“Radical libertarianism assumes that humans are
wired only to be selfish, when in fact cooperation is the height of human
evolution.”
Libertarianism does not assume people are wired
only to be selfish. Libertarianism is
simply the belief that the initial use of force is not permitted in society,
including government officials. If you
want to be selfless in a libertarian society, you are free to do so. So long as you act in a voluntary manner, you
are acting within a libertarianism framework.
You can have completely selfless societies acting within a libertarian
society such as a communist enclave or a group of monks.
“It assumes that societies are efficient
mechanisms requiring no rules or enforcers, when, in fact, they are fragile
ecosystems prone to collapse and easily overwhelmed by free-riders.”
There are rules in a libertarian society. The rules are imposed by the owners of
private property. If you don’t like the
rule set by the owner, you are free not to engage that owner in voluntary exchange. For example, the owner of a theater may have
a rule that says no cell phones allowed.
If you don’t like that rule, you can choose not to visit that
theater. It is wrong to say libertarian
societies have no rules.
Libertarian societies would be far stronger and
less prone to collapse than the modern state.
Libertarian societies would allow individuals to follow the choice of
life that each individual decides is best for him or herself. The state imposes a lifestyle on people. The state method based on violence is less
flexible which makes it more fragile. It
also creates a state of hostility between the state and its victims as the more
the state spies, steals, and abuses, the more anger is generated in the rest of
the population which increases the chance of a violent overthrow of the
existing order.
“And it is fanatically rigid in its insistence on
a single solution to every problem: Roll back the state!”
As I stated earlier, libertarian society do not
insist on a single solution to every problem.
It allows people to find their own solutions to their problems. It is the state that imposes a single
solution such as saying drugs are wrong.
It used to be that religion was combined with the state, and the state
would impose a single religion, similar to how the state currently imposes a
single solution in other areas. When
religion was separated from government, a reason for violence and hostility in
society was removed because people didn’t have to worry about a government
imposing some other religion and they became free to practice whatever religion
they wanted. Libertarianism takes this
idea of removing church from state to all principles, such as abortion and gay
marriage. So people would be free to
live how they want in all ways, not just in religion, so long as they do not engage
in violence on another person.
“Communism failed in three strikingly similar
ways. It believed that humans should be willing cogs serving the proletariat.
It assumed that societies could be run top-down like machines. And it, too, was
fanatically rigid in its insistence on an all-encompassing ideology, leading to
totalitarianism.”
Libertarianism is not similar to these three
principles in any way. Libertarianism
does not see people as cogs in a machine.
It assumes that people run their own lives, and their lives are not run
by other people. And Libertarian
ideology would result in the opposite of totalitarianism.
“wealthy could exponentially compound their
advantage, as the programs that sustain a prosperous middle class are gutted.”
The wealthy use the government to compound their
advantage. The government, including the
Federal Reserve, subsidize and cartelize the banking industry. The government inflates the money supply
which helps the rich and hurts the poor.
And the wealthy rely on government regulations to stifle competition
which hurts the poor and middle class.
“A Koch domestic policy would obliterate
environmental standards for clean air and water, so that polluters could
externalize all their costs onto other people.”
In a libertarian society, pollution would be a
form of violence on other people’s private property and the victims of
pollution would be able to sue the polluters to stop them.
“It is in failed states such as Somalia that
libertarianism finds its fullest actual expression.”
Somalia failed under a communist regime which
ruled until 1991. Since the communist
government collapsed, the quality of life in Somalia has improved.
No comments:
Post a Comment