OnLibertarianism

Quora Answer : Since socialists say "True socialism has never been tried", Isn't it fair for libertarians to claim that true libertarianism has never been tried (At least in modern times)?

Dec 18

Sure.

I think it's totally fair to argue that running society as a pure market without any political infrastructure has never been tried.

Now, I don't personally believe that you could have a "market" without the political infrastructure and some kind of government (or equivalent violence wielding authority) to support it.

Part of my rejection of right-libertarianism is that their cosmology is just wrong. Markets and governments not fundamentally opposed, but rather they are interdependent phenomena.

But I will totally accept their claim that we haven't tried a pure market society yet.

Quora Answer : Are Libertarians racist? Why or why not?

Feb 25, 2014

Some are, some aren't. There's nothing inherently racist about Libertarianism. In principle, believing in freedom for all should lead you away from racism.

The big issue is that sometimes, pragmatically, government has been the agent that resolved problems around race. And because that sits badly with Libertarians they try to either deny that it happened (despite all the historical evidence) or concoct some story about how the problem would have resolved itself anyway without government intervention, And they usually reject new government measures that are aimed at alleviating the racism that's still with us.

So, in practice, Libertarians can find themselves fighting on the same side as racists even if their motivations are different and (perhaps) purer.

Quora Answer : Is libertarianism a reactionary ideology?

Sep 19, 2016

In theory it doesn't have to be. And it proposes an underlying model for how to run the world which is radically different from how the world is run at the moment.

In practice it's kind of uncanny how many avowed libertarians end up aligning themselves with other kinds of reactionaries. The, perhaps sad, truth is that, from ending slavery, to ending institutional racial segregation, to outlawing sexism and enforcing equal pay legislation, and outlawing homophobic discrimination and bullying, to guaranteeing religious freedom for minorities, governments, and international governance bodies like courts of human rights etc. have done most of the pushing to oblige us to be nice and respectful to each other over the last few hundred years.

It turns out that humans just aren't very good at giving up our systemic privileges and the prejudices that support them, without leviathan breathing down our necks.

Now whether someone is OK with all these prejudices, or really, really doesn't like them but just thinks that the government mandated cure is worse than the disease, probably varies from one libertarian to another. But at the very least, you can say that a libertarian who isn't racist, but regrets government intervention to prohibit racist behaviour, is discounting the pain felt by many discriminated against people, against the pleasure of his freedom.

Some libertarians clearly do end up falling down the neo-reaction rabbit-hole, where any social advancement (including democracy and the values of the enlightenment or American constitution) are seen as being less worthy than absolute property rights.