Look: I am eager to learn stuff I don't know--which requires actively courting and posting smart disagreement.

But as you will understand, I don't like to post things that mischaracterize and are aimed to mislead.

-- Brad Delong

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Everything that appears on this blog is the copyrighted property of somebody. Often, but not always, that somebody is me. For things that are not mine, I either have obtained permission, or claim fair use. Feel free to quote me, but attribute, please. My photos and poetry are dear to my heart, and may not be used without permission. Ditto, my other intellectual property, such as charts and graphs. I'm probably willing to share. Let's talk. Violators will be damned for all eternity to the circle of hell populated by Rosanne Barr, Mrs Miller [look her up], and trombonists who are unable play in tune. You cannot possibly imagine the agony. If you have a question, email me: jazzbumpa@gmail.com. I'll answer when I feel like it. Cheers!

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Journeys into a Libertarian Future

Brought to you by -

Mike Kimel at A.B.

Andrew Dittmer at N.C.

Commenters at both places mention similarities to feudalism.  Right up my ally, of course.

Here, at no extra charge, is my view of  libertarian quasi-feudalism.

4 comments:

BadTux said...

As I've previously pointed out, libertarian philosophy is fundamentally incompatible with democracy, in that the majority of a people in a democracy would never vote to impose upon themselves an economic system *guaranteed* to produce a lot of dead bodies and subject 99% of the population to conditions little different from serfdom. The more honest libertarians will admit that they are fundamentally anti-democratic. The more dishonest ones simply claim that they support democracy but wish to limit the powers of government so that the majority cannot vote for things that the libertarian elites believe are not the proper duty of government. In short, the more dishonest ones claim to support democracy, while their actual statements explicitly contradict that claim.

Given that democracy -- the arrival at a consensus by at least half of the population -- is the only way thus far that we've been able to organize a society without massive repression and large numbers of dead bodies, it makes you wonder how the libertarian elite are going to get around that whole repression and dead bodies issue. It turns out that they don't care about the dead bodies, and they don't define repression as repression if it's done via economic means rather than at gunpoint (though fundamentally doing it via economic means requires doing it at gunpoint, since as I've repeatedly pointed out, people do not voluntarily starve to death just because a rich man says it's their duty as a citizen to do so).

In short, libertarianism is incompatible with the fundamental principles of our Republic, and should be viewed with the same skepticism as Communism, Islamism, and other such utopian methods of organizing society. The history of the planet tends to support the notion that when utopians come to power, the end result is *always* repression and lots of dead bodies, because the majority of people simply are not utopians -- they're pragmatists, doing whatever it takes to get through their daily lives but caring not a whit for any sort of utopian idealism expressed by ideologues. Only via force can utopians gain the acquiescence of the majority, and only via force can they maintain said acquiescence. So it goes... ironic, that people who claim their philosophy is about "liberty" could bring it into being only by depriving the majority of their liberty.

- Badtux the Pragmatist Penguin

Jazzbumpa said...

Yeah, Tux -

You've basically summed up the comment stream at N.C.

The post there liberally (so to speak) quotes published libertarian literature that is quite explicit in its contempt for democracy, and preference for an elite.

The best libertard idea of all is protection with armies provided by insurance companies.

Libertarianism takes us to Westeros during Cierce's regency.

JzB

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