#SiliconValley#Billionaires#Libertarianism: "The big idea: “Our enemy is the Precautionary Principle.” Normal people define that as the imperative of seeking to prevent and contain certain potentially civilization-ending potentialities like nuclear holocaust and pandemic. Andreessen, conversely, calls precaution “perhaps the most catastrophic mistake in Western society in my lifetime … deeply immoral, and we must jettison it with extreme prejudice.”
What ought be embraced in its stead, naturally, is markets, because “they divert people who otherwise would raise armies and start religions into peacefully productive pursuits.” (The opening of markets, as all students know, having everywhere and always been the most peaceful pursuit known to humanity.)
What stands in the way of the recognition of this so self-evident truth? Ideas like “sustainability,” “stakeholder capitalism,” “social responsibility,” “tech ethics,” “trust and safety,” and “risk management,” which must be eliminated—“with extreme prejudice.” According to the logic of the piece, I suppose, this must happen in order to nip in the bud the armies we can expect the avatars of ethics and responsibility to raise any day now.
Basically, the manifesto is an argument, dressed up in the raiment of morality, about power: Andreessen and people like him should get to make decisions to reorder life as we know it without interference from anyone else. Which will be quite relevant to know for the saga ahead, once you see the style of moral judgment this most powerful of human actors displays behind closed doors." https://prospect.org/power/2024-04-24-my-dinner-with-andreessen/
"It is certain that the coming Revolution — like in that respect to the Revolution of 1848 — will burst upon us in the middle of a great industrial crisis. Things have been seething for half a century now, and can only go from bad to worse. Everything tends that way — new nations entering the, lists of international trade and fighting for possession of the world’s markets, wars, taxes ever increasing."
Peter Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread #communism#socialism#anarchism#libertarianism
"Citizens were challenging big business, holding them accountable, demanding governmental oversight, exercising their democratic rights. To [Lewis] Powell, the corporate lawyer and perennial corporate board member, this was a bridge too far. The chorus must be killed, power returned to the kings.
The future Supreme Court Justice went on to outline in detail how the corporate world must retake control and influence over every aspect of American life."
One of the most successful parts of the Powell strategy has been the reframing of "liberty". From it's original meaning; freedom from tyranny, to the freedom to be a tyrant (eg ZuckerBorg, Bezos, Thiel, Musk etc). Buying into this framing...
"Limitarianism v Libertarianism"
... implies we can only have economic justice at the cost of political freedom (a la China). I call bollox on this.
"Everywhere you will find that the wealth of the wealthy springs from the poverty of the poor."
Peter Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread #communism#socialism#anarchism#libertarianism
"But a free society, regaining possession of the common inheritance, must seek, in free groups and free federations of groups, a new organization, in harmony with the new economic phase of history."
Peter Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread #communism#socialism#anarchism#libertarianism
"It is not difficult, indeed, to see the absurdity of naming a few men and saying to them, “Make laws regulating all our spheres of activity, although not one of you knows anything about
them!” "
Peter Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread #communism#socialism#anarchism#libertarianism
Think about the destruction of this unique community treasure the next time some libertarian is glibly trying to persuade you that minimizing constraints on private property will maximize social welfare.
Radical pay-what-you-can restaurant faces eviction from mill it refurbished | Environment | The Guardian
Workers unite! Form unions to gain collective strength against bosses. Recognize that harm to one worker reflects the systemic exploitation affecting all workers. We have a world to win!
High-functioning autistic people should come out of the shadows.
They should openly say that they are best suited to rule and have the best ideas, i.e. libertarian ones.
This should not be an insult to Korwin or Mentzen that they are autistic (Asperger's), it should be an open advantage, and only such people should be admitted to the party.
"[A] great embarrassing fact ... haunts all attempts to represent the market as the highest form of human freedom: that historically, impersonal, commercial markets originate in theft."
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.
@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
Two things. First, it was ukuli two made the comparison to #Nietzsche, not me.
Second, with only 500 characters, it's hard to get in-depth.
Rand's philosophy mostly looks like classic #libertarianism justified by an epistomological framework. But given how extremist it is (that's not a value judgment, but an assessment of its positioning), I see no viable adoption path with a democracy. So how would you get there? If you say "not democracy", what then?
Maybe this article is worth reading (even if discussing it with the author on space karen's right-wing social media site isn't) Like sure we need more leftist progressivism in #StrongTowns discourse, but it seems like it might be more "rah-rah let's spend on #transit first" leftist #urbanism that isn't getting us anywhere (except diverted into boondoggles) and fails to acknowledge that the govt has been captured by billionaires and used to impose cars on everyone.
@enobacon this article offers some useful context. While I regularly agree with #StrongTowns, I find myself scratching my head at times thinking: “What would prompt Marohn to promote such an idea?”
I won’t throw the good out with the bad, but as a recovering #libertarian I often fail to recognize the sometimes subtle anti-government and anti-poor ideas of #libertarianism.