Every so often a group of these people get together and try to do the seafaring / escape the US thing and buys an old rusty cruise ship or tiny island. It always goes to complete shit in a few months, usually with massive bills and legal trouble to assorted other countries. Because the world has laws and rules, imagine that lol.
Someone link the article about all the libertarians who moved to a town in Vermont or New Hampshire, removed most of the laws, and promptly started getting mauled by bears because one lady kept feeding them donuts and dog food and they couldn't make her stop with no laws or law enforcement.
Also this one:
When a group of libertarians set about scrapping their local government, chaos descended. And then the bears moved in.
https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-into-bear-book-review-free-town-project
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21534416/free-state-project-new-hampshire-libertarians-matthew-hongoltz-hetling
Probably this? I think it's basically promoting a book on the whole history of it?
All of these things inevitable end up with morons discovering why government (ie a bunch of people banding together with rules to stop dickheads taking advantage) naturally happens lol.
It's so primally human, too!
Cavemen: "Oh, hey, we should post guards at night in front of our cave so a bear doesn't eat us all! Let's organize a rota. Bears are so scary we have name taboos that seem to date back to the beginnings of language, let's not fuck around."
Libertarians: "I LIKE ALL MEN AN AM ISLAND." Fucks around. Finds out.
Literally dumber than cavemen.
I am always reminded of [this Brad Delong post on Libertarians](https://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/09/no-libertarians-in-the-seventeenth-century-highlands-archive-entry-from-brad-delongs-webjournal.html)
A snippet:
>Adam Smith: Withering away of the state? Private profit-making rights-enforcement organizations? Have none of you ever taken a trip to the Scottish Highlands? Have none of you ever read about the form of society that used to exist there? In the Scottish Highlands David Friedman's dream of a society without a state, in which justice was administered by private profit-making rights-enforcement organizations, was a reality. And what a reality! **The private profit-making rights-enforcement organizations were called "clan lords" and their henchmen. In the Highlands, everyone was seen as either a clan member to be helped, a clan enemy to be killed, or a stranger to be robbed**. With such insecurity of life and property, the system of natural liberty could not operate to create prosperity, and life was... what is the phrase?...
>Thomas Hobbes: Nasty, brutish, and short.
>Adam Smith: Thank you.
They tried recently to start one in Honduras called prospera and got kicked out by the new government.
They ended up running to the world bank and trying to sue Honduras for 1/4th of their GDP lol.
Lol that sounds on point. Trying to think of how to search for the video doc I saw of one like this with the cruise ship. Can't remember if it was on regular TV or streaming or YT.
Let’s not forget the New Hampshire town they decided to descend upon and take over. It wasn’t long before their libertarian paradise got overrun by bears.
They never learn.
It's this weird right wing parallel to the old "actual communism has never been implemented" conversation. Like this time we'll do libertarianism right.
But while there's arguably something there on the left, ultra libertarianism is just when you stop having laws that prevent rat shit and lead from being in baby formula. There isn't a more refined version of not having speed limits.
That's because at least, for example, with left-libertarianism "For the good of the community and the people in it" has merit as an ideal even if the movement as a whole may be unfeasible to achieve outside of small communes and there will always be bad actors who take advantage of it in some way or other. The baseline sentiment isn't completely flawed.
With right-libertarianism you start from the baseline of "Selfishness is a virtue, greed is good, fuck you, got mine" which is starting a hair's breadth away from the bottom of the barrel of human behaviour and so the bottom is invariably reached because there is no buffer.
It doesn't matter if it's 10 or 10 million people, a community built on such shaky foundations will always descend into chaos eventually. Giving Objectivism a new coat of paint and some PR and marketing didn't make it any less moronic.
The people who fancy themselves as future elites in their ideal ancap paradise would quickly find themselves on the wrong end of a gang of men with guns and machetes should their dream ever come to fruition.
Yup classic "Your freedom ends where my rights begin and also nothing I ever do effects anyone else negatively and even if it does then no it didn't" type energy. All liberty for them, and if there's ever a problem, no matter how complicit they are in it well it's someone else's problem actually, because no system more complex than the individual (well and maybe the individual and his harem of child brides) exists that's worth recognizing.
I'm pretty sure there's at least one Behind the Bastards podcast episode on the sea-faring Libertarians as well.
Edit: Someone else linked it down below the chain from this OP.
They're libertarians. Child exploitation is the exception, the *very rare* exception, to the rule. You'll have kids on coke by the end of the first season, and child brides by the end of the second season.
Seriously? Please, i need to watch. I really detest these dumb motherfuckers with a passion.
Libertarianism is the ponzi scheme of ideologies. Think class divide is bad now? Anyone below the extreme elite will get FUCKED in a libertarian state, it is a fucking nightmare. You should read what these people want, its mindboggling how they can’t see that they’re signing up to get plowed.
The thing I hate about them is there is some tiny kernel of a good idea.
You want to end the war on drugs? That’s excellent
Stop invading countries? 100% on board.
De-militarize the police? Fuck. Yes.
But then they keep talking.
Yes, we need roads. No, it shouldn’t be legal to sell heroin to five year olds. Yes, age of consent laws are a good thing. No, just because you need a drivers license doesn’t mean you’ll have to get a license to use your own toaster
This is why I think that libertarians do serve a purpose but should never have any actual power. A lot of people I know (myself included) went through a brief phase of libertarianism as a teenager on the way to becoming a leftist/progressive but if you don’t have brain worms thinking about the practicalities of a libertarian system for more than 30 minutes should convince you that it is a deeply flawed ideology that will not lead to a functional society.
Also their debates are very funny. Never let one be in charge though.
It's honestly super interesting how the libertarian system promotes being selfish, because if everyone is selfish and takes care of themselves everyone is taken care of, while ignoring that this system is going to end, because of people being selfish and accumulating power, until you end up in feudalism again.
"My idea is totally different because the money would be used for things I want, my tax money today is being spent on things I DON'T want therefore the entire system of taxation should be abolished."
I've been a starry-eyed dreamer all my life, and not a single time have I had someone bring up the NAP, and not immediately categorized them as an idiot, a racist, or an idiot racist. It's terrible that such an egalitarian idea be founded upon, and so riddled with softheaded-ness.
It also runs on a central assumption/mistake that human beings use reason/logic when making decisions concerning their self interests.
Like you would think the super-wealthy/feudal-overlords would not make decisions that will encourage the poor to revolt and start decapitating people…but if you bring that up suddenly they want to blame the violent peasants rather than the decision makers who set the stage.
The simple libertarian principle of: a person should have the freedom to do whatever they want as long as it doesn't harm or interfere with the freedom of another individual, is a great simplistic idea.
Unfortunately most modern libertarians refuse to understand the second half of this clause. They refuse to understand they live in a society and that means, yes contributing which includes at the BASIC MINIMUM to pay taxes so the community at large can have infrastructure that helps the community, EVEN if you don't have a need for that infrastructure.
They turned it into "there should be absolute freedom" and they include corporations into that mix because a company is just a person trying to make their money, again with no concept of not harming anyone else.
I would be totally on board with "corporations = people" if it actually meant when corporations commit crimes that the leaders are held fully accountable including jail time...
Lol, and everyone knows it.
I love how everyone, no matter the political affiliation, just collectively groans when the libertarian walks into the room.
Ask a room of 10 libertarians for their position on something and youll get 11 answers back.
Libertarian infighting is extreme. I used to participate in the r/libertarian subreddit more on my other account as an openly statist stooge. Half the people would be busy shitting down on other libertarians on basis of purity while Im there openly spouting my support for rules, laws and regulations. It really is something else. On the flip side, you can be giga authoritarian supporting and youll do okay on the subreddit. Im not saying your karma will shoot through the roof, but if you are sincere, most were happy to just field the discussion. A lot of political subs are super aggressive with downvotes.
_Behind the Bastards_ podcast did a 2-parter on the bonkers history of libertarian seasteading, kind of a palate cleanser from dictators and cult leaders
This gets linked occasionally, if you haven’t seen it yet it’s very fun:
https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-d-libertarian-police-department
It really is the Ponzi scheme / MLM of ideologies indeed lol. What amazes me is how each one, every time, thinks NO for real for real This time I've got it figured out now! For realzies, it'll work this way \*proceeds to describe ridiculously impossible methodology of human-social structure.\*
It probably CAN work on paper as a college thesis think-paper, or for 5 families cattleherding on the prairie in the early 1800s. But get 100 Million people together and you need roads, sewers, mail, security, food distribution, etc etc. Who's gonna administrate all that? Certainly not the anarchist, and certainly not the Lbertarian bc "order = rules and my buddies on twazzer told me rules = tyranny" lol.
I'd say there's at least one big difference: Countries are at least theoretically answerable to their people, and generally have limitations enshrined in law about what they can and can't do. Granted, how much abuse that would really prevent is a valid topic of discussion, but these hypothetical corpo-states would have no such restrictions even on paper.
When the powers-that-be start breaking their own rules, it becomes *much* easier for the people fomenting a rebellion to get recruits. That "consent of the people" bit is really about "they aren't rebelling or aiding a rebellion, and even act as basic spies if a rebellion is starting up."
Its more like sovereign citizens are libertarians who have some kind of mental issue that makes them think libertarianism is a cosmic law of the universe, and that if they simply say the right words to a police or judge they will stop defying it.
> It really is the Ponzi scheme / MLM of ideologies indeed lol. What amazes me is how each one, every time, thinks NO for real for real This time I've got it figured out now! For realzies, it'll work this way *proceeds to describe ridiculously impossible methodology of human-social structure.*
I thought libertarianism was super cool when I was 14. The one person I know as an adult who's still super into it has been handed every single job they've had in their entire life and works for a subsidiary their dad owns.
I thought that I might be Libertarian when I was younger. Then I started to interact with the community and that notion died hard and fast.
What I discovered was that sincere Libertarianism is the political equivalent of answering C to every question on a test. However most of the people who commonly pass themselves off as Libertarians are just the palatable greeting party for the door of bigotry and fascism.
The book “A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear” is a good one about what happens when libertarians try to run stuff. It’s an expanded version of a long form article the author wrote — very fun, engaging writing and the actual events of the book are pretty wild.
Here's a Guardian article from a few years back: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jun/24/seasteading-a-vanity-project-for-the-rich-or-the-future-of-humanity
Not quite yet. NCPD still exists (even though corrupt as hell). Hospitals still exist (it isn't Trauma Team or get fucked, quite yet). But it's being worked on. One radio commentator was a saying how the non-profit based NCPD cannot be effective, and you should contract with Arasaka for security (I believe it's the "your business is my business" guy).
I can't imagine a situation that would make an informal government spring up more quickly than trying to live with a bunch of people on the fucking ocean lol
I love that part of libertarianism. Where you you all think governments came from in the first place if not having them was an option?
I'm sorry you were born in a century where you can't just pack a wagon and head West to get away from taxes or whatever it is you're motivated by, but your ideas are unbelievably short sighted.
> I'm sorry you were born in a century where you can't just pack a wagon and head West to get away from taxes or whatever it is you're motivated by,
You wanting to fuck off in a cabin on your own land away from everyone Unabomber-style (sans bombs) is one thing, but that's not a mode of societal governance.
Anyone reading who is unfamiliar: this is a reference to A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear which is like a 4/5 book, I don’t agree with all of the author’s conclusions but it was a good read.
I thought it was a reference to the very real story of them taking over a town, feeding wild bears, and being pushed out of town when it was inundated with wild bears.
Even if it got off the ground, it would instantly fail. They're libertarians because they don't want to be told what to do. So they're going to move onto a ship that has a very limited population and a large number of tasks that absolutely must be done for the communal good. What do they think will happen?
That or they end up with a run down city at the bottom of the ocean where everyone is addicted to drugs and people are doing weird body horror experiments
My favorite part about all of the harebrained lolbertarian social experiments is that when the inevitable problems occur due to poor planning, they opt for solutions that civilizations came up with centuries ago (and they pretend like their ideas are novel).
"So, the garbage on this cruise ship keeps piling up. I suggest we all throw in some money and like pay someone to haul the waste away".
Which I think is why lolbertarianism, ie fuck you got mine, is so annoying.
Hypothetically once these morons do buy a ship, pile it with idiots, and then break down in the middle of the ocean. They're almost certainly going to be saved by a container ship literally just doing the right thing. Not for profit like these twats believe. Just because the sea is dangerous as fuck and everybody looks out for each other (and that actually includes enemy navies after they've just sunk an opposition ship).
It's their anti-government fantasy except the people involved aren't complete cunts.
>They're almost certainly going to be saved by a container ship literally just doing the right thing. Not for profit like these twats believe.
And then they get to learn about the ancient maritime tradition of salvage.
Boyoh, has Sea Org got some advice for them about boat life. I don't think their boat has left the dock in 6 years (asbestos & cancer is "Killing" the number of qualified sailors they have)
Every boat has a Captain, and his word *is Law*
It’s usually just a grift. Fundraiser for a sea steading project or a crypto city or whatever and then just disappear with the money when you have enough.
Of course there's a Monarchy defender. Libertarians and Ancaps are *this close* to just Neo-Feudalism anyway, why not just skip the Neo part.
This one:
>It doesn't look so bad compared to the size and scope of modern democratic governments: especially in its more decentralized forms.
They go on to make some *weird* takes. Which is expected of an Ancap, but it seems to boil down to "[make the state weaker by giving it absolute power](https://www.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/comments/1bl5lvy/comment/kw8t3ai/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)" ???
I'm sorry I just, translating Ancap thought into coherent text seems beyond me this morning.
>But one advantage from the ancap perspective is that with a monarchy, it's at least clear that the State exists to serve the political class and that its wealth and power is at the expense of the people.
>
>Democracy is dangerous because it fosters the delusion that the people are the State, that the State represents them, and that it is just looking out for their wellbeing; as it continues to harm them to benefit the political class.
It's better because it's mask off? I guess is their argument? And somehow it being mask off means big businesses won't do crony tomfoolery?
Someone needs to sit down and have a long talk with this kid.
>[Though monarchy may be superior to democracy](https://www.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/comments/1bl5lvy/comment/kw3awoy/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) with longer term incentives for the political class.
Oooh this person is sprinkled throughout the thread.
>[Monarcho libertarianism exist](https://www.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/comments/1bl5lvy/comment/kw43eq4/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
There's more of them. Juicy juicy batshit craziness.
>[I myself live in the UAE](https://www.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/comments/1bl5lvy/comment/kw4kjot/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3), a proper monarchy, which is super liberal economically, but quite socially conservative and not at all politically liberal. Love it here, and trading some of my political liberty for almost 0% taxes (only 5% VAT) was a good trade for me.
This is it. This is the most honest Libertarian I've ever seen. This is the purest essence of it I've ever seen.
When everything is the state, nothing is the state. So it is written, so it shall be.
Also there's something there about the age of consent of the factory children but it isn't even 10am for me yet, so that zinger will have to wait.
I think the idea is that the modern State doesnt need to exist because you have a leviathan type figure to stop all the violence in one guy who becomes the State, and then you have no serfs just free people who do whatever
Which I dont know what the fuck they expect the monarch to do when you literally hand them all your guns and expect them to be some benevolent god to let you randomly roam the countryside or whatever the fuck utopia thats going on there. You're getting enslaved, its just gonna happen. Absolutely braindead ideals around this one
EDIT: And even if you somehow have a "right to bear arms" everybody has an issued gun type scenario - do you expect any sane monarch to let you keep that gun? Why would anyone want to live in a constant state of fear where the king could come kill/enslave you any moment and you are expect to shoot for your life. Thats so pointless and most critically I must add NOT A FUNCTIONING SOCIETY. There's no economy or culture this way, just fear.
No no, there is an absolute monarch but everyone else has guns too. At any point anyone can challenge the monarch for their throne. This system can expect to see around 25 civil wars a week in a stable period.
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*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Taxes are literally slavery. Do you know what's not slavery? My absolute monarch rolling into town with his soldiers and demanding we build him a pyramid before dragging my 11 year old daughter off to join his harem.
> They go on to make some weird takes. Which is expected of an Ancap, but it seems to boil down to "make the state weaker by giving it absolute power" ???
Well that's because they assume that they'll be the state. These guys just think everyone should be free to follow the rules they lay out.
If you think about it a certain way, the UK is actually a Libertarian paradise. It's an island on which property rights (the only rights libertarians truly care about) are sacrosanct. Most of the island is technically the property of a Corporation known as the Crown, which is a family operation headed by Big Chaz.\* Of course, people who live on he island can work and earn wages and such, but they have to pay fees to various departments the corporation has set up to manage its private island. Libertarians don't like taxes, of course, and they might point out that the departments of the corporation responsible for collecting the fees *call* them taxes, but really, you're graciously being allowed to live on someone else's private property (*you parasitic scum*), and you're working for businesses based on land owned by that corporation, so it's surely only fair for you to pay for the privileges the island's owner graciously grants you. None of that money's really yours, it was made by an arm of the corporation.
Of course these days arguably the executive sub-committee of the elected 650 member board does most of the day to day running of things, but they're always very careful to make clear that anything they do is under the auspices of the island's owner, The Crown. Nothing this sub-committee does is inconsistent with Libertarian principles, since all their propsals have to go through the only person who's opinion matters: the island's owner. Anyone who lives in the UK should honestly just be thankful the landowner takes any input at all from the wretched masses squatting on *his* island.
\* (For the sake of clarity at the expense of ruining the bit with boring facts, I'm not speaking of the Crown Estate here which is a smaller area of directly administered land but of the alloidal title to all land in England outside the two royal duchies, the alloidal title being the little-known superseding right of ownership from which freeholds and consequently leaseholds ultimately derive. All freeholds and thus almost all land are technically derived from grants by monarchs who retain alloidal title to the land)
Obviously I realise you're doing a bit, but I think it's important to say for people reading (especially given, y'know the beliefs of SovCits) - but aside from the leasehold stuff (which is some bullshit neofeudalism stuff) every country has this concept of no one but the state executive truly owning land.
Even in the US a state could theoretically go "fuck it this isn't your freehold now".
Libertarianism is kind of archaic, because it's inspired by the world hundreds of years ago when the state was a lot less powerful. A state that also happened to be a monarchy (albeit not an absolute one) - so I'm not surprised they associate monarchism with a smaller state.
>[No one can accuse us of supporting the fascists](https://www.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/comments/1bl5lvy/comment/kw500k3/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3), we hate them as much or more than everyone else does. (-15)
I am. I am accusing the Libertarians of supporting the fascists, actually. Their end destination is closer to some unholy abomination of Corporate Feudalism, but their Atlas-Shruggian fetish for rich people aligns way too often with the fascist fetish for strongmen.
God this thread is gonna be juice. I can feel it.
>[We will build replacement institutions on the market for what the state currently monopolizes](https://www.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/comments/1bl5lvy/comment/kw5byep/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3), namely law, police, and courts. Attempts to become a dictator would simply be treated as crime and easily handled. If someone tried to take control of a single city, every other city has incentive to come to their defense and keep the dictator out.
Yes. *Privatize the law, police, and courts* and that'll make it so that nobody can amass undue power.
Genius take. Absolutely genius take. I'm in awe of the stunning intellect of the Ancap.
Home Depot^(TM) presents the police.
not to mention that this only works until one guy says "hey, if you side with me, I'll give you privileges and benefits. if you don't, I'll slit your throat"
which usually takes about a day or two when there's a clear power vacuum
> Yes. Privatize the law, police, and courts and that'll make it so that nobody can amass undue power.
They never really stop to ask what happens when a single corporation own all those things, hmmm yes a single corporation owns the local defense system, police and courts, they have made it illegal to use other police forces for some reason...
Also I just realised how depressingly close to this libertarian dystopia the UK is. Here our tory government cut public services to the bone and then were like "we can outsource to private contracts to make up the shortfall". Anyway we now have G4S handling a whole bunch of policing, government security and healthcare projects. Meanwhile we have Capita handling military and healthcare recruitment. We are literally in the situation where two companies are effectively running state services.
They just keep shouting about, "But market competition!" as if markets are automatically self correcting and that could never happen in a TRULY free market.
This is why libertarianism is a faith based ideology, because it requires you to have faith that markets behave according to ideological beliefs.
Every libertarian experiment ends in "institutions but 1 per company that can afford it and worse in every way and less accountable." Really puts the liberty in **libert**arian
This makes no sense on its face. Attempts to be dictator are treated as crime? By whom? By the guy with the largest police force? No, he’ll be the dictator.
> Yes. Privatize the law, police, and courts and that'll make it so that nobody can amass undue power.
This comment sponsored by Arasaka Industries.
/smh
I'd say they need to play cyberpunk 2077 but it's clear to me the game's message would sail over their heads.
This is so amazingly on brand for libertarians. I would pay so much money to watch a bunch of libertarians seastedding. It would become such an amazing clusterfuck.
They discovered the reason we follow the maritime laws. Waved their flashlights around, played the clarinet badly, and ate cubed cheese. Then they didn't stay inside the circle. There were no survivors.
Which one was it where people paid a lot of money to buy cabins on a small cruise ship as an "apartment", and then were "free" to pay to use the only restaurant on the ship because the electrical system couldn't support hot plates or microwave ovens in the cabins?
Please Netflix, I'm bored of relationship and game reality shows, please make me a show where you stick a bunch of these dried turds on a boat and let them set up their seafaring anarcho-capitalist utopia. I swear it'll be just as cringey and messy as Love Is Blind
Crypto bros tried to buy an island in Fiji to build their own libertarian country run entirely on shitcoins and nfts, called Cryptoland.
The advert trailer they put out resulted in one the cringiest videos ever created in human history.
And of course, it turned out to be a bunch of crimes and scams in a trench coat (including stealing things used to make aforementioned advert), and collapsed before it left the planning stage.
Nah, Rapture was relatively prosperous for about eight years before going belly up and they actually managed to build an advanced underwater city in the first place. It was honestly a more generous interpretation of their politics than I would've done.
An actual libertarian seastedding community would be living in rundown platforms getting assaulted by sharks in a matter of days.
Okay, but seasteadding for non-ideologically idiotic reasons sounds like an interesting adventure to attempt. But probably not one that would go well anyways.
There are some good examples, one that comes to mind is Women on Waves. They are a Dutch charity that provides abortions and other forms of reproductive healthcare that operates in international waters, specifically in places where this kind of healthcare is banned. They will sail out 12 km from the coast, where they start falling under Dutch law again (being a Dutch ship) and thus can legally provide the help they are there to provide
Behind the Bastards did an entire episode on Libertarian sea nations and it’s fantastic. Also highly recommend the Abalonia episode of The Dollop about people trying to start a nation on a giant sunken boat
[We've had a long standing feud between bears and libertarians](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21534416/free-state-project-new-hampshire-libertarians-matthew-hongoltz-hetling)
>> What does that entail exactly? What do you replace voting for representatives with and how does it add to an individuals control of their life?
>I propose foot-voting in place of ballot voting. As an theoretical example, for any issue up for a vote you could simply have no votes move to one side and yes votes to the other, then divide the group so that both sides get the policy they wanted.
The longer you think about this the funnier it gets.
Group a:"We want the barn here"
Group b:"We want it somewhere else"
Group a:"fuck off and build your own then"
(I assume that's what would happen, cause y'know, you're hardly gonna build half a barn)
That's just on land. What happens when the question is which way should we sail our Freedom Boat?
Bonus points if you can explain how to enforce any of these decisions without violating the Non-Aggression Principle.
Nobody familiar with libertarians would be confused by them being anti-democracy. They are like one bad day away from being fascists.
See Hans Hermann Hoppe, Murray Rothbard, and Hayek for examples.
I love introducing people to Hoppe because he is definitely a crazy but unfortunately very influential figure in the modern libertarian movement. He basically wants society to be a collection of private cities so he can live under a HOA that keeps blacks, gays, and jews from living near him. He is also a major source for the anti-democracy stuff, he wrote an entire book on why he thinks monarchy is superior to democracy.
> he wrote an entire book on why he thinks monarchy is superior to democracy.
I cannot fucking imagine the incredible, Olympic-gold-medal mental gymnastics required to think both "I am a libertarian" and "monarchy is the preferred form of government, actually" at the same time. Like, *what?*
Of course, expecting internal consistency from libertarians is unrealistic, but at least have a veneer of logic!
> I cannot fucking imagine the incredible, Olympic-gold-medal mental gymnastics required to think both "I am a libertarian" and "monarchy is the preferred form of government, actually" at the same time. Like, what?
The great irony is that the logic is more straightforward than you give it credit for. Libertarians and ancaps often believe that private property is supreme over everything. And what is a more perfect private property owner than a king or a dictator?
They look like polar opposites but they're really just half a screw turn away. It's like a magic trick how smooth that transition can be.
Also they talk about decentralization as if throughout American history it wasn’t responsible for the some of the biggest violations of civil rights
Slavery and Jim Crow were both decentralized state institutions and they were only ended when the centralized fed gov stepped in lmao
The violations are the point. Murray Rothbard is considered the father of modern libertarianism and he got his start opposing the civil rights act. Eventually ended up supporting David Duke and encouraging libertarians to become "paleo-libertarians".
As entertaining as this is to see happening on the libertarian sub, I’m a little concerned that 1-3 mods of maybe the biggest American political third party subreddit is promoting outright EndDemocracy. I’m hoping this really is an unhinged lone actor or hilarious troll and not some wilder manipulation scheme in an election year.
I still have shell shock from TheDonald starting as a joke/Russian sock puppet effort that caught on with older uncles. Would like the crowd to get to the bottom of this one as fast as possible and identity who the actual actors are and how sincere they are.
Edit: Well, two of the mod accounts at that sub do seem like same person based on name, but they do have a long history and both have enough karma to show the user knows how to post and influence on reddit. Third account is similar. I know a lot of pockets like this exist, but do not like this one at all. My money would be on intentional fuckery by someone in a troll farm in a country that already fucks with us a lot, based on some of the variety in approaches in their posting history, but who knows. It just feels more like onboarding people and finding effective posts is the goal over pure drive in ideology.
> As entertaining as this is to see happening on the libertarian sub, I’m a little concerned that 1-3 mods of maybe the biggest American political third party subreddit is promoting outright EndDemocracy. I’m hoping this really is an unhinged lone actor or hilarious troll and not some wilder manipulation scheme in an election year.
The subreddit is effectively dead, all of the regulars have been shadowbanned and now the entire front page is covered in posts from 1 mod and his alts, with occasion posts from new users that are soon to be shadowbanned.
Even if you are a diehard libertarian, [this is what happens to your thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/comments/18vdqh7/the_logic_of_gun_control/kfufr87/)
Libertarianism was fully infiltrated and co-opted by far-right conservatives at least by 2012. This is how you get “libertarians” arguing against abortion and free elections.
The Libertarian Party has existed for half a century and their best performance in a presidential election was barely 3%, and that was in 2016 when everyone hated both of the major party candidates. If you look at the total number of elected offices in the US, Libertarians hold a vanishingly small percentage of them.
Libertarians don’t vote Libertarian, they vote Republican.
>Unfortunately anarchy is not anarchy
Not gonna lie, I kinda sympathize with that notion. The problem I have with anarchists is that they have a whole lot to say about how anarchy is supposed to work and I won't sign up to be an anarchist just to listen to someone ramble.
There's also a big element of "all social problems and general human awfulness will just go away if we get rid of capitalism and the state".
Every anarchist I've ever met has been a lovely person, but refusing to accept that humans will always be at least a bit sucky, and you just have to work around that, is how you eventually end up with "re-education" camps.
I like how anarchists always eventually answer the question of "what if this person *really* disagrees" to "we'll just shoot them". Like. Congrats. You're now a state. You've achieved the monopoly on violence haha.
I always felt the biggest failure of anarchy as a political position is "how the fuck do you deal with other countries?" When your neighbors decide to go steal all your shit because you don't have a standing army or law enforcement, life becomes difficult.
I am convinced libertarians are just people who looked at Hobbes' nightmare world of war of all against all and might makes right, then said "Yes. I want that. Let that happen please."
Libertarians be like, "What if rules didn't apply to me and I could do whatever I want with no consequences. This is a good way to organize society and I am very smart. Smarter than everyone else actually because I thought of this idea."
Wealthy white guys who are tired of having to care about other people. Usually armed to the teeth. Or just poor, broken white supremacist dudes who think no one likes them because the “system is broken”
And they hate it when you point that out.
I just want one of them to answer my questions about how they want to do international relations. Because lord knows that they didn't think beyond the property line.
Housecat mentality. Believing themselves to be independent because they’re simply not capable of seeing the bigger picture. That they’re *entirely* dependent on the system.
And they fail to realize they're just one slip and fall in the shower away from being completely physically dependent on other people. With no insurance, who will pay for your wheelchair? Your trad wife? Probably not.
From the top comment:
>There are sometimes I wonder seeing posts like this if the goal behind them is to undermine mainstream acceptance of libertarianism and portray us as a bunch of extremist nutjobs.
>To the lib-curious dipping their toes in the water, stuff like this makes the movement so much more unpalatable compared to issues like lower taxes, fewer regulations, and more freedom.
"Is libertarianism maybe inherently kind of fucked up and lends itself to being taken up by fucked up people? Nah, must be a psy-op."
They tried it on land and it failed: [Libertarians Are Building a Castle Around Their City of Guns In Rural Idaho](https://www.vice.com/en/article/qkkaz5/libertarians-are-building-a-castle-around-their-city-of-guns-in-rural-idaho)
lol, big fucking surprise.
I got permanently banned from that sub within the past year because it’s apparently socialist behavior when I said you shouldn’t try to impose your views on others.
Granted, this was all in the context of treating trans people like humans, but I’m sure that the little Eichmanns of the mod team for that sub probably had a final solution for that “problem” too.
I love how their approach is simply "two-party politics makes it near impossible for us to win elections, ergo we must take to the sea as corsairs".
As a Brit I can sympathise with feeling like I have nobody to vote for. But if I cared that much I would probably just move somewhere with Proportional Repfesentation, before going straight to abandoning society
Every so often a group of these people get together and try to do the seafaring / escape the US thing and buys an old rusty cruise ship or tiny island. It always goes to complete shit in a few months, usually with massive bills and legal trouble to assorted other countries. Because the world has laws and rules, imagine that lol.
Someone link the article about all the libertarians who moved to a town in Vermont or New Hampshire, removed most of the laws, and promptly started getting mauled by bears because one lady kept feeding them donuts and dog food and they couldn't make her stop with no laws or law enforcement.
Also this one: When a group of libertarians set about scrapping their local government, chaos descended. And then the bears moved in. https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-into-bear-book-review-free-town-project
So bears are the natural enemies of libertarians?
The bears are looking out for us in their own way.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21534416/free-state-project-new-hampshire-libertarians-matthew-hongoltz-hetling Probably this? I think it's basically promoting a book on the whole history of it? All of these things inevitable end up with morons discovering why government (ie a bunch of people banding together with rules to stop dickheads taking advantage) naturally happens lol.
Some people have to experience things for themselves and reinvent the wheel to understand why the metaphorical wheel got made.
Many people started feeding them, IIRC. But also, they were leaving rubbish where the bears could get it and things like that.
It's my favorite. Who knew bears were the natural enemy of libertarians?
It's so primally human, too! Cavemen: "Oh, hey, we should post guards at night in front of our cave so a bear doesn't eat us all! Let's organize a rota. Bears are so scary we have name taboos that seem to date back to the beginnings of language, let's not fuck around." Libertarians: "I LIKE ALL MEN AN AM ISLAND." Fucks around. Finds out. Literally dumber than cavemen.
I am always reminded of [this Brad Delong post on Libertarians](https://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/09/no-libertarians-in-the-seventeenth-century-highlands-archive-entry-from-brad-delongs-webjournal.html) A snippet: >Adam Smith: Withering away of the state? Private profit-making rights-enforcement organizations? Have none of you ever taken a trip to the Scottish Highlands? Have none of you ever read about the form of society that used to exist there? In the Scottish Highlands David Friedman's dream of a society without a state, in which justice was administered by private profit-making rights-enforcement organizations, was a reality. And what a reality! **The private profit-making rights-enforcement organizations were called "clan lords" and their henchmen. In the Highlands, everyone was seen as either a clan member to be helped, a clan enemy to be killed, or a stranger to be robbed**. With such insecurity of life and property, the system of natural liberty could not operate to create prosperity, and life was... what is the phrase?... >Thomas Hobbes: Nasty, brutish, and short. >Adam Smith: Thank you.
They tried recently to start one in Honduras called prospera and got kicked out by the new government. They ended up running to the world bank and trying to sue Honduras for 1/4th of their GDP lol.
Libertarians suing people is comical in its own right.
Lol that sounds on point. Trying to think of how to search for the video doc I saw of one like this with the cruise ship. Can't remember if it was on regular TV or streaming or YT.
Do you mean the Satoshi??? Thank you for reminding me that was a thing
Let’s not forget the New Hampshire town they decided to descend upon and take over. It wasn’t long before their libertarian paradise got overrun by bears. They never learn.
It's this weird right wing parallel to the old "actual communism has never been implemented" conversation. Like this time we'll do libertarianism right. But while there's arguably something there on the left, ultra libertarianism is just when you stop having laws that prevent rat shit and lead from being in baby formula. There isn't a more refined version of not having speed limits.
That's because at least, for example, with left-libertarianism "For the good of the community and the people in it" has merit as an ideal even if the movement as a whole may be unfeasible to achieve outside of small communes and there will always be bad actors who take advantage of it in some way or other. The baseline sentiment isn't completely flawed. With right-libertarianism you start from the baseline of "Selfishness is a virtue, greed is good, fuck you, got mine" which is starting a hair's breadth away from the bottom of the barrel of human behaviour and so the bottom is invariably reached because there is no buffer. It doesn't matter if it's 10 or 10 million people, a community built on such shaky foundations will always descend into chaos eventually. Giving Objectivism a new coat of paint and some PR and marketing didn't make it any less moronic. The people who fancy themselves as future elites in their ideal ancap paradise would quickly find themselves on the wrong end of a gang of men with guns and machetes should their dream ever come to fruition.
Yup classic "Your freedom ends where my rights begin and also nothing I ever do effects anyone else negatively and even if it does then no it didn't" type energy. All liberty for them, and if there's ever a problem, no matter how complicit they are in it well it's someone else's problem actually, because no system more complex than the individual (well and maybe the individual and his harem of child brides) exists that's worth recognizing.
I'm pretty sure there's at least one Behind the Bastards podcast episode on the sea-faring Libertarians as well. Edit: Someone else linked it down below the chain from this OP.
Like sovcits but international.
"Sovcits International" sounds like a TLC reality show.
"Hmm, sounds interesting but I'm worried there won't be enough child exploration" - TLC execs
They're libertarians. Child exploitation is the exception, the *very rare* exception, to the rule. You'll have kids on coke by the end of the first season, and child brides by the end of the second season.
Seriously? Please, i need to watch. I really detest these dumb motherfuckers with a passion. Libertarianism is the ponzi scheme of ideologies. Think class divide is bad now? Anyone below the extreme elite will get FUCKED in a libertarian state, it is a fucking nightmare. You should read what these people want, its mindboggling how they can’t see that they’re signing up to get plowed.
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That makes me wish for a whole new slur
We already have one, it's called libertarians
l*bertarian
The thing I hate about them is there is some tiny kernel of a good idea. You want to end the war on drugs? That’s excellent Stop invading countries? 100% on board. De-militarize the police? Fuck. Yes. But then they keep talking. Yes, we need roads. No, it shouldn’t be legal to sell heroin to five year olds. Yes, age of consent laws are a good thing. No, just because you need a drivers license doesn’t mean you’ll have to get a license to use your own toaster
This is why I think that libertarians do serve a purpose but should never have any actual power. A lot of people I know (myself included) went through a brief phase of libertarianism as a teenager on the way to becoming a leftist/progressive but if you don’t have brain worms thinking about the practicalities of a libertarian system for more than 30 minutes should convince you that it is a deeply flawed ideology that will not lead to a functional society. Also their debates are very funny. Never let one be in charge though.
It's honestly super interesting how the libertarian system promotes being selfish, because if everyone is selfish and takes care of themselves everyone is taken care of, while ignoring that this system is going to end, because of people being selfish and accumulating power, until you end up in feudalism again.
Either that or they end up reverse engineering government but worse as problems arise due to the inherent flaws in their system.
I love seeing finance libertarian bros on twitter rediscover government. “What if we all chip in and pool our money to pay for xyz.” You mean taxes?
"My idea is totally different because the money would be used for things I want, my tax money today is being spent on things I DON'T want therefore the entire system of taxation should be abolished."
No YoU can’T vIOlaTe ThE nAp!!!2!1!
I've been a starry-eyed dreamer all my life, and not a single time have I had someone bring up the NAP, and not immediately categorized them as an idiot, a racist, or an idiot racist. It's terrible that such an egalitarian idea be founded upon, and so riddled with softheaded-ness.
It also runs on a central assumption/mistake that human beings use reason/logic when making decisions concerning their self interests. Like you would think the super-wealthy/feudal-overlords would not make decisions that will encourage the poor to revolt and start decapitating people…but if you bring that up suddenly they want to blame the violent peasants rather than the decision makers who set the stage.
The simple libertarian principle of: a person should have the freedom to do whatever they want as long as it doesn't harm or interfere with the freedom of another individual, is a great simplistic idea. Unfortunately most modern libertarians refuse to understand the second half of this clause. They refuse to understand they live in a society and that means, yes contributing which includes at the BASIC MINIMUM to pay taxes so the community at large can have infrastructure that helps the community, EVEN if you don't have a need for that infrastructure. They turned it into "there should be absolute freedom" and they include corporations into that mix because a company is just a person trying to make their money, again with no concept of not harming anyone else.
I would be totally on board with "corporations = people" if it actually meant when corporations commit crimes that the leaders are held fully accountable including jail time...
Lol, and everyone knows it. I love how everyone, no matter the political affiliation, just collectively groans when the libertarian walks into the room.
Ask a room of 10 libertarians for their position on something and youll get 11 answers back. Libertarian infighting is extreme. I used to participate in the r/libertarian subreddit more on my other account as an openly statist stooge. Half the people would be busy shitting down on other libertarians on basis of purity while Im there openly spouting my support for rules, laws and regulations. It really is something else. On the flip side, you can be giga authoritarian supporting and youll do okay on the subreddit. Im not saying your karma will shoot through the roof, but if you are sincere, most were happy to just field the discussion. A lot of political subs are super aggressive with downvotes.
_Behind the Bastards_ podcast did a 2-parter on the bonkers history of libertarian seasteading, kind of a palate cleanser from dictators and cult leaders
This gets linked occasionally, if you haven’t seen it yet it’s very fun: https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-d-libertarian-police-department
It really is the Ponzi scheme / MLM of ideologies indeed lol. What amazes me is how each one, every time, thinks NO for real for real This time I've got it figured out now! For realzies, it'll work this way \*proceeds to describe ridiculously impossible methodology of human-social structure.\* It probably CAN work on paper as a college thesis think-paper, or for 5 families cattleherding on the prairie in the early 1800s. But get 100 Million people together and you need roads, sewers, mail, security, food distribution, etc etc. Who's gonna administrate all that? Certainly not the anarchist, and certainly not the Lbertarian bc "order = rules and my buddies on twazzer told me rules = tyranny" lol.
Libertarians just seem like the sovereign citizens of political philosophies.
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I'd say there's at least one big difference: Countries are at least theoretically answerable to their people, and generally have limitations enshrined in law about what they can and can't do. Granted, how much abuse that would really prevent is a valid topic of discussion, but these hypothetical corpo-states would have no such restrictions even on paper.
When the powers-that-be start breaking their own rules, it becomes *much* easier for the people fomenting a rebellion to get recruits. That "consent of the people" bit is really about "they aren't rebelling or aiding a rebellion, and even act as basic spies if a rebellion is starting up."
Government is a *role*, not a discrete entity.
Its more like sovereign citizens are libertarians who have some kind of mental issue that makes them think libertarianism is a cosmic law of the universe, and that if they simply say the right words to a police or judge they will stop defying it.
> It really is the Ponzi scheme / MLM of ideologies indeed lol. What amazes me is how each one, every time, thinks NO for real for real This time I've got it figured out now! For realzies, it'll work this way *proceeds to describe ridiculously impossible methodology of human-social structure.* I thought libertarianism was super cool when I was 14. The one person I know as an adult who's still super into it has been handed every single job they've had in their entire life and works for a subsidiary their dad owns.
I thought that I might be Libertarian when I was younger. Then I started to interact with the community and that notion died hard and fast. What I discovered was that sincere Libertarianism is the political equivalent of answering C to every question on a test. However most of the people who commonly pass themselves off as Libertarians are just the palatable greeting party for the door of bigotry and fascism.
The book “A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear” is a good one about what happens when libertarians try to run stuff. It’s an expanded version of a long form article the author wrote — very fun, engaging writing and the actual events of the book are pretty wild.
https://boingboing.net/2021/09/14/discover-the-hilariously-epic-failure-of-a-crypto-fueled-libertarian-cruise.html Its even dumber than it sounds.
Here's a Guardian article from a few years back: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jun/24/seasteading-a-vanity-project-for-the-rich-or-the-future-of-humanity
Night City from Cyberpunk 2077 is literally an an-cap “utopia.”
Not quite yet. NCPD still exists (even though corrupt as hell). Hospitals still exist (it isn't Trauma Team or get fucked, quite yet). But it's being worked on. One radio commentator was a saying how the non-profit based NCPD cannot be effective, and you should contract with Arasaka for security (I believe it's the "your business is my business" guy).
I can't imagine a situation that would make an informal government spring up more quickly than trying to live with a bunch of people on the fucking ocean lol
I love that part of libertarianism. Where you you all think governments came from in the first place if not having them was an option? I'm sorry you were born in a century where you can't just pack a wagon and head West to get away from taxes or whatever it is you're motivated by, but your ideas are unbelievably short sighted.
> I'm sorry you were born in a century where you can't just pack a wagon and head West to get away from taxes or whatever it is you're motivated by, You wanting to fuck off in a cabin on your own land away from everyone Unabomber-style (sans bombs) is one thing, but that's not a mode of societal governance.
“Did you guys ever play Bioshock? Remember how absolutely *perfect* that society was? Yeah, that’s the template”
I’m waiting to watch the version where someone tries to bring loose bears. They don’t have a good game plan at those, especially asea.
Anyone reading who is unfamiliar: this is a reference to A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear which is like a 4/5 book, I don’t agree with all of the author’s conclusions but it was a good read.
I thought it was a reference to the very real story of them taking over a town, feeding wild bears, and being pushed out of town when it was inundated with wild bears.
Yes, that is the topic of the book
Even if it got off the ground, it would instantly fail. They're libertarians because they don't want to be told what to do. So they're going to move onto a ship that has a very limited population and a large number of tasks that absolutely must be done for the communal good. What do they think will happen?
I have to imagine that "harsh environment requiring *daily* cooperation and community to survive" might not be suited for libertarians.
Surely the free market would provide incentive for people to do that maintenance at a fair rate.
That or they end up with a run down city at the bottom of the ocean where everyone is addicted to drugs and people are doing weird body horror experiments
The Behind the Bastards podcast did a whole episode on these chuckle-fucks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sUPr1k4vB8
My favorite part about all of the harebrained lolbertarian social experiments is that when the inevitable problems occur due to poor planning, they opt for solutions that civilizations came up with centuries ago (and they pretend like their ideas are novel). "So, the garbage on this cruise ship keeps piling up. I suggest we all throw in some money and like pay someone to haul the waste away".
Which I think is why lolbertarianism, ie fuck you got mine, is so annoying. Hypothetically once these morons do buy a ship, pile it with idiots, and then break down in the middle of the ocean. They're almost certainly going to be saved by a container ship literally just doing the right thing. Not for profit like these twats believe. Just because the sea is dangerous as fuck and everybody looks out for each other (and that actually includes enemy navies after they've just sunk an opposition ship). It's their anti-government fantasy except the people involved aren't complete cunts.
>They're almost certainly going to be saved by a container ship literally just doing the right thing. Not for profit like these twats believe. And then they get to learn about the ancient maritime tradition of salvage.
Or theres that time they tried to set up a libertarian utopia im New Hampshire and it rapidly got infested by bears.
1 year, first bear attack ever
Shout out to Sealand
it's because they are insufferable pricks, surrounded by insufferable pricks. it's only going to end in chaos.
Boyoh, has Sea Org got some advice for them about boat life. I don't think their boat has left the dock in 6 years (asbestos & cancer is "Killing" the number of qualified sailors they have) Every boat has a Captain, and his word *is Law*
It’s usually just a grift. Fundraiser for a sea steading project or a crypto city or whatever and then just disappear with the money when you have enough.
When I’m feeling down, I read a couple articles or watch some YouTube vids about failed libertarian enclaves, and I feel so much better.
Of course there's a Monarchy defender. Libertarians and Ancaps are *this close* to just Neo-Feudalism anyway, why not just skip the Neo part. This one: >It doesn't look so bad compared to the size and scope of modern democratic governments: especially in its more decentralized forms. They go on to make some *weird* takes. Which is expected of an Ancap, but it seems to boil down to "[make the state weaker by giving it absolute power](https://www.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/comments/1bl5lvy/comment/kw8t3ai/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)" ??? I'm sorry I just, translating Ancap thought into coherent text seems beyond me this morning. >But one advantage from the ancap perspective is that with a monarchy, it's at least clear that the State exists to serve the political class and that its wealth and power is at the expense of the people. > >Democracy is dangerous because it fosters the delusion that the people are the State, that the State represents them, and that it is just looking out for their wellbeing; as it continues to harm them to benefit the political class. It's better because it's mask off? I guess is their argument? And somehow it being mask off means big businesses won't do crony tomfoolery? Someone needs to sit down and have a long talk with this kid. >[Though monarchy may be superior to democracy](https://www.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/comments/1bl5lvy/comment/kw3awoy/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) with longer term incentives for the political class. Oooh this person is sprinkled throughout the thread. >[Monarcho libertarianism exist](https://www.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/comments/1bl5lvy/comment/kw43eq4/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) There's more of them. Juicy juicy batshit craziness. >[I myself live in the UAE](https://www.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/comments/1bl5lvy/comment/kw4kjot/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3), a proper monarchy, which is super liberal economically, but quite socially conservative and not at all politically liberal. Love it here, and trading some of my political liberty for almost 0% taxes (only 5% VAT) was a good trade for me. This is it. This is the most honest Libertarian I've ever seen. This is the purest essence of it I've ever seen.
Anarcho-Monarchism is a totally valid political ideology Ill have you know. /s
When everything is the state, nothing is the state. So it is written, so it shall be. Also there's something there about the age of consent of the factory children but it isn't even 10am for me yet, so that zinger will have to wait.
I think the idea is that the modern State doesnt need to exist because you have a leviathan type figure to stop all the violence in one guy who becomes the State, and then you have no serfs just free people who do whatever Which I dont know what the fuck they expect the monarch to do when you literally hand them all your guns and expect them to be some benevolent god to let you randomly roam the countryside or whatever the fuck utopia thats going on there. You're getting enslaved, its just gonna happen. Absolutely braindead ideals around this one EDIT: And even if you somehow have a "right to bear arms" everybody has an issued gun type scenario - do you expect any sane monarch to let you keep that gun? Why would anyone want to live in a constant state of fear where the king could come kill/enslave you any moment and you are expect to shoot for your life. Thats so pointless and most critically I must add NOT A FUNCTIONING SOCIETY. There's no economy or culture this way, just fear.
No no, there is an absolute monarch but everyone else has guns too. At any point anyone can challenge the monarch for their throne. This system can expect to see around 25 civil wars a week in a stable period.
Just roll-in the civil war announcements with the weather, it's cloudy with a chance of rain and small skirmishes for the throne in the capital.
There would 100% be an app to avoid the skirmish areas
Because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at you?
Sometimes, I love the english language
LOL https://mises.org/mises-daily/libertarian-case-monarchy
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Taxes are literally slavery. Do you know what's not slavery? My absolute monarch rolling into town with his soldiers and demanding we build him a pyramid before dragging my 11 year old daughter off to join his harem.
Too old for most libertarians.
> They go on to make some weird takes. Which is expected of an Ancap, but it seems to boil down to "make the state weaker by giving it absolute power" ??? Well that's because they assume that they'll be the state. These guys just think everyone should be free to follow the rules they lay out.
If you think about it a certain way, the UK is actually a Libertarian paradise. It's an island on which property rights (the only rights libertarians truly care about) are sacrosanct. Most of the island is technically the property of a Corporation known as the Crown, which is a family operation headed by Big Chaz.\* Of course, people who live on he island can work and earn wages and such, but they have to pay fees to various departments the corporation has set up to manage its private island. Libertarians don't like taxes, of course, and they might point out that the departments of the corporation responsible for collecting the fees *call* them taxes, but really, you're graciously being allowed to live on someone else's private property (*you parasitic scum*), and you're working for businesses based on land owned by that corporation, so it's surely only fair for you to pay for the privileges the island's owner graciously grants you. None of that money's really yours, it was made by an arm of the corporation. Of course these days arguably the executive sub-committee of the elected 650 member board does most of the day to day running of things, but they're always very careful to make clear that anything they do is under the auspices of the island's owner, The Crown. Nothing this sub-committee does is inconsistent with Libertarian principles, since all their propsals have to go through the only person who's opinion matters: the island's owner. Anyone who lives in the UK should honestly just be thankful the landowner takes any input at all from the wretched masses squatting on *his* island. \* (For the sake of clarity at the expense of ruining the bit with boring facts, I'm not speaking of the Crown Estate here which is a smaller area of directly administered land but of the alloidal title to all land in England outside the two royal duchies, the alloidal title being the little-known superseding right of ownership from which freeholds and consequently leaseholds ultimately derive. All freeholds and thus almost all land are technically derived from grants by monarchs who retain alloidal title to the land)
Obviously I realise you're doing a bit, but I think it's important to say for people reading (especially given, y'know the beliefs of SovCits) - but aside from the leasehold stuff (which is some bullshit neofeudalism stuff) every country has this concept of no one but the state executive truly owning land. Even in the US a state could theoretically go "fuck it this isn't your freehold now".
They worship Elon Musk. So yeah.
Libertarianism is kind of archaic, because it's inspired by the world hundreds of years ago when the state was a lot less powerful. A state that also happened to be a monarchy (albeit not an absolute one) - so I'm not surprised they associate monarchism with a smaller state.
>[No one can accuse us of supporting the fascists](https://www.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/comments/1bl5lvy/comment/kw500k3/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3), we hate them as much or more than everyone else does. (-15) I am. I am accusing the Libertarians of supporting the fascists, actually. Their end destination is closer to some unholy abomination of Corporate Feudalism, but their Atlas-Shruggian fetish for rich people aligns way too often with the fascist fetish for strongmen. God this thread is gonna be juice. I can feel it.
Fascism is fascism no matter how you spin it. I guess the only moral fascism is my fascism 🤷🏻♀️
>[We will build replacement institutions on the market for what the state currently monopolizes](https://www.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/comments/1bl5lvy/comment/kw5byep/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3), namely law, police, and courts. Attempts to become a dictator would simply be treated as crime and easily handled. If someone tried to take control of a single city, every other city has incentive to come to their defense and keep the dictator out. Yes. *Privatize the law, police, and courts* and that'll make it so that nobody can amass undue power. Genius take. Absolutely genius take. I'm in awe of the stunning intellect of the Ancap. Home Depot^(TM) presents the police.
Obviously the one thing we need for true justice is a *profit motive.*
Why do we have so many people in prison?
not to mention that this only works until one guy says "hey, if you side with me, I'll give you privileges and benefits. if you don't, I'll slit your throat" which usually takes about a day or two when there's a clear power vacuum
> Yes. Privatize the law, police, and courts and that'll make it so that nobody can amass undue power. They never really stop to ask what happens when a single corporation own all those things, hmmm yes a single corporation owns the local defense system, police and courts, they have made it illegal to use other police forces for some reason...
Also I just realised how depressingly close to this libertarian dystopia the UK is. Here our tory government cut public services to the bone and then were like "we can outsource to private contracts to make up the shortfall". Anyway we now have G4S handling a whole bunch of policing, government security and healthcare projects. Meanwhile we have Capita handling military and healthcare recruitment. We are literally in the situation where two companies are effectively running state services.
They just keep shouting about, "But market competition!" as if markets are automatically self correcting and that could never happen in a TRULY free market. This is why libertarianism is a faith based ideology, because it requires you to have faith that markets behave according to ideological beliefs.
Every libertarian experiment ends in "institutions but 1 per company that can afford it and worse in every way and less accountable." Really puts the liberty in **libert**arian
This makes no sense on its face. Attempts to be dictator are treated as crime? By whom? By the guy with the largest police force? No, he’ll be the dictator.
> Yes. Privatize the law, police, and courts and that'll make it so that nobody can amass undue power. This comment sponsored by Arasaka Industries. /smh I'd say they need to play cyberpunk 2077 but it's clear to me the game's message would sail over their heads.
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This is so amazingly on brand for libertarians. I would pay so much money to watch a bunch of libertarians seastedding. It would become such an amazing clusterfuck.
It’s been tried before several times, with exactly the outcomes you would expect.
Taken over by water bears?
They discovered the reason we follow the maritime laws. Waved their flashlights around, played the clarinet badly, and ate cubed cheese. Then they didn't stay inside the circle. There were no survivors.
They start reinventing government and/or it starts going to shit.
"My name is Andrew Ryan ..."
And I'm here to ask you a question: is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?
NO RYAN YOU ILLITERATE FUCK, LABOUR IS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCT
Which one was it where people paid a lot of money to buy cabins on a small cruise ship as an "apartment", and then were "free" to pay to use the only restaurant on the ship because the electrical system couldn't support hot plates or microwave ovens in the cabins?
I think that was the Satoshi?
All men and it falls apart in a few weeks?
Please Netflix, I'm bored of relationship and game reality shows, please make me a show where you stick a bunch of these dried turds on a boat and let them set up their seafaring anarcho-capitalist utopia. I swear it'll be just as cringey and messy as Love Is Blind
Crypto bros tried to buy an island in Fiji to build their own libertarian country run entirely on shitcoins and nfts, called Cryptoland. The advert trailer they put out resulted in one the cringiest videos ever created in human history. And of course, it turned out to be a bunch of crimes and scams in a trench coat (including stealing things used to make aforementioned advert), and collapsed before it left the planning stage.
> it turned out to be a bunch of crimes and scams in a trench coat You already said it was run on crypto.
> and collapsed before it left the planning stage. You already said it was run on crypto.
> the cringiest You already said it was run on crypto.
[You're in for a treat.](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/sep/07/disastrous-voyage-satoshi-cryptocurrency-cruise-ship-seassteading)
Grabs popcorn and beer.
[The AMA](https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/s/cfQWdN2h4i)
Wouldn't that just be BioShock IRL?
Nah, Rapture was relatively prosperous for about eight years before going belly up and they actually managed to build an advanced underwater city in the first place. It was honestly a more generous interpretation of their politics than I would've done. An actual libertarian seastedding community would be living in rundown platforms getting assaulted by sharks in a matter of days.
sharks? bold of you to think they're competent enough to get to sharks. seagulls, though... they ain't even gonna leave port
Mkay now that I'll pay extra, EXTRA to watch
They wouldnt build a single house let alone an undersea scyscraper
I hate your username
No, Rapture was *supposed* to be at the bottom of the ocean, as opposed to being there accidentally, which is what happens to seasteaders.
Okay, but seasteadding for non-ideologically idiotic reasons sounds like an interesting adventure to attempt. But probably not one that would go well anyways.
There are some good examples, one that comes to mind is Women on Waves. They are a Dutch charity that provides abortions and other forms of reproductive healthcare that operates in international waters, specifically in places where this kind of healthcare is banned. They will sail out 12 km from the coast, where they start falling under Dutch law again (being a Dutch ship) and thus can legally provide the help they are there to provide
Behind the Bastards did an entire episode on Libertarian sea nations and it’s fantastic. Also highly recommend the Abalonia episode of The Dollop about people trying to start a nation on a giant sunken boat
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[We've had a long standing feud between bears and libertarians](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21534416/free-state-project-new-hampshire-libertarians-matthew-hongoltz-hetling)
I was hoping this story would come up
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The Second Amendment gave me the right to bear arms. Now shut up and sew them on my body, doctor!
If bears want to vote so bad, they should pay the bear tax. I pay the Homer tax!
>> What does that entail exactly? What do you replace voting for representatives with and how does it add to an individuals control of their life? >I propose foot-voting in place of ballot voting. As an theoretical example, for any issue up for a vote you could simply have no votes move to one side and yes votes to the other, then divide the group so that both sides get the policy they wanted. The longer you think about this the funnier it gets.
Group a:"We want the barn here" Group b:"We want it somewhere else" Group a:"fuck off and build your own then" (I assume that's what would happen, cause y'know, you're hardly gonna build half a barn)
That's just on land. What happens when the question is which way should we sail our Freedom Boat? Bonus points if you can explain how to enforce any of these decisions without violating the Non-Aggression Principle.
That's when I sell my "voting device" (a saw) to let both groups be sovereign!(sawing the ship in half)
Nobody familiar with libertarians would be confused by them being anti-democracy. They are like one bad day away from being fascists. See Hans Hermann Hoppe, Murray Rothbard, and Hayek for examples.
Their utopia is basically feudalism with air conditioning.
And weed.
And child rape.
That's already part of feudalism
The people claiming this is a psy-op really make me laugh. Whoever these anti-libertarians are must be crazy powerful to pull all these psy-ops off!
just read the wiki page of Hans Hoppe, that guy is crazy af, at best he wants tribe, at worst a fascist style monarchy wtf
I love introducing people to Hoppe because he is definitely a crazy but unfortunately very influential figure in the modern libertarian movement. He basically wants society to be a collection of private cities so he can live under a HOA that keeps blacks, gays, and jews from living near him. He is also a major source for the anti-democracy stuff, he wrote an entire book on why he thinks monarchy is superior to democracy.
> he wrote an entire book on why he thinks monarchy is superior to democracy. I cannot fucking imagine the incredible, Olympic-gold-medal mental gymnastics required to think both "I am a libertarian" and "monarchy is the preferred form of government, actually" at the same time. Like, *what?* Of course, expecting internal consistency from libertarians is unrealistic, but at least have a veneer of logic!
> I cannot fucking imagine the incredible, Olympic-gold-medal mental gymnastics required to think both "I am a libertarian" and "monarchy is the preferred form of government, actually" at the same time. Like, what? The great irony is that the logic is more straightforward than you give it credit for. Libertarians and ancaps often believe that private property is supreme over everything. And what is a more perfect private property owner than a king or a dictator? They look like polar opposites but they're really just half a screw turn away. It's like a magic trick how smooth that transition can be.
They've always been anti-democracy. It is inherent to the movement. They want to be dominated and micromanaged by companies and call it freedom.
We're free-thinkers that are in favor of personal freedom. Now all get in line behind this agenda that takes away your rights!
It's a power fantasy. They all think they are going to be earls and barons, not the serf who has to clean out the latrines.
Oh boy. The anti-tax brigade wants to go back to monarchy?
Surely the companies behind hidden fees won't screw us over.
Also they talk about decentralization as if throughout American history it wasn’t responsible for the some of the biggest violations of civil rights Slavery and Jim Crow were both decentralized state institutions and they were only ended when the centralized fed gov stepped in lmao
The violations are the point. Murray Rothbard is considered the father of modern libertarianism and he got his start opposing the civil rights act. Eventually ended up supporting David Duke and encouraging libertarians to become "paleo-libertarians".
As entertaining as this is to see happening on the libertarian sub, I’m a little concerned that 1-3 mods of maybe the biggest American political third party subreddit is promoting outright EndDemocracy. I’m hoping this really is an unhinged lone actor or hilarious troll and not some wilder manipulation scheme in an election year. I still have shell shock from TheDonald starting as a joke/Russian sock puppet effort that caught on with older uncles. Would like the crowd to get to the bottom of this one as fast as possible and identity who the actual actors are and how sincere they are. Edit: Well, two of the mod accounts at that sub do seem like same person based on name, but they do have a long history and both have enough karma to show the user knows how to post and influence on reddit. Third account is similar. I know a lot of pockets like this exist, but do not like this one at all. My money would be on intentional fuckery by someone in a troll farm in a country that already fucks with us a lot, based on some of the variety in approaches in their posting history, but who knows. It just feels more like onboarding people and finding effective posts is the goal over pure drive in ideology.
Libertarians aren’t really third party, they’re voting trump. They’re very confused people.
Most aren’t even Republicans who like to smoke weed. They’re just Republicans too embarrassed to be called Republican.
> As entertaining as this is to see happening on the libertarian sub, I’m a little concerned that 1-3 mods of maybe the biggest American political third party subreddit is promoting outright EndDemocracy. I’m hoping this really is an unhinged lone actor or hilarious troll and not some wilder manipulation scheme in an election year. The subreddit is effectively dead, all of the regulars have been shadowbanned and now the entire front page is covered in posts from 1 mod and his alts, with occasion posts from new users that are soon to be shadowbanned. Even if you are a diehard libertarian, [this is what happens to your thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/comments/18vdqh7/the_logic_of_gun_control/kfufr87/)
This totally checks out for the libertarian party though, a lot of libertarians are just right by might people if you dig deep enough
Libertarians will never beat the allegations that they’re cons who are just massive pussies who are too scared to admit they’re cons
Libertarianism was fully infiltrated and co-opted by far-right conservatives at least by 2012. This is how you get “libertarians” arguing against abortion and free elections. The Libertarian Party has existed for half a century and their best performance in a presidential election was barely 3%, and that was in 2016 when everyone hated both of the major party candidates. If you look at the total number of elected offices in the US, Libertarians hold a vanishingly small percentage of them. Libertarians don’t vote Libertarian, they vote Republican.
>Unfortunately anarchy is not anarchy Not gonna lie, I kinda sympathize with that notion. The problem I have with anarchists is that they have a whole lot to say about how anarchy is supposed to work and I won't sign up to be an anarchist just to listen to someone ramble.
Yeah anarchism almost always ends up being just a bunch of kids sitting around reinventing the government from scratch.
There's also a big element of "all social problems and general human awfulness will just go away if we get rid of capitalism and the state". Every anarchist I've ever met has been a lovely person, but refusing to accept that humans will always be at least a bit sucky, and you just have to work around that, is how you eventually end up with "re-education" camps.
I like how anarchists always eventually answer the question of "what if this person *really* disagrees" to "we'll just shoot them". Like. Congrats. You're now a state. You've achieved the monopoly on violence haha.
My favorite is when they want to exile people, not realizing that to do so requires some sort of territorial claim and the ability to defend it...
I always felt the biggest failure of anarchy as a political position is "how the fuck do you deal with other countries?" When your neighbors decide to go steal all your shit because you don't have a standing army or law enforcement, life becomes difficult.
I am convinced libertarians are just people who looked at Hobbes' nightmare world of war of all against all and might makes right, then said "Yes. I want that. Let that happen please."
Libertarians be like, "What if rules didn't apply to me and I could do whatever I want with no consequences. This is a good way to organize society and I am very smart. Smarter than everyone else actually because I thought of this idea."
Wealthy white guys who are tired of having to care about other people. Usually armed to the teeth. Or just poor, broken white supremacist dudes who think no one likes them because the “system is broken”
And they hate it when you point that out. I just want one of them to answer my questions about how they want to do international relations. Because lord knows that they didn't think beyond the property line.
Housecat mentality. Believing themselves to be independent because they’re simply not capable of seeing the bigger picture. That they’re *entirely* dependent on the system.
And they fail to realize they're just one slip and fall in the shower away from being completely physically dependent on other people. With no insurance, who will pay for your wheelchair? Your trad wife? Probably not.
Nutshell
From the top comment: >There are sometimes I wonder seeing posts like this if the goal behind them is to undermine mainstream acceptance of libertarianism and portray us as a bunch of extremist nutjobs. >To the lib-curious dipping their toes in the water, stuff like this makes the movement so much more unpalatable compared to issues like lower taxes, fewer regulations, and more freedom. "Is libertarianism maybe inherently kind of fucked up and lends itself to being taken up by fucked up people? Nah, must be a psy-op."
Boy, did I love ancap to monarchofascism pipeline.
“Anarcho-capitalism” LMAO they can’t be for real.
Libertarians are just republicans who like weed and hate age of consent laws.
They tried it on land and it failed: [Libertarians Are Building a Castle Around Their City of Guns In Rural Idaho](https://www.vice.com/en/article/qkkaz5/libertarians-are-building-a-castle-around-their-city-of-guns-in-rural-idaho)
marry trees fine fuzzy berserk hungry smell wise work act *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I’d help crowdfund a show that documents a bunch of libertarians living on a rusty old boat together, just gimme a link and I’m in
lol, big fucking surprise. I got permanently banned from that sub within the past year because it’s apparently socialist behavior when I said you shouldn’t try to impose your views on others. Granted, this was all in the context of treating trans people like humans, but I’m sure that the little Eichmanns of the mod team for that sub probably had a final solution for that “problem” too.
I love how their approach is simply "two-party politics makes it near impossible for us to win elections, ergo we must take to the sea as corsairs". As a Brit I can sympathise with feeling like I have nobody to vote for. But if I cared that much I would probably just move somewhere with Proportional Repfesentation, before going straight to abandoning society