A Certain Classical Liberal reminded us that you cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the good, in a video called Ideological Hegemony.
Back then, it was to try to reason with people who wanted GG to be more "anti SJW" than pro ethics during the GG era, and that ostracization of those who just wanted to be "pro ethics" is how you kill the movement. He was partially right, but he also realized that not addressing the SJW issue was ultimately going to be detrimental to everyone and that the key is to win over the "pro ethics" crowd to realize there is a bigger issue than just vidya ethics.
Now I think that can still be applied to "Lolbertarians" who have adopted the neverTrumper "muh freedoms" view.
They don't realize that by continuing to stick to their utopian libertarian stance, they are literally handing the weapon over to the enemy to silence them with.
You have to realize at some point that strict adherence to your utopian principles may actually be detrimental to the ultimate goal you're going for. If you remember the interview Ben Shapiro had with Tucker Carlson, Shapiro had the tradcon ultra-capitalist position. That the best business out there will rise to the top, and that there will be winners and losers in a situation and those who cannot adapt are simply in a "too bad, so sad" position.
Tucker, on the other hand, saw the right-populist position, he understands that the adoption of pure capitalism actually placed us in a quandry where we're going to "out-capitalism" some of our population, especially the current Gen X population that are already too old to learn new skills. Some will adopt, but others are essentially going to be "phased out" of the economy and be too old to be able to do anything while staying in the workforce.
That same pure capitalism has also allowed the proliferation of plagues like OnlyFans and other hedonistic degeneracy. From a lolbertarian standpoint, this should be allowed - none of it is directly hurting me, but we know this shit is harmful to society as it deteriorates the already crumbling foundation of relationships and essentially commodifying it. The girls who take advantage of this aren't exactly well adjusted people either.
This is the reason why people like Styx aren't pure libertarians either - he realizes that in order to protect a libertarian state, you NEED to take some nationalist policies that may come in conflict with your ideology but are ones built of absolute pragmatism. Be principled all you like, but at the same time one needs to realize sometimes you need to be realistic than idealistic.
The point I have been trying to drive home to one of my libertarian friends is that the heads of these companies:
All share the same values as the politicians (which are not your values)
All attend the same schools as each other (which are not schools they would let you attend)
See it as their sacred duty to shape society into a form that works against your interests
Are being encouraged and/or allowed to do this by politicians and a judiciary who would gladly do it themselves but need to launder it through the private sector to grant it legitimacy because it's not being done through legislation.
It isn't "My neighbor Joe wanted to sell some apples from his orchard, but he got shut down because he didn't have a food vendor's license and because his orchard wasn't zoned for commercial farming". It's "These Fortune 500 CEOs want to reshape society and change your way of life so that they can maintain a permeant neo-feudalist oligarchy".
To the extent the NAP has any teeth at all, your way of life is being aggressed against by these companies; and you are under no obligation to stand by and let them do it.
Well put. According to our lolbertarian friends, these megacorps having their boots on our necks is not a violation of the NAP, but us trying to remove it is.
That's because this particular brand of lolbertarianism when taken to its logical conclusion results in absolute monarchy. If a megacorp owns all the land in a region and can do whatever it wants with the land, and everyone on its land is obligated to comply with whatever dictates it wants, how is that any different than the old feudal system?
At least Hoppe is honest that he wants states to be absolute monarchies, and has the good sense to want to forcibly remove communists.
Megacorps dont exist without government intervention. An ancap society would likely stay mostly local, and corps like Disney or Microsoft would have died out decades ago like they naturally would have without all the lobbying they did for regulations that kept them afloat.
This is probably true. The problem is that you rarely see these types of libertarians talk about it (though more serious ones like Hoppe do, but you rarely hear about them in mainstream discourse for obvious reasons).
When Boeing was having problems with their 737 MAX, was the Libertarian Party of Texas tweeting out "If the concept of Limited Liability for company executives and investors -- a market-distorting legal fiction created by the government -- were eliminated, these issues would be far less likely to occur because the executives and investors wouldn't want to risk bankruptcy and prison time by putting out an unsafe product"? Or were they blaming the FAA?
It was always the intolerance of the "pro ethics" crowd (the very few who were) which was the problem. They wanted to ban generic "anti-SJW" content, while the anti-SJW folks made no such demands about ethics. If the roles were reversed, and the anti-SJW crowd was demanding bans on ethics content, I would have been on their side. Basically, don't ban stuff.
I agree with the rest of your comment. It's populism or political suicide for the right. "Muh capitalism" and "cut taxes for the 1%" aren't going to cut it. They were never popular, but going against a hard-left that is so radicalized, you're not going to win if you do not stand against it - nor do you deserve to win.
Yeah, I know. I knew from the very beginning of GG personally that there was a poisonous ideology fueling the behavior of game journalists. That just forcing game journalists to be "ethical" isn't going to fix the problem. Their unethical behavior is motivated by an ideology that believes in the ends justifying the means.
For the right-populist/actual libertarian side, we try not to adopt that "ends justifies the means" position, we only resort to it when it becomes impractical to maintain our position or if we end up risking being completely eliminated to maintain our position. For us, it's more of a "you left us no choice, I don't want to do this" position, which IMO is a far more defensible position than what the crazies on the far left use which is the "morals be damned, what we do is justified" position.
I stopped worrying about optics once the other side stopped being honest about their ideology.
Rolling out a pet theory here: positive goals versus negative goals; alternatively, constructivism versus destructivism. "I don't want to fight, I just want to play games in peace" is a positive goal, as it expresses an outcome where something is created or a lost thing is regained. "Your ideas are an evil and I must see you undone" is a negative goal, as it expresses an outcome where something is destroyed or a desired thing is taken.
Argument is simple, that the maintenance of civility demands positive goals, because negative goals are a direct threat to civility. The implication is basically a meme: that "ends justifies the means" may be just only under a positive goal.
I'm inviting feedback because I've hit a wall in development. (I'm still considering whether it could also apply to uncivil scenarios, such as military strategy, but it's looking doubtful so far.)
Because it claims that no objective standard can exist, by definition. As such, it instantly devolves into “that which causes the greatest pleasure” as a false dichotomy to the opposite of “do not cause others pain.”
Because it claims that no objective standard can exist, by definition. As such, it instantly devolves into “that which causes the greatest pleasure” as a false dichotomy to the opposite of “do not cause others pain.”
Why does Libertarianism so often end with no standards?
Weed.
A Certain Classical Liberal reminded us that you cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the good, in a video called Ideological Hegemony.
Back then, it was to try to reason with people who wanted GG to be more "anti SJW" than pro ethics during the GG era, and that ostracization of those who just wanted to be "pro ethics" is how you kill the movement. He was partially right, but he also realized that not addressing the SJW issue was ultimately going to be detrimental to everyone and that the key is to win over the "pro ethics" crowd to realize there is a bigger issue than just vidya ethics.
Now I think that can still be applied to "Lolbertarians" who have adopted the neverTrumper "muh freedoms" view.
They don't realize that by continuing to stick to their utopian libertarian stance, they are literally handing the weapon over to the enemy to silence them with.
You have to realize at some point that strict adherence to your utopian principles may actually be detrimental to the ultimate goal you're going for. If you remember the interview Ben Shapiro had with Tucker Carlson, Shapiro had the tradcon ultra-capitalist position. That the best business out there will rise to the top, and that there will be winners and losers in a situation and those who cannot adapt are simply in a "too bad, so sad" position.
Tucker, on the other hand, saw the right-populist position, he understands that the adoption of pure capitalism actually placed us in a quandry where we're going to "out-capitalism" some of our population, especially the current Gen X population that are already too old to learn new skills. Some will adopt, but others are essentially going to be "phased out" of the economy and be too old to be able to do anything while staying in the workforce.
That same pure capitalism has also allowed the proliferation of plagues like OnlyFans and other hedonistic degeneracy. From a lolbertarian standpoint, this should be allowed - none of it is directly hurting me, but we know this shit is harmful to society as it deteriorates the already crumbling foundation of relationships and essentially commodifying it. The girls who take advantage of this aren't exactly well adjusted people either.
This is the reason why people like Styx aren't pure libertarians either - he realizes that in order to protect a libertarian state, you NEED to take some nationalist policies that may come in conflict with your ideology but are ones built of absolute pragmatism. Be principled all you like, but at the same time one needs to realize sometimes you need to be realistic than idealistic.
The point I have been trying to drive home to one of my libertarian friends is that the heads of these companies:
It isn't "My neighbor Joe wanted to sell some apples from his orchard, but he got shut down because he didn't have a food vendor's license and because his orchard wasn't zoned for commercial farming". It's "These Fortune 500 CEOs want to reshape society and change your way of life so that they can maintain a permeant neo-feudalist oligarchy".
To the extent the NAP has any teeth at all, your way of life is being aggressed against by these companies; and you are under no obligation to stand by and let them do it.
Well put. According to our lolbertarian friends, these megacorps having their boots on our necks is not a violation of the NAP, but us trying to remove it is.
That's because this particular brand of lolbertarianism when taken to its logical conclusion results in absolute monarchy. If a megacorp owns all the land in a region and can do whatever it wants with the land, and everyone on its land is obligated to comply with whatever dictates it wants, how is that any different than the old feudal system?
At least Hoppe is honest that he wants states to be absolute monarchies, and has the good sense to want to forcibly remove communists.
Megacorps dont exist without government intervention. An ancap society would likely stay mostly local, and corps like Disney or Microsoft would have died out decades ago like they naturally would have without all the lobbying they did for regulations that kept them afloat.
This is probably true. The problem is that you rarely see these types of libertarians talk about it (though more serious ones like Hoppe do, but you rarely hear about them in mainstream discourse for obvious reasons).
When Boeing was having problems with their 737 MAX, was the Libertarian Party of Texas tweeting out "If the concept of Limited Liability for company executives and investors -- a market-distorting legal fiction created by the government -- were eliminated, these issues would be far less likely to occur because the executives and investors wouldn't want to risk bankruptcy and prison time by putting out an unsafe product"? Or were they blaming the FAA?
It was always the intolerance of the "pro ethics" crowd (the very few who were) which was the problem. They wanted to ban generic "anti-SJW" content, while the anti-SJW folks made no such demands about ethics. If the roles were reversed, and the anti-SJW crowd was demanding bans on ethics content, I would have been on their side. Basically, don't ban stuff.
I agree with the rest of your comment. It's populism or political suicide for the right. "Muh capitalism" and "cut taxes for the 1%" aren't going to cut it. They were never popular, but going against a hard-left that is so radicalized, you're not going to win if you do not stand against it - nor do you deserve to win.
Yeah, I know. I knew from the very beginning of GG personally that there was a poisonous ideology fueling the behavior of game journalists. That just forcing game journalists to be "ethical" isn't going to fix the problem. Their unethical behavior is motivated by an ideology that believes in the ends justifying the means.
For the right-populist/actual libertarian side, we try not to adopt that "ends justifies the means" position, we only resort to it when it becomes impractical to maintain our position or if we end up risking being completely eliminated to maintain our position. For us, it's more of a "you left us no choice, I don't want to do this" position, which IMO is a far more defensible position than what the crazies on the far left use which is the "morals be damned, what we do is justified" position.
I stopped worrying about optics once the other side stopped being honest about their ideology.
Rolling out a pet theory here: positive goals versus negative goals; alternatively, constructivism versus destructivism. "I don't want to fight, I just want to play games in peace" is a positive goal, as it expresses an outcome where something is created or a lost thing is regained. "Your ideas are an evil and I must see you undone" is a negative goal, as it expresses an outcome where something is destroyed or a desired thing is taken.
Argument is simple, that the maintenance of civility demands positive goals, because negative goals are a direct threat to civility. The implication is basically a meme: that "ends justifies the means" may be just only under a positive goal.
I'm inviting feedback because I've hit a wall in development. (I'm still considering whether it could also apply to uncivil scenarios, such as military strategy, but it's looking doubtful so far.)
Because they agree with every leftist belief when it comes to social/morality issues and only disagree with a few fringe econ issues.
Because it claims that no objective standard can exist, by definition. As such, it instantly devolves into “that which causes the greatest pleasure” as a false dichotomy to the opposite of “do not cause others pain.”
Because it claims that no objective standard can exist, by definition. As such, it instantly devolves into “that which causes the greatest pleasure” as a false dichotomy to the opposite of “do not cause others pain.”