Why you should never, ever take a Libertarian seriously
PayPal founder Peter Thiel, writing at Cato Unbound:
The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics. Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of “capitalist democracy” into an oxymoron.
And yes, he does go on to propose that the boys’ club build a new clubhouse at sea. Or in space. Or on the Internet. He’s not particular.
April 28th, 2009 at 5:43 am
And the 1920s ended so nicely too.
April 28th, 2009 at 7:33 am
Yeah, you have to love that part. I’m sure Thiel has some sub-Amity Shlaes argument as to how the Nineteenth Amendment caused the Depression, but there’s a word for that and it’s “misogynanigans.”
April 28th, 2009 at 7:36 am
To be fair, Thiel also hates brown people.
April 28th, 2009 at 8:34 pm
[...] in the name of “freedom”, of course). David Moles, however, is a braver soul than I. He reads Cato Institute publications so that I don’t have to. Which is how come I discovered that Libertarians look back fondly on the 1920s as a golden period [...]
April 29th, 2009 at 5:33 am
Are you really making a generalization about all libertarians based on a rather poorly written paragraph by one person who calls himself a libertarian? Perhaps I am missing something. If you are judging large groups based on single individuals then you might want to look into the issue of drawing conclusions from small sample sizes. But maybe if an misunderstanding your title. Please let me know if I am.
April 29th, 2009 at 6:42 am
No, I’m making a generalization from fifteen years of experience with libertarianism in general and science fiction / Silicon Valley libertarians in particular, and elevating Thiel and the Cato Institute as notably egregious examples. It’s called synecdoche.
April 29th, 2009 at 7:13 am
Do you mean science fiction libertarians like Vernor Vinge and Greg Benford? Do you really mean that you do not take Vernor or Greg seriously? Are you serious or am I just missing a joke?
April 29th, 2009 at 7:36 am
I don’t take their ideas about politics or economics seriously, if that’s what you mean.
April 29th, 2009 at 8:14 am
Well I guess that some people do not take other peoples ideas seriously on many things; politics, economics, religion, culture, etc. I think you have answered my questions. Thanks for the clarifications.
April 29th, 2009 at 10:06 am
I try to take every idea as seriously as it deserves to be taken. But when somebody keeps shouting for bigger shovels to dig deeper holes, at some point I run out of rope.
May 1st, 2009 at 3:27 pm
I’m actually really puzzled by the link … because I don’t think that dislike of brown people and a belief that women shouldn’t have been allowed to vote are per se requirements for libertarianism.
I mean, I’ve got my problems with libertarian economics and politics; I went through a phase where I flirted with it, like any good geek boy, and eventually came out the other side.
But … surely libertarianism, or at least capitalist anarchism, doesn’t require racism and sexism? I mean, if the whole point is *personal freedom*, isn’t that something which everyone is entitled to regardless of race and gender?
I guess on the one hand I’m saying that anyone who can say what the dude you are quoting is saying is actually a bad libertarian … and on the other hand I’m wondering if libertarianism, as manifested in the American political discourse, is less about an abstract devotion to personal freedom and more about members of a priviliged economic and social class using the rhetoric of freedom to fight off attempts to reduce their privilige, and thereby arising from a foundation of hypocrisy.
May 15th, 2009 at 5:13 pm
Just saw this post, and yeah…re: taking Vinge’s ideas about politics and economics seriously*, this last spring semester at the University of Miami, I taught a Social and Ethical Issues in Computing class that was cross-listed between the Philosophy and Computer Science Departments and I assigned “Rainbow’s End” as one of the textbooks. I then asked the students to jot down a few of the things they found the most interesting about the book, and one of them wrote, “Where are all the poor people in this world?”
I was pretty ashamed that, good little socialist that I supposedly am, the strange absence of poverty hadn’t actually occurred to me.
*….and, hey, he was one of my Clarion instructors, and I liked “Fire Upon the Deep” to a ridiculous extent.
May 16th, 2009 at 6:03 am
To be fair, one could ask the same question in contemporary La Jolla.