1w ago

Penn Jillette is No Longer A Libertarian

405 comments

- LMAO I'm a libertarian who fully realizes that my party is bullshit.
  I mean, Democrats and Republicans are both total bullshit too, but at least I'm self-aware enough to know my party is bullshit.
  
  Why have a party if you know that libertarianism is bullshit?
  Because at least when Libertarians fuck everything up, sometimes it's kinda funny. Ever hear about the time a bunch of Libertarian idiots got an entire town overrun by bears?
  If they all suck why not just focus on mutual aid and solidarity with working class folks, instead of siding with billionaires. Because that’s ultimately what libertarianism is you know?
  Libertarians aren't a monolith, y'know. I'm not the "simp for billionaires" type of Libertarian, I hate those people. Rather, I'm the "prepper nutjob who hates the government and is ready to retreat to the woods when everything goes to hell" type of Libertarian.
  
  Well I think the real question is what are your ethics if you encounter another human being when you have retreated into the woods? ... Do you avoid them?
  Yes. "Get off my lawn" would be the appropriate response.
  Do you try to dominate or exploit them? If so that is libertarianism.
  No, that is not Libertarianism. Libertarians want very small government, focusing on protection of one's rights and one's property.
  lib·er·tar·i·an·ism
  /ˌlibərˈterēəˌniz(ə)m/
  noun: libertarianism
  a political philosophy that advocates only minimal state intervention in the free market and the private lives of citizens.
  Do you work toward partnership and mutual aid? If so that’s anarchism.
  No, that is not anarchism. Anarchists want no government whatsoever.
  an·ar·chism
  /ˈanərˌkizəm/
  noun
  noun: anarchism
  a political theory advocating the abolition of hierarchical government and the organization of society on a voluntary, cooperative basis without recourse to force or compulsion.
  No offense, but honestly? I find anarchism to be even more ridiculous than libertarianism, and us libertarians are absolutely ridiculous. Sure, "voluntarism" sounds good on paper but what ends up happening looks more like Somalia in practice.
- I mean, libertarianism in essence, arrived at purely through your own reasoning, is pretty based. Every person should be free to do as they please right up until it infringes on their neighbors' own similar freedom; the government should be limited in scope to services which uphold that goal.
  In practice, its proponents are either selfish pricks who think libertarianism means they specifically get to do whatever they want, or they wind up reinventing the government with Citizen Advocacy Boards and such.
  The principle is valid, the company is pretty cringe tho.
  
  Right, that's exactly the problem I have with most people who call themselves libertarian. In a nutshell, they truly believe that we all should get to do whatever we want, as long as it doesn't affect others. Except, everything we do affects other people. Some of the ways are profound, and some are trivial. The libertarian-type people are so selfish, or solipsistic, they think that only their own judgement applies whether the effect infringes freedom it not.
  We see that with vaccines: The government shouldn't mandate what they put in their bodies. That's infringes freedom. But they're more than happy to spread virus into other people's bodies, and if immuno-compromised people think that it's hurting them, too bad. Or the libertarian types think that they should be allowed to drive the biggest brodozer available, because it doesn't affect anybody else, and the freedom of other people who get hit and crushed under the wheels, the other drivers blinded by eye-level headlights, or the taxpayers who have to subsidize more free parking space and street maintenance, doesn't matter.
  It's always the same pattern: Anything that stops me from doing what I want is an unreasonable infringement of freedom, and any effects I have on other people are just the reality of living in society and they should suck it up.
  
  It's good to remind people that the term "libertarianism" ("Libertaire") was coined by French anarcho-communists in the 1850s when the French government outlawed speech advocating anarchism specifically by name, and that for a full century is was used by anarchists throughout the western world to refer specifically to non-hierarchical modes of socialism and communism, ideologies that are founded on concepts like mutual aid, social solidarity, worker's control, anti-authoritarianism, etc. It wasn't until the 1950s when the American Murray Rothbard colonized the term to advocate for the exact opposite in an attempt to obfuscate the inseparable relationship between capitalism and the state. His attempt worked.
  Ideologically I'm a true believer in communalism, a sociopolticial practice that is not quite anarchist and therefore is best described as a "libertarian socialist" tendency. But thanks to that ancap rat bastard Rothbard that description does not aid in helping most people to understand me.
  
  Libertarian socialism with democracy in the workplace woud be a better alterantive that libertarian capitalism ... we're just stuck in the end of history way of thinking that people cant grasp life without capitalism
  
  The thing is, there really is no such thing as libertarian capitalism. Capitalism cannot exist without the state, they're essentially two necessary sides of the same coin. American "libertarianism" can really be described as a (successful) attempt to obfuscate that fact in the minds of capitalist subjects (Especially the most socially and financially privileged of those subjects). To make it seem like nothing good has been the result of competent governance, that it's all great men unburdened by regulation, unbridled by law. Really though, all the coercive might of capitalism deflates without the violent capacity of the state.
  
  Yeah , agree 100% ... great man theory of history rly pisses me off , plus the whole "capitalism is best without regulations" bullshit , people forgot the first gilded age and the fight of the unions to give people some semblance of decency in the workplace
  
  It's that line of "infringing on the freedom of others". If you think it's the government role to free people of their oppressive burdens (e.g. free them from poverty, free them from ill-heath) then concentration of wealth is "infringing on the freedoms of others". So it needs to be regulated against.
  
  No. Not what I said.
  
  I think you just didn't realize that's synonymous with what you said. Private property is wealth, private property is theft... But even if you didn't realize that's what you implied, you were still correct :)
  
  Somewhat ironically, we can see virtual libertarianism/Anarcho capitalism evolve by following EVE online: Some of the larger player corporations became de facto states
  
  I always thought I was one of the few people that saw Eve as the libertarian dystopia that it is. I certainly thought I was the only one that held it up as a ready example of what libertarianism looks like when fully executed -- now that I think about it, this must be a more popular idea than I realized. Complete with nullsec monopolies and everything. All this in a space that features no scarcity other than real-estate. The end game of libertarian ideals in the Eve example ends in monopoly and the accumulation of absurd amounts of power into the hands of few select individuals. What's striking is how well run things are on the fleet level, only for the corporate leaders to often be wasteful, populist, of questionable moral fiber, and generally irresponsible -- albeit not as a rule. They also have a penchant for casually destroying those that disagree with them. It stands as an excellent example.
  
  I think it's cool if you take it far enough for it to become anarchism, but if there's still property it just becomes an excuse for exploitation.
  
  The funny (sad?) part is that libertarianism was originally coined to be a synonym for anarcho-communism, when discussion by name of the latter was outlawed in France. In fact, the definition has been completely overwritten only in the USA, where the word was colonized by Murray Rothbard in the 1950s. In Europe a lot of people still recognize the word "libertarian" outside of North American contexts as reference to leftist anarchist tendencies.
  But colonizing an existing social good and contorting it to become something antisocial is extremely on-brand for capitalism.
- I feel smart because I met Penn in his dressing room in Vegas few years back and discussed Gary Johnson's running for President. But I came to my senses years ago...

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