From time to time I get serious queries about my views on libertarianism. I take a backseat to no man in my disdain for modern libertarians, so I think a lot of people just assume I have never bothered to fully understand the topic. This is a popular defense from libertarians and soccer enthusiasts. As with soccer, the primary appeal of libertarianism is its simplicity, so this line of defense is a bit silly. Still, I thought a fuller explanation of my views on the topic would make for an interesting show this week, so here we are.
Now, as we see with defenders of Islam, libertarians have a habit of strapping on roller skates whenever you begin to analyze their thing. “That’s not the real Islam” follows every terrorist attack. “That’s not the real libertarianism” will inevitably show up in the comments of this podcast. I chose to rely on Hans-Hermann Hoppe for this show, as he is the pope of the faith right now. I did draw on Rothbard a bit and Rand, of course. I largely ignored the childish scribbling from Reason [clown horn] and Cato.
This week I have the usual variety of items in the now standard format. Spreaker has the full show. I am up on Google Play now, so the Android commies can take me along when out disrespecting the country. I am on iTunes, which means the Apple Nazis can listen to me on their Hitler phones. The anarchists can catch me on iHeart Radio. YouTube also has the full podcast. Of course, there is a download link below. I’m now on Spotify, so the millennials can tune in when not sobbing over white privilege and toxic masculinity.
This Week’s Show
Contents
- 00:00: Opening
- 02:00: Wrong From The Start
- 12:00: Getting There and Keeping It
- 22:00: The Reality Of The Market
- 32:00: The Story of Iceland
- 42:00: Drug Legalization
- 47:00: Libertarian Trade
- 52:00: Individualism
- 57:00: Closing
Full Show On Spreaker
Full Show On Odysee
There was an old Soviet-era joke: There is no ”truth” in https://translate.google.com/?hl=en#ru/en/pravda and no ”news” in https://translate.google.com/?hl=en#ru/en/Izvestiya
And of course, no ”reason” in Reason [clown horn].
If the NAP is wrong, then there is no morality at all. Is it possible that morality does not exist? That there is no such thing as morality? That it is nothing more than a fiction created by different peoples at different times?
I think we all agree that there is no universal belief system that applies to all humans. Thus, any attempt to create such is pointlessly silly.
I think the closest example of a society to libertarianism is Singapore. Singapore is mostly free-market, with the major exception being real-estate (government owns most real estate). Singapore is successful because it is comprised mostly of industrious Chinese people who were raised under an English-based common law system. The alt-right endevours to create a “white” version of Singapore, it would seem. This is probably the best we can accomplish as a realistic objective.
One thing is certainly true. Human capital is the basis of everything. HBD is real. Any further improvement in any society can only come about through improvement in quality of human capital.
Something that is becoming quite apparent to me in the 6 months or so is just how much of personality and cognitive traits are biologically determined (as opposed to “blank slate” environmentalism). This suggests that future improvements to human cognitive and behavior traits will be accomplished by bio-engineering rather than through embrace of stuff like traditional religion or political philosophy. So, not only is libertarianism not any good. All other political philosophies and religion are equally worthless as well.
Its becoming abundantly clear to me that bio-engineering is the future. (e.g. making humans better). Anything else is mere entertainment.
” Singapore is successful because it is comprised mostly of industrious Chinese people who were raised under an English-based common law system. The alt-right endevours to create a “white” version of Singapore, it would seem.”
No, the alt-right endeavors to re-create white America. No need to copy a copy of the original. Singapore is for Chinese people who act white much of the time.
Also, it would seem that someone needs to “endevour” to improve his American English spelling. Perhaps some bio-engineering is needed to accomplish this.
So this critique of libertarianism is a white nationalist thing. Is it fair to describe the alt-right or dissident right as white nationalism?
In his full comment, Abelard says:
“Its becoming abundantly clear to me that bio-engineering is the future. (e.g. making humans better). Anything else is mere entertainment.”
Question: Isn’t eugenics, including eugenics conducted along racial lines, a type of bio-engineering?
Its a crude form of it, yes.
Its stuff like this that makes me think that bio-enigneering is a very big deal with regards to improving human society.
http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2018/07/game-over-genomic-prediction-of-social.html
I talk about improving human society only because i see it as the only justification of any kind of collectivism. If you’re not out to make a difference, then why do anything at all (other than to liver your own life on your own terms, that is)?
I get your points about HBD, immigration, and the like. I even agree with them. I think we can agree that there is no solution to be found through politics. There are only non-political solutions to our problems.
Excellent podcast. I would like to add one aspect that may be helpful to your understanding. Big “L” libertarianism as a political movement is a farce as you so eloquently explain. However, small “l” libertarianism is, at it’s root, about love of liberty and survival of the fittest. The latter is about as ancient and natural as evolution itself.
Gorgar pleased, esp what Z did there at the end.
Lots of people with lots of different beliefs call themselves libertarian. I love the fools who think that because they oppose laws against some drugs and prostitution they are therefore libertarian. My definition of libertarian is someone who practices the NAP. NAP means “non-aggression principle.” So let’s be clear about what NAP means. The NAP is about determining under what circumstances an act of violence, or the threat of violence, or an act of fraud is morally justified. According to the NAP, violence, threats of violence and fraud are only justified in response to the initiation of violence, the threat of violence, or fraud.
Let’s compare two examples. If you and I are walking down a road, you heading east and me heading west, and as we pass each other I punch you in the nose, we can all probably agree that that is an act of violence. On the other hand, if we’re walking along as before but you punch me in the nose first, and then in response I punch you in the nose, we have both committed acts of violence. But according to the NAP there’s an important difference in my action vs yours. In the first case I initiated violence, making my act of violence unjustified. In the second case, you initiated violence, and even though my punching you in the nose was an identical physical act as in the first case, in the second case my act of violence is justified. It’s justified because I did not initiate violence in the second case. Rather, you did.
So, given that definition of the NAP, I’d like The Z Man to to answer this question.
Would the world be a better or worse place if you live by the NAP? In other words, if you only commit acts of violence, or threaten violence, or commit fraud, in response to another person initiating violence or the threat of violence or fraud against you or another person, would the world be a better place or a worse place?
NAP works in civilized society that only became civilized by the use of force… Quite the quandary wouldn’t you say…Here is an example that shows why NAP is foolish to use in an uncivilized world…Two men grab the same item at the same time which means survival for the one who gets it for their family/tribe/community and death for the other…The one who uses force first wins the item… What are you prepared to do and remember it’s not just you who’s dying its everyone you care about…Now the real kicker, the other guy is evil and by letting him have the item your not only dooming your f/t/c your dooming the world… Would you still be using NAP…
“Let’s compare two examples. If you and I are walking down a road, you heading east and me heading west, and as we pass each other I punch you in the nose, we can all probably agree that that is an act of violence. .. ”
But what if you-heading-east, without overt violence, positions himself on the sidewalk so that you-heading-west have to step aside?
How do you react to that?
And you suppose you, without violence, protest his rudeness, but you-heading-east repeats his act of dominance time after time? What do you do about that?
I step aside. Why should I be a jerk just because someone else is being a jerk?
“When a worm is stepped on,it curls up. In the language of slave morality, that is humility.”
–Nietzsche
What quandary? How do you know that civilized society only came about by force? That’s a premise. Prove its truth please.
Your example of two men and the item seems a bit forced. Really? Just that one item, makes the difference between living and dying for a whole family? Really?
And what do you mean by the other guy being “evil?” How do I know that the other guy is evil? Perhaps he committed an act of aggression? Ah! Now I know he’s evil.
One issue that there really isn’t any other rational definition of morality than the NAP. Rejecting the NAP as the standard of morality means that there is a “void” that can only be fille by power. The only thing that exists outside of NAP is power.
Indeed!
Libertarian equals death because they won’t fight for the resources they need to survive…They can only survive by the sacrifice of others…
Re: vigilantes will make us paint our houses red.
Not intending to defend them, but did the kkk ever try to make people build their houses a certain way or write books, songs, pamphlets, and even magic cards a certain way? You are trying to rationalize.
It’s easy to poke fun at liberatarianism – I do it all the time at misesuk.org – but … the real discussion point you need to spend a Power Hour on, and which was almost a throw-away comment, is the point that you get as much government as the social organization can bear without collapsing, no more, no less.
This is actually the elephant in the room all thanks to modern technology. We’re entering the panopticon and it’s increasingly clear that only those with the least morals and the highest psychopathy are in in charge.
Once you get beyond social organization where the King is the bravest fighter who has the vision and the stones to hold the society together, the parasites take over and it becomes inevitable the host will die.
Unless the Z Man has a recipe to limit the power of government pointing and laughing at libertarians is simply fiddling while Rome is burning. I certainly haven’t seen anything from the alt-right about how to restrain the power of government in a materially wealthy and technologically advanced society. This is the problem of our age, not SJWs, not Muslims, not whatever else. The tiny intolerant minority end up running any society and today with the possibility of total social control of the individual (see China’s social media scoring) this means the end of human life as we have previously understood it. We all become slaves to the system which is there to service the system not human values. We’re pretty much there already.
Great podcast Z Man! I think the biggest problem for Libertarianism, other than being a utopian fantasy, is that it is almost exclusively a “frontier” ideology. You referenced that word a few times in the podcast but having a frontier with low hanging fruits that could easily be exploited (land, labor, capital) was the reason that it sorta worked for a while in the U.S. And it’s the reason why it has no appeal in Europe, which has been settled for thousands of years. Libertarians idioitically think that the UK can solve its astronomical housing costs with just adopting a Houston, Texas sprawl model, not thinking that literally 75% of the island would be covered in concrete.
There’s a very strong cultural Marxist strain in libertarianism. The same people who tell you we can’t have borders or any kind of social safety net will immediately declare that the government must prevent discrimination against blacks or gays or Muslims. Freedom to discriminate is apparently against freedom. Arguing with them is pointless because as a previous comment noted they just get angry.
It is written, in John 15:13, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”
This is of course the sort of maudlin nonsense rejected by libertarians. A libertarian is simply a self-worshipping asshole, if I may be allowed to generalize. There exist neither moral nor economic arguments for a libertarian ‘laying down his life” for anyone at all; sovereign in his leather jacket in a godless matrix, he has one task: To be awesome!
Laugh all you want at the great swindle known as Christianity, or even Communism, but John’s precept was lived by many in each Faith, and they – consequently – made themselves forces in the world.
I await libertarian martyrdoms. Ok, not really; that’s like Linus awaiting the arrival of the Great Pumpkin.
Can’t believe I’ve never run across John 15:13. My mom used to drill verses into my head every day. That’s such a cool line. I see it online just now. But I’m gonna have to check one of my real bibles to verify it’s actually in there.
“Self-worshiping asshole” is a apt description of the buggers. The ones I knew were all obsessed over drugs and prostitution of all things. It did tell me where their values lay and it was in very bad place.
I think their model human is a cross between Gordon Gekko and that sociopath Ayn Rand(did you know she admired a gruesome serial killer as a ‘real man’ in her private dairies).
That’s a pretty terrible mischaracterization of Libertarians. Sure, some Libertarians are jerks, just like some people of any group you can name. At its base, Libertarianism is just:
1. Don’t take other people’s stuff without their permission.
2. Don’t hurt people.
3. Keep your word.
It’s a utopian, unworkable philosophy, sure.
However, there’s nothing about Libertarianism that prevents you from being a Christian, from being generous (It’s your stuff, you get to decide what to do with it, including giving it to other people to help them), from laying down your life, from living by a a religious code.
If you ask a libertarian why Detroit is a basket case they will tell you it’s onerous taxation and regulation policies. There’s some truth in their criticisms of government in general but I don’t need to spin myself in circles trying to explain things like Detroit in order to be critical of the government. There’s a lot of problems with libertarianism but I came to the conclusion a while ago that even if I wanted a libertarian world, supporting open borders libertarians would more quickly turn us into Venezuela than if I supported the socialist party.
Just to clarify, in case there was any doubt, Detroit is a basket case because it’s full of Blacks.
Bastiat convinced me years ago “Free Trade” was wonderful. I scoffed at Perot when he talked about the “giant Sucking sound”. Now you have convinced me, not about the issues like free trade, but about me being too impressionable to read any more. Thanks a lot.
The thing is, words in politics mean, like the Caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland, exactly what they want them to mean. What they call “free trade” is nothing of the kind. So, does free trade work? Hell if I know. I haven’t seen it in operation. NAFTA doesn’t implement free trade any more than the Affordable Care Act implements affordable care.
Libertarianism is a tough one for me. If we were all angels, Libertarianism would be great. But we’re not, and we’re importing and breeding more and more devils all the time.
Like all Utopian schemes of the Right and the Left, Libertarianism starts with “First, create humans that don’t behave like humans.”
We were actually mind-bogglingly close in the 18th and 19th century US. I think we’ve all heard the saying attributed to John Adams: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” (Haven’t checked to see if the quote is really by him, but it’s not important, just making a point.*)
That’s very, very true. Our founders, while they were not, as the Zman points out, Libertarian, did create probably the most Libertarianish significant government ever. And it worked pretty darn well, because the American population was surprisingly virtuous. Of course, there were lots of evil people, but the proportion of the population that was more or less “good people” was strikingly high. High enough to carry us for a long time, until we were undone by mass immigration and the welfare state.
I am still reflexively Libertarian in my approach, because I look at our ruling class and I see, clearly, they are not smart enough to tell me how to live. They are vomitously corrupt and decadent.
And then I look at most of the alt right leaders. Most of them are ideologues. Some of them might want to deport me because I’m half-Italian and my grandparents were immigrants (my Mom’s side may go all the way back to the Mayflower for all I know**). None of them are smart or virtuous enough to tell me how to live, either.
I just want to be left alone. I do pretty well without need for government coercion. I am, without arrogance, a vast net benefit to this country: I have raised decent, law-abiding children (four out of five of them adults now), I make a lot of money and pay an extraordinary amount in taxes as a reward.
I’m that privileged White male who works two productive private sector jobs, keeps the trains running on time, the roads paved (via taxes; I’m not a construction worker or locomotive engineer), looks out for my neighbor and doesn’t commit any of what we traditionally think of as crimes.
I am thus thoroughly reviled by my progressive betters. Why should I trust anyone with power over me?
*Ah ha! Apparently the quotation is genuine: http://www.beliefnet.com/resourcelib/docs/115/Message_from_John_Adams_to_the_Officers_of_the_First_Brigade_1.html
As Abraham Lincoln said, “The problem with quotes on the Internet is that it is hard to verify their authenticity.”
**My maternal grandmother’s maiden name is Gardner. There was a Gardinar on the Mayflower. Small spelling changes in names were very common in the pre-oppressive-government era. On my Italian side I have close relatives (aunts and uncles ) who use a different last letter for their name than I do.
The basic assumption is that it’s for smart white guys. Doesn’t work for the distaff side or the mystery meats.
More clown horn! At least it’s a must if Nick Gillespie or the apple heads at the Scroto Institute get a mention.
Great podcast. Speaking of individualism, Black Pigeon Speaks put up a new video on the issue. Wondering what you think of him, Zman?
https://youtu.be/lrVyXdwft8E
I am not Zman but I like Black Pidgeon. One thing that bugs me though is how he illustrates his points with video. It’s manipulative and condescending, and just over the top stupid. “Modern life’s entertainment as distraction.” Cut to slow-mo scene of girl laughing on an amusement ride. We get it, thanks. “Yadda yadda tribalism”. Shows zombies. gtfo. I get that it’s a video and we need to look at something moving. But yeah, it’s kinda weird.
I think that’s just creative videography..Better than the balding talking head that is Stefan Molyneux.
Download youtube directly to you phone sd card as audio only mp3 using videoder. I almost never watch high verbal content youtube videos anymore. Listen to the mp3 cgonversion in the car.
Hans Herman Hoppe’s last name is pronounced as in kangaroo.
btw I liked last weeks version of TBTM
Hans-Hermann Kangaroo can’t be right.
But they are both Hoppers
While we’re on pronunciation, Alþingi is pronounced “alTHingi”. The third letter is not a weird “p” but rather the character “thorn” which has fallen out of English, but survives in Icelandic.
Context switch: I’d like to see someone go into a gun shop and ask for a bottle of “Kangaroo’s number 9”.
I knew that, but I was working from notes, which I never do. I wanted to make sure I did not forget anything and wound up reading it as I wrote it. I did not have time to fix it. It’s why I never work from notes or a script. I’m just not trained to do it.
Our friends, the farmers.
https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/07/26/gop-yoder-vote-provide-more-visa-workers-for-farmers/
If you can read the comments, lots of “farmers” that are quite pissed that their slave labor illegals could be gone. Privatize the profit, socialize the loss through degraded white/black work ethic, wage stagnation and drugs.
Harsh but true. Many farmers are just opium addicts on a larger scale. Give me my fix and f*ck everyone else.
If we cut off all immigrant labor could they go cold turkey?
It would be painful for sure. The horse-trading for E-Verify has always involved some quid pro quo for either a new helot visa (H-2C) or bureaucratic streamlining for the existing H-2A. The correct thing to do would be to mandate that able bodied without dependents (ABWD) be forced to take these jobs or else lose benefits. We’d probably see more importation of food from Mexico, Central America, Brazil and West Africa. Not a bad thing as it would reduce incentives to migrate. Remittance income is a “resource curse”.
FYI, wolves and coyotes are genetically closer than Africans and Asians, though regarded as different species. Both groups can interbreed…and that doesn’t make coyotes a “social construct.”
Evolutionary anthropologist, Robin Fox mentions the relation of feeling pried and associate with one kin-group in “The Tribal Imagination -civilisation and the savage mind” an episode. He had been to a dinner where there was a Lebanese. Foxs mentions to him a lebanese author for saying that all in the middle east that do something or accomplish something always dedicates it to his kin-group of clan or tribe. The Lebanese became extremely angry and denied that and said “The man who wrote that is likely to come from that clan or that tribe” -so, tribalism is confirmed with denialism of its existence . A lebanese version of Jordan Peterson.
Odd that you didn’t mention your age on podcast #53!
Libertarianism is the cop-out when you reject the status quo, but don’t want to face the socially uncomfortable cultural and biological realities right in front of you.
Here’s the test. When you are with lefties that for whatever reason you aren’t interested in intimidating, and you are forced to put some opinions out there, you cloak your views in libertarian arguments.
To paraphrase The Z Man:
“Libertarianism is a convenient hiding place for people unwilling to take on the Left. If you reject central planning of the national economy, but are afraid to be called bad things by the local lunatics. In the culture war, libertarians will never go over the top and will, once in a while, turn their weapons on their comrades. You just can’t trust them to fight.”
I think this is true up to a point, but I also think that the reason so many libertarians have lefty friends and spouses is that they are all utopians at heart, and mostly atheistic as well. A shared atheistic utopianism is the common ground on which they can agree. After that collectivism vs individualism is a minor quibble over how to make paradise. And since the libertarian realizes that his beliefs are basically bullshit, he will usually defer to his communist wife when with her, and explain why she is wrong when discussing things with others when she’s not present.
Somehow the country survived the zombie apocalypse of every drug imaginable drug being legal before America lost it’s mind in the late progressive era. You know, that backward time where despite the absence of big, loving government to destroy the foundation of the Constitution, we whelped out little advancements like the light bulb, phonograph, telegraph, telephone, A/C electric, the airplane and I’m sure one or two other things.
And I’m having a hard time figuring out who to root for in this drug war. If MS-13 pulls a home invasion of my house at 4:00AM, I’m at least allowed to shoot them once they are in my house. But I’m assured a death sentence if I shoot back at the DEA and/or local SWAT team doing the same if they get the address wrong on their search warrant.
The reason 1906 happened was because the average addict was a white middle aged housewife. Now she couldn’t buy coke of opium at the drug store, and we were off to the races. Libertarianism brought us coke for $2.50 an ounce, and temperance brought organized crime, private and public.
If libertarians really hated the state as much as they hate the nation, they might actually be good for something.
Except they don’t, and they aren’t.
Along my path at various points, I have considered myself a conservative, constitutionalist, classical liberal, libertarian, anarchist, anarcho-capitalist, etc. At current, I qualify mostly as a heretic to the Progressivist religion mismanaging our culture. My main objective is to value truth above all else. Politics is beyond my circle of influence. I am increasingly aware of the limitations and drawbacks of individualism in a world filled with tribalists; however, because I have always viewed myself through a lens of individualism, it is not a mentality I can easily abandon. Let us concede that libertarianism makes a poor fit with human nature. Very few people will sign onto libertarian philosophy. Beyond a contingent of white males, barely anyone understands it, let alone supports it. Nevertheless, libertarianism has great value when it promotes skepticism/cynicism toward the government/ruling class. We should take every chance to remind folks that various governments killed over half a billion people during the 20th Century. Power has proven itself one hell of a dangerous commodity. That government may be inevitable hardly makes it trustworthy.
“We should take every chance to remind folks that various governments killed over half a billion people during the 20th Century.”
Can’t argue. Unfortunately, if you broadcast this truth to the general public, it will have zero effect. Better to be selective and mindful about it, no?
“Power has proven itself one hell of a dangerous commodity.”
True. But if that makes you avoid exercising or delegating power, the danger to you is worse. Avoidance just amplifies your adversaries’ power.
From the podcast:
“We are evolved to live in hierarchical groups. … The great challenge is to rally your people — to rally your group — in order to survive.”
Power is a damned if you do/damned if you don’t scenario. A power vacuum is bound to be filled at some point and likely by tyrants. Take power yourself and you become a potential tyrant. Men are not angels and none of us is immune to corruption. It’s never easy trying to transmit anything of substance to the general public. Most people prefer bells and whistles over challenging insights. Give them too much to ponder and they will probably reject your message.
My understanding of the opioid crisis is a bit different. Thirty years ago in my state we were required to have duplicate prescription pads specifically for schedule II drugs as a hedge against fraud, which was very unusual. The low level of fraud led to dropping the special Rx’s to having the same plain paper Rx for all prescriptions. (Actually, when I went to med school having pre-printed Rx’s was something high class doctors did, or drug or medical stationery companies provided as promotions, we were taught to write them on blank pieces of paper).
There was a very gradual increase in fraud year over year after that, which I noted by people stealing prescription pads out of exam rooms in my offices. The big bang, so to speak came with two events. One was the emergence of the “pain specialist”; the other was the publication of a letter in one of the journals (it wasn’t even a study) where people who were given high doses of narcotics as inpatients were noted to not develop dependence. This letter then began to be used as a reference in other articles to justify the use of highly potent drugs such as oxycontin. The average doc felt he could prescribe these things without ill effect.
The above also happened at a time when the border security was very lax, so that may have had an effect as well. I remember taking care of traumas in lots of Mexicans during that time.
Since then everything has changed. We now use Rx’s with special paper and the pharmacies track opioid prescriptions through a statewide system so fraud can be picked up. In the old days emergency rooms used to have lists of people to watch out for, now there is a statewide database of abusers. Physicians who prescribe long term narcotics are monitored as well, and when this is done there must be documentation of a contract with the patient not to seek narcotics elsewhere, with the penalty being dismissal from the practice. Meanwhile the narcotics used have switched over from being prescribed to being illegally imported or extralegally manufactured. Thus the heroin overdoses and meth labs.
Addiction also appears to be a family phenomenon. Passed on from generation to generation, either by adoption of behavior, or by genetic predisposition according to neurotransmitter reception sites. The people who got addicted to oxycontin have children who are more likely to be addicts as well. These are the people dying of heroin overdose.
The way I look at this is like when alcohol was introduced to indian tribes who had been addicted to nicotine only, and whose hepatic metabolisms weren’t up to getting ethanol out of the system quickly. When they got ahold of booze everything went out of control. Well, some white people have a similar genetic problem with narcs, only instead of hepatic metabolism other pathways and receptors are involved.
The one thing to note is that most of the above problems have their genesis in people who assume that they have some special enlightenment about how things work or should work. This, in various iterations, is the basic defect with almost all ideologies and ideas, which may have some merit at some point, but get pushed too far. This is hubris. Not a new concept.
The salient point regarding opioids is that the Sackler family’s efforts to make painkillers easily available was a form of legalization. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/30/the-family-that-built-an-empire-of-pain
The result has been a disaster for lower class whites. It also opened the door for heroin and fentanyl. It’s another example of how libertarians routinely exclude social capital from their cost analysis of public policy.
‘…libertarians routinely exclude social capital from their cost analysis of public policy.’
Uhm, social capital does not exist in libertarianism, exactly as in marxism, ‘culture doesn’t exist’. Libertarianism is marxist analysis reaching a different conclusion. It is a one-dimensional view of humans. Ayn Rand was a lot closer to Old Karl than she or her fans ever realized. She just decided he got the analysis right and the conclusion wrong. Real conservatives think he got both wrong.
Never mentioned them by name or the company, but this all fits in precisely with the timeline I just described. It is the same story told from a different perspective.
My 2 cents.
The more refined and powerful the drugs, the more addictive. Marijuana, coca leaves, hemp, and that sort of stuff aren’t particularly harmful or addictive. Start refining cocaine, heroin, and pharmaceutical pain killers and you get some dangerous stuff.
I’ll still argue that the enforcement of drug prohibitions (just like alcohol prohibition) is more costly than it’s worth.
Singapore actually takes drug prohibition seriously, meaning customs inspections and hanging dealers. Our government conducts a phony war with the DEA, while the CIA enables the cartels to evade enforcement.
Regardless of what we allow to be legal or not, the state should have a monopoly on distribution (Canada has state-run liquor/weed/casinos). Loan sharks like (((Dan Gilbert))) should not be allowed to manipulate the political process to gain a monopoly on vice. The underclass should be strictly forbidden from accessing vice, lottery tickets are bought by the low-IQ when they should only be bought by the 1%.
I’m not real keen on state-owned businesses.
The government has a tendency to be less efficient than the private sector, when it comes to vice that would be a good thing. Casinos would be less appealing if they were in a drab Soviet Brutalist building rather than a glitzy Vegas skyscraper.
Unless and until that money becomes a vital revenue stream for bureaucrats’ retirement fund or similarly important budget items. Then they’ll be fully committed to creating addicts.
Incidence of tobacco use is on a secular decline, despite its importance to state budgets. No real effort has been made to ease advertising restrictions or public smoking bans. Gilbert wasn’t even able to get smoking allowed in his casinos here in Ohio. The cost of vice is socialized, the benefits are private. Removing the former is unelectable social darwinism.
I don’t enjoy watching people suffer, but there are serious dysgenic drawbacks to the welfare state of good intentions. As teapartydoc says, propensity to addiction is heritable. A welfare state that enables addicts is effectively encouraging dysgenic breeding.
But an effective prohibition regime isn’t doing much better. Set aside the fact that an effective prohibition regime in a nation the size of the US is a unicorn, unless we become a completely different, far more repressive society, and maybe even then.
Even if prohibition were successful, the propensity for addiction is still there and will surely express itself in different equally destructive ways. There will always be dysfunctional people in society. What do you do with them?
Leaving them to suffer the consequences of their own bad decisions isn’t necessarily less humane than rounding up and imprisoning hundreds of thousands of people, as the War on Drugs does, in the name of protecting the genetically flawed.
Re: special prescription pads for narcotics.
I almost feel bad responding to a thoughtful comment with an anecdote, and a borrowed anecdote at that, but here goes. So the VA system had these special green-paper narcotics prescription pads back when I was a medical resident. Each sheet had a serial number stamped on it, and a clerk recorded the block of numbers that you “controlled” when they issued you a narcs pad. Well, someone walked into the team room where us trainees kept our coats, backpacks, etc and made off with a colleague’s backpack, which happened to have her narcs pad in it. She duly reported the theft, and spent an angry day (on top of her baseline anger, which was considerable, incidentally) cancelling credit cards, etc.
A few days later she gets called by local pharmacy. The voice on the other end says, “Hello, Dr. Smith? This is Joe from the CVS pharmacy on Main Street. I’m asking this purely for the record, but did you happen to prescribe, and I quote, ‘A pound of mofeen’ to a Mr. Quantravious Jones?” Angry colleague said it was almost worth the pain of having to replace her credit cards and ID just to get that call. Almost.
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On a more serious note, regarding poor border controls in general and Chinese-origin fentanyl in particular. Apart from the obvious present-day advantages of flooding an economic and political rival with drugs, I am mortally certain that the Chinese (some, many; if not all) also view it as payback for the Opium Wars.
Want a take on Libertarianism from today. Go to Lew Rockwell and two articles stand out with the standard fare. One about hoping the Russians win the trade war, because:bad policy. Two Jesus was not a socialist but probably would be closer to us.
Ideology is a bitch, and I consider those types at Rockwell much better that your standard “Reason” types. I still go because there because still a paleo remnant there.
Good job. A decade ago I would have called myself a Libertarian. I’ll always want less government in my life and in general. But the flaws in some of the ideas and the complete denial of the consequences of their ideas drove me away.
Reason has drifted significantly to the left over the past decade. They used to at least stand up to bad ideas such as Islam, not anymore. Now they can’t admit that inviting millions of Muslims into a western democracy is a horrible idea that will result in bloodshed and eventually war or progroms. They also refuse to acknowledge the supply side of labor when arguing for open borders. Pointing these things out to them results in indignation and anger.
“Libertarians generally believe in and abide by the non-aggression principal, which renders the philosophy itself impotent in the cause of implementing its own principals.”
– James LaFond
He continues:
“Libertarians generally seem to believe that the Founding Fathers of the U.S, were libertarians, when the majority of them were either bankers with monopolistic designs or slave masters seeking to wring more profit from their chattel. The actual libertarians of the Revolutionary Era were those escaped and released white slaves who headed into the Ohio Country to escape the plantation economy and the natives they battled against.
And, for the tie breaker, it goes to the cons. Libertarianism is a purely materialistic view of life, which appeals predominantly to atheists. Atheists, however, tend to be drawn to collective worship of the human cause, to save and extend every life at all costs, and generally abhor libertarians. What is more, libertarianism ultimately comes to a point of agreement with the left, regarding the body as more important than the mind, the material world more sacred than the transcendent. For instance, in his otherwise very good audio article, The Truth About Slavery, Stefan Molyneux, the foremost libertarian spokesperson today, declared that escaping from or fighting against enslavement made no sense to American blacks during the plantation era, as they were assured better shelter and food in chains than on the run! The problem with all materialistic philosophies and ideologies is that they lead to such sell-out conclusions, a chief taking glass beads to disinherit his grandchildren, a slave dying in chains rather than in combat, a tribe giving up its identity for t-shirts, a nation throwing away its ideals for the cause of obesity.
Lastly, libertarian views may only be understood by the rational human mind. So, when competing with sentimental conservatism and collective liberalism, with the identity-based right and security-based left, a libertarian view can only hope to appeal to the tiny minority of intelligent people. Public education and the media have essential disabled the vast majority of Americans from comprehending views more complex than a snack-food commercial.”
Libertarianism is only attractive to white males. This is because it allows them to deny their unfair advantages and privileges.
Envy isn’t a good look on you, even if this trolling is a bit more effective than you usually provide. Everything, including socialism, is best run by the evil white male empire.
You forgot “…white males with a fully functional penis.” Unlike you.
Partially true.
I almost upvoted you for this, Soros troll or not since sometimes you provoke needed discussion
Libertarianism is for White Males who think they are Reardon from Atlas Shrugged and are being held back by the man. If I could only work kids to death in my cat litter mine, I’d be rich and successful.
Its a disgusting ideology and no wonder it was cribbed for the Satanic Bible
That said while White Men especially the upper classes do have privileges though working class and poor Whites are treated like shit quite unfairly
Healthy societies divide rights and responsibilities by class , action, age gender and where they have more than one racial group , by race.
This is the correct way to govern in any time and place
Whites tend tend to be smarter than anyone save Asians and Jews, commit less crime and have a better attention span as well.
We built nearly everything and as such its ours. Other groups are using it by theft or let
Thus yeah, we get privilege
Anyway before the rugged individualists jump in
Individuals have value but are of far more value as part of a group, can accomplish more, do more, be more and leave a longer lasting legacy.
You are correct about the appeal of libertarianism but I have to ask, “Do the Japanese have Japanese advantage and privilege in Japan?” When blacks receive extra scrutiny in Asian countries are those instances of white supremacy?
Until leftists are driven out of the academy, Asians will be both “victims” and “unwitting co-conspirators” of white supremeists.
Guys, don’t you recognize sarcasm when you see it?
Good analysis; a libertarian society is probably not stable, ie it will evolve into something else. Game theory suggests that bands of strong men would gang up, in business, as ‘corporations’, or simply as gangs of violent men. And create monopolies for own benefit. The only defense against this is to make your own band of men….and that’s how tribes, then kings, then states etc, arose. Libertarianism is simply trying to go back to square one and then watch essentially the same systems grow up, probably in worse versions.
And, it is actually a sort of offshoot of the marxist view of man, as is Ayn Rand; it sees humans as economic units but not as an advanced and social mammal. Therefore it might work for tigers or bears (they are fairly ‘libertarian’, as lone predators) but not for humans.
Distributivism has the same problem. Once you have distributed the property and given people freedom over whether it is alienable or not, it will end up being disrributed unevenly again. What are you going to do? Redistribute it every fifty years?
I agree, but the important thing to realize is that libertarianism does not maximize either meaningful lives (raising a family is central for 99% for that) or liberty, b/c it will end up in oligarchy or anarchy.
In that respect even something as stupid as distributivism is better than libertarianism.
It’s obvious, Doc. That’s when you offer the free sex change & a lifetime of hormone therapy. Duh. Lolberts will love that. They are super into being trannies.
Maybe you can throw in a lifetime of free weed, as well?
On overweening belief in the sanctity of private property is a product of modernism and its not necessarily a good one. A man’s home may be his castle and inviolate but putting limits on private wealth for the common good is moral and often the right call
If you doubt me, let me show you the kids version
Play monopoly in the late game when one guy owns all the property . Even with money on free parking , the game is unplayable and real world economics while far more complex still operates with the same base principle
Scarcity is real and often if you get ahead someone else doesn’t. This is fine until 1% of the population are the only people getting ahead.
Distributism usually isn’t used as a synonym for Socialism. As understood its a form of tax and economic policy that encourages wealth to be spread among many and makes this the most cost effective choice to make via taxes and other policy choices.
Its also known as Catholic Economics sometimes as it was developed by two Popes
That said, in history systems that redistributed property it was fairly common to simply redistribute it again if the problem reared its ugly head . Debt jubilees happened every 49 years under Mosaic law
However the economies of the past were in a larger world and it was nearly impossible for someone to just pack up and leave. Trade and finance were also a much smaller part of even the urban economy
These days a lot of people are rootless cosmopolitans and either in global trade or finance which are the most rapacious and rootless businesses known
if a society wanted to prevent them for reoccurring it would essentially have to be a monarchy/dictatorship of sorts as such a system would be North Korean Juche with a private sector and would have brutal capital and trade controls
This would mirror the isolationist periods of US history pretty well
The economy would probably be a fair bit smaller overall and there would be less varieties of goods, most people wouldn’t notice that much. Without so many rent seekers, parasites, financiers, foreign carpet baggers and globalists screwing everything up costs would be a lot lower too.
However those parasites respond with extreme violence or subversion when the hosts kick them off so whoever tried it would have to be very grounded in that society , sneaky as hell and ready to use nukes any time.
Nice. Making private property the highest value is a deception for avoiding the tribalism inherent in the world. The only people who have ever made property sacred are whites. The libertarian must believe that the sanctity of property is universal, which is manifestly false. When the libertarian fetishizes property he is deflecting from the fundamental tribal nature of the world.
Greg Johnson once proposed a steep progressive tax on anyone who earns more than a million dollars a year. He said, “Our community would be better off without someone who objects to this.”
Who is Greg Johnson?
Also, if you’re making $1 or $2 million a year and you’re not happy you need a therapist, not a tax cut.
I seem to recall a brief article in the news a few years back, some survey or poll was taken and some shrinks concluded there was a sort of income comfort zone. If you made too little money, stress or dreams denied gnawed at you. But the study indicated that people who made $500K, $1M or more yearly were no happier on average than people who made $100 or $200K yearly. IIRC correctly the former were sometimes less happy than the latter group. Stress from fear of losing the money, stress from working so hard to earn it all etc.
One can reconcile themselves to progressive taxation without embracing the welfare state wholeheartedly.
Complete and brutal take down of another materialist utopian Jewish ideology. Great podcast. If we could get all these high IQ whites to stop playing with these shiny distractions. We could win this thing in a generation
There are the libertarian intelligentsia, and these are the ones I think you have a beef with; their ideology has become an “ism” … a religion. And it’s a false ideology because most libertarians seem to assume that human nature aspires to goodness. (No different from socialists on that point.)
But if you distill some of the libertarian tenets down to “government should leave productive people the hell alone” then that’s pretty good political philosophy, no? Further, our Founders had a foreign policy that looked a lot like the libertarian Non-Aggression Principle, which seemed to serve America well until 1914. I’d sure like to see an America-first, NAP-centric foreign policy over our current tendency for global empire & perpetual war. So this discussion needs some differentiation between the wacko Libertarian party and some of the more sensible tenets that de-fang governmental power and de-swampify their bureaucracy.
If we were to get back to the primary question, “Given the depravity of human nature, what is the purpose of government?” then we’d be on track with American greats like Jefferson & Patrick Henry (who never bothered to label themselves with any “ism”) … and heck, going all the way back to Mosaic government. The purpose is to allow a united (vice diverse) people and their monocultural (vice multicultural) civilization to survive & thrive. The wicked are eliminated or exiled, enemies are annihilated, and the non-assimilable are expelled.
Libertarian thinkers made some important observations, but they tend to ignore them in favor of less realistic ideas about human organization. Hoppe’s observation that all forms of representative government are expansive is important and accurate. Yet, he seems to ignore it while chasing the Sasquatch of libertarianism.
Power itself is expansive and that includes government, representative or otherwise. Checking individuals or fractions from getting undue power is the interesting Q libertarianism tries to address and it will not work the way libertarians imagine.
See? That’s where I’ve landed over the years. Ultimately you have to have an independent arbiter for disputes, and that’s not something human beings can really hire out, that and internal and external security issues.
They also ignore externalities of economic decisions almost all the time and don’t seem to understand that you can do something that is short term profitable and long term disastrous.
There have been any number of tolerably functioning and free societies, the libertarian critique of which through “expansive government” is that nothing lasts forever, except AnCapistan would.
I’m glad you can read and interpret his writing. I can’t, and i have a Mensa card.
I can only speak for myself, but 99% of the Lolbertarians I’ve had exposure to, need to have their NAP shoved up their heiney with a tank.
Some, I assume, are good people.
I called myself a libertarian for quite a while until I realized a lot of those guys believed things I know are crazy. But libertarianism was my gateway drug away from National Review “conservatism”. So at least it was transitionally useful in my case.
So you’re a libertarian presenting, transreactionary?
I’m not sure what I am now, but most lefties would call me a Nazi. So I have that going for me, which is nice.
Libertarianism is a common stepping stone for people shedding the traditional “conservative” identity as it has a mildly significant political party and lots of big money backers but it has little in the way of staying power. Libertarianism is a great philosophical topic to discuss via simplistic memes (Taxation is theft!) and social media posts but it is not a serious political philosophy because it prefers esoteric theories over the reality of human nature. I was a big proponent of libertarianism up until the 2016 election and I am sure I am not alone.
On the other hand, some libertarian groups are fertile ground for recruiting people into the dissident right. I see a lot of discontent from people in libertarian/liberty groups online thanks to the decision by the Libertarian Party and mouthpieces like Reason to shift libertarianism away from eliminating the income tax and shutting down the Fed to “marriage equality”, legalized pot and open borders. As the LP rushes left to try to capture the pot/amnesty/sodomy vote, many libertarians are going to be left behind and looking for a place to call home.
Remarkable that the Dissident Right reduces people who happen to be gay to the word “sodomite”. So a fellow American citizen, taxpayer, creative contributor to society, possible awesome uncle, great neighbor, softball coach, and all around good guy is just…sodomy. Nice. Real nice.
Maybe because open homosexuality is a disaster from a societal standpoint. A thief can be a fellow American citizen, softball coach, good neighbor, and all around good guy. He’s still a thief. Rampant and open homosexuality is a sign and an additional cause of a collapsing society. It’s a hedonistic activity and homosexuals are not, in general, a group that cares about the future of society. It also is a mental illness.
They aren’t going to plant the tree they’ll never sit in the shade of.
“open homosexuality is a disaster” – so I guess you’d prefer your gay priests & coaches & scout-masters &c to be closeted?
I mean, that worked so well with, e.g., Jerry Sandusky!
I’ve planted, at last count, some three or four hundred trees, and fussed over them, endlessly, back in the day in Virginia, and now here in Missouri.
Unfortunately, my thoroughly heterosexual nephew & niece couldn’t seem to care less about our land, our people & all that sort of thing.
For them, I’ll always be their awkward gay racist uncle.
You’ve allowed degenerates to whitewash the issue for you. Those “fellow American citizens, taxpayers, creative contributors to society and potentially awesome uncles and softball coaches” … are far more likely to sodomize your kids than be a positive influence on them. Or infect them with easily prevented diseases like HIV. Libertarians are big proponents of faggotry and drug addiction whether they admit it or not, which is why I’ve always dispensed with them by contemptuous laughter.
Most libertarians I know really aren’t that bright for the most part. They’re not stupid – but from what I’ve seen they haven’t been raised right, and have often been the products of troubled or traumatic childhoods.
The insolence of you Sodomites knows no bounds.
The word sodomite to describe you shirt-lifters, pillow biters and turd-burglars has been in use in English since at least the year 1615 – according to the entry on page 925 of volume 15 of my copy of the Oxford English Dictionary. You may wish to check your own.
The real issue is why we sane people allowed you perverts to appropriate the perfectly useful word “gay” to describe your filth.
You are, of course, so fucking gay, cheerful and happy that you, thankfully, commit suicide at a rate about four times that of sane normal people.
It is obvious to everyone except the sodomites that their proclivities are perverted. Try looking at your hole card.
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