Libertarian Examples Mega-Thread

[Leo Gura]

33 minutes ago, Elisabeth said:

@Leo Gura A friend of mine took a deep dive into the history of neo-liberalism. He now thinks most of libertarianism is just a huge smokescreen created to gain popular support for neo-liberal economic policies which actually serve corporations and the rich, Milton Friendman being a typical example of neo-liberal propaganda disguised as libertarian belief. I wonder whether you think that's possible. 

I wouldn't ascribe it a conscious malicious motive. It's just part of the the stage Orange worldview.

By definition every ideology serves someone's survival agenda.

It's not really propaganda. Milton was true believer. Libertarians are true believers. They are just naive about human nature. They expect everyone to be as ethical as them. And they don't recognize their own devilry.

It's not an accident that many billionaires gravitate towards libertarianism. Of course it's highly convenient for them.

[Ferdi Le]

11 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

So... I've gotten some pushback from libertartians that I am strawmanning their arguments. Of course we don't want that. So let's see some real-life self-proclaimed libertarians arguing for their ideology and their policy proposals.

Post video examples here so people can get a true sense of how libertarians think and how my critiques of libertarianism applies to their logic.

Then people can judge for themselves if libertarianism holds any water.

You see... one of the things I made sure to do in my Libertarianism critique is to focus on libertarianism as it functions in the real world, not as it is written about in academic books. What I have found is that while libertarianism may sound reasonable in an academic book, when it is practiced by real people in the real world, it looks far less flattering. That's what you'd expect from an ideology which is highly idealistic and philosophical. The philosophy can look good on paper, but then when you use it to build an actual real-world thing, it turns to shit. Similar to what happened with Communism in the Soviet era. It sounded a lot better on paper than it turned out in practice.

John Maynard Keynes captured this very well in one quote when when he criticized his fellow economists for being "unmoved by the lack of correspondence between the results of their theory and the facts of observation".

I think Keynes is quite frankly a good example. He was a self-described capitalist but saw the necessity of state intervention in times of crises.

But by many libertarians, he is viewed as the worst devil who is responsible for all evil in the world.

But it is also noteworthy how quickly libertarian economic-thinking is vanishing. I mean the US basically gave out free money with the stimulus check (and that by a Republican Administration, with (I guess) very little pushback and even plans for more. It doesnt get much worse than that according to libertarians I guess.....

Edited July 7, 2020 by Ferdi Le

[Leo Gura]

18 minutes ago, Ferdi Le said:

But it is also noteworthy how quickly libertarian economic-thinking is vanishing.

Not so fast!

Libertarianism has infected much of the Republican party and their donor class -- because it's so convenient for them. People who's survival depends on the exploitation of others LOVE the libertarian ideology because it weakens the regulations which keep such exploitation in check.

The Trump administration's explicitly stated goal is "the deconstruction of the administrative state", as Steve Bannon put it:

The problem is that libertarianism rarely exists in its pure form. In the real world it get alloyed with all sorts of conservative ideology such as nationalism and religious fundamentalism.

As we speak the Trump admin is deregulating and privatizing as much of the government as possible, making it easier for the strong to exploit the weak.

"Political termites" is a great phrase from David Cay Johnston:

So in practice libertarianism becomes the handmaiden of shameless arch-capitalists who stand to gain the most from the exploitation opportunities which libertarianism opens up.

You see, the ego is incredibly ingenious and sneaky. It will use an ideology like libertarianism -- which nominally values non-aggression and consensual agreements -- in order to get rid of the referee, and then use that opportunity to dominate the field. And by the time that happens, it's too late. You're powerless to reverse it.

[Kailash Bhattarai]

 

 

Edited July 8, 2020 by Kailash Bhattarai

[QandC]

This guy:

Although he has some pretty good things to say, it's pretty obvious he's a libertarian

[abrakamowse]

I read long time ago that the Inca society lived in a kind of socialist or anarchist system but I never could study well what they were talking about. I will find out and I post what I find here. This is a document I found now with a quick google search.

WAS THE INCA EMPIRE A SOCIALIST STATE?

A HISTORICAL DISCUSSION

I put a link here to the document, I wanted to copy some parts of the pdf but it messes up the text... I think is interesting what the Incas had as a system for living in community, of course it must have their problems, I am not saying that it was perfect, but... is interesting anyway...

https://www.eiu.edu/historia/Harris.pdf

 

[Jacobsrw]

On 07/07/2020 at 9:41 PM, Preety_India said:

 

@Leo Gura

Why can't we destroy all the governments and all the borders and create one world with one government at the top. 

Because there are always some sort of war and conflicts between different countries and governments and this is a huge threat to global peace and security. We never have a system where we don't do wars. 

I mean we have learned lessons from the horrors of the second world War and wars after that. 

Whats stopping the whole world from dissolving borders and creating  one government. 

It seems sad that the current uncertain state will always continue. So much oppression. So many bad governments. Wars. 

I don't think human life was meant to be so uncertain and stressful. To me this is needless. 

 

Because not every being operates from the same level of consciousness required to maintain an equilibrium of unity.

Anarchy is what would manifest. Simply by the fact those with less civility would have no system to hold them accountable.

[Jacobsrw]

@Leo Gura watch this.

This clearly demonstrates the limitations of libertarianism. Math is racist is plain absurd. It’s like saying Chinese are racist because they created large technology companies and are now presumed elite in software engineering. 

Those who ascribe to libertarianism can sprout any theory they desire. The ego can use its own preferences and justify them from an individualistic lens.

You see libertarianism is an offshoot from post modernism. It’s one of the most aggrandised ideologies many cling to simply because it validates any position (hence, individualism). It’s quite a radical ideology when closer examined. If any average citizen can use libertarianism to defend an arbitrary viewpoint than the ideology itself is extremely unmediated and volatile. It becomes a walking abomination ready to implode.

This is the very dangers of libertarianism. Almost any act of free-will is justified, yet equally contradicted since any argument of free-will can be used to oppose it. Free-will is arbitrary and subjective, collapsing when we see its absurdity between conflicting views.

The very limits of libertarianism is patently clear and extremely dangerous.

Edited July 8, 2020 by Jacobsrw

[Leo Gura]

@Jacobsrw What does math have to do with libertarianism?

I think you're confusing libertarianism with post-modernism.

[Jacobsrw]

14 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

@Jacobsrw What does math have to do with libertarianism?

I think you're confusing libertarianism with post-modernism.

That’s exactly the point.It has nothing to do with it but is still being used to make the argument nonetheless.

Supposedly math constricts the autonomy of those who are not white, since it was created by the white man and is maintained by white bureaucracy. Basically libertarianism is being used here to defend individual freedoms of the black American.

Post modernism and libertarianism are related in that post modernism was used in deluded fashion to create libertarianism.

[Carl-Richard]

34 minutes ago, Jacobsrw said:

Post modernism and libertarianism are related in that post modernism was used in deluded fashion to create libertarianism.

Didn't the principles of libertarianism arise before the advent of post-modernism? Ayn Rand didn't strike me as a post-modernist.

[Leo Gura]

3 hours ago, Jacobsrw said:

Post modernism and libertarianism are related in that post modernism was used in deluded fashion to create libertarianism.

You're just wrong.

You are confusing two unrelated things.

2 hours ago, Husseinisdoingfine said:

Also Leo, you've said a Libertarian society has ever exist in history, WRONG, we've had the gilded age and it was so bad that the result was labor uprisings.

Gilded Age was not libertarian. It was just a lack of anti-trust regulation.

[abrakamowse]

What about the Kibbutz in Israel?

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibbutz

Communal kibbutz: a society for settlement, being a separate settlement, organised on the basis of collective ownership of possession, of self-employment, and of equality and cooperation in production, consumption and education.

[Leo Gura]

Additional new video about libertarianism:

https://www.actualized.org/insights/deconstructing-property-rights

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, abrakamowse said:

What about the Kibbutz in Israel?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibbutz

Communal kibbutz: a society for settlement, being a separate settlement, organised on the basis of collective ownership of possession, of self-employment, and of equality and cooperation in production, consumption and education.

Any small community like that will get taken over and dominated by a larger community such that there will a bunch of use of force and involuntary sacrifices.

[Lyubov]

[abrakamowse]

4 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Any small community like that will get taken over and dominated by a larger community such that there will a bunch of use of force and involuntary sacrifices.

Well, that's what happened with the Incas when europeans came to South America. True... and same thing to the commune "Revolutionary Catalonia" in Spain in the times of Franco.

It would be interesting to read George Orwell's book: Homage to Catalonia.

 

@Lyubov

 

[Leo Gura]

7 minutes ago, abrakamowse said:

Well, that's what happened with the Incas when europeans came to South America. True... and same thing to the commune "Revolutionary Catalonia" in Spain in the times of Franco.

It would be interesting to read George Orwell's book: Homage to Catalonia.

Fundamentally, no two communities can remain isolated from each other. It's always only a matter of time before they start to bump into each other, cross-pollinate, and merge.

It is impossible for two villages to simply live near each other without interaction. And much of that interaction will not be voluntary or lovely. Libertarians fundamentally do not understand this.

[Jacobsrw]

11 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

Didn't the principles of libertarianism arise before the advent of post-modernism? Ayn Rand didn't strike me as a post-modernist.

Isolated principles of liberalism have been around for Millenia, since Confucius in fact. However, libertarianism itself evolved paradigmatically only if recent centuries.

Edited July 9, 2020 by Jacobsrw

[Jacobsrw]

@Leo Gura You’ve misunderstood the point. Libertarianism is being used to aggrandise individualised political positions, ie. maths is racist. This is completely arbitrary and irrelevant to math, yet equally maintained by individualism.

These type of positions are underpinned by the very freedoms which are assumed through the libertarian and post-modernist ideology.

Edited July 9, 2020 by Jacobsrw