Difference between revisions of "What Is Libertarianism?"

From Critiques Of Libertarianism
Jump to: navigation, search
(A Rightwing Populist Movement In Miniature)
(A Catspaw For Corporations)
Line 15: Line 15:
  
 
== A Catspaw For Corporations ==
 
== A Catspaw For Corporations ==
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.
+
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 the corporate right-wing welfare employment of think-tanks, lobbying and astroturf organizations.
 +
 
 +
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".
 +
 
 
== 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.
 
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.

Revision as of 12:12, 9 October 2010