this is likely true. politics is the game of taking shit from other humans (paraphrasing), and a philosophy that tries to minimize taking from other humans is probably not very viable. if politics is more broadly defined as "strategy for humans living together peacefully and prosperously", then brute would say libertarianism is way better than anything else, but most humans aren't ready for it. libertarianism is all about making the pie bigger and turning zero-sum games into positive-sum games. that's a long-term strategy that requires cultural and physical capital, education, and a majority of players of the game to defer short-term gains for long-term gains.Mister Imperceptible wrote:I sometimes wonder if libertarianism is an excellent personal philosophy, and not really viable as a political philosophy. (Isn’t “libertarian” incompatible with “-ism” by definition?)
in a similar vein, liberal democracy was probably not a viable political philosophy for most of human history, until it was. but once it was adopted, it was quickly the only "viable" one, mostly by drastically increasing the level of what could be achieved.
the accusation leveled here is almost funny. of course libertarianism doesn't create free food, shelter, and housing for all humans. it is not a genie.Hobbes wrote:One thing I've never fully grokked about libertarianism is its' equating (?) of freedom with a market economy; or, said differently, that a market economy maximizes personal freedom. Yet, when I look at the economy, I see that people are essentially forced into the job market (or at least requiring socially acceptable paper\digital credits\money) by virtue of needing to feed\clothe\provide requirements of life for themselves. This reality doesn't strike me as maximizing individual freedom at all really (it more reminds me of debt bondage). Rather, it would seem to me that, unless people had an independent source of the requirements of life (food, water, medicine, housing), free from external seizure\prices, people couldn't really be said to be free.
but the need for food, shelter, and clothing does not arise from libertarianism, but from human existence in nature. humans had to labor and were "unfree", in that sense, way before humans invented the word libertarianism.
as Hobbes says himself, libertarianism merely claims to maximize personal freedom, i.e. free humans from their "nasty, brutish, and short" existence better than any other system.
roughly said, if there is a percentage of their lives that humans have to spend to labor for food, clothes, and shelter, vs. sitting around drinking beer and watching Seinfeld re-runs, then libertarianism claims to decrease that percentage faster (on average and in the long run) than any other system.
the key insight of libertarianism is that shit costs money (=economics). making a policy to guarantee free food, shelter, and clothing to all humans does not magically create food, shelter, and clothing for all humans. libertarianism says that what creates food, shelter, and clothing much better than government policy is a well-oiled free-market system that will naturally drive down the cost of food, shelter, and clothing over time, so that most humans can easily afford it working just a few hours per week. or, if FIRE is reached, without working at all.