BIG Announcement! Leave Me Alone on sale now!

[zacb]

Hello! If you don't know, I just released a new book, called Leave Me Alone, the Facts About Libertarianism. In it, I discuss the basics of libertarianism, and explain the basic policies, the schisms, and the main figures of various factions. You can order it here:https://www.amazon.com/gp/css/homepage. ... nkified-20

[Winston]

The link doesn't go to any product. Did you put the wrong link in there?

[abcdavid01]

What schisms? There's Rothbard who started the party. He's the most commonly followed it seems. Then there's Rand, but Objectivists hold no love for Libertarians. Agorism might be a faction. I don't suppose you've done a section on Reactionism, which is kind of an aristocratic libertarianism that holds it as the unobtainable end of politicial arrangement. Basically what happens when you keep Austrian economics, but throw out most of the rest for keeping the proles in line. Lot of the early Austrians had a respect for monarchy after all.

[zacb]

To answer your question David, I just went into the main splits, such as anarchist, libertarian leaning, minarchist, etc. I am not trying to offend, but I was going over the main divides. I imagine I could add libertarian socialist and marxist, but I was trying to keep it more into info, as an opener, not as a be all end all. I did consider Rand, bu tI was a tad iffy on her. I was also atad iffy on Friedman, but I added him. I also added Daniel Hannon, eve though he may not be libertarian through and through, I think he should be condsidered. I am sorry Bout the link. I will try and see what the problem is. But in the mean time th etitle is Leave Me Alone: the Facts About Libertarianism.

[abcdavid01]

Daniel Hannon? Huh. I never heard of him. Looking this up now, so his idea is localism? Well, I wonder the viability of that when analyzed for systems theory.

Yeah, I get what you're saying though. I had to really read this stuff at the highest level to become a Reactionary. For example, how does a libertarian handle animal rights? I tried to reconcile this, but most answers I got from people just hand waved over the issue. It seemed like a contradiction.

Then I got to reading Hayek, who said the family is a socialist institution and humans are socialist by nature. Unlike Rand, Hayek thought this wasn't a problem so long as it didn't affect the economy barring certain political concerns. Basically, socialism is human nature, and human nature isn't always right (it's often wrong with regards to the needs to build and maintain civilization), but rejecting human nature would only lead to empty, psychotic people. Socialism for families. One's birth isn't voluntary. That's what I learned from Hayek.

Apparently Hayek's teacher Friedrich von Wieser went even further. He's the guy who coined the term "opportunity cost" although obviously the idea was well known to Bastiat long before. Wieser also coined the term "marginal utility" and said "freedom has to be superseded by a system of order." Thus, freedom is the opposite pole to anarchy, superseded by a system of chaos. Frankly I think that's close to what we have today. Anarcho-tyranny. It's something that characterizes many tyrannical regimes too; Hitler having his underlings compete and the like. Anarchy simply means no government and since the 1960's in many Western countries crime laws have been relaxed. The result of this government weakness has been chaos e.g. much higher crime rates. You can argue that America has a super high incarceration rate, but that's for stupid stuff like drug laws. I look at Western societies and I see chaos. Anarcho-tyranny.

Wieser was a Baron and advisor for the Austro-Hungarian Empire. That's where Austrian economics comes from and Menger and the other early ones worked as finance ministers for the empire...monarchy. Eugen Bohm von Bawek and Joseph Schumpeter are other ones to look at. It was only with von Mises that there was something of a split and then much further with Rothbard. Rothbard's prose and ideas are accessible even if they seem kind of out there. I've always thought early Austrians were much greater intellectual heavyweights though, even von Mises.

[Cornfed]

Hello! If you don't know, I just released a new book, called Leave Me Alone, the Facts About Libertarianism. In it, I discuss the basics of libertarianism, and explain the basic policies, the schisms, and the main figures of various factions.

You expect people to pay $10 for something they could get from a Wikipedia entry?

[Cornfed]

Yeah, I get what you're saying though. I had to really read this stuff at the highest level to become a Reactionary. For example, how does a libertarian handle animal rights? I tried to reconcile this, but most answers I got from people just hand waved over the issue. It seemed like a contradiction

There are numerous issues like how are major technological projects that take decades to come to fruition to be funded? how are people to get access to resources when there is a huge surplus of labor due to automation? etc. The whole thing is fairly silly really.

[abcdavid01]

[Cornfed]

^ Fairly strong slave mentality there.

[abcdavid01]

Well here are the other solutions:

Solution A is Jonathan Smith's Modest Proposal. Kill off the unfunded liabilities and sell the organs. Pretty f***ing awful for any sane person to consider. Solution C has to do with virtual reality. The Matrix maybe? Something like S_Parc would propose. Unlikely to happen. Remember, the problem is that if the masses can't be productive, they should at least be kept from degeneracy and harming society. Virtual reality super porn may make American society more like Japan or something maybe, but I still don't think it'll stop crime. Most crime is over drugs anyway and people feeding habits. Need some heroin money? Steal your neighbor's TV. These solutions try to prevent that and the best ones even make productive members of society. Solution B, outlined above, has enough problems that are well known. Like my father said recently, people have all this money, but none of the responsibility for it. Trade food stamps for drugs, eh? He's a criminal defense lawyer, so he sees it every day. He employs my aunt (his sister in-law) as his secretary for a small salary, but she's kind of dumb and with her habits probably couldn't find work elsewhere. She's a nice enough women, but she's simple. Good for getting fat and making babies and cooking and being kind. My dad has also wished there were better secretary robots though, like what Japan's barely starting to see in some isolated offices. That's another solution for later.

This is Solution D:

There is an apocryphal anecdote which illustrates Solution D perfectly. It probably never happened. A famous American economist - Milton Friedman, perhaps - is visiting China, perhaps in the '80s, and sees a construction project where workers are digging a canal, with picks and shovels. "Why not use bulldozers?" the economist suggests.

"But Professor Friedman," his host points out, "this is a jobs project."

"Oh!" says the apocryphal professor. "Well, in that case, why are they using picks? Why not give them spoons?"

While this is meant to illustrate the supposed idiocy of Solution D, it actually illustrates the design space. The purpose of Solution D is to lose as little money as possible, while maintaining the human quality of your assets and preventing them from degenerating into Hardcore Pawn customers, 10th St. zombies or other revolting parodies of the human condition.

Digging ditches with appropriate hand tools is a simple and almost ennobling, in its own small way, form of manual labor which is ideally suited to the condition of most humans, delicate aristocrats perhaps excepted. (It is possible to construct makework for delicate aristocrats, but it takes more imagination.)

The problem with makework is that it's a house of cards that only functions with a strong government, which we don't have.

Solution E is restricting foreign trade, which would instantly raise GDP and employment. This is mercantilism. Kind of like Nazi Germany. Again, it has other problems in that it sacrifices choice. Free trade is more than products, but the exchange of ideas that increases human development in art, science, culture, etc. I'm wary of sacrificing that, so I rarely attack outsourcing. But that's me talking, not Moldbug.

Solution F is technology restrictions. What happens when robots become the new Mexicans stealing all our jobs?

I am not suggesting across-the-board technology restriction, general medieval stasis, low-res iPads, banning Google Glass, or anything of the kind. My idea of Solution F involves targeted technology controls designed to create market demand for the type of unskilled human laborers that modern industry has made obsolete, but that we are politically unwilling to kill and sell as organ meat. Being so unwilling, we have no choice but to provide these people with a way to survive as human beings - preferably as human as possible.

For instance, two forms of semi-skilled labor well-known to be good for the human soul are (a) craftsmanship and (b) farming. Compared to the demand for these professions that once existed, both have been essentially eradicated. How many meth-heads, thugz, etc, are there in America whose great-great-grandparents were craftsmen, farmers, or both?

Consider one targeted technology restriction: no plastic toys. If my children are going to have toys, these toys will be made from wood, with hand tools, by Americans, in America.

Results: (a) negative financial impact on parents who need to buy toys for their children, and might have to increase their toy budgets; (b) negative hedonic impact on children, whose toy bins are no longer filled with brightly colored Chinese plastic crap; (c) negative economic impact on China, which is not our country, so who cares; (d) gigantic economic boom in American wooden toy industry, providing employment to any fool who can whittle.

How can anyone contemplating these outcomes not agree with me that (d) considerably outweighs the sum of (a), (b) and (c)? Or take agricultural labor, for which an arbitrary level of demand can be created simply by banning industrial farming techniques. Every ghetto rat in America today could find employment as an organic slow-food artisan. Crap - even a 10th Street zombie can milk cows. We'd have to pay them for their work, of course. We already pay them for not working. Is this better for us? For them? WTF, America?

Farming's a bit more dangerous to be fair. Governments would have to make sure there were never any shortages.

The future will require completely new social arrangements. Post-Industrialism.

[zacb]

Yeah, I get what you're saying though. I had to really read this stuff at the highest level to become a Reactionary. For example, how does a libertarian handle animal rights? I tried to reconcile this, but most answers I got from people just hand waved over the issue. It seemed like a contradiction

There are numerous issues like how are major technological projects that take decades to come to fruition to be funded? how are people to get access to resources when there is a huge surplus of labor due to automation? etc. The whole thing is fairly silly really.

I am not outright saying that collective action would never be a good idea, all I am saying is that individuals should be able to choose their own destiny. If you want to have a strong moral state, fine, just don't involve me in it (if I did not like that). I guess all I am saying is that a man is a king of his castle, and since it is his, he should be able to decide who he will cede that power to. I am not saying there should not be collective programs, just don't force me to pay for it. Because here is the thing: lets say we have a $500 billion dollar surplus. I say we build a missile defense system, you say we build a Death star, and David said we should go to mars or some other galaxy. Which is more valuable. I think most people would say the defense mechanism, but then you have people lobbying for this, and lobbying for that, and what ultimately makes one the right thing to spend it on or not to? Another way to look at this is in a partisan way. Should we build a homeless shelter for gays, should we continue the war on drugs, or should we build a road to no where to spur jobs? To each person, they have a stake in these things. But the problem is that not one of those are right or wrong. So the best thing, in most cases, is to let people use their own money to decide what is right. Because we will disagree on what is the best use of resources. This is called a free market. And here is the other thing, I don't want my tax payer dollars going to abortion or to fund wars in the name of God, so the best thing to do is don't even allow the government to open the door to those possibilities.

And now let me ask you this: why is your idea of government right?

[zacb]

http://www.amazon.com/Leave-Alone-Facts ... e+me+alone

Hopefully that one will work .

[Cornfed]

Yeah, I get what you're saying though. I had to really read this stuff at the highest level to become a Reactionary. For example, how does a libertarian handle animal rights? I tried to reconcile this, but most answers I got from people just hand waved over the issue. It seemed like a contradiction

There are numerous issues like how are major technological projects that take decades to come to fruition to be funded? how are people to get access to resources when there is a huge surplus of labor due to automation? etc. The whole thing is fairly silly really.

I am not outright saying that collective action would never be a good idea, all I am saying is that individuals should be able to choose their own destiny. If you want to have a strong moral state, fine, just don't involve me in it (if I did not like that). I guess all I am saying is that a man is a king of his castle, and since it is his, he should be able to decide who he will cede that power to. I am not saying there should not be collective programs, just don't force me to pay for it. Because here is the thing: lets say we have a $500 billion dollar surplus. I say we build a missile defense system, you say we build a Death star, and David said we should go to mars or some other galaxy. Which is more valuable. I think most people would say the defense mechanism, but then you have people lobbying for this, and lobbying for that, and what ultimately makes one the right thing to spend it on or not to? Another way to look at this is in a partisan way. Should we build a homeless shelter for gays, should we continue the war on drugs, or should we build a road to no where to spur jobs? To each person, they have a stake in these things. But the problem is that not one of those are right or wrong. So the best thing, in most cases, is to let people use their own money to decide what is right. Because we will disagree on what is the best use of resources. This is called a free market. And here is the other thing, I don't want my tax payer dollars going to abortion or to fund wars in the name of God, so the best thing to do is don't even allow the government to open the door to those possibilities.

And now let me ask you this: why is your idea of government right?

You haven’t actually addressed any of the above issues. It is clear that things like making long term technological progress or providing for people in the absence of much of a labor requirement would simply not be possible, so the system being proposed is nonsense.

[gsjackson]

Solution A is Jonathan Smith's Modest Proposal.

Jonathan Swift

[zacb]

Simple. Form a government according to common ideals, and fund reseatch for these long term projects. Or perhaps companies could research these. All I am saying is we shouldn't limit ourselves. I guess all I am asking for is interapping governments. A government should be like buying insurance, you choose which one is right for you. And depending on which system you choose, the answer to that question will be different. In other words, there is no one right or wrong governmnet, unless it is against the will of the governed. So how would you solve it? You answer is as right a smine, just don't force me to fund it.