Long post / Political bullshit
I think my disillusionment with the "Libertarian" movement can be broken into two halves, both of which boil down to semantics when you think about it.
The first is economics, and the begrudging admission that it is, at this point, impossible to separate the "bad" of capitalism (cronyism, corporatism, etc.) from the "good" (free enterprise, individual ownership etc.) without it fundamentally becoming something else in a modern context.
This is why I call myself a "free market Anarchist" and not an AnCap; it's because that while I do think free markets are the way to go, I can't live in the delusion that the monster "capitalism" has been perverted into by oligarchs and billionaires can be fixed by restoring "real capitalism," any more, I think those days Ron Paul pined for in those books I read in high school are probobly gone forever now.
The second is the simple fact that they will *never* leave you alone. Galt's Gulch is a fantasy and it will never exist. You can't fuck off to a cabin in the mountains, because the state will eventually come and take your cabin no matter how many guns or bars of gold you have squirreled away.
If the state is allowed to perpetuate it will inevitably become a tyrannical dictatorship (we're already there in all but name), this is what "Minarchists" don't seem to get, the state is a germ, and if you don't kill it then all you're doing is treating symptoms. And if we're going to eliminate the state, then we need to completely retool society to create something compatible with anarchy, we can't do that by digging our heels in and buying crypto.
Whatever productive form that takes, whether it's AnComs making functional communes apart from the state, or Agorists replacing state functions with counter-economics, I'm with it. Your flag can be any color as long as it's black.
The first is economics, and the begrudging admission that it is, at this point, impossible to separate the "bad" of capitalism (cronyism, corporatism, etc.) from the "good" (free enterprise, individual ownership etc.) without it fundamentally becoming something else in a modern context.
This is why I call myself a "free market Anarchist" and not an AnCap; it's because that while I do think free markets are the way to go, I can't live in the delusion that the monster "capitalism" has been perverted into by oligarchs and billionaires can be fixed by restoring "real capitalism," any more, I think those days Ron Paul pined for in those books I read in high school are probobly gone forever now.
The second is the simple fact that they will *never* leave you alone. Galt's Gulch is a fantasy and it will never exist. You can't fuck off to a cabin in the mountains, because the state will eventually come and take your cabin no matter how many guns or bars of gold you have squirreled away.
If the state is allowed to perpetuate it will inevitably become a tyrannical dictatorship (we're already there in all but name), this is what "Minarchists" don't seem to get, the state is a germ, and if you don't kill it then all you're doing is treating symptoms. And if we're going to eliminate the state, then we need to completely retool society to create something compatible with anarchy, we can't do that by digging our heels in and buying crypto.
Whatever productive form that takes, whether it's AnComs making functional communes apart from the state, or Agorists replacing state functions with counter-economics, I'm with it. Your flag can be any color as long as it's black.
re: Long post / Political bullshit
@cee @xianc78 @icedquinn Quinn makes some really good points, especially the stuff about the medical industrial complex, and the problem of creating a solution in the market for people without reliable income or social status. I agree that it's the extremes at both ends that spoil the implementation of a true AnCap system, and I worry that just removing the state from the equation isn't enough to fix it on it's own.
That's kinda what I mean by retooling society, if the state disappeared overnight then we wouldn't be much better off because we're in a society that's both built around it and is populated by people whom have been conditioned their whole lives to believe that the state was absolutely necessary to their survival (this is why the pervasive idea that rights come from the government is perhaps the most evil concept to persist on the scale that it does); you've freed the people, yes, but they don't know how to be free yet, nor do they have the tools to keep themselves free.
> All these "recreational nuke" and "Chinese sex slave" memes really make us look like a fucking joke.
110% this. I used to make the distinction between "Libertarians" and "LOLbertarians" in this way; but when the people who, supposedly, lead your movement go around saying meme worth bullshit about removing child labor laws and the like, it becomes a much tougher sell (this is coming from someone who *actually* voted for Jo Jorgensen, for the record
).
That's kinda what I mean by retooling society, if the state disappeared overnight then we wouldn't be much better off because we're in a society that's both built around it and is populated by people whom have been conditioned their whole lives to believe that the state was absolutely necessary to their survival (this is why the pervasive idea that rights come from the government is perhaps the most evil concept to persist on the scale that it does); you've freed the people, yes, but they don't know how to be free yet, nor do they have the tools to keep themselves free.
> All these "recreational nuke" and "Chinese sex slave" memes really make us look like a fucking joke.
110% this. I used to make the distinction between "Libertarians" and "LOLbertarians" in this way; but when the people who, supposedly, lead your movement go around saying meme worth bullshit about removing child labor laws and the like, it becomes a much tougher sell (this is coming from someone who *actually* voted for Jo Jorgensen, for the record
).
re: Long post / Political bullshit
@icedquinn @cee @xianc78 God, that was embarrassing. If you can't even stick to your principles in a situation where you know it doesn't make a difference anyway (it's not like they were actually going to win), what does that mean for when it actually maters?
The LP is a fucking joke, if I didn't know any better I would think it was some kind of smear operation, but I completely trust them to just be that incompetent.
The LP is a fucking joke, if I didn't know any better I would think it was some kind of smear operation, but I completely trust them to just be that incompetent.
re: Long post / Political bullshit
I'm more into Minimalist Economics- so like green markets and minimising shipping, production in textiles and construction etc. minus the subsistence farming, that the Luddites want.