*First, and OT, the next Clanker Song “Blood On Ice” has dropped. Again, not happy with the video, but I have ideas for improving it. (Likely easier when the antibiotic isn’t trying to kill me, yes?) Anyway, here’s the new song:
Note that it helps immensely if you like and comment on the videos. It tricks the algorithm into showing it to more people. And the comments can be just “I like this” or whatever. If you have no idea what this is all aoubt, the rest of it is here. Now for the real post. -SAH)
Some days ago I got — of all things — in an argument on libertarianism on X.
I said pure libertarianism is a utopian ideal that — because it is utopian — can never be achieved. Someone got very upset at me and told me that someone whose name I don’t know (or if I know, I don’t remember, because my mind is made of taffy right now) said that libertarianism is not utopian. So, I was wrong. Which I have to tell you is the most libertarian argument yet. Because libertarians are people of philosophy and often argue in screamed quotations.
So, am I abjuring libertarianism? Oh, please! I retain a high value for the philosophy. It is important for any number of reasons, but mostly because it stands in direct contradiction to most other philosophies of government. Even if it were completely insane, (it’s not) it would be desperately needed in today’s world.
First, let’s make it absolutely clear that EVERY political position, taken to its ideal is absolutely impossible. Yes, even monarchism at the twitter-monarchists view it, where the King is appointed by G-d and either very good or supposed to be a scourge the people deserve. In fact monarchy with rare intervals ends up like any given family business where the guy who takes over does so by nepotism and not competence: slowly grinding downfall, but taking an entire country along for the ride. And it’s peculiarly brittle around rapid change, be it social or technological.
In the same way I don’t need to outline the failure of communism to anyone. Marxism is a theory built on air, with no connection to real economics. (Any theory that misunderstands distribution as waste has serious issues.) It appeals to minds broken by envy, but anyone else can see what it does it cut off the economic signals of individual consumption from the producers, leaving people to decide what’s needed by fiat from above, from people who — by the nature of it — are misinformed or not informed at all. The result is a rapid devolution into “rule by a king” by any other name. And, stripped of upbringing meant to make them think they owe the people something, the ruler tends to rapidly fall into the “mad king” category. (Looks North-Korea, or for that matter Cuba-ward.) What it doesn’t do is become a utopian stateless society where everyone automagically gets what he/she needs.
Socialism is Communism on the installment plan, having surrendered the idea that they’ll eventually get to that magical state withering away and instead believing it’s possible to stay suspended in that place where everyone gets what he needs and everyone contributes what she can. Like communism, in its most functional form, it is an oligarchy, nepotistic and brittle in the face of any new technology. For its failure mode, see the sh*tshow of Europe these days. Or the way we were headed two years ago. Eventually the nepo oligarchy becomes an open kakistocracy that can stay in power only by brutal repression. Next verse, same as the first, welcome to the end stage of various dictatorships as the velvet glove comes off and the steel clad boot comes down.
And then there is us. Are we a libertarian country? Meh. Somewhat. It scares the pee out of the rest of the world, to the extent we are, actually.
What we are is the result of founders who had the foresight to say “Government should be as small as possible, and central government smaller than local government, and the individual should have the most power of all.” Did it work? Are humans involved?
As someone pointed out in some comment, we started betraying our own constitution when the ink was barely dry.
And yet– And yet, what remains and our absolute certainty that this is how things are SUPPOSED to work is enough to make us the powerhouse of civilization and prosperity for the world.
But is constitutionalism and an unwavering devotion to minarchism (not the i not o) libertarianism.
I don’t know. Do you?
Part of what we’ve run into is “who defines Libertarianism?” or if you prefer “The individualists are still arguing over it.”
As I first encountered Libertarianism, I’m no longer a libertarian. Why? Open borders. Open borders are absolutely an utopian idea, predicated on the idea that cultures somehow stopped existing, or that people won’t have greater loyalty to their cousins than to complete strangers. For a soft failure, look at the H1B visas and various companies being wholly taken over by foreign ethnic groups for whom nepotism is a POSITIVE value, much more important than competence. For the hard failure, the open borders under autopen and oh, Venezuelan gangs. (Though the Mexican gangs are enough to do for us, honestly.)
I hate to say this, but humans aren’t interchangeable, and even without a welfare state open borders would be dangerous. Because if you dilute the culture to the point that people don’t understand their neighbors social signals, the failure mode isn’t “we fall apart” it’s “multiple warring ethnic and cultural groups.”
What I don’t understand is how I came to forget that in the nineties, when I’d seen it among exchange students, with people clinging to their nationality, the next closest nationality, and vaguely related cultures after that. Except me, because I’m broken or something. BUT all the same. It’s a human thing that makes open borders suicidal.
And I’m not sure about legalized drugs. Look, I’m divided on this. Because the war on drugs has caused enough trouble. BUT on the other hand, there are foreign cartels who view pushing drugs everywhere, including on those too young to know better, as an excellent business opportunity. And a lot of the newest stuff are “take it once and destroy yourself” (Okay, it’s a Russian roulette, but). And also I saw the results of legalization in places like Portugal.
It’s hard to know what part is the drugs, and what part the reaction to the drugs, and what part well, fraud around, under and between all the drug dealing. For instance, how much of the mess in Portugal is just “Portugal.” And how much of the fact that legalizing pot destroyed Colorado is real? How much of it was JUST fraud masquerading under the new influx?
How much, in fact, of the havoc I’ve seen legalization wreak is the drugs, and how much of it is stuff like no enforcing laws against petty theft, camping in public spaces, homelessness, etc. etc. etc.?
I don’t know. Hence “I’m not sure” and not a hard coming-out against it. Because I don’t have all the data and can’t therefore decide. What I’m sure about is that legalization destroys neo-liberal states in which letting drugs eating your mind is proof you’re a victim and need to be given everything.
Other things: still sure you should be able to do whatever you want sexually, provided no force or coercion (or inability to consent) is involved, and you don’t do it on my front lawn and scare my cats.
Still think taxation is theft. (No, hear me out, how about a lottery to finance the few functions that are actually constitutional to the Federal government. Because we don’t need the rampant theft and grift going on at all levels of government. Less money would make it less attractive.)
Still sure “public education” is an oxymoron, and we would be better off with “charity schools.”
I still think the Libertarian Party as an entity is over its skis and has been for a long time. Their last chance at redemption was the election in 16 when they decided to nominate… a democrat.
I still think that the socialist libertarians are as L. Neil Smith put it “something smelly clinging to our shoes.” And to prove it, I’m going to quote Ayn Rand, because of course I am.
And I guess that makes me a libertarian, since I’m arguing in loud quotations. :D
On the serious side, I’m exactly what I’ve always been, the same person who wrote A Few Good Men. I believe in our Constitution. I believe the government should wear it as a girdle cinched tight enough that it can’t escape. I believe in the quotient of individual versus government the individual should now and always have primacy.
To my view that’s libertarian enough, without accruing the utopian and evangelistic view of open borders that requires libertarianism all over the WORLD. The world is not our concern. Let’s start here and make this a shiny city on the hill.
I am in truth an OWL — Older, Wiser Libertarian — who has learned some things sound great in the abstract but are in fact impossible in this our fallen world.
And in the end, I think that’s the greatest value of Libertarian, small government and individualistic philosophy. A grand implementation of it is at its complete best, absent small colonies away from Earth (eh) is utopian and impossible.
But just by existing, by being loud (and sometimes shouty in quotations (eh)), by keeping emphasizing that power always comes from the individual in ultimate instance, we provide much needed leavening to a world that is sure of the opposite, and in which the solution of all problems is assume to be “get a man” (Or these days often woman) “with a bigger stick.”
In that sense, I’m perfectly happy to be lumped in with the liberty lovers, the trouble makers, the goats refusing to be herded, the rebels who refuse to fall into line.
Because we’re the ones who keep humanity from rushing forward, as one…. and fall off the cliff.
According To Hoyt 
“twitter-monarchists”?
Oh yes, those sorts. I “ran into” one of those critters and to make it worse he loved the idea of a “Christian” king with absolute power.
And he had worse faults than that. [Frown]
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Oh, yeah. Those are LIKELY to have other faults. They eat their own boogers at industrial quantities.
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Keep in mind that a steady diet of paste and window licking palls after a while.
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Even if you add an occasional doorknob lick for variety, you are quite short of sufficient protein for adequate brain function.
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I rather suspect those lots are ones who saw the sort of fantasy monarchy set up in the Lord of the Rings and think “that’s a great idea!” and absolutely a.) never looked at real world history, and b.) didn’t even look at the fictional Middle Earth history (including things directly mentioned in the trilogy) that pointed out an awful lot of bad kings. Also they ignore the whole “Aragorn is a fictional character who was deliberately written to be a perfect king who ushered in a new golden age” part.
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The sad thing is that Tolkien had written that after Aragorn, Middle Earth would go down hill.
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Those people who believe that a monarchy is God’s preferred form of Government really need to read 1 Samuel Chapter 8. To paraphrase:
Israel: We want a king!
God (via Samuel): No, you don’t want a king. A king is going to force your sons and daughters to serve him, take the best of everything you have, and basically make you into slaves.
Israel: Yes, yes, we want a king.
God: Okay, fine. I’ll give you a king. But you’re going to be sorry. And don’t come whining to me when it turns out that the king is every bit as bad as I warned you it would be.
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Name me one socialist/fascist/communist ruler (lumping them all together because they are so hard to tell apart) that didn’t become a ‘mad king’. Including Turd-o in Canuckistan, Merkel in Germany and Starmer in (formerly) Great Britain.
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Hm… you know…..
Look at those in terms of how quick they eat resources without resupplying them– King types have to keep folks from killing the farmers to get enough support, because of all the layers, but Marx could kill off the farmers and all the layers. So, fails faster.
Now apply that to making it folks’ best interest to do The Right Thing, even if they’re a bad guy.
This feels like it might connect to CrossoverQueen’s post on good guys who do the good thing for the wrong reason.
:spends way too long stopping WP(DE) from inserting post rather than linking:
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RAH himself said (through Lazarus Long) that the most effective form of government is a well-run tyranny.
Three problems: (1) How do you ensure that it is well-run, (2) who decides, and (3) how do you select a worthy successor for the Benevolent Tyrant? Because history shows that the 3rd Tyrant is likely to be either an idiot or a psychopath. (Or both. Could be both.)
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There’s also a fourth issue: the longer you leave one guy in charge as an absolute ruler, the worse he gets. General personality changes as a man grows older, coupled with growing sycophancy over time are two of the reasons why. Deng Xioping recognized this under Mao, and specifically changed up the CCP’s constitution with term limits to block another Mao (and applied those changes to himself, though he apparently shifted to a “power behind the throne” position when his was up).
Unfortunately for China, Xi removed those limits.
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I am not a libertarian, because I don’t have unrealistic views of how the US should be run (into the ground). Plus I don’t smoke pot.
I am a USAian if I am anything. I’m one of those grouchy old men who just wants to be left the hell alone.
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This is much more sensible than pretty much any political ideologue of any stripe, Left to Right to Committed Middle. Thanks for putting it in print.
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Idealism is to an extent an attempt to convert an idealized model into reality.
The inherent devil in the details is how one sorts priorities, and what the specific person in question stops at, rather than autistically screeching as they have a melt down at the literal closed form not being realized.
The same ideas might have different results for a natural bloody-minded fanatic of the ‘do it at all costs’ variety, versus someone who gives up at the first sign of difficulty. But the selection of ideas also does matter.
The mind a person has before the ideas, and the ideas they latch onto, can be related.
Libertarianism may correlate less strongly with malign ignoramuses than communism, but it can be a model that might not have been realized.
Realizing an unrealized model can correlate to bloody-minded fools who might destroy everything in a quixotic quest.
Preserving a realized system, on the other hand, can be a) small c conservative b) attract a different sort of personality. Preserving a bad system can also correlate to bad personality traits. Good and bad in a system relate to realized systems, not imaginary systems, and we best evaluate unrealized systems close to currently extant and functioning ones.
(Failing or non-functioning systems in human behavior have a ton of routing around that is off-model to more official models.)
Anyway, there are mental phenomena that are shared between many cases. My own mistakes, actual facism, actual communism, and actual libertarianism. At least perhaps.
I’m having a sort (1) of day, and do not have the spoons to really nail quite a lot of things down.
(1) good, productive, tiring
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The longer and deeper you get into the founding documents and their original intent, you realized they knew from the start that Humans are fallible and tend over time to corruption. But just like an aircraft carrier takes a long ways to turn, so does our bloated government. And the pigs feeding at it’s myriad tits squeal like the swine they are when you try and save the bloated sow.
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I believe power should lean toward individual freedom as much as practical. In America most of us seem to honor the ideal if not the practice, which is, at least, a step in the right direction.
I actually became a registered Libertarian in the early 70’s. That’s because of a fit many of us threw over a little tyrant, Fu Manchu (actually March Fong Eu) who was Secretary of State at the time, meaning she was in charge of elections. Now the California Constitution lists two ways for a political party to be recognized in the state. First is to have over 0.33% of the registered voters register under that party designation. Second is for a candidate from that party have a vote total exceeding 2% of a statewide election. Sometime in the 70’s the Libertarian candidate for Governor got some 6% of the vote, bu Fu Manchu ruled that section of the Constitution did not apply because he hadn’t been listed on the ballot as Libertarian. Since her own rules prevented that from being the case because the party hadn’t been recognized as official before the election, she created a nifty Catch-22. In a fit of pique, I and enough others went out the next day and registered Libertarian to put the party over the other threshold.
I have never voted for a big L Libertarian, and soon thereafter reregistered as a Republican, but we made our point.
When i was young, I voted for a lot of bad things, because I was naive (another reason to re-raise the voting age to 21 even though I was 21 when I first got the vote along with a horde of 18-21 year olds). I’m ashamed to admit to voting for the Coastal Commission (Prop 20), something that turned out to be a very bad idea. I’m proud to admit that I voted for the limit on reassessment of property values for taxation purposes (Prop 13), but even that has had deleterious consequences. It eventually shifted the funding of public schools from the local level to the state level. Definitely a very bad thing. Sigh.
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The main bad thing from all the good Prop 13 did is the “reallocation” mechanism that the state bureaucracy built into its implementation – it’s clearly unfair that county X is wealthy and spends its property tax wealth to make its schools great, so Sacramento reallocates property tax revenues from those counties to the counties with crap schools, with the result that the schools are still crap, but with much higher administrative pay.
Capping the property tax rates without the Sacramento central planning aspects would have been better, but overall it’s still a plus. And plus, the decades of loud complaining from local governments is entertaining to this day.
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I am similar, I like the ideals of liberty, but find actual libertarianism to be too utopian.
I do have an ancap YouTuber I like, and after watching one video he had about logical fallacies of collectivism, I had the realization that the fallacy of extreme individualism is to deny the power of collective action. Basically, by accepting the assumption that collective action means government they miss that there are many ways for people to voluntarily work together, and that teamwork is a.powerful tool.
Also, I have realized that I conceptualize the non-aggression principle differently than many libertarians.
One way is to realize that government is a technological tool of violence. This is no different than any other weapon that can be used to protect or to rob. This means that a government expanding its power can be good if it is doing so to restrict other governments from infringement of liberty.
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Mind you, you can still get me to shout incoherently in individualist. :D
But yeah. Part of coming to terms was realizing that things like “abolish the welfare state” are probably beyond my reach in this time, much less anything else.
Brother, we need us a man like Miley. But for now, I’ll take Trump. Better than the other side.
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Yeah, I have a friend who is a hard core Randian objectivist, and it had taken me a while to really articulate what felt off to me about the whole “altruism is evil” that he buys into (but does not actually follow).
I am reminded of a blog I read the other day by a tech entrepreneur who was comparing his experience in Silicon Valley vs. growing up in India. In India people see knowledge as zero sum, and only share if they get something in return. In Silicon Valley they see sharing tips and wisdom with other entrepreneurs as what you do, and it helps all of them improve and do better and have a flourishing ecosystem that produces huge amounts of wealth for all of them.
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Altruism is not evil if you believe in it and practice it on your own. Forcing other people to fund your altruism is as wrong as any other form of robbery.
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Silicon Valley is actually a fairly small pool of people. You keep running into the same folks over and over as you do your rides on the Tech jobs rollercoaster, so you really never know which random acquaintance will be the next VC lottery winner whom you can catch your the next ride with, so it is in one’s self interest to share such tips and keep your amicable networking alive.
That’s not to say there are not infamous grudges, but generally it’s seen as smart to keep things friendly.
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I would be a libertarian if I believed it to be possible. What annoys me is the “die heretic!” that the true believers come out with when you try to discuss the thing.
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For proximate examples of libertarian “no drug laws, dude” in real world application, at least basically no drug use enforcement plus free needles and free money for voter fraud, see The City and County of San Francisco, though the worm just possibly may have started to turn there, and the City of Los Angeles under it’s current Cuban administrative oversight. Where on the libertarian free drug spectra does “camp on the street, shoot up in doorways, and poop on the sidewalk” go?
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Where on the libertarian free drug spectra does “camp on the street, shoot up in doorways, and poop on the sidewalk” go?
Same place as “drive drunk and cause an accident” goes when it comes to alcohol–it ain’t there. Libertarianism holds people responsible for the consequences of their actions, even if the actions themselves are legal.
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Canada. Seriously, a judge in Ontario has ruled that government [tax payers] can’t evict homeless druggies from an encampment unless the government (tax payers) provide housing that the homeless approve of (have to be able to shoot up, smoke, fool around, be loud), because they have a right to housing {free to them} that matches their right to be antisocial in all sorts of ways.
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My wife and I put it this way:
Ideologically, we’re libertarian and (therefore) pragmatically we’re mostly conservative except where the conservatives start getting bossy.
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I like “non-bossy conservative” as a label.
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Any ‘right’ that has to be supplied by somebody else is not a right. 😡
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I’m a libertarian–registered Libertarian and Trump’s the only non-Libertarian I’ve ever voted for–but I don’t consider open borders to be a valid libertarian position, even as a philosophical ideal. Don’t have time right now to go into my reasoning, but I’ll do so later if anyone’s interested.
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I don’t want open borders for the same reason I don’t leave the front door of my house open all day and night. 😛
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I consider myself…um…it’s complicated? And probably doesn’t translate into US political ideas well. I would say I’m more a minarchist than a libertarian, and that what little government should be is meant to fill the gaps between individual moral compasses. The closest semi-coherent ideology I’ve ever found to where I land is what the Euros call “Christian Democracy” and even that is far from a perfect fit. So, darned if I know.
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Subsidierist works. “The lowest, smallest level of government that can do it should do it. If they can’t then it goes up one tier.”
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My response to the assumption that I’m a moderate is “no, I’m extreme in all directions.”
They assume I’m joking, but it’s truer than a lot of descriptions.
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I agree with you on the drug thing. Colorado was also one of the first states to legalize pot, which drew in a less than productive wave of immigrants.
One of the things that bothered me, right from the start, was both smelling pot on the street all the time and the people that complained about it. It is not legal to smoke it in public. That has _nothing_ to do with legalizing pot. It has everything to do with not enforcing laws already on the books.
I was a fairly hard-core libertarian in my youth. I’m not so much, now. I do believe in minimal laws, which is somewhat libertarian.
I also believe that if a law exists, it should be enforced or repealed.
I’m going to have fun with that in fiction. Our intrepid heroes want to farm a dungeon. To farm it, you have to feed it. I believe it was a RAH (or maybe Clarke) story that had almost every crime warrant the death penalty so organ harvesting could keep up with demand. This will be similar. No one objects when you toss murderers and rapists naked into the dungeon. When it gets to j-walking, people start to get upset. Plenty of story fodder there.
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That was a Larry Niven story.
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I know someone who is anaphylaxis-allergic to pot. (She buys Epi-pens on the open market, since there isn’t a blood test for cannabis, so to get the 100% certain that it’s pot test, she would have to go to a hospital and do deliberate exposure.) You can’t contain pot smoke like you can, say, peanuts, so public pot-smoking is a direct health hazard for her.
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As Drak noted, that was Larry Niven, from his short story “The Jigsaw Man”, set earlier in the timeline of his “Known Space” universe.
He continued with it in his “Gil the ARM” series, focusing on a UN agent policing organlegging (illegal organ trade, primarily used by criminals).
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The reason long-lasting monarchies (Romanov, Habsburg – Austrian version) seem to have hung in there is that there was a limited amount they could actually do. They were not all-seeing, all-knowing, and all-meddling.
Since the empire really was a family business, at least for the Habsburgs, there was also an obligation to keep it intact or grow it through marriage and investment as well as conquest. Oddly, the Habsburgs had a habit of throwing “that crazy Archduke” who was actually listened to when he did local reforms. Not every generation had one, and over time entropy won.
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I’m an accidentalist. The point is not the form of the government, but to what extent it does its job of protecting people from force and fraud without harming them in other ways. An absolute monarchy that does a better job than a republic is more legitimate.
Also, history shows that governments must be fitted to times and circumstances.
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The thing about “legalizing drugs” is that without that, we have cartels making mega-billions and killing everybody in their path. Al Capone and Lucky Luciano would be weeping with envy to see our modern drug cartels.
The medieval church tolerated whorehouses, not out of hypocrisy but out of a doctrine of “harm reduction.” Their take was that all men (yes, even you and I) are fallen, and all men will sin. Sinlessness is not an option. So they figured that allowing sin some licit outlets was better than trying to stamp sin out completely.
And another thing—which drugs are we talking about? Pot is not opiates is not hallucinogens is not uppers is not downers… I will stipulate freely that some people and some drugs are a bad, bad combination. But I could say the same thing about alcohol. I know quite a few people who’re OK when they’re sober but put a few drinks down them and it’s Katy-bar-the-door. The temperance/prohibition people started out with a good idea—the amount people drank as a matter of routine in Colonial times boggled my mind when I found out about it. But they took it way too far, and now the whole idea’s discredited.
The “drug exemption” to the freedoms granted to us in the Constitution also concerns me. In the names of the Drug War and the Holy War On Racism, they’ve made much of the Constitution and Bill of Rights dead letters. They haven’t tried quartering soldiers on us yet, but give them time. I’d rather deal with giggling druggies on every corner than that.
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–
There is a reason why Europe, early pioneer America, and even now outside of US and Canada, that alcohol based drinks are the drink of choice. Often the only safe option for those of us traveling from Canada and US. Suppose to be watered down alcohol. But still contains alcohol.
Drinking water flat out not guarantied to be safe. Can’t always boil the water either. But one can always add drinkable alcohol to an unsuspecting contaminated water source.
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I’ve seen too much to think that there are really too many “victimless” crimes. I’ve seen enough families ruined by drugs to think that addicts are only hurting themselves. And, yes, I know, alcohol does much the same thing, we tried prohibition with that, and it didn’t work—but that strikes me as an excellent reason not to let another drug get embedded in our culture to the point where we can’t get rid of it.
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