From the perspective of a foreigner who has lived in the US, libertarianism is very much a scheme created by local oligarchs.
Americans think they are special and it’s only in other countries that people can fall for propaganda and schemes.
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vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org 3 weeks agoThat’s not what “libertarian utopia” is. Also Ayn Rand is not libertarian, more like fascist.
They want a “thief feudalism”, it’s a different thing. Libertarianism involves rights and freedom of association, while these people want sort of a mafia world.
Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org 3 weeks ago
From the perspective of a Russian you don’t know what you are talking about.
Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I would argue that’s part of the (unfortunate) effectiveness of libertarianism as an oligarch polemic.
vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org 3 weeks ago
I’ve recently refreshed my mind on Khmer Rouge, and have gotten a very nasty feeling that, in a right (wrong) combination of circumstances, my ideological ideas could eventually lead to something like that. Despite being libertarian.
But one thing very notable about them - despite in ideology being frankly very fascist in addition to communist (fascist in a deep sense, the anti-intellectualism, the reliance on emotion, rejection of modernity and complexity, feeling of soil and violence, the almost deified organization, using 12-14 year olds as the main armed force, all that), many things, like their “struggle sessions” and the “quick and radical” solutions, were, one can say, reliant on wide participation and popular approval.
So. An oligarch is a businessman with power bending the law and allowing them to capture, together with other oligarchs, a sphere of the economy.
Oligarchy is not nice, and eventually always leads to authoritarianism (initially oligarchs install their tools at the top of the state, and then eventually those tools become the primary bearers of power and oligarchs their pockets, and then eventually oligarchs are robbed and the relatives and clansmen of the tools own everything).
However, it has nothing to do with libertarianism, because libertarianism is principally based on freedom of association (oligarchy usually involves suppressing unions and customer associations and cooperatives, and suppressing competition ; this also is about freedom of making a deal), non-aggression (understood as oligopoly being aggression in the means to enforce it, and the same about IP and patents) and natural law, the latter being rigid idea of ownership where what you create fully is yours fully, what you didn’t create is not yours at all, and the intermediate (real) things being all compromises between these. That notoriously makes owning territory dubious, which, ahem, is not very good for oligarchy.
That’s if there’s a working system of enforcing such a libertarian order, and if there’s none, then it’s not libertarianism.
And why did I mention Khmer Rouge - I don’t think blaming everything upon oligarchs and such is useful. Most of the people supporting any existing order are not bosses. If a society has oligarchy, then this means its wide masses are in general in favor of morality of oligarchy (who managed to capture a portion of an industry, deserves to milk it forever, and who managed to capture an institution regulating it, deserves the spoils, and so on), just like wide masses of Khmer peasants were more or less in agreement with that party’s ideas, until, of course, it became fully empowered.
It’s a failure of education, and I don’t think libertarianism is a component in that failure, after all, Kato institute is one of the organizations which haven’t ideologically drifted and just do what they are openly intended to do - provide the libertarian perspective on any events. Not drifting into lies in attempt to secure support is something I’d consider a good commendation. Maybe carriers of other ideologies should look at how that was achieved and build their own similar institutions. Then at some point problems might start being resolved by people knowing what they are doing.
ILoveUnions@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Libertarianism does not involve rights and freedoms. It involves pretend rights and freedoms, with a ruleset that guarantees they will be lost
vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org 2 weeks ago
It doesn’t involve anything other than rights and freedoms. There’s simply no space for you not being a bullshitting leftie jerk here.
orrk@lemmy.world 4 days ago
I find it interesting, so many proponents of Libertarianism don’t realize that the limits we put on these things they want to exist to stop people from creating neo-feudal fiefdoms.
Yes, Ayn Rand IS a Libertarian, yes the end result of Libertarianism is a government that is too weak to oppose any organized violence.
If a government is too weak to stop large scale organized violence you get warlords, of some form, in the modern case it’s whoever has the most wealth to found the largest private army.
But hey, your not too far off the mark with the whole Nazi bit, after all the word Privatize was invented to describe what the Nazis did with state property.
vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org 3 days ago
She didn’t call herself a libertarian and explicitly said she isn’t, libertarians don’t call her a libertarian and explicitly say she isn’t, only people not knowing what the hell they are talking about call her a libertarian.
There’s absolutely no reason to call her a libertarian. No matter how you’d want that to accuse libertarianism of whatever bad.
It’s actually funny, there is a bunch of ideologies, all different, and like all of them not mainstream and not left are bunched by idiots under libertarianism just like this. Rand isn’t libertarian (not even in history of her beliefs), Curtis Yarvin isn’t libertarian (despite history of his beliefs), Silicon Valley bros aren’t libertarian (despite them using the word sometimes to the confusion of everyone), and neither are Zelensky and Milei (I mean, there is some awareness of libertarianism in his approahes).
Bullshit. You might also want to think who’s “we” and what externalia does giving that “we” an ability to “put limits on these things” possess.
A government is large scale organized violence and warlords.
That claim would require sources, I doubt you have any.
orrk@lemmy.world 3 days ago
And North Korea calls its self democratic. Yet we don’t call it a democracy. No, we define these categories by what they are/do/believe in/etc… and like it or not, Ayn Rand’s Objectivism is 100% a component of libertarian ideology, Ayn Rand’s beliefs are very much a core component of Libertarianism, and i’m sorry to inform you that many on that list of yours ARE libertarians, such as Milei. In the same way the Marx&Hegel were a cornerstone of communism.
But you are correct about Zelenskyy, he is not libertarian.
Standard Libertarian response that basically ignores the existence of anything outside the individual
Also, from the person who you believe isn’t a Libertarian: The source of the government’s authority is “the consent of the governed.” This means that the government is not the ruler, but the servant or agent of the citizens; it means that the government as such has no rights except the rights delegated to it by the citizens for a specific purpose. -Ayn Rand, Galt’s Speech.
Lastly, on privatization: www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257%2Fjep.20.3.187