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.
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.)
Why does Libertarianism so often end with no standards?
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.
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.)