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Oh man, this thread moved way too fast for me to get in any sick burns. OP, I used to be you. Maybe not quite as masochistic, in that I didn't go around inflicting my terrible ideas on strangers, but everything from the content of your ideas (though I was much more hardcore Objectivist and would have sneered at your wishy-washy ancap bullshit) to the way you present them is hilariously familiar to me. This will probably have no impact on you, but: you are wrong. Objectively wrong. Your understanding of 'society' as an entity is simplistic nonsense. As a simple example: you are able to have this conversation because someone, at some point, thought it worth the effort to teach you to read and write. This is not a universal value, and not necessarily provided in the absence of a well-maintained society that values literacy. There are plenty of places in the world where literacy is not valued, and thus not universal. You happen to live in one where it is. The idea that you could, in any way, discharge the debt you owe to the society you're a part of is absurd. You can't. It's not possible. You will go to your grave still deeply in the red to that society. But that's okay; the rest of us have agreed that people should be allowed to run a negative balance for their entire lives, and we include you. I'm not going to bother expanding on this point (yet, anyway) because I have a strong suspicion that you're going to read it, identify a few key words to fixate on, argue against what those words suggest to you, and fail to think deeply about the actual content of this post. Because ten years ago, that's what I would have done. If by some chance I'm wrong about that, let me know and I'll give you the whole dissertation on your relationship to the abstraction we call 'society', and how the libertarian understanding of that relationship is shallow and self-serving.
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Aug 10, 2014 19:55
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Libertarian racism comes from the same place as the rest of the stupid poo poo in libertarianism: a shallow and simplistic understanding of how human society operates. See, there's nothing biological that makes black people dumb. It's just that they choose to be dumb! You can observe this by looking at black communities and black culture, which are dumb. Nothing is stopping smart black people from choosing to turn their backs on black communities and black culture; I can prove this by reference to Sowell and Thomas and any number of other 'conservative' black people. The above makes sense to a libertarian because they are, by and large, privileged whites, and the nature of privilege is that it's invisible to the people who have it. They simply cannot imagine reasons why black people would not choose to abandon black culture and black communities. They cannot imagine any prevailing conditions that would make it difficult or impossible for a black person to make the same choices as a white person (not to mention conditions that would make them not desire to make those choices). When the world is the simple world of white male privilege, these issues are also simple, and have simple answers. Black people who don't bootstrap themselves out of poverty are consciously choosing to be poor. Only a stupid person would do that; ergo, black people are stupid. (No libertarian would frame it that way, and would vigorously deny that's what they're thinking, but it is precisely what they're thinking; it's the subtext behind all libertarian racism, when it's not the actual text). Look at the responses Neil DeGrasse Tyson generated when he talked about how much more difficult it was for him to succeed in his chosen career, how it was basically 'hard mode' to defy expectations set for young black men. White dudes were infuriated, because Tyson exposed the ugly truth that being smart is insufficient for black people. It challenges the whole basis of libertarianism: that society is a simple thing, with simple rules, and those rules are universal for everyone. eta: this is how libertarians are able to claim they're not racist. They don't think black people are stupid; they just think that for some reason, black people choose not to pursue the obvious opportunities everyone has available to them. And their point of calibration for 'obvious opportunities everyone has available' is 'white straight cis male.' isildur fucked around with this message at 01:40 on Aug 11, 2014 |
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Aug 11, 2014 01:29
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jrodefeld posted:I didn't say there are no "racial undertones" to any part of the libertarian movement. I didn't even say that some libertarians aren't racist, though the concept of individualism is contradictory to this view. What I did say is that the libertarians cited here, Hans Hoppe, Murray Rothbard and Ron Paul are not racist. Every time you say this, I remember that Reason loving Magazine was forced to disavow Ron Paul because of how loving racist he is. http://reason.com/archives/2008/01/16/who-wrote-ron-pauls-newsletter http://reason.com/archives/2008/01/16/pauls-apology
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Aug 11, 2014 01:51
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jrodefeld posted:It's only a government if it ceases to be voluntary. If a community chooses to contract with a security provider and every member of the community chooses to pay for collective defense, this is not anything close to a State. What happens if I live in a community and all my neighbors want to ban children? I have children. Do I have to move? Can they force me to move? Moving is non-trivial; will I be compensated or simply forced out? By what right can they make that choice without my consent? If they can't make that choice without my consent, how can the 'community' choose anything? You're describing something that's repugnant to both socialism and libertarianism -- an odd place to end up. quote:The anarchist society would become a beautiful tapestry of different experiments in social order and organization. Each community will develop differently based on their values. People will have an endless variety of choices of where to live based on their values and cultural characteristics. Even Ayn Rand, bless her twisted black soul, saw the fundamental problem with competition between armed private security forces. Your ancap paradise is destined to end up with warring armed camps seizing territory, goods, and personnel from each other. We have a word for the people who rule in situations like these: 'warlords'. You can see them in action in Somalia. That's not hyperbole: that's the actual situation that will result from armed, independently governed enclaves.
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Aug 11, 2014 02:03
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jrodefeld posted:What do you think the public outrage would be like if a prominent store chain instituted an open racially discriminatory policy? Chik-Fil-A. Duck Dynasty. Cliven Bundy. I think that some of your 'enclaves' would have absolutely no problem with that discriminatory policy. I'd venture to guess that somewhere between a quarter and a half of Americans would cheer on such a policy. If anything, your enclave-world would more aggressively protect racism, by insulating racists and their beliefs from external approbation and critique. (efb on chik-fil-a, dammit)
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Aug 11, 2014 03:06
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You know, I've never actually read much ancap stuff, on the basis that the whole idea sounded even more awful and absurd than the Objectivism I'd already rejected. This Molyneux guy is pretty much the best thing I've read in a while. It's someone seriously advocating a brutal nightmare dystopia. He doesn't even hide it; he's proud of it. I never thought I'd find a group for whom this was true, but: anarcho-capitalists are even dumber and more naive than objectivists. That's impressive.
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Aug 11, 2014 09:41
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Caros posted:The bizzare thing to me is that they don't see it. Ayn Rand posted:Instead of a single, monopolistic government, they declare, there should be a number of different governments in the same geographical area, competing for the allegiance of individual citizens, with every citizen free to “shop” and to patronize whatever government he chooses.
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Aug 11, 2014 09:55
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Bifauxnen posted:You guys ever read Market Forces by Richard Morgan? I really liked it! Ha! I actually pulled that down off the shelf yesterday to re-read it because of that nightmarish Molyneux quote in this thread.
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Aug 12, 2014 20:22
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Christ, this thread makes me want to devil's advocate for libertarianism, just so it has someone who isn't useless advocating for it. At least the arguments would be more interesting.
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Aug 15, 2014 07:49
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tbp is not socrates. He's just trolling. He's a pretty good, high-effort troll, so it's usually entertaining. Um, here's some libertarianism, I guess, because the thread needs it: An-cap is dumb. Does an-cap being dumb necessarily invalidate minarchist libertarianism? If we accept that the state has some legitimate functions, is there a way to construct a non-dystopian libertarian state?
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Aug 15, 2014 22:55
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tekz posted:What he's saying is crystal clear, you'd have to be wilfully dense to misunderstand it. No, it's very easy to understand: he's trolling. Come on, dude, 'post history' exists right there below every post. I can click it and go to The Ray Parlour and see him saying 'I'm trolling D&D'. I can see that you're like, 90% exclusively a Ray Parlour poster, too, explaining your sudden appearance here to defend tbp. He's a good troll, in that he seems to make an actual effort to post things that stir up interesting conversation instead of just threadshitting, but he's not arguing in good faith and never has been. It's not like there's a rule that you have to argue in good faith, but I hate seeing people engage with him like he actually cares about the things he posts.
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Aug 19, 2014 18:13
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