I've podcasted and written a lot about the Christian Right, but wait until you hear about TESCREALism, a new post-libertarian parareligion based on the very worst scifi
It's totally insane, but many of the world's richest people have bought into it. It's like Scientology for oligarchs, minus the centralization.
Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and many others seem to be devotees.
Libertarianism markets itself as "pro-freedom" and "anti-authoritarian," and it can be sometimes. But embedded within its core assumptions is a desire for corporate overlord rulership.
@mattsheffield i ask libertarians, "if you get rid of the police and military, what will stop walmart from making their own police force and taking your property?" and they tell me their militia will. sure. you ragtag militia will fight the kitted out corporate oligarch warriors
@hapbt Even if it were true, however, no normal person would want to be living in such a 100% militarized state of affairs.
These "ancap" ideas are totally childish fantasies. Unfortunately, they aren't content to try living them in some patch of dirt by themselves. They want everyone else to be forced to live this way first.
@mattsheffield theres also some kind of persistent fantasy maybe from the reagan era that corporations wouldn't turn us all into soylent green because they are all run by benevolent altruists, that underpins all of this
@hapbt That's the Ayn Rand stuff. These people are like the secular version of religious cult members. They want the same thing, obedience to someone they think is greater than them.
@mattsheffield#Libertarianism's selective reading of #liberalism ignores any #liberal principle that is a threat to corporate power. Democratic theory is ignored. For example, #libertarian case for private property rests on the principle that people have the right to appropriate the fruits of their labor. This principle is contorted to support corporate power and not imply #WorkersRights to worker democracy by interpreting "their labor" as the labor you own rather than the labor you perform
@jlou It's basically conservative liberalism, an older form of the ideology that was invented to enable the landed gentry to oppose the king. Totally obsolete in the modern world.
@mattsheffield Another religion that tells rich people they don't really have to care about this world because there's a magic world in which they will live forever.
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