Why Libertarianism Struggles and How It Could Succeed
Posted by CircuitGuy 11 years, 4 months ago to Government
A few weeks ago I wrote a post I'm Not Ready for the Gulch and stopped reading this website regularly. http://www.galtsgulchonline.com/posts/21... Thank you to those who encouraged me to go live life prosperously in my real or virtual gulch.
A few people pointed out it was a poor choice of words for me to say the AS strikers “gave up”. I should have said “gave up on the looters' world.” As I said in the post, I'm where Dagny was most of the book, still wanting to be part of the world and solve its problems. I can't remember her words, but I thought even she said something like "how can they give up when the world needs their help?"
I enthusiastically support those who “give up” and work on building a seastead or micronation in a remote location, e.g. a gulch, a remote arctic area, under water, or in outer space.
So many people identify as “social liberal, fiscal conservative”, it borders on being a cliché. So why the heck isn't there a mainstream political party representing libertarian views!?
I suspect it's because most outspoken libertarians are extremists and/or mean-spirited. They focus on how $hitty things are and appear long for an AS-style apocalypse that paves the way for a better world. I can't actually know what people long for, but I know Rand fans have more than our share of dickishness.
When I came back and read comments to my post, most were positive, but someone said he/she would spit and turn away in condemnation of me. This is how you respond toward someone working in small ways for libertarian causes? It's no wonder we struggle “to win friends and influence people” as it were.
I hope the mean-spirited and extremist are just a vocal minority. If a startup housed on a ship incubator, initially for immigration/visa reasons, becomes the next Facebook, they can build a fixed physical platform and hire lobbyists to get other nation states to leave them alone. If the organization that manages it is committed to respecting a US-style Constitution established by the residents and not widely interpreting it away, they'll have a veritable libertarian micro-republic in my lifetime, IF THEY CAN KEEP IT.
For it to work, every one who believes in the right to be let alone must be your friend.
A few people pointed out it was a poor choice of words for me to say the AS strikers “gave up”. I should have said “gave up on the looters' world.” As I said in the post, I'm where Dagny was most of the book, still wanting to be part of the world and solve its problems. I can't remember her words, but I thought even she said something like "how can they give up when the world needs their help?"
I enthusiastically support those who “give up” and work on building a seastead or micronation in a remote location, e.g. a gulch, a remote arctic area, under water, or in outer space.
So many people identify as “social liberal, fiscal conservative”, it borders on being a cliché. So why the heck isn't there a mainstream political party representing libertarian views!?
I suspect it's because most outspoken libertarians are extremists and/or mean-spirited. They focus on how $hitty things are and appear long for an AS-style apocalypse that paves the way for a better world. I can't actually know what people long for, but I know Rand fans have more than our share of dickishness.
When I came back and read comments to my post, most were positive, but someone said he/she would spit and turn away in condemnation of me. This is how you respond toward someone working in small ways for libertarian causes? It's no wonder we struggle “to win friends and influence people” as it were.
I hope the mean-spirited and extremist are just a vocal minority. If a startup housed on a ship incubator, initially for immigration/visa reasons, becomes the next Facebook, they can build a fixed physical platform and hire lobbyists to get other nation states to leave them alone. If the organization that manages it is committed to respecting a US-style Constitution established by the residents and not widely interpreting it away, they'll have a veritable libertarian micro-republic in my lifetime, IF THEY CAN KEEP IT.
For it to work, every one who believes in the right to be let alone must be your friend.
This rant is not about you. It's that a few years back my wife mentioned on social media she was cleaning out her Facebook people who she didn't really talk to but let her know if they wanted to stay linked. She un-friended people who didn't reply. They had a holy fit. I had a phone call in which someone said "what your wife did was just unheard-of". Clicking something on a website? Pick up a g/d phone and ask her to relink to you if you're that into this stuff. I'm an old man about it, I guess. I don't see how someone can get fired up about clicking a button.
That is the essence of liberty, isn't it? The right to be left alone to pursue your own ideal... your individual happiness. Best of luck on your personal quest.
For example, I do great work. I have always gotten complements and bonuses and such. But I am a terrible employee. I may be one of the worse because I tend to do work as I see it needs to be done and that is hardly an employee's role.
How is the world built? Ideas and the will to make those ideas reality. You are either living in the world of your ideas or you are living someone else's dream.
AS suggested that the movers and creators simply "drop out" of the process and go their own way. It posits what would happen without those people. Interestingly, we have good examples in the recent experiments with National Socialism and Soviet Socialism. While there were some "state" approved deep thinkers, much was lost in servicing and catering to the populace. Finally, people just got sick and tired and the whole thing came apart at the seams.
By the way, we're pretty close now. America is not immune from immutable forces of nature that seem to control large populations of any ilk.
And to me they have to be willing to cut programs they support. It means nothing to save you want to cut programs you don't like because you're a fiscal conservative. Everyone wants to cut programs they don't like.
A true fiscal conservative is a liberal who cuts Medicaid while scared nursing homes will kick grandmothers to the street, a neo-con who cuts the military while scared the dismantling our standing army and foreign bases could be the first step to WWIII, or a conservative who cuts prison sentences for violent crimes and eliminates them for drugs while afraid we barely have our finger in the dike against crime as it is.
It's lame to sanctimoniously say you're for "fiscal responsibility" when you call for eliminating things you don't like anyway.
I LOVE just the title itself. :)
I don't think I used the phrase "save the world," but it would have been valid. They were trying to save the world, to the extent "the world" was the means of production for their society and the freedom to own them privately. They wanted to provide goods and services in fair trades with other people providing goods and services. This is why the book is call AS. The protagonists are holding up the world.
I do think business people build the world and are usually concerned about saving and protecting their creation.
If you have ever traveled to other parts of the world, you will notice that a lot of business goes on everywhere. Even in poor countries, people are enterprising and set up small stands or cook food for sale or sell tires, cokes, light bulbs, etc. They pepper the sides of roads with all kinds of services and food. In a very real sense, these people are more Libertarian than many who avow party affiliation in the US.
While Rand wrote he book using trains and transportation as a model, she was describing large industrial concerns. These cannot operate using the Libertarian model because the very structure is hierarchical. Working for a large corporation as a worker is no different, in many ways than working for the government. The bigger the corporation, the more rules to impede excellence and innovation. It's because to be successful, large industry must have focus and not everyone is qualified to impose on the focus. We see in AS, were government steps in to impose a system designed to regulate human behavior onto entities called corporations.
Read Marx. One of his main concerns was how to get everyone to look at everybody as equal. Everyone should get the same regardless of effort or enterprise because to have a viable social system as he described, individualism must be suppressed. Marx was Jewish but there are parts of his writings where he advocates "the Jewish problem." his system couldn't allow something like organized Jewish or any other religion for that matter because those entities tend to breed a thought system that opposes the big blender society where everyone is regarded the same, that he envisioned.
Dagny and the other entrepreneurs depicted by RAnd are locking for ways to operate outside of government control so they can develop an industry. It's how they think and Rand compares it to the way an artist thinks about art. I don't think the creation of art and building a business are the same but do think that how an artist marks his art is equivalent to how businesses market their products.
Business people are interested in making money from their ideas. They are not interested in saving the world but a businessman may invent or hybridize a new kind of soy that would thrive in airs climates with 1/10th the water used by commercial soy products to meet a need of feeding people in arid climates. Is he thinking of saving the world? No. He's looking to find an area of business where there are no or few competitors.
The most mean spirited people I have met are Public School teachers during a national election. They say things about any opposition that are completely rude. Only certain extreme talk radio hosts do the same but I don't think any of them are Libs. mostly because Libs. just don't give a damn.
I think it's coming. The Tea (taxed enough already) Party got trashed by the mainstream media for no legitimate reasons. I think people are starting to realize it and see through the crap.
I read Greg Gutfeld's "The Joy of Hate: How to Triumph over Whiners in the Age of Phony Outrage" (pub. Nov 2012) and enjoyed it so much that I went back and read "The Bible of Unspeakable Truths" (pub. May 2010). I would not have done it eagerly in reverse.
To summarize chronologically, Gutfeld's writing went from hilariously crude, meandering commentary on everything "stupid" on under the sun to hilariously (less) crude, meandering, and yet targeted commentary on "repressive tolerance". He is a strong example of an outspoken Libertarian in the media moving from "extreme" and "mean-spirited" criticism to less mean, logic-infused humor with real weight.
I highly recommend "The Joy of Hate: How to Triumph over Whiners in the Age of Phony Outrage" (I find nonfiction books much easier to digest in audio format) for a glimpse at how a "hip" Libertarian might go about enhancing the image of the party. Fair warning though... be prepared to laugh unselfconsciously at the enemy without the uncomfortable feeling that you're just succumbing to hate.
I think there is more "hope" among us than is immediately observable... we just don't talk all that much about emotions. Well, I do sometimes... then I get distracted or set straight.
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There's a reason why academia generally ignored or rejected Ayn Rand's objectivist philosophy.
The reason IMHO? Objectivism holds that your every motivation should be selfish in nature. It takes the pursuit of happiness to a whole new level — pursue it without regard for others. As I understand Ayn Rand's meaning, an Objectivist would only take a bullet for their loved one if they couldn't live without them economically.
The distilled truth? Objectivists are extremely self-centered.
Objectivists don't care if society provided them the tools for their success—they don't want to give back to society unless it advances their personal quest for happiness. I think most Objectivists can't see how contributing to a better society is intricately linked to their happiness and our collective happiness.
Sadly Objectivism has been a significant influence among libertarians and American conservatives.
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The content doesn't bother me really (even though the subtle distortion is a crappy tactic). It's more the ensuing debate, where I call him on the specific distortion or the tactic, and he evades. Call, evade, call, evade, ad nausium.
How would you handle such a series of interactions? I just unfriended him on Facebook - not the end of the world, but it is bugging our mother.
This is significant too because before the 2012 election, Mike Bloomberg and Sam Nunn seriously considered a 3rd party run (Pres Bloomberg, VP Nunn) focused on the Ross Perot voting block first and foremost, plus believing they could broaden it that core. They ended up not running because they didn't think in the end they could win, but they explored it to a great depth.
So with some broadening, rebranding and moderation away from the Lundy fringe, along with a charismatic candidate, Libertarianism could win the highest office...Rand Paul perhaps?!
Wait...what TEA party are you talking about again? Your first line was referring to a third party type of party, right? (and left lol) That wasn't the kind I meant...I meant the meeting kind.LOL
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