Libertarianism just replaces governments with corporations, and doesn't lead to freedom!
Libertarianism just replaces governments with corporations, and doesn't lead to freedom!
Freedom is the ONLY thing that counts. I do acknowledge that Libertarians claim to want to pursue freedom.
However I believe that Libertarianism, will only replace tyrannical government with tyrannical rule by businesses.
The problem with governments no matter their political leaning is that most political ideologies lack any mechanism to deal with corruption and abuses of power. Libertarianism seeks to deal with this by removing government and instead hand the power to private companies.
Companies are usually small dictatorships or even tyrannies. Handing them the power over all of society will only benefit the owners of these companies. The rest of society will basically be reduced to the status of slaves as they have no say over the direction of the society they maintain through their 9to5s.
These companies already control governments around the world through favors, bribes or other means such as regulatory capture or even by influencing the media and thereby manipulating the public's opinion through the advertisement revenue.
Our problems would only get worse, all the ills of today's society, lack of freedom, lack of peace, lack of just basic human decency will be vastly aggravated if we hand the entirety of control to people like petur tihel and allen mosque.
Instead the way to go about this is MORE democracy not less of it. The solution is to give average citizens more influence over the fate of society rather than less. However for that to happen we all need to fight ignorance and promote the spread of education. It has to become cool again to read books (or .epub/.mobi's lol)
The best way to resolve the the corruption issue is to not allow any individual to hold power, instead having a distributed system.
More of a community-driven government. Sort of like these workers owned companies. We should not delegate away our decision-making power. We should ourselves make the decisions.
Although this post is in English it does neither concern the ASU nor KU or any other English speaking countries, in particular. It's a general post addressing a world wide phenomenon.
;)
Libertarian Police™ Department
I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief.
“Bad news, detective. We got a situation.”
“What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?”
“Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.”
The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?”
“Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.”
“Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.”
He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.”
I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside.
“Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t.
“Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up.
“Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?”
It didn’t seem like they did.
“Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.”
Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing.
I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it.
“Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled.
Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him.
“Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen.
I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!”
He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose.
“All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.”
“Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy.
“Because I was afraid.”
“Afraid?”
“Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.”
I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head.
“Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.”
He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me for arresting him.
I think you may have come up with the least unpopular opinion on Lemmy. There's more people who are unabashed fans of Stalin and Mao than there are libertarians.
Buuut...I mean, I'm not a libertarian, but I've taken libertarian ideas more seriously than you have, so I can play devil's advocate.
The idea behind libertarianism isn't to hand power over to corporations; that's just what detractors claim will happen. What they claim will happen is that corporations will become far less powerful.
The nightmare cyberpunk scenario where companies acquire private militaries and just physically take over doesn't really apply. The difference between libertarians and anarchists is that the former do see a place for government, usually including military, courts, policing, enforcement of contracts, and a few other things. So companies would continue to have to earn your dollar the old fashion way.
Now, think of industries that suck, where the companies are really shitty causing people to complain about them all the time, but are nonetheless stuck using them for lack of options.
Got some? Okay, now, were you thinking of electronics companies? No? How about bedding, or kitchenware? Hardware & tools? Flooring? Children's toys? Food & grocery?
Or...were you maybe thinking (depending where you live) of banking, airline, healthcare, insurance, or telecom industries?
Okay, now, change of topic: think of some industries with lots of regulation and government intervention.
Did you by any chance come up with the same list?
Lots of people will claim those industries are heavily regulated because they're somehow inherently shitty, and need the government to step in to fix them. Libertarians would say that those industries are shitty because regulations and government interventions prevent competition and shelter incumbents. They don't have to treat customers well anymore, or make particularly good products, because their position is secure whether they do or not. In an actual free market, competition is easier, so it's harder for a company to establish a monopoly.
An extreme example: Britain famously demanded Hong Kong as compensation from China during the Opium Wars, and used it as a gateway to Asia. They treated it with a sort of benign neglect: as long as the port was functioning, they didn't pay that much attention to the operation of the territory. It was not heavily regulated, to the point that even (for example) the healthcare industry was basically regulation-free. You could literally stick a sign on the door of your apartment claiming you were doctor, and start treating people, and nobody would stop you.
So, since healthcare is one of those sacred industries that requires heavy government regulation to protect people, the life expectancy and health outcomes of Hong Kongers must have been abysmal, right? Well...no, it actually climbed steadily throughout, and is #1 in the world today (though it should be noted the situation re: regulation changed post-1997). And it was a hell of a lot cheaper than American or European healthcare at every point.
There are industries where monopolies seem to form naturally. In my lifetime, Microsoft, Facebook and Google have all been accused of being monopolistic. There were calls for government intervention. But like...they were monopolies (or got close, anyway) because lots of people chose to use them. Nobody was forced. I couldn't stand Microsoft or Facebook, so I switched to Linux way back in the 90s and I've never really used Facebook at all. I do use some Google products, because they're pretty good.
And I'm fine. Nobody ever threatened me. My life wasn't negatively affected AFAICT. I just didn't use that product. Competitors appeared, like Linux & BSD, Reddit, Lemmy, etc, and I liked those better so I used them instead. That was it. Pretty boring as far as dystopias go.
The situation is a bit different when it comes to government. I can't opt in or out, I'm just stuck. I mean, I can move (assuming I have enough cash to do it), but fully extricating yourself from your home country is surprisingly hard: the US will chase you around the world to claim taxes from your income. And you immediately have to pick another country, and your options are severely limited.
People talk about corporations in such dire terms. It's kind of mystifying to me: just don't fucking use that corporation's products. Voila! You're free from their insidious influence.
Ahh, but they corrupt government institutions with their lobbying money! The libertarian answer is: have fewer government institutions, then. They can't lobby to bend regulations in their favor if there are no regulations in the first place. They would say that heavy regulation means incumbents are protected from competition, and can thus extract more 'rent', meaning more profit, which they can then turn towards warping the copious regulations in their favor...meaning still more protection, more profit, and more regulatory capture.
Like I said, I'm not a libertarian, but I understand their perspective, and I think it should be more influential than it is. I can talk about how rent control raises housing costs, or how "worker's rights" results in lower pay, or how minimum wages are racist and sexist.
Or you can just call me names for taking libertarians seriously! That seems like the more popular approach.
Is that an unpopular opinion? I thought that was the whole appeal, hence why most billionaires are libertarians.
That's also basically the moral of the story of bioshock.
Instead the way to go about this is MORE democracy not less of it.
Agreed. Some good steps to take:
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Switching to approval/STAR voting (far fewer flaws than FPTP, generaly better than ranked)
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Requiring all companies to be worker owned democracies. We don't accept dictators or monarchists in government, so why would we accept that kind of tyranny in our work?
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Shit loads of anti-corruption efforts. As of right now, politics is controlled with money, and politicians effectively get a free pass to use their office for personal gain. That shit needs to end.
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Libertarianism denies humanity. Exalting the individual as the basic unit of society is the political equivalent to a spherical cow in a vacuum. The human mind and body deteriorate in isolation; we need others to even think or be healthy.
The individual in isolation also happens to be the weakest political unit. It's almost like the ruling class invented the an ideology for the serfs to demand feudalism. An ideology that not only rejects collective action, but short circuits any attempt. A group of libertarians is called an impasse.
Prioritizing the rational individual causes irrationality in society. Tens of thousands of rational decisions to go home at the same time lead to the irrationality of traffic.
The problem is that no single person can educate themselves strongly enough on every potential topic. That's why we're supposed to have representatives to spend all day in a specific area of expertise. I could be jobless, and study this stuff all day every day, 24/7 and STILL not be educated enough to vote on a bill and claim to understand all of the nuances and interactions with society that would ripple out from that decision.
And have you seen society? Do you REALLY want some of these idiots voting? They don't even care to educate themselves - so it's easy to influence them with advertisements and campaigns.
Companies are usually small dictatorships or even tyrannies. Handing them the power over all of society will only benefit the owners of these companies. The rest of society will basically be reduced to the status of slaves as they have no say over the direction of the society they maintain through their 9to5s.
Well said. It's so weird how gullible people can be.
The problem is capitalist libertarians don't see corporations as a power structure, just simply as an expression of individual effort. There's no libertarian conception of a corporation as a collective unit or a way to exert influence; libertarians see a corporation as a random group of individuals who voluntarily join a leader.
The things that always gets thought about last is transparency, accountability, and separation of powers
Community driven, worker owned decision making? Maybe you could check out Democratic Confederalism?
I'd agree that more democracy is the right way. We live in a world where the public could actually vote on any and all choices a community has to take. Would this be good though? I doubt it.
I don't belive that the public is able to make the rigt decisions without at least some more insights than the average citizen has. This is why the system is set up with ministers and their offices who theoretically should know more about every being decided on.
The public will vote for what it thinks is good for themselves but this is not always the best direction for a community to do sometime the right thing to do is not popular or even comfortable. We just need better politicians who are in it for the community and not the money
Just to clarify: This post seems to only talk about American libertarianism. Libertarianism is a very different thing in the rest of the world, closely related to socialism, anarchism and democracy.
Reading Atlas Shrugged is actually what broke me out of my teenage libertarian phase. I saw the central conflict of the book as those who were willing to engage with reality (the industrialists) vs. those who wouldn't engage with reality (the bleeding hearts). However when I turned my mind to the real world it was easy to see that the people ruled by their feelings and far more likely to reject reality were the conservatives and the business types that the book wanted you to believe were the heroes when, in fact, they were just the more long winded. Galt's arrogant and literally 3 hour long speech (I listened to the audiobook) gives the lie to the idea that this was a confident truth sayer and revealed him to be just a guy who would speak until others had no choice but to believe him. He's the guy from "Thank You For Smoking", an unprincipled blowhard. And the people that followed him were just soft minded, listless, and selfish enough to only want what was good for themselves
From most perspectives, freedom is power. And one person's freedom is another person's slavery.
If you bring it back to the roots of life's purpose: to procreate exponentially. It always comes down to doing better than your neighbor.
You can come up with all the moral rules of thumbs you like, like "your rights stops where my nose begin". At the end of the day, if what John is doing enables him to procreate exponentially faster than Jack. Then Jack (on an evolutionary level) will perceive John as evil.
But "on an evolutionary level" isn't really a real thing. It manifests itself in our dreams and feelings. Like how we get envious of people who do better than us or how we feel pride when we do better than others.
It gets complicated because of the effectiveness of cooperation. Which is where things like altruism, compassion and empathy come from.
But even here, evolution tries to pierce through it with things like hypocrisy, subconscious bias and tribal allegiance.
From this context, I believe that for most people freedom is a feeling they get when they do better than the people around them, when they are more powerful than them. It makes for a good slogan, because everyone wants to feel free, the theory says that everyone can be free, but the practice is that not everyone can feel free.
When you use freedom as your theoretical basis of government, it sounds good. But in practice, people will have slightly different interpretation of what freedom means to them, one where they'll feel free but others won't.
You might think now, that we should simply work on a clear and objective definition for freedom, but that definition you're looking for is one where you'll feel free, but many others will feel oppressed.
The best way to resolve the the corruption issue is to not allow any individual to hold power [...[.
That's part of it, probably the biggest part of it. You also want a system that can come to a consensus through compromise when resolving social issues. You also want a system that is efficient and powerful (to compete against other societies).
But going back to the corruption thing. It's not enough, people can organise around an ideal to oppress entire groups. You can have a system where not individual or small group of individual hold power, but one where the whites can oppress the blacks, or the Christians can oppress the Atheists, etc....
Creating a system that substantially reduces corruption is insanely difficult. Corruption is the lynchpin of all the alternate systems being proposed, none are as good as the current system of capitalism + regulation + democracy.
What that system does, is it pretty much gives up on trying to eliminate corruption. Instead it tries to redirect its energies and minimize the damage it causes.
Basically, someone trying to become powerful in a capitalist system, is sort of cajoled into working hard to improve society.
The democracy + regulation aspect is what minimizes the damages caused.
Eventually, the "democracy + regulation" does get captured, and while it's pretty bad compared to how these systems should work, they still tend to perform their function to some extent.
If you contrast this with something like communism or socialism. Those seeking power immediately start by dismantling the systems that prevent corruption. The pressure is so strong, the system will collapse almost instantly, and I think history shows this to be the case.
As for Libertarian, I don't know. You always got someone who will show up telling you that you don't know what "True" libertarian is. When there's actually 200 different true libertarian and each requires 10,000 hours of study to fully understand.
But the few discussions I've had has been enough to convince me that the vast majority are either some kind of survivalist or people who see themselves as effective local business leaders. They just think that's a system that will shift the balance of power in their favor and many of them won't even deny it if you straight up ask them. They're sick of feeling oppressed and they want to become the oppressor.
But generally, it seems to me that most Libertarian systems fail to account for bad state actors. These libertarian systems tends to favor a system that shifts the balance of power to local groups. But has no system in place to keep that power local. There's no way this won't immediately lead to civil war, with the winner setting up a dictatorship.
From most perspectives, freedom is power. And one person's freedom is another person's slavery.
If you bring it back to the roots of life's purpose: to procreate exponentially. It always comes down to doing better than your neighbor.
You can come up with all the moral rules of thumbs you like, like "your rights stops where my nose begin". At the end of the day, if what John is doing enables him to procreate exponentially faster than Jack. Then Jack (on an evolutionary level) will perceive John as evil.
But "on an evolutionary level" isn't really a real thing. It manifests itself in our dreams and feelings. Like how we get envious of people who do better than us or how we feel pride when we do better than others.
It gets complicated because of the effectiveness of cooperation. Which is where things like altruism, compassion and empathy come from.
But even here, evolution tries to pierce through it with things like hypocrisy, subconscious bias and tribal allegiance.
From this context, I believe that for most people freedom is a feeling they get when they do better than the people around them, when they are more powerful than them. It makes for a good slogan, because everyone wants to feel free, the theory says that everyone can be free, but the practice is that not everyone can feel free.
When you use freedom as your theoretical basis of government, it sounds good. But in practice, people will have slightly different interpretation of what freedom means to them, one where they'll feel free but others won't.
You might think now, that we should simply work on a clear and objective definition for freedom, but that definition you're looking for is one where you'll feel free, but many others will feel oppressed.
The best way to resolve the the corruption issue is to not allow any individual to hold power [...[.
That's part of it, probably the biggest part of it. You also want a system that can come to a consensus through compromise when resolving social issues. You also want a system that is efficient and powerful (to compete against other societies).
But going back to the corruption thing. It's not enough, people can organise around an ideal to oppress entire groups. You can have a system where not individual or small group of individual hold power, but one where the whites can oppress the blacks, or the Christians can oppress the Atheists, etc....
Creating a system that substantially reduces corruption is insanely difficult. Corruption is the lynchpin of all the alternate systems being proposed, none are as good as the current system of capitalism + regulation + democracy.
What that system does, is it pretty much gives up on trying to eliminate corruption. Instead it tries to redirect its energies and minimize the damage it causes.
Basically, someone trying to become powerful in a capitalist system, is sort of cajoled into working hard to improve society.
The democracy + regulation aspect is what minimizes the damages caused.
Eventually, the "democracy + regulation" does get captured, and while it's pretty bad compared to how these systems should work, they still tend to perform their function to some extent.
If you contrast this with something like communism or socialism. Those seeking power immediately start by dismantling the systems that prevent corruption. The pressure is so strong, the system will collapse almost instantly, and I think history shows this to be the case.
As for Libertarian, I don't know. You always got someone who will show up telling you that you don't know what "True" libertarian is. When there's actually 200 different true libertarian and each requires 10,000 hours of study to fully understand.
But the few discussions I've had has been enough to convince me that the vast majority are either some kind of survivalist or people who see themselves as effective local business leaders. They just think that's a system that will shift the balance of power in their favor and many of them won't even deny it if you straight up ask them. They're sick of feeling oppressed and they want to become the oppressor.
But generally, it seems to me that most Libertarian systems fail to account for bad state actors. These libertarian systems tends to favor a system that shifts the balance of power to local groups. But has no system in place to keep that power local. There's no way this won't immediately lead to civil war, with the winner setting up a dictatorship.
Libertarianism is pro-democracy and anti-corporation.
Actually no, when we replace government with corporations we replace one government with many corporations.
Governments is not something people live under. Governments are by definition monopolies, and that is why cooperations is better than the government.
Itt nobody understands libertarian philosophy. You might want to start by reading John Locke, and David Henry Thoreau . Fuck ancaps like Rand
Read into. Classical liberalism