229 sats \ 3 replies \ @kepford 16 Jun \ parent \ on: The Libertarian-to-Fascist Pipeline libertarian
Here is why I find it surprising to hear he's a libertarian. The fact that people say they are libertarian and do not align on these topics is one reason I don't call myself one any more.
- Seems to embrace positive rights and completely misunderstand negative rights
- Seems to reject the none aggression principle
- Seems to reject the abolition of the monopoly on violence by the state
- Seems to confuse moral beliefs with political systems
- Seems to not understand the fundamental importance of property rights
- Seems to not understand the importance of the right of freedom of association
I could speculate on the type of libertarian he is but that's not fair. I will stick to the context of the article.
I don't call myself a libertarian or anarchist any more because I don't think I align with enough of the principles myself. So if it makes you feel any better I'm not a true Scotsman either. My issues with this aren't that he is or isn't a libertarian. Its that I find his arguments illogical and frankly unoriginal. This sounds like progressive arguments I've heard for many years from people that do not really even understand the principles of the ideology.
I appreciate your elaboration. I have a plane to catch and can't engage with this as it merits, but a couple things. Caveat is that I only read this once.
Seems to reject the none aggression principle
My sense wasn't that he rejected it; and in fact, that he embraced it. What he rejected was the idea that the NAP is anything close to sufficient to building society around at scale. (See below wrt property rights.)
Seems to reject the abolition of the monopoly on violence by the state
I could read this two ways: he rejects the assertion that there should be no monopoly on violence (e.g., anyone should be able to do violence, and suffer the consequences of however the world reacts), or else he rejects the assertion that nobody, including the state, should be able to do violence. My sense is that he does the latter as a matter of pragmatism -- you can't have 100k + humans living together without coercion being applied. The question is who applies it and what are the consequences of that.
Seems to not understand the fundamental importance of property rights
I got nothing like this from the article; although if you re-state as: he rejects the idea that property rights alone form a coherent political methodology, then I would agree, he does that. And I also do that, but that's not the issue under discussion I guess.
Seems to embrace positive rights and completely misunderstand negative rights
I'd be interested to know what misunderstanding you're referring to.
Note that I have no dog in this fight other than not being Libertarian myself, for reasons you can probably infer from this and from everything I've ever said on SN. But I would like to understand what's so triggering about this post, since when I read it it all seems pretty uncontroversial.
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Also, I've written and thought more about this than I should have really. If this article hadn't been praised so much I wouldn't have even read it based on the title. I cover my issues with it in other comments. I have heard all this before. Really started coming up around 2016.
On positive / negative rights specifically the issue libertarians have with positive rights is that they require some sort of action from others. If rights are to be protected (that seems to insinuate negative rights btw) and the right requires resources to provide, then how do you get those resources? Well, if people choose to give that fixes that. But that is hardly a right if it is voluntary. A positive right in my view requires a state or entity to use the threat of force to provide it.
We could get into consent and contracts but I don't want to spend all day thinking and writing about this. I'll just say there is a lot written about this. The curious libertarian can go read on these topics and they mostly predate the libertarian movement.
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