I’ve noticed that as well. I mean this in all seriousness, I think a philosophy that is a defence of wealth and power being taken up by the wealthy and powerful in a time of economic crisis in order to beat back attempts at fixing the problem may have soured a lot of people on libertarianism.
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Here’s a working link, if anyone’s interested:
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There are extremists in every group. There are Democrats who think that sick people should buy pot off the streets, that suspects should be held in prison indefinitely, and that it’s okay to occasionally blow up and burn alive innocent men, women, and children as long as you were aiming at suspected terrorists.
But hey, #NotAllDemocrats
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No doubt. I only use Democrats as a comparison, because so many people who reflexively think all libertarians are selfish monsters vote Democratic.
Fact is that the libertarian positions on criminal justice, civil rights, and foreign policy are truly liberal.
Which traditions are those? And I don’t know of any mainstream libertarians who espouse “anti-democratic authoritarianism.” Libertarianism is inherently anti-authority. Also, I think we all oppose certain democratically approved people and ideas, but that isn’t necessarily anti-democratic.
No, that was the Democrats and Republicans. Libertarians were all for letting failing banks go ahead and fail.
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In libertarianism, I usually see a lot of revenge fantasies at work. They don’t like society in pretty much any form, so they want society to fail. They don’t just want the big banks to fail, they want all currency to fail, so we’ll all be bartering junk silver, MREs, and pine cones. Of course in this fantasy world they will suddenly rise ten rungs on the social ladder because the future is going to unfold according to their deterministic forecast. And then they will be at the top of the heap. To me, it sounds like “Just wait! You’ll see! And then you’ll be sorry! You’re all going to be sorry!”
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Hey guys! I’m going to start a new “Internet Magazine” called BangBang, where we post pictures of people with different political ideologies and make fun of them to spark conflict – I mean, “engagement” – and drive page views ever higher. Who’s with me?
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I was a Libertarian when I had money and more narcissistic tendencies that age has eroded over they years. It’s like nightclubbing, it’s cool when you’re a 20 something but by the time you’re in your 30’s you should really have grown past it.
I like the hashtag: #NotAllLibertarians
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Is that the sort of thing people who have been immersed in Ayn Rand for 10 years say when they take acid?
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It’s a slam dunk because there are so many narcissists out there demanding to be looked at. Admiration or ridicule is all the same to them, because it’s all attention, so don’t waste any tears on them.
Socialism, anarchism, and other left wing traditions. They all point out that if freedom is connected private property, then those who lack property also lack freedom, because without property they are subject to the owners in order to acquire the means to survive.
Every time a libertarian says “taxation is theft” they are espousing anti-democracy. The slogan isn’t about disagreeing with particular pieces of legislation, it’s about denying the legitimacy the democratic process itself. Most libertarians aren’t consciously against democracy in principle, but their proposed polity would require severe restrictions on democratic power to prevent the recreation of things like cancer treatment for your mother. Some libertarians have recognized that democracy has to go.
Libertarianism is about the absolute authority of private property. It makes every little piece of land into a private kingdom, ruled absolutely by its owner, and this state of affairs is not a voluntary one because violence is used to enforce it. Anarchists in particular point out how the state itself is just a manifestation of private property on a larger scale.
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Yes, the wanted to let the big banks fail. And they also want it to happen with no real social safety net for the people at the bottom. Because they feel THEY aren’t going to be hurt by the big bank failure. Because they are self made. Never had to stand on anyone’s shoulders (cough ParentsPulbicSchoolsCommunitiesBuiltOn50’sTaxRates cough). My problem with Libertarianism is the same as my problem with pure Communism and pure Socialism; They completely ignore the messy realities of real life and real people. They are great ideas inside a classroom, but would work in the real world only if the real world were populated with robots. Personally I believe in a mix of them all. No pure ideology will ever work with real people.
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And that refutes my point that libertarianism is a defense of wealth and power how? That libertarians opposed the bailouts means they opposed government intervention, not took issue with the wealth and power concentration that caused the crisis. If anything it demonstrates an incredible naivety about how libertarians think capitalism works, as they were content to sit back and let it destroy itself. Of course they saw this as No True Capitalism causing the crisis, claiming that the difference between crony capitalism and capitalism wasn’t entirely a figment of their imagination.
When libertarians advocate for redistribution of all the wealth unjustly gained from this No True Capitalism so we can all advance on merit, I might take them seriously. The reason why libertarianism was taken up by the wealthy and powerful is because it doesn’t challenge the existing distribution. Sure it might oppose the occasional obvious government intervention on behalf of the rich, but it’s blind to how the concentration of wealth is one long government intervention.
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There aren’t any “traditions” of the left or right that are free of periods of oppression. I’m not so interested in “traditions” as I am current, modern thinking. I don’t believe in anarchy and there are plenty of socialist states with oppressive laws.
I agree. I just asked which mainstream libertarians espoused this.
Again, the most vocal, mainstream libertarians aren’t opposed to social safety nets that would provide cancer treatment for anyone’s mother.
I don’t doubt that some libertarians subscribe to this, but, like you said, so do anarchists.
That doesn’t really make sense. If a person tries to rob my house and I use violence (reasonable, non-lethal violence, mind you) to stop him, I have stopped an involuntary interaction. In all liberal societies, some form of physical force is allowed to protect one’s person and property.
The problem I have with your comment is that you keep saying “they,” as if all, or even most libertarians oppose a social safety net of some kind. I don’t think the philosophy of “libertarianism” is as clear as the philosophy of “communism,” as there’s never been a “libertarian manifesto.”
But we agree that we need a mix of philosophies and that no pure ideology will ever work with real people.
Was it Charles Koch who was the VP candidate on the Libertarian ticket? Their personal agenda is for the wealthy to carve up the nation into vast private estates. Presumably it’ll be like the old days where we’ll all live in company towns subject to being assassinated by company security, except they’ll be some offshoot of Blackwater instead of the Pinkertons.
Most libertarians would argue that the “power concentration” was aided and abetted by the government.
The idea that letting some large, irresponsible, fraud riddled banks fail because of bad behavior would lead to capitalism “destroying itself,” is rather baseless. There’s simply no evidence that letting those banks fail would have caused such a thing.
There are lots and lots of libertarians who are not “wealthy and powerful,” but who simply believe things about the government that people on the left believe about corporations. And there are lots and lots of “wealthy and poewrful” people who have relied on the government for their fortunes.
Personally, I think neither of those things present the main problem. The main problem are the assholes in government and corporations who are protected by ideologists on both sides.
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I think an incongruous number of libertarians work for the government, especially as engineers. I’m starting to think that people who are accustomed to looking at a mathematical proof and saying “Aha, that makes sense, so it’s not only true but also probably very close to the best possible answer” are exactly the sort of people that fall hook line and sinker for sleight of hand tricks and conspiracy theories. Applying the same standard of proof to the larger world of current events leaves an otherwise rational person living in a land of urban legends and conspiracy theories. This was a serious enough problem that Ron Paul had to silence the “FEMA camp” conspiracy nuts in his own organization.
If you’re so keen on modern thinking, I don’t understand why you’d consider libertarianism, which is just 19th century classical economics resurrected whole hog. But to be fair to libertarianism (and socialism and anarchism), the conditions they describe are still very much in existence. As for the existence of authoritarian left wing states I grant you that, but it’s not like libertarianism is free from this same criticism.
I’m beginning to think that when you say “mainstream libertarians” you’re conjuring up some phantom that none of my criticisms apply to. If the Mises Institute doesn’t count as mainstream, than those libertarians are the mostly softly spoken mainstream of a movement I’ve ever encountered.
To be honest, claiming that mainstream libertarianism is in favour of social safety nets is so flies in the face of everything libertarianism stands for that for me to provide links refuting this is an absurd waste of all our time. Could you provide me with some links of what you think is representative of mainstream libertarianism?
That’s a misrepresentation of my point. Libertarianism may be about the absolute authority of private property, but it argues this is synonymous with true freedom. For anarchism that is an analytical critique of what they want to abolish, not an endorsement!
That is missing my point. I’m not criticizing self defense against a home invasion, but the entire foundation of private property relations themselves. That even in our homesteading fairytale about the origins of private property, somebody had to unilaterally declare a piece of land theirs and exclude all others access without compensation. In the real world, the creation of private property also involved a great deal of dispossession of the people who were in the way. The creation and maintenance of private property requires a kind of authoritarian violence that goes beyond simple self defense. Acknowledging this history but arguing it is actually the most beneficial is a far stronger position than claiming this actually anti-authoritarian.
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Ahh yes, No True Capitalism. If only we had that instead of this actually existing capitalism that has historically never been able to avoid colluding with government. If only it had principles instead of the profit motive.
To be clear I did not support the bailouts. Nationalizing the bastards would have been the better option. But to think there is no evidence that widespread bank failure would not have had serious negative economic consequences is just silly. It’s not that the bank crisis in itself is the destroyer, but the armies of newly unemployed. The crisis simply creates the conditions.
Fair enough, but if you think the problem is the marriage of business and government (which I do too btw), then libertarianism is totally the wrong way to look at it. Its focus on the state as something separate from and opposed to the wider social order is deeply mistaken, and serves to disguise how dependent business is on state power.
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