etc.) are out to wreak havoc/impoverish people/etc.
Tell them, “if we had a limited government your adversaries wouldn’t be able to do these awful things.”
They’d reply, “you can’t hold down these evildoers with parchment constitutional barriers, you have to go after them and bring them to heel before they carry out their sinister designs!”
I don’t disagree with this premise at all. I am just skeptical of the notion that the level of social trust in a society has any bearing on whether or not an individual prefers a large government. Again, just from my observations, it seems ethnically homogeneous, high social-trust societies love themselves some cradle-to-grave nanny states.
OK, I see that.
But it doesn’t really seem to work the other way.
If we were to believe the progs, in a diverse society people want a limited government so that people outside their own group can’t get government benefits.
Yet instead, you get the various groups either trying to use the state against each other, or establishing a government spoils system so each group (or designated representatives) gets a slice of the loot.
I think I meant to write “the control on personal liberties…”
It’s been like that in Turkey the past century. Bear down against religious freedom, lest they get too much power and bear down on you; or let the pressure off, and that’s exactly what they do. So it swings back and forth. France is like that too, albeit less starkly.
Yes and no.
Yes, there is some plain out selfishness. I don’t doubt that for a minute. But, I think there’s a lot of people who break out of good intentions (and we all know where the highway paved with them leads). People do some really stupid and self-destructive shit. And watching them do stupid and self-destructive shit is no picnic. People just know that they know better than people screwing up so badly. I mean who couldn’t look out at all the people killing themselves with heroin or meth and not feel at least a little revulsion at the senselessness of it all. That doesn’t make their positions or solutions right. Or you get the people who look at people living in abject poverty. They just know that with a little bit of money, they could fix things for them. Those other guys, they wouldn’t even miss it…
This makes me think of my time in the military. Most people like picking up rank because they enjoy being able to tell more people what to do. I liked picking up rank because it meant there were fewer people telling me what to do.
NYT: Trump called Comey a “nut-job” to the Russians.
You know how the Times knows this? An anonymous source read them a summary of the meeting.
I find your lack of faith disturbing.
So is that supposed to be a bad thing?
Is it a state secret that the FBI head is a nutjob?
“Anonymous source” = “I just made this shit up”
I am convinced that eventually someone will come forward from the NYT or WaPo and admit that they just make shit up out of thin air.
I did not do the McAfee pic on top. I only wish I had.
What if the guy across the street buys a MG and shoots into my home in a state of drunkenness?
Those Limey shitboxes have notoriously shitty brakes.
Fuck you, Brooks. My Spitfire stops nearly every time!
Trying to start it is the exciting part.
Runs like a thief in the night, Drake.
Mostly.
Trump called Comey a “nut-job” to the Russians.
I wonder what he calls Nancy Pelosi.
Selling is not about the product, it’s about the customer. You’ll fail spectacularly if you just start pitching your product before you have even ascertained a need or desire. There are components of the libertarian message that most people will really dig. But you have to lead them there, not beat them over the head with heroin and hookers before you’ve even asked them what is important to them.
Is it education? Security? Environment? (It’s actually the economy every single time, but that’s another discussion).
Johnson was a shitty salesman. Barr was a shitty salesman. Basically they all been shitty salesmen. McAfee is a great salesman if his customers are already libertarians.
Rand is good. He can sell to people who don’t realize their libertarian potential. More people in the movement that can do so would help a lot.
I think that is why most of us here, and the honest ones still over at TSTSNBN, aren’t really fans of the LP, but in advancing the principles.
I think most of us here see the right wing of the spectrum as the most fertile ground to work in, and many of those still over there hope to work from the left. Yokels and Cosmos.
Harry Browne was the last LP candidate I actually felt good about voting for.
2012 Gary Johnson was a pretty decent candidate. I don’t know what happened to that guy, but 2016 Gary Johnson was not like him.
Gary was in it for the money. It seemed obvious to me that the man had no desire to win the race, in fact he seem to be actively sabotaging his chances.
I thought candidates couldn’t pocket campaign funds. Was he just trying to get money for the LP?
My observations have gradually swayed my to the conclusion that if you want to make converts from the equality-obsessed sycophants, you’re going to have to make the bleeding heart libertarian consequentialist argument. You can make philosophical and moral arguments all you want, but if they can’t get past their faith that all you want to do is kill off the poor and inject cash into the 1%, you’re not going to get through to them, period. They have different values than you do, and the only way to get them to accept that libertarian morality is actually moral because it produces the best outcomes for their own values, such as equality, is to prove to them that their preferred policies exacerbate inequality, and libertarian policies reduce it. Only then will they even consider something like NAP a legitimate moral foundation.
Good point. You can share means without sharing ends, especially if there are compatible combinations of ends. Equality and liberty often go together — not always, but you can steer towards circumstances wherein they do.
“Do people want liberty and can libertarians sell them some?”
Yes, libertarians.
and
No, we can’t even give it away.
Lol. I’d be satisfied if people can’t take it away from me.
So I’ve come to the conclusion what we need for liberty is some kind of personal transdimensional force field. Not one that reflects or deflects energy because it would still have limitations just like body armor. I mean one that nullifies or reverses energy. Something that messes with gravity or space-time.
So just stoned in your Parent’s basement talk, again. People are too simple to grasp the underlying themes of Libertarianism. Give it up, Gretchen, “Fetch” is never gonna happen.
I’ve been saying for years that people just like to be controlled. Look at history, for the vast majority we’ve had chiefs, dictators, kings, and other top men. Then our founders came along with a fairly radical concept: individual liberties, natural rights, etc. People just don’t like that. They like to be controlled. And the great American experiment is closing because of this.
It just depends on which Wormtongue is whispering in which ear. Left ear? Right ear? Hedge your bets? Most people are too stupid to be able to change a flat or fix damn near anything.