I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief.
“Bad news, detective. We got a situation.”
“What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?”
“Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.”
The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?”
“Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.”
“Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.”
He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.”
I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside.
“Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t.
“Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up.
“Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?”
It didn’t seem like they did.
“Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.”
Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing.
I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it.
“Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled.
Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him.
“Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen.
I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!”
He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose.
“All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.”
“Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy.
“Because I was afraid.”
“Afraid?”
“Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.”
I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head.
“Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.”
He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me for arresting him.
Amazing
You have to pay toll for the road first
The shoes require a subscription.
You can have a free trial of 20 whole steps!
Actual argument I had recently with a “libertarian” family member:
Libertarian: “Rent control shouldn’t exist! It’s wrong for big government to tell property owners and renters what kind of agreements they can enter!”
Me: “What are your thoughts on single family zoning that bans missing-middle housing throughout most of the US?”
Libertarian: “Well that’s different! People choosing what kind of rules should apply to where they live is the epitome of freedom!”
Me: “Couldn’t that same argument apply to rent control?”
Libertarian: “Wha…you have clearly been brainwashed by the woke mind virus! So sad!”Clearly they are not a libertarian.
The correct reaponse is “The government would need to demonstrate a beyond reasonable need for that ban. Preventing industrial chemical plants from being built near housing, sure, types of housing, get out.”
Libertarianism - The idea that a just society with fair rules is impossible because of the greed and selishness inherent in human nature. So by embracing this we can abolish all taxes and social safety nets, instead we would solve everyone’s problems through voluntary charity work, as after all humans are naturally giving and kind.
Yeah, clown shoes seem appropriate. I can somewhat respect a philosophy that I disagree with by saying “Well, that’s certainly a take, can’t say I’m on board.”
But I cannot if the problem isn’t that I disagree, it’s that it is self-refuting by its own logic.
Kinda like how Sam Harris’ Free Will Denial nonsense is bullshit simply by my own ability to decide for myself that it’s bullshit.
Reminder: Ayn Rand died on public assistance.
They’re only for freedom to gouge for water at the only source for a hundred miles when they believe they’ll be the ones holding the ladle.
Libertarian ideology is logically solid, but it has two minor problems:
- It heavily depends on assumptions that never hold in real life.
- Any other ideology, when confronted with bad outcome predictions of their models, will try to explain why their way actually prevents these bad outcomes. Libertarianism… prefers to explain why these outcomes are actually a good thing.
Except it isn’t logically solid, because the premise is that Governing bodies cannot be expected to provide for the general welfare because humans are naturally greedy and selfish, and the solution is that we abolish all social safety nets and instead rely on voluntary charity to solve the problem of poverty…
But what voluntary charity exists if by Libertarian’s own logic: Humans are too greedy and selfish to give to the poor even when they’re literally mandated to do so?
It also seems to assume perfect knowledge and that all harms can be compensated for.
Milton Friedman, my favourite libertarian, advocated for a negative income tax as the best form of social safety net. It means that the minimum amount of money any person gets is not zero!
He also liked to point out that a lot of other government programs were in fact regressive: paid for in taxes by working class people and providing the benefit to middle class and up. A classic example of that is funding for higher education. It’s pretty darn regressive to pay for higher education with taxes collected from working class people whose children don’t even attend higher education!
He has a lot of other arguments that make a ton of sense. He is against any and all forms of subsidies for large businesses and he is against laws which create and protect monopolies and oligopolies.
The one thing I’m not clear on is how to organize society to protect against future government interference and especially corruption by special interests.
That name sounds familiar.
He’s one of the most famous economists of the 20th century. There’s a ton of YouTube videos of him debating all kinds of people and giving lectures on many different topics from his perspective.
What did we do to you :(
Have dumb ideas
I’d personally rather align more with libertarianism than authoritarianism. But hey, different strokes for different folks.
Um… Libertarianism is authoritarianism just with corporations replacing the state.
Libertarianism and authoritarianism are opposite ends of the same spectrum. If two hypothetical societies are heavily authoritarian and equally so, then they are both authoritarian. Libertarianism emphasizes personal autonomy and individual freedom. It is by definition non-authoritarian. Libertarian concepts extend from the left to the right.
Don’t you understand they’re the bad word gang and you don’t want to be associated with the gad word gang that I think is bad because it’s bad. Now let me ignore this other label that applies to me because I don’t want to understand that it’s worse bad. /S
Destroyed attempts at American Singlepayer under the blatantly wrong assumption that for-profit companies lead by anonymous billionaires are somehow better at fairly using the ability to decide who lives and who dies than elected officials who have to maintain the support of their constituents to stay in power.
Please. Libertarians can always afford WAY more expensive shoes than that
i met plenty of people who’d like to fuck clowns and a total of zero who want to fuck libertarians. Clowns 1, Libertarians 0
So many of my friends grew up in libertarian families. I wish their parents had been professional clowns instead of perennially divorced wealth obsessed crypto-nazis.
In my heart, i am a libertarian.
In my brain, im not stupid enough to believe that the general public is smart enough to make it work.
The eternal problem of “the general public” is that they’re a product of their material conditions. They don’t emerge from the soil and engage with the world on first principles.
When you grow up in a community that has been heavily privatized and financialized, socially owned and operated community functions have to be developed from the ground up rather than inherited. Any kind of proposed social change will grow out of the body of the system that came before.
Libertarians grow up in countries where it is easier to believe in the end of the world than the end of capitalism.
How do you define libertarian?
Also, are you from the USA?
I’m not him, but technically anybody who isn’t an authoritarian is a libertarian. Economic theory is Left Right. Freedom is up down. It’s a spectrum.
Though apparently I’m one of the minority libertarians as I believe in egotistical altruism. Caring about the planet etc.
You contradict yourself in the first paragraph.
It is a spectrum, which is why “anybody who isn’t an authoritarian is a libertarian” is not true.
I don’t understand why you think that is a contradiction. You both agree there’s a spectrum between the two. Technically, if you’re not 100% authoritarian you have a greater-than-zero alignment with libertarianism.
Now, if you’re trying to say landing somewhere in the middle of the spectrum means you’re neither, then I tend to agree with you (labels suck). However, I’d take it a step further and say that nobody is going to be the 100% perfect embodiment of either end of the spectrum, and therefore, no true authoritarian or libertarian exists. I think, to say either one of you is wrong is just arguing semantics.
My guy look at the chart
I’m aware of the chart. You are saying that only the two very extremes exist. That’s silly.
You either like authority or you don’t. That’s binary. How much you like or dislike it is the spectrum.
Or you appreciate authority in some matters, but reject it in others. That’s the point in the spectrum that rejects the simple binary.
Edit: just realised both my last posts were responding to you. I’m not stalking or weird shit I swear! It just happened I woke up with more opinions!
Any assertion in chart form must be true!
the word libertarian literally does mean what I’m telling you though . What your experiencing is that your personal definition is not matching up with everyone else’s reality. You’ve just been misinformed and have only been exposed to a subset of libertarian ideals . To put this in an analogy it’s like if I said truck and you assumed I was talking about a Ford F-350 when in fact I’m referring to all trucks. From tiny k trucks to 18 wheeler big rigs
No, what I’m experiencing is the conventional meaning of the term as used by people in normal language not matching up with a technical definition that you favour. It’s fine that you prefer to use the word that way, you just can’t expect everyone else to
So libertarian equals extremism?
You should look into Libertarian Socialism or Anarchism. Maybe starting with this video
Oh I’m fully aware. I’m not a socialist though. I still think capitalism is the best model for innovation it’s just the current system is geared to fuck the small mom and pop and only benefit massive conglomerations. If I was hypothetically in charge I would fully cut corporate welfare and redirect all of that directly to proper funding of essential services and safety nets and infrastructure. If your company requires government handout money to run, it should go under. That’s the capitalism I want to see.
Sounds like you might like agorism. (Free Market anarchism).
I actually agree with libertarians more often than with communists, because being anti authoritarian is my most inportant value
The great revolution will come when humanity is ready to organize itself, not by force, but by the power of free association.
whats a libertarian im not usaian
American Libertarianism is all about minimizing governmental oversight, regulation, and taxation. Basically people who already “got theirs” and want to pull the ladder up behind them so no one else can. Sovcits are like extremist libertarians.
Some of them are so stupid that they never even “got theirs.” But they see people who look different than them getting things that they didn’t get, and they can’t abide that…
Watch this short video and realize they are the better half: https://youtu.be/PcllE7fx8-I
They are right wingers that want to be free of government meddling in the form of anti discrimination laws, taxes and drivers licenses. For some reason they also the consider age of consent to be a greater evil that the Pentagon.
They claim the be for all of those things, but then they line up behind whatever fascist the Republican party puts in front of them, when push comes to shove.
They’re full of shit.
They are right wingers that want to be free of government meddling in the form of anti discrimination laws, taxes and drivers licenses. For some reason they also the consider age of consent to be a greater evil that the Pentagon.
Yeah, pedo-nazis.
They want a white ethno state, where they can smoke meth and fuck kids. The whole “age of consent should be abolished to protect children who are essentially considered property of their parents until ages of majority because sometimes parents are really shitty to their kids” isn’t a solution to the stated problem. Proper funding, oversight and regulation of social programs such as child and family welfare/protection is significantly better than giving an easily manipulated child the right to consent. The only reason to make age of consent whenever a child can talk should be pretty obvious to anyone with half a brain.And guess what, if you abolished anti-discrmination laws, you’d end up with only WASPs allowed to vote, massively suppressed wages and limited if any social benefits for women or anyone not white.
the word libertarian comes from anarchists (eg. libertarian socialists) however right wing anarchists (anarcho capitalists) have claimed the term, so now a libertarian is a right wing anarchist
I say co-opt it back to its original leftist roots. I don’t mind calling myself a libertarian instead if I’m talking to a right winger who’s scared of anarchists and then just say “the socialist kind”. It’s a conversation starter to introducing a right winger to how one can believe a market free from capitalists (the best kind of free market) is actually not the worst idea ever
there are also people like me who are in the middle and think both the left and right have valid economic points and arguments but that authoritarian rule is gross.
Libertarianism is a spectrum just like authoritarianism.both the left and right have valid economic points and arguments but that authoritarian rule is gross.
I’m not clear how you have privatization without authoritarianism. Property claims without enforcement aren’t worth much.
And this is why I am a minarchist ultimately, we know that there must be a monopoly on violence, preferably that would be held by a state of elected peers that can be impeached for transgressions against the public trust. I am 100% personally for protections and social safety nets, a strong system to protect and enrich the lives of citizens so that they can be productive and have better outputs in the long run benefits all of us. And it turns out it’s generally cheaper to fix problems then let them fester and rot.
Personally, I would love modern societies bring back banishment as a punishment for being a corrupt official. Imagine if election day lets you vote somebody out of the country for being a huge dick head and a detriment to your life and rights.
we know that there must be a monopoly on violence
We know what the alternative looks like. pops open a stack of history books on various civil wars
I am 100% personally for protections and social safety nets, a strong system to protect and enrich the lives of citizens so that they can be productive and have better outputs in the long run benefits all of us.
I think that’s an easy idea to sell at the top line. But as soon as you get into the messy details, you’re going to run into disputes between rival ideologues. And when tensions flare, resources run short, and people panic, those disputes can turn violent… resulting in civil war.
I would argue that the number one job of a state government is to avoid civil war. When you go back to the Spanish Civil War (every ideology nerd’s favorite bone to pick) and you talk about the various sides, their ideologues, and their relative successes, what you are ultimately asking is which faction was most successful in ending the war and reestablishing a peaceful order.
Anarchists and Communists love to bicker over who screwed over whom. But the dirty bottom line of it all is that Franco’s highly authoritarian bloody-handed military, backed by a host of private profit-motivated interests, brought an end to the chronically unstable Republican Era.
it’s generally cheaper to fix problems then let them fester and rot.
When you’re working with limited resources and you have a variety of stakeholders at play, which problems get fixed and which are ignored can often come down to which stakeholders can form a lasting functional coalition.
The problem with authoritarianism as a system of government is that it does a great job of placating a coalition of powerful patrons, stabilizing an erratic popular system through a campaign of military terror. You win the support of capital by making a region profitable. And then you’ve got a ahem “virtuous” self-reinforcing cycle of profits expanding the scale of resources afforded to the authoritarian state.
Minarchy might be attractive ideologically. But if the system can’t stave of domestic conflicts by placating powerful opposed interests, it isn’t a system people can participate in safely or sustainably. Nobody wants the job of Minarchist Government Official if they’re just going to be the whipping boys for popular discontent.
I’m fully aware of the keys to power that you are referring to, and I agree the main struggle would be to get society as a whole to realize and remember that they hold power over those keys and that the keys have convinced the populous of the reverse
Capitalist anarchism doesn’t exist. Capitalism is a form of unjust hierarchy (or if you want to stick to the literal meaning of “anarchism”: capitalism is a way to create rulers)
There are capitalist anti-statists, bit being against states isn’t sufficient to make you an anarchist for above reasons.
Capitalism is a form of unjust hierarchy
It’s a form of hierarchy through economic accumulation. The problem of justice is in the privative accumulation. When we start the game playing from a stacked deck, only a handful of people ever have an opportunity to accumulate new capital, while the rest of us are bound to serve through debt.
Leveling the playing field allows people to accumulate within their lifetimes, and incentivizes capital development broadly, without allowing intergenerational accumulation to stagnant the system.
But wealth redistribution is incredibly unpopular among the people with the most political capital, necessitating some kind of social or economic revolution to achieve change.
I still don’t believe that anarcho-capitalists exist. The ideology just loops back into fascism most of the time.
There is no critique of capitalism so it’s incompatible with anarchism.
They’d be actual anarchists if they didn’t conflate capitalism with markets.
If they use the term themselves, it’s just a synonym then
A rebrand, if you will
I see it more like feudalism with extra steps
But minarchists are also libertarians. Libertarian is quite wide term. It also may include left-libertarians (anarchists).
I tried to simplify it, also I don’t think OP meant those other groups with the clown shoes
I walked my late teens/early twenties in those shoes. Would not recommend.
I’m socially libertarian and fiscally communist
That’s just an anarchist.
Anarchism is often called libertarian socialism.
That’s the joke.
an anarcho communist to be exact
A libertarian is just a conservative that likes weed. You can ask their girlfriends after they pick them up from middle school.
I wouldn’t say that actual libertarians are conservatives (I know some in europe), but a lot of conservatives in the us larp as libertarians because that was the original vision of the us freedom fighters and they also on some level think they are libertarians because they think libertarians are smart (because the avrg libertarian is way smarter than the avrg conservative) but your joke still works because conservatives and libertarians are both pedos
Rothbard co-opted the term. It used to mean anarchist.
Bro, the moment that “abolishing the age of consent” is brought up, you need to know that they aren’t acting in good faith. Every argument they bring forth should be tainted by that shit!
yeah, but I know some libertarians and the reason most of them don’t like the age of consent is, that a child is basically the parents property in our current system, and I (especially with trans rights in mind) can see their point, parents shouldn’t be able to ruin a child’s life just because they fucked without condom
that being said a lot of libertarians are pedos
parents shouldn’t be able to ruin a child’s life just because they fucked without condom
You have a greater community of people who (theoretically) look out for one another beyond strict family association.
In my experience, the kids who successfully come out and find their way into the broader LGBTQ community are the ones who have family or friends in that community to guide them.
But in practice, your parents make a lot of decisions because you lack the information, the resources, or the social contentions to do them on your own.
Fucking without a condom isn’t what gives parents dominion over their kids.
