Dispatches from Libertopia

[Sauron]

Actual SCIENTISTS (majoring in hard science, with empirical evidence) discuss the biological reason why libertarianism is a failure.

Two recent studies in evolutionary biology (discussed in Scientific American) concern the problem of why not all individuals cheat: “A key problem when trying to understand the evolution of cooperation has been the issue of cheaters.”

In other words: cheating helps the cheater, so why doesn’t everyone cheat?

One finding (“Generalized Reciprocity”) has been that to the extent that individuals in a culture trust and help strangers, the culture itself thrives, but that to the opposite extent, in which it’s common to take from strangers without giving proportionally in return, the culture suffers and declines.

This means that cultures in which cheating is prevalent decline; that’s one reason not everyone cheats – the more cheating there is, the weaker the culture is.

Another finding is that “cooperation could be a viable evolutionary strategy when individuals within the group collectively punish cheaters who don’t pull their weight.”

In other words: The only type of culture that can thrive is one in which there is prevalent trust, and in which there is also prevalent contempt and rejection of cheaters.

But what happens when the person who is held in contempt is not the cheater, but the cheater is instead more often admired because cheaters (by definition) avoid the barrier, to their personal success, of adhering to the rules of decency and fairness – the rules against frauds and against all other types of theft from others? It’s by avoiding those barriers that cheaters win.

When success itself is admired, regardless of how it is won, then the result becomes what the philosopher Thomas Hobbes called “the state of nature,” in which there is “continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

This is what results when everyone places success above fairness or any other ethical objective. Some people call this “state of nature” “libertarianism,” or “anarchy,” and they think that this might-makes-right society is the ideal form of “government” (no government at all), towards which the world should strive.

However, the recent studies in evolutionary biology show that there is actually evolutionary benefit in “the state of nature” only if the culture happens to be one of trust of strangers, and of contempt for cheaters. But how can there continue to exist trust of strangers, and contempt for cheaters, in any “state of nature”?

It’s too dangerous to trust strangers in such a society. Furthermore, contempt for cheaters imposes ethical rules that remove the state of nature, and that replace it with the imposed ethical order.

This is the problem that libertarian believers must wrestle with, if they are at all serious, instead of just ideological kooks.

So, rejecting government solves nothing. It’s like rejecting food: The real issue isn’t to reject food, it’s to eat healthful food, and to avoid poisonous food. Similarly, the real issue isn’t to reject government, it’s to support good government, and to oppose bad government.

And so, too, the issue isn’t whether government should be “small,” or “big,” but rather that it should be the best size to serve the public, who must bear its costs.

In other words: Libertarianism entirely avoids the real question, which is: What type of government is good? As an “ideology,” libertarianism doesn’t even make it to first base: it’s fake, from the get-go. That’s why libertarianism fails.

[Stormlight]

Libertarian writing that reads like comic books

1. A Free Market is Good for Everyone.

Milton Friedman was a magician with words, making reality disappear: "There is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lot of the ordinary people [than] the free-enterprise system...The free market system distributes the fruits of economic progress among all people."

The Cato Institute added their own banality: "Free markets create a future promoting integrity and trust."

[SR71]

I really want to do a dispatch on this exact theme right here, but alas, not really up to the task of making it veruh funneh. I know it has YUGE potential though.

When a free-market propagandist uses the term “tragedy of the commons,” we should feel free to substitute “justification for privatization,” and when an ecologist references “tragedy of the commons” to describe the current climate negotiations, the propagandist again presents this as “justification for privatization.” In other words, if there’s a problem with the commons, such as it being portrayed as a tragedy, then clearly the solution is to privatize it, creating an anti-commons.

The argument is an example of the fallacy of the excluded middle: an assumed problem with one thing being used to justify some specific preferred alternative rather than a lack of that very thing. In this case, private property, which is not the opposite of property held in common, is being singled out as the only alternative, whereas the stunningly obvious alternativ to a resource held, and used, in common is a resource not held, or used, at all, by anyone. This is so stunningly obvious a thought that it may be hard to grasp at first, and so it bears repeating: the opposite of a resource the public can use (and/or own), is a resource that the public cannot use (or own), jointly or individually. That is the case that is being excluded. The reason for its exclusion is stunningly obvious too: if nobody is allowed to shoot panda bears, then how the hell are you supposed to get rich selling those cute black-and-white panda bear rugs to put in front of the fireplace?

[specious_reasons]

I'm a libertarian because I do not want to vaccinate my kids.



(To be fair, the libertarian who shared this picture thought this was a bad idea.)

[Beth]

You know what gets me, is that these same Libertarian people on my FB list have ranted at work, or on FB because their foodstamps application was rejected, OR, I have seen them purchasing their food with their EBT card. WTF?! So, help isn't needed for the poor, but they milk the system while it ia there, cuz after all, they pay their taxes.

Bitch please! I have paid more taxes into the system than they will pay in a lifetime, and had assistance when I was separated. First time in my life...after paying massive amounts into the system. Now they want to fight to end SS insurance. I have paid a crapload of money into that, as well, and if my money, with interest is not returned if they abolish it, well, that is theft. Oh, and a few actually either collect bennies because the drugs they used messed up their lungs, or caused mental disorders. The whole philosophy sounds grand in theory, but it does not pan out in practice.

[Beth]

Sorry for the rant. My point is, we never know what tomorrow brings and I would rather live my life knowing that there is a safety net, than be prosperous, lose all, and then have to go from food bank to food bank to beg for food that won't even last a couple of weeks. It is pretty damned heartless to deny the havenots. If they are upset about fraud, better fund our DCF departments so that they can better sniff out fraud!

[SR71]

lolling my ass off at a real life dispatch from libertardia

New study says threat of man-made global warming greatly exaggerated | Fox News

LOL! The Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change. It's peer reviewed!

[AynMisesLibertarian]

Originally Posted by SR71

lolling my ass off at a real life dispatch from libertardia

New study says threat of man-made global warming greatly exaggerated | Fox News

LOL! The Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change. It's peer reviewed!

ahahahaah YEAHYEAH all the doomday prediction about "uuuuuuuh the new climate will destroy the earth" is true because...well we need it in order to advance our socialist/communist agenda since anticapitalism has failed the real world you need a new excuse to give the power over all the economics to a big government

enviromentalist are like watermelon....green outside and fucking red inside

[Watser?]

Everybody is red inside, you braindead ideology machine.

[SR71]

Originally Posted by AynMisesLibertarian

ahahahaah YEAHYEAH all the doomday prediction about "uuuuuuuh the new climate will destroy the earth" is true because...well we need it in order to advance our socialist/communist agenda since anticapitalism has failed the real world you need a new excuse to give the power over all the economics to a big government

enviromentalist are like watermelon....green outside and fucking red inside

While I don't even actually hold to what you ascribe to me, go ahead and continue to inhabit your absurd fantasy of a place that doesn't exist in all the world if it makes you feel better. Have fun in your delusion!

[Sauron]

Originally Posted by EinWhinyPlagiarian

ahahahaah YEAHYEAH all the doomday prediction about "uuuuuuuh blah blah blah

Oh, how cute.

AML never took any hard science that uses empirical evidence in college. He majored in a soft social science; i.e., economics.

Which means he's totally unqualified* to even evaluate the scientific evidence on global warming, much less come to a conclusion about it.

Oh, and €200.


* by AML's own previously enunciated reasoning

[Sauron]

Interesting read.

Like communism, this philosophy is defective in its misreading of human nature, misunderstanding of how societies work and utter failure to adapt to changing circumstances. Radical libertarianism assumes that humans are wired only to be selfish, when in fact cooperation is the height of human evolution. It assumes that societies are efficient mechanisms requiring no rules or enforcers, when in fact they are fragile ecosystems prone to collapse and easily overwhelmed by free-riders. And it is fanatically rigid in its insistence on a single solution to every problem: Roll back the state.

Communism failed in three strikingly similar ways. It believed that humans should be willing cogs serving the proletariat. It assumed that societies could be run top-down like machines. And it, too, was fanatically rigid in its insistence on an all-encompassing ideology, leading to totalitarianism.

Radical libertarianism, if ever put into practice at the scale of something bigger than a tiny enclave, would also be a disaster.

We say the conditional “would” because radical libertarianism has a fatal flaw: It can’t be applied across a functioning society. What might radical libertarians do if they actually had power? A President Rand Paul would rule by tantrum, shutting down the government in order to repeal laws already passed by Congress. A Secretary Norquist would eliminate the Internal Revenue Service and progressive taxation, so that the already wealthy could exponentially compound their advantage, as the programs that sustain a prosperous middle class are gutted. A Koch domestic policy would obliterate environmental standards for clean air and water, so that polluters could externalize all their costs onto other people.

Radical libertarians would be great at destroying. They would have little concept of creating or governing. It is in failed states such as Somalia that libertarianism finds its fullest actual expression.

[chunksmediocrites]

Originally Posted by SR71

lolling my ass off at a real life dispatch from libertardia

New study says threat of man-made global warming greatly exaggerated | Fox News

LOL! The Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change. It's peer reviewed!

The Heartland Institute produced that "study", and they have all the ethical and scientific background of a hired goon. You are still a parasite in the eyes of Ayn Rand if you are firmly clamped onto big businesses' dick, right?

In the 1990s, the Heartland Institute worked with Philip Morris to question the link between secondhand smoke and health risks.Philip Morris used Heartland to distribute tobacco-industry material, and arranged for the Heartland Institute to publish "policy studies" which summarized Philip Morris reports.

[SR71]

Originally Posted by AynMisesLibertarian

ahahahaah YEAHYEAH all the doomday prediction about "uuuuuuuh the new climate will destroy the earth" is true because...well we need it in order to advance our socialist/communist agenda since anticapitalism has failed the real world you need a new excuse to give the power over all the economics to a big government

enviromentalist are like watermelon....green outside and fucking red inside

How does Libertopia deal with external costs? Do you even acknowledge the existence of external cost?

[Stormlight]

Do you actually expect an answer from him? Oh SR71, you poor, naive sod.

[Sauron]

Originally Posted by Stormlight

Do you actually expect an answer from him? Oh SR71, you poor, naive sod.

External costs are for amateurs. Or losers.

AML is living off his parents, so "external costs" don't worry him.

[BrotherMan]

External costings are very important to libertopias because external costs are the prices everyone else pays for living in a liberteria.

[AynMisesLibertarian]

In "Libertopia" everything would be privatized

Without a concept of "common" everyone is responsible for his piece of land,if someone externalize cost by dumping shit on my ground he will get a huge monition by my lawyers and same thing will happen for everyone

[Stormlight]

[Watser?]

So, just out of curiosity, who would own the Atlantic Ocean or Antartica, for example?

[Pan Narrans]

We would

show spoiler

[Vivisectus]

And who owns the ozone layer? Or, for that matter, the atmosphere?

[Dingfod]

Who owns the court system your lawyers would be suing in? I assume it too would be privatized. Or, if not, underfunded.

[chunksmediocrites]

Hey now. If you don't have the money to buy a judge to rule in your favor, or the money to hire mercenaries to enforce the decision, well then that's the Invisible Hand giving you a gentle goosing and letting you know you simply aren't bootstrapping hard enough in this a competitive world, and there are winners and losers, ya know? And if you can't prove that the sludge coming out of the pipe upstream (guarded by people with guns enforcing the property rights of their clients) is killing all the fish and making you sick, well then I guess you should just move somewhere else or lump it, because THE MARKET HAS MOTHERFUCKING SPOKEN.

[Sauron]

Originally Posted by EinWhinyPlagiarian

In "Libertopia" everything would be privatized

Without a concept of "common" everyone is responsible for his piece of land,if someone externalize cost by dumping shit on my ground he will get a huge monition by my lawyers and same thing will happen for everyone

We will tell all the lawyers how you welched on your bet of €200, no lawyers will take your case because you have bad credit.

Q.E.D.