Difference between revisions of "What Is Libertarianism?"

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(A Simplistic Ideology)
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{{DES | des = Several views of the big picture of libertarianism.}}
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{{DES | des = 24 views of the big picture of libertarianism.}}
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It's obvious that definitions of libertarianism by opponents are prone to bias.  By the same standard, self-serving definitions by  proponents are also prone to bias.  Because libertarianism is diverse and complex, the simple solution is to present multiple viewpoints, each true to some degree, to construct a picture of the whole.  The story of [[Blind men and an elephant]] illustrates how ridiculous clinging to a single viewpoint can be, and how building a more realistic picture would require critical acceptance of multiple viewpoints.  Viewpoints of proponents of libertarianism are well known; here are some viewpoints of opponents.
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== A Rhetoric Of Liberty ==
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Libertarianism is united only by a rhetoric of liberty.  "Liberty" is the central [[Fallacies_Of_Philosophy#Glittering_Generalities_Of_Propaganda|glittering generality]] of libertarian propaganda.
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Who can reject "liberty"?  That makes it a powerful rhetorical tool; as long as you don't start getting specific.  Different people have different ideas of liberty, and can divide over those issues.  The defense against attempts to get specific is "equal liberty", but that rhetoric also begs important questions.  If we all had equal liberty to kill each other, would we want such liberty?
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"Liberty" unspecified is vague enough to justify any atrocity.  We routinely see libertarians promoting Barry Goldwater's "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice."  In the name of liberty, [[John Galt]] plans genocides dwarfing those of Communist states in "Atlas Shrugged".  In actual history, liberty to own slaves was a frequent claim.<ref>Joseph Harding Underwood, [http://books.google.com/books?id=1e4tAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA428&lpg=PA428&dq=%22liberty+to+own+slaves%22&source=bl&ots=Jnr_iwgrtU&sig=NouHizar0qO-keBi8H-pdOz3mVM&hl=en&ei=8-66TN2PO8T38AbTr7CZDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22liberty%20to%20own%20slaves%22&f=false The Distribution of Ownership]</ref><ref>Doug Linder, [http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/convention1787.html The Constitutional Convention of 1787]
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"Across the country, the cry "Liberty!" filled the air.  But what liberty? Few people claim to be anti-liberty, but the word "liberty" has many meanings.  Should the delegates be most concerned with protected liberty of conscience, liberty of contract (meaning, for many at the time, the right of creditors to collect debts owed under their contracts), or the liberty to hold property (debtors complained that this liberty was being taken by banks and other creditors)?  Moreover, the cry for liberty could mean two very different things with respect to the slave issue--for some, the liberty to own slaves needed protection,  while for others (those more able to see through black eyes), liberty meant ending the slavery."</ref>  Liberty to head your own family and religious liberty excused beating wives and disobedient children, sometimes fatally.
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"Liberty" is the rhetorical tool of choice that unites libertarians: it can back any claim they make, no matter how bizarre.  Libertarians have no single claim in common except this rhetoric, and they can gloss over their conflicting beliefs through the persuasion of their own rhetoric of liberty.
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== A Long-Running Public Relations Campaign ==
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The extent of libertarianism today is largely the result of decades-long public relations campaigns that have been working on insinuating libertarian ideas throughout our society.  The time, the ambition and the resources applied over the past 60 years are extraordinary.  Generations of propagandists, scholars, lobbyists, think-tanks, astroturf organizations and political parties have been financed by large corporations and billionaires. 
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They have attempted (quite successfully) to subvert the language, to pack propaganda into textbooks and academic publications, to subvert science (smoking, pollution and global warming) with enormous [[Denialism|denialist]] campaigns, to create intellectual shock troops to disperse their propaganda, [[Federalist Society|to stack the legal system with specially trained judges]], [[ALEC|to direct politicians with think-tank plans]] and offers of revolving-door employment, and [[Kochtopus|a host of other activities]].
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This coordinated effort channels the numerous variants of libertarianism to serve the political face of libertarianism, the [[Koch]]-controlled maze of fronts and organizations (the "[[Kochtopus]]".)
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Because "he who pays the piper calls the tunes", the result is that libertarianism has benefitted major corporations and billionaires far more than it has benefitted the middle-class pot smoker (now approaching lower class.)
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== A Catspaw For Plutocrats And Their Corporations ==
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A great deal of libertarian literature is written by corporate hirelings. Sure they can throw in the occasional socially liberal complaint about warmongering to genuflect towards the purported ideology, but they do NOT bite the corporate hand that feeds them. Otherwise they'd be pointing out that corporations are government creations of special privilege, and asking that they be abolished the way they ask that public schools be abolished.  And those authors would be looking for new jobs, as we've seen so often from think-tanks.  Professional libertarians tend to be reliant on right-wing welfare: corporate-funded employment by think-tanks, lobbying and astroturf organizations.
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The liberty these corporate hirelings write of is generally the liberty desired by corporations, not the liberty desired by ordinary people.  Hence we see propaganda such as the "Index of Economic Freedoms".
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== A Rightwing Populist Movement In Miniature ==
 
== A Rightwing Populist Movement In Miniature ==
While libertarians may profess socially left ideas such as freedom of choice, their right-conservatism becomes obvious if you ask them what parts of the right-wing economic agenda they'd be willing to sacrifice to realize their left social goals. They just won't give up their opposition to government and taxation, nor will they give up their allegiance to absolute property. No matter what social goals you propose in exchange. (This is a generalization -- of course some individual exceptions occur.)
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While libertarians may profess socially left ideas such as freedom of choice, their right-conservatism becomes obvious if you ask them what parts of the right-wing economic agenda they'd be willing to sacrifice to realize their left social goals. They just won't give up their opposition to government and taxation, nor will they give up their allegiance to absolute property. No matter what social goals you propose in exchange.
== A Catspaw For Corporations ==
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A great deal of libertarian literature is written by corporate hirelings. Sure they can throw in the occasional socially liberal complaint about warmongering to genuflect towards the purported ideology, but they do NOT bite the corporate hand that feeds them. Otherwise they'd be pointing out that corporations are government creations of special privilege, and asking that they be abolished the way they ask that public schools be abolished.
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== A Left-Anarchist Movement ==
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Long ago, [[Libertarian (propaganda sense)||libertarianism everywhere meant left-anarchism]].  It is only since the 1950's that the word has come to mean right-wing supporters of capitalism in the United States. Europeans who are very familiar with lfet-anarchism under that name can get very confused by the right-capitalist usage.  Much like soccer versus football.
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== A Right-Anarchist Movement ==
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[[Anarchocapitalism]] is a small but very distinctive thread in libertarianism. It promotes doing away with government entirely, which is about as radical as you can get.  They fanatasize that somehow we would not be like [[Somalia:_The_Libertarian_Paradise|Somalia]] or the [[No Libertarians in the Seventeenth-Century Highlands|Scottish Highlands]] when we do away with central government.
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== A Polyphyletic Nightmare ==
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[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phylogenetics Phylogenetics] is the science of evolutionary descent, a major part of the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxonomy_(general) science of taxonomy].  It can apply to more than just biology: it can apply to anything that evolves, such as philosophical ideas.  [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphyly Polyphyly] is when a grouping consists of members with multiple ancestral sources, and is considered bad classification.  Adding to the problem is the issue of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reticulate_evolution reticulate evolution]: where separate branches combine to make a network of origin.  This is common in political philosophy.  Libertarianism arises from different branches of many philosophies, and is united only in the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homoplasy homoplasy] of a rhetoric of liberty.
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== A Childish Selfishness ==
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Libertarianism is a tiny movement of people who primarily want (a) to freeload on society by not contributing their share (b) to avoid social prohibitions and (c) want to lock in their good fortune.  It's really that simple: all the supposed philosophy is really just after-the-fact (post hoc) rationalization. Everything springs from the childish "I don't wanna pay", "I wanna do that anyhow" and "no, it's mine!"  In addition, it paints alternatives (altruism and empathy) as evil.
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== A Philosophy For The Privileged ==
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Libertarianism is a philosophy for people born on third base who think they hit a triple.  Dazzled by this virtue of their own, they insist that everybody else is lazy, stupid, or whatever.  They do not understand that their success, whatever their talents, relies upon a position in society, and thus they do not understand that blacks, latinos, women, and assorted minorities do not have similar positions in society and similar opportunities for success.  This is why blacks, latinos and women are extremely few among libertarians.
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== An Unusual Preference for Certain Liberties ==
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Some libertarians simply value some forms of personal liberty more than other people consider reasonable.<ref>Ravi Iyer et al., [http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1665934 Understanding Libertarian Morality: The Psychological Roots of an Individualist Ideology]</ref>  Essentially all the rest of their argument is post hoc excuses that conceal the simple difference in preferences.  Their post hoc arguments tend to be based on (a) natural rights, (b) ridiculous formulas like "coercion is bad", (c) assertions about qualitative benefits that overlook other obvious factors or (d) [[denialism]].
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== Scrooge's Viewpoint ==
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Many libertarians reject patriotism, democracy, politics, religion, charity and other traditional values and institutions in their attempt to view the whole world through economics.  While many traditional values and institutions may deserve a good kicking, preferring "greed is good" economic views and ignoring the harms of dismantling major institutions is repulsive.  Examples include the Friedman and Hayek attitudes towards Pinochet's Chile<ref>Third World Traveller, [http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Zeroes/Milton_Friedman.html Milton Friedman]</ref><ref>John Quiggan, [http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2006/11/23/friedman-and-hayek/ Friedman and Hayek]</ref> and serious defenses of Scrooge.<ref>Michael Levin, [http://mises.org/daily/110 Scrooge Defended]</ref>
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== Philosophical Fairytales ==
 
== Philosophical Fairytales ==
There are three dominant libertarian fairytales.  They are natural rights, Nozickian night-watchman state, and Objectivism.  All three are non-positivist: they are not founded on observable facts and just plain make stuff up that contradicts what's known of reality.  Each has produced large, complicated apologetics that attempt to explain away their myriad failings.  Like science, they create models, but unlike science their models cannot be validated because they presume the unobservable.
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There are three dominant libertarian fairytales.  They are natural rights, the Nozickian night-watchman state, and Objectivism.  All three are non-positivist: they are not founded on observable facts and just plain make stuff up that contradicts what's known of reality.  Each has produced large, complicated apologetics that attempt to explain away their myriad failings.  Like science, they create models, but unlike science their models cannot be validated because they presume the unobservable.
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Most libertarian authors rely on natural rights.<ref>[[David Boaz]], [[Libertarianism: A Primer]] pp.82-87</ref>  Natural rights were originally invented to oppose stories such as rights of kings.  They are "nonsense on stilts" that is as popular, insubstantial and unprovable as souls.
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The supposedly just and non-coercive Nozickian minimal state of [[Anarchy, State, and Utopia]] is notorious for its failure to justify initial acquisition of property, the basis of the entire scheme.  The whole thing appeals to gut feelings as fallaciously as Steven Colbert does, starting with the first sentence: "Individuals have rights, and there are things no person or group may do to them (without violating their rights.)"
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Objectivism starts with the fairytale of a priori knowledge.  "A is A", for example.  But that doesn't work for the real world, because the real world has time: A at time 1 is not necessarily the same as A at time 2.  It's never the same water in the river, and even protons can spontaneously decay.  A priori knowledge at best can build models: whether the models are accurate or inaccurate is a matter of empirical study of the real world.
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== Economic Fairytales ==
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There are two major bases for libertarian economic fairytales: the pseudoscientific Austrian School (especially Mises, Rothbard and Hayek) and neoliberalism (especially Chicago School and Milton Friedman.)  Arguments from both are used to promote capitalism and condemn everything else, but especially to condemn government.  The fairytales involve seldom-mentioned unrealistic assumptions such as rational man (in the case of the Austrians) and economic man in the case of the neoliberals.  It's no coincidence that those unrealistic assumptions more closely match the corporations that heavily subsidize these schools than they do human beings.
  
 
== A Justification of Personal Righteousness ==
 
== A Justification of Personal Righteousness ==
hich emphasizes the notion of virtue in selfishness and has as its historical genesis the exceptional American experience. As such, it appeals mostly to white American males who are moderately above-average in intelligence, economically secure, independently-minded, and prefer simplistic theoretical constructs for making political and moral decisions. It validates their own affluence/privilege not by group affiliation, but by inherent individual merit; and it likewise superficially validates the poverty and lack of privilege of others not on the basis of group affiliation, but inherent fault. In this it mimics a meritocratic view, which allows the libertarian to congratulate himself on his lack of bigotry; but, in fact, it is a facade behind which his true bigotry hides. [http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/2009/08/what-is-libertarianism/#comment-1644385 Keith M Ellis]
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"Which emphasizes the notion of virtue in selfishness and has as its historical genesis the exceptional American experience. As such, it appeals mostly to white American males who are moderately above-average in intelligence, economically secure, independently-minded, and prefer simplistic theoretical constructs for making political and moral decisions. It validates their own affluence/privilege not by group affiliation, but by inherent individual merit; and it likewise superficially validates the poverty and lack of privilege of others not on the basis of group affiliation, but inherent fault. In this it mimics a meritocratic view, which allows the libertarian to congratulate himself on his lack of bigotry; but, in fact, it is a facade behind which his true bigotry hides." [[Comments at Matt Yglesias' "What Is Libertarianism?"|Keith M Ellis]]
== A Simplistic Ideology ==
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Kevin Carson calls this "vulgar libertarianism".  Simple rules for identifying friends and enemies, righteous and unrighteous.  Private or public?  Statist or freedom loving?  Individualist or collectivist?  Market or coercive?  Ignorant or enlightened?  Libertarians portray themselves as elite because of their ideological righteousness: just read Atlas Shrugged for that mentality.
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== A Substitute For Success ==
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Many libertarians are socially awkward, weird, losers etc. but get some emotional satisfaction out of ideology.  Ideology allows them to compete in purity, condemn outsiders, find common cause with other outcastes and otherwise try to satisfy their emotional needs.  Will it get them the girl, or get them the job?  Finding a community tiny enough in which you can excel is a good way to exaggerate your self-importance and find some happiness.  Too bad libertarians choose such a socially destructive outlet.
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== Vulgar Libertarianism ==
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[[Vulgar Libertarianism|Kevin Carson identifies this attitude]]: ''"Them pore ole bosses need all the help they can get."'' Simple rules for identifying friends and enemies, righteous and unrighteous.  Private or public?  Statist or freedom loving?  Individualist or collectivist?  Market or coercive?  Ignorant or enlightened? All good comes from private enterprise, all evil comes from statism and government interference.  These libertarians are fighting the Manichean struggle of light versus dark, and will make the most ludicrous assertions about how government is behind each and every evil.  Denunciation and demonization abound, with salvation in capitalism alone. Libertarians portray themselves as elite because of their ideological righteousness: but they are really just the bosses favorites, the house slaves.  Read some Atlas Shrugged to learn this mentality.
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== A Blinkered Ideology ==
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Libertarianism is often easy to recognize by the things it will not consider.  For example: market failures, public goods, benefits from government, benefits from spending tax money, deadweight costs from private sources, threats to liberty from private sources, rights other than property rights, values other than economic values, social harms from private actions (such as drug usage), climate change, anything but [[Methodological Individualism (propaganda)|methodological individualism]], Keynesianism, etc.  "There are no market failures, only government failures" and other glib excuses or accusations are characteristic of such denialist ideology.
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Shunning these ideas is essential for "consistency" in the beliefs of many libertarians.  If you don't admit contrary data, your theory is unfalsifiable.
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== A Distorting Lens ==
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There is a major streak of spin and revisionism in libertarianism: when the facts don't back your ideology,  redescribe the world so that it does match.<ref>Mike Huben, [http://world.std.com/~mhuben/revisionism.html Libertarian Revisionist History]</ref>  When government does something undeniably good, such as freeing slaves, denounce it for other actions.<ref>Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, "Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War"</ref>  Always look only at the costs of what governments do and the benefits of what markets do, never the reverse.  Promote cost-benefit analysis now that you've stacked the deck against government.  If you don't like the tax or gun laws, reinterpret the constitution ahistorically to suit your claims.<ref>Mark Pitcavage, [http://www.adl.org/mwd/faq1.asp Militia - History and Law FAQ]</ref><ref>Dan Evans, [http://evans-legal.com/dan/tpfaq.html Tax Protester FAQ ]</ref>  Rebaptize historical figures (such as Jesus<ref>Bill Butler, [http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig9/butler-b1.html The Libertarian From Nazareth?]</ref>)and documents (such as the Constitution) as libertarian.
  
 
== A Cargo Cult ==
 
== A Cargo Cult ==
Libertarians expect gifts from the sky if they perform the right philosophical rituals: surrender of political rights, surrender of all government property claims, etc.  This has been called "The White Men's Ghost Dance" by Bob Black.  They have the unrealistic assumption that if they succeed, they will have an advantage because they knew the magic ritual philosophy first.  But instead, the rich and powerful will step right in as the oligarchs did in Russia.
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Many libertarians expect gifts from the sky if they perform the right philosophical rituals: surrender of political rights, surrender of all government property claims, etc.   
== Snarky Definitions ==
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They wish us to hand over political sovereignty of the richest, most powerful nation in the world.  They wish us to hand over the lands, roads, and other property held in common by the government.  They wish us to hand over the biggest pot of money in the world: social security funds for the retirement of essentially the entire US population. 
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What do they offer the rest of us for these enormous gifts?  Nothing.  They do not expect us to do it as an exchange, but as a magical summoning.  They summon these gifts magically by re-interpreting liberal philosophy and Constitutions.
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== Wishful Thinking ==
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Many libertarians paint a picture of a fantasy libertarian future that is just like today, except much richer and without government.  Government in society is the equivalent of a [[Wikipedia:Keystone species|keystone species]] in ecology.  Remove government and society will change radically.  Government is responsible for the creation of middle classes, infrastructure, defense, human rights, etc.  Government combats the rise of coercion for private ends and brings about limits to externalities such as pollution.  These are problems where significant market failures exist, and market solutions have rarely worked.  A libertarian future would be different enough that the transition would be perhaps as painful as the Soviet change to capitalism, and few would be certain of their position in the new society.
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== A Millennialist Cult ==
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Many libertarians think they can promise pie-in-the-sky in libertarian heaven.  In the libertarian future we would all be amply repaid for having had the faith to bring about the fabulously free and wealthy libertopia where the privately owned streets are paved with gold, a gun in every pot field, etc.  They have the unrealistic assumption that if they succeed, they will have an advantage because they learned libertarian principles first.  But in reality, a class of oligarchs would quickly form as they did in Russia, leaving the majority in much worse condition.  The large middle classes we enjoy are a result of government programs promoting equality.  They do not occur otherwise.
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== Technological Utopianism ==
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Much libertarian literature relies on technology to create their fantasy world, usually by creating a new frontier.  Heinlein and others relied on space travel to open a new frontier.  Transhumanists look forward to recreating humans to develop new frontiers.  Many libertarian authors write of a forthcoming singularity in technological development.  Seasteaders look forwards to marine frontiers in international waters.  Rand relied on fictional technology to conceal Galt's community.
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What they all miss is that creation of a new frontier doesn't change those left behind into a libertarian society.  And as the frontier matures, density and competition will bring about the same problems that led to the governance that libertarians object to, the same as happened in other frontiers in the past.  Libertarianism might "work" on the edges of expansion, but creates problems that grow until a government solution is needed.
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== A Herd of Cats ==
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Libertarianism, with its excessive emphasis on individualism, tends to lack coordinating mechanisms besides markets.  Liberalism has markets, politics and government, which between the three of them can coordinate group efforts up to and including eradication of smallpox and total wars.  Organizing libertarians is like herding cats: oxymoronic.  In 10 years, the Free State Project has only been able to line up half of the 20,000 people it thinks are necessary to be effective, despite funding from the Koch Brothers.<ref>Pam Martens, [[The Far Right's Plot to Capture New Hampshire]]</ref>
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== The Libertarian Party ==
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US third parties are often a joke, but the LPUSA is a particularly funny one.  It is by far the most public face of libertarianism, and to many libertarians it is libertarian orthodoxy.  Indeed, many LP members don't seem to know that there are other libertarians with other beliefs.  Like some other third parties, it was founded with funding from billionaires (the Koch brothers.)  The LPUSA has been crippled by internal conflict, corruption, declining membership, purges, featherbedding, grotesquely radical platforms, repulsive candidates and a preference for preaching to rather than serving the public.  Consequently, few LPUSA candidates get elected to positions higher than dogcatcher, and then often as stealth candidates in nonpartisan elections.
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== Conclusion ==
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No one libertarian exemplifies all of these viewpoints, nor do any of these viewpoints match all libertarians.  There might be a libertarian who doesn't match any of these viewpoints.
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But it is easy to find libertarians who are well-described by any of these characterizations.  A large, diverse ideology such as libertarianism requires large, diverse description the same way the blind men describing an elephant used a lot of analogies.
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Some of these characterizations are repulsive: hurrah for the libertarian who avoids matching the repulsive ones.  There aren't too many of them in print because the vast majority of libertarian authors are sponsored by corporate funding (especially the Koch brothers) or rely on philosophical or economic fairytales.  A great many libertarians are repulsed by each other for one or more of these problems.
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== References ==
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<references/>

Revision as of 20:59, 26 June 2020