Flaws in libertarianism

Intended for constructive conversations. Exhibits of polarizing tribalism will be deleted.
Spartan_Warrior
Posts: 1659
Joined: Fri Dec 02, 2011 1:24 am

Re: Flaws in libertarianism

Post by Spartan_Warrior »

fiby41 wrote:@Spartan Warrior,

Pretty sure that National Socialism was the de facto official ideology of the Nazi party. In fact it's German name translates to National Socialist German Workers' Party.
Yeah, and the Democratic Party calls itself "democratic", too. :roll:

Ignoring the essentially right-wing nature of the Nazis' anti-labor, pro-capitalist, nationalist and racist policies, how about the fact that socialists and communists were considered political enemies by the Nazis and were literally among the first groups sent to concentration camps?

Don't answer that, it's a rhetorical question, one I'm not interested in debating here. Like I said, the conflation of the ideologies is simply ahistorical and often agenda-driven. As the OP indicated, his question has been answered, and this thread is not for "totalitarian regimes of Europe" (although let the record show it was the libertarians who brought it up). So I don't want to argue this. If you're interested, here's some further reading on the subject:

http://www.csun.edu/~vcmth00m/NazismSocialism.html
https://www.quora.com/Was-Nazism-or-Nat ... -socialist
Last edited by Spartan_Warrior on Thu Mar 23, 2017 4:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.

subgard
Posts: 109
Joined: Mon Mar 17, 2014 12:53 pm

Re: Flaws in libertarianism

Post by subgard »

Socialism and Libertarianism come from the same source.

Start with Original Position Anarchy. Take one step in one direction. Anarcho-Libertarianism. Take a step in the opposite direction. Anarcho-Socialism. The difference between the two has to do with the OPs question of how to determine private property. Both are products of Enlightenment thinking.

Nazism was a rejection of the Enlightenment. A single race of people will make a single strong nation with a single will. This nation-race, because of it's unity will dominate all other inferior nations...
Anyway, you get the idea that this is lightyears away from the petty minutia of exactly who should own what and why. Very appealing if you don't know how the story ends :?

BRUTE
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Joined: Sat Dec 26, 2015 5:20 pm

Re: Flaws in libertarianism

Post by BRUTE »

at least the Nazis proved that racism doesn't work ;) silver lining?

Riggerjack
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Re: Flaws in libertarianism

Post by Riggerjack »

Ignoring the essentially right-wing nature of the Nazis' anti-labor, pro-capitalist, nationalist and racist policies, how about the fact that socialists and communists were considered political enemies by the Nazis and were literally among the first groups sent to concentration camps?
Imagine, if you will, after a generation of hard times, libertarians seize control of the US government. Inevitably, some party leaders would not get the rewards they "deserve". There would be splinter groups of minarchists, holding true to their ideals, while classical liberals ruled.

Generations later, minarchists can still talk about how completely different and right they are, while condemning the moral failures of classical liberals. This would be just as true as you are describing, and yet just as irrelevant to socialists.

I understand that you find the difference between a nationalistic, left leaning, statist, nation to be completely different from a nationalistic, right leaning, statist nation. Please understand, from my perspective, the difference is in who gets oppressed, rather than whether there will be oppression, so it really is a distinction without a difference.

My issue with Soviets and Nazis is the statism. Not whether the State allows favored individuals to continue to own noncritical industries. They both embraced political violence, militarism, Eugenics, concentration camps, and ethnic cleansing.

The more power gets concentrated, the greater that power is abused. If anyone knows of an exception, please bring it up.

As I explained in this thread:http://forum.earlyretirementextreme.com ... 6&start=25 once you meter parking, it is nearly inevitable that you will start jailing people for not parking appropriately. It doesn't take evil intent, merely regulation.

Now, I'm not enough of a libertarian to call out jailing people for minor civic infractions as evil. I understand that there needs to be rules to allow people to get along. And I understand that the more dense the population, the more those rules and enforcement are necessary.

This is why I live in the sticks. There is just less interpersonal friction out here.

ThisDinosaur
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Joined: Fri Jul 17, 2015 9:31 am

Re: Flaws in libertarianism

Post by ThisDinosaur »

Statism is unavoidable. There has never been a major libertarian country. This is because, in any large enough group of people, some subset will assert control and become the authority. Once power is established, it is used to establish even more power. This continues until there is some sort of resource shortage perceived and then the out group holds a revolution. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Dragline
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Joined: Wed Aug 24, 2011 1:50 am

Re: Flaws in libertarianism

Post by Dragline »

A little OT, but here is an interesting paper from Bridgewater (Ray Dalio) about populist movements in various countries in the 20th Century that includes all of your favorite boogeyman leaders: https://www.bridgewater.com/resources/bwam032217.pdf

It just came out this week.

Riggerjack
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Joined: Thu Jul 14, 2011 3:09 am

Re: Flaws in libertarianism

Post by Riggerjack »

Yeah, I agree. There's never been a libertarian state, there never will be. The kind of man who spends his life gathering political power isn't ever going to be the kind that wants to distribute that power.

As I've said, I don't think libertarianism is the solution to all problems. I do think that it is a good default starting point for addressing first world problems. This is because first world problems are generally caused by our stable, secure state. As problems go, those are the best to have.

Riggerjack
Posts: 3182
Joined: Thu Jul 14, 2011 3:09 am

Re: Flaws in libertarianism

Post by Riggerjack »

A little OT, but here is an interesting paper from Bridgewater (Ray Dalio) about populist movements in various countries in the 20th Century that includes all of your favorite boogeyman leaders: https://www.bridgewater.com/resources/bwam032217.pdf

It just came out this week.
While populism was a force in the US, and some would say that Roosevelt was a populist of the left—because his
policies were both populist and rather extreme at the time (though much less so in retrospect)—we will consider
him a ”quasi-populist.” If you are interested in more classic cases, you might skip to the next section to review
those in Europe.
An interesting piece, but it seems to be extremely forgiving of our populists. Extreme historical policies don't become less extreme because we got used to them, or because we now agree with them(or not). There must have been some part of the New Deal that wasn't extreme, but I can't think of it. (For the sake of accuracy, at this point, I need to point out that Hoover started policies very similar to the New Deal, but much less aggressively. They were extreme when he did it, far more so when Roosevelt ramped it up.)

For the record, the differences between Stalin's, Hitler's, Mussolini's, and Roosevelt's reign were differences of degree, not kind. I'm not so sure about pre-war Britain and France, I haven't really looked into them.

Riggerjack
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Joined: Thu Jul 14, 2011 3:09 am

Re: Flaws in libertarianism

Post by Riggerjack »

It's also weird that they gave a full page to Huey Long, without even mentioning corruption. I thought of him as being a populist, but knew him as the prototypical example of corrupt southern politician. Maybe populism and corruption are synonymous to these guys. Or maybe they thought it would distract readers.

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