[ExI] Call To Libertarians
Keith Henson
hkeithhenson at gmail.com
Sat Feb 19 22:20:00 UTC 2011
On Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 11:46 AM, David Lubkin
<lubkin at unreasonable.com> wrote:
> Darren wrote:
>
>>I understand there are some libertarians in this group.
>
> It's surreal to read this. I was one of the
> earliest of subscribers to the original extropian
> list, twenty or so years ago. I was delighted to
> join and help build a community that shared so
> many of my (even then) long-standing interests.
> One of the ideas was that it was a place where we
> didn't have to defend or explain the
> fundamentals. And the dominant sentiment was that
> anarcho-capitalist libertarianism was one of them.
>
> I recognize the drift from that here over the
> years, and the reasons for it, but your posting
> still feels weird. Like someone saying "I
> understand there are some Jews in Israel."
>
> I guess the paleo-extropian label is appropriate;
> it's easy to feel like a living fossil.
Welcome to the club. :-)
As I recall anarcho-capitalist libertarianism was just an underlying assumption.
Libertarians come in a lot of flavors, personally I best fit the Space
Cadet (Heinlein) variation. But as I recall, there was either
relatively little discussion on the topic, or I just skipped the posts
about it.
Of course early days L5 Society members were something like 20%
libertarian, and perhaps as high as 50% of the early cryonics members.
Keith
> -- David.
>
> Easy to find on: LinkedIn ? Facebook ? Twitter ? Quora ? Orkut
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 8
> Date: Sat, 19 Feb 2011 12:10:22 -0500
> From: Richard Loosemore <rpwl at lightlink.com>
> To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
> Subject: Re: [ExI] Call To Libertarians
> Message-ID: <4D5FF97E.2080006 at lightlink.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> spike wrote:
>> ... On Behalf Of Richard Loosemore
>> ...
>> Subject: Re: [ExI] Call To Libertarians
>> ...
>>>> Somalia is an example of anarchy, Olga, not libertarian. Two very
>> different things. spike
>>
>>> Only different to those who cannot understand the inevitable end-point of
>> libertarianism. :-)
>>
>>> Richard Loosemore
>>
>> The description of complex systems cannot be reduced to a bumper sticker.
>> But this is one rare example of a case where the refutation can *almost* be
>> bumper-sticker-ized:
>>
>> Chaos is the endpoint not of libertarianism but rather the endpoint of its
>> opposite, totalitarianism.
>
> Factually inaccurate, I would say:
>
> Example 1: Soviet Union (totalitarian) -> Boris Yeltsin (short
> interregnum) -> Russia Under Putin (totalitarianism again).
>
> Example 2: Iran under Shah (totalitarian) -> Revolution (short
> interregnum) -> Iran under the Mullahs (totalitarianism again).
>
> Example 3: Iraq under Saddam Hussein (totalitarian) -> US Invasion
> Period (short interregnum) -> Iraq under Corrupt Shia Government with
> Rigged Elections (totalitarianism again, or heading fast in that direction).
>
> Example 4: Germany under Hitler (totalitarian) -> 2nd World War (long
> interregnum during which GDR was totalitarian and West Germany was
> deomcratic) -> Eventually United Germany (Democracy).
>
> This is really not looking good for your bumper sticker.
>
>
>
> Richard Loosemore
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 9
> Date: Sat, 19 Feb 2011 09:45:34 -0800
> From: "spike" <spike66 at att.net>
> To: "'ExI chat list'" <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
> Subject: Re: [ExI] Call To Libertarians
> Message-ID: <000001cbd05c$d0092520$701b6f60$@att.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
>
>>... On Behalf Of Richard Loosemore
>
>>... people coming together and realizing that it is in everyone's best
> interest if the community is forced to pool their resources to pay for
> things like roads and theaters and bridges and schools and police forces...
>
> Indeed? The critical difference in my thinking and yours is found in this
> one sentence. People coming together for roads, bridges, schools and
> police, yes. Theatres? No. That is exclusively the domain of private
> industry, and the root of the tension between libertarian and statist. It
> is not in everyone's best interest to pool resources to build theatres.
>
>>... the conclusion about "SOMALIA == the Libertarian Paradise" is almost a
> no-brainer... Richard Loosemore
>
> You said it, not me. Somalia is the criminal's paradise, not the
> libertarian's.
>
> spike
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 10
> Date: Sat, 19 Feb 2011 19:20:52 +0100
> From: Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org>
> To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> Subject: Re: [ExI] Call To Libertarians
> Message-ID: <20110219182052.GD23560 at leitl.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> On Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 12:10:25PM -0500, David Lubkin wrote:
>> Darren wrote:
>>
>>> I understand there are some libertarians in this group.
>>
>> It's surreal to read this. I was one of the earliest of subscribers to
>> the original extropian list, twenty or so years ago. I was delighted to
>
> Does the list go back to 1990, or was there a dialup BBS before?
>
> It's too bad we cannot read the early archives, but I understand
> why.
>
>> join and help build a community that shared so many of my (even then)
>> long-standing interests. One of the ideas was that it was a place where
>> we didn't have to defend or explain the fundamentals. And the dominant
>> sentiment was that anarcho-capitalist libertarianism was one of them.
>>
>> I recognize the drift from that here over the years, and the reasons for
>> it, but your posting still feels weird. Like someone saying "I
>> understand there are some Jews in Israel."
>>
>> I guess the paleo-extropian label is appropriate; it's easy to feel like
>> a living fossil.
>
> It's nice to be a part of one of the longer-lived Internet communities.
>
> --
> Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
> ______________________________________________________________
> ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org
> 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 11
> Date: Sat, 19 Feb 2011 14:33:29 -0400
> From: Darren Greer <darren.greer3 at gmail.com>
> To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
> Subject: Re: [ExI] Call To Libertarians
> Message-ID:
> <AANLkTikbN-5Qv1A5FfOAi+VudGkowrdqVQ8G7q564B22 at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> One of the ideas was that it was a place where
>> we didn't have to defend or explain the fundamentals. And the dominant
>> sentiment was that anarcho-capitalist libertarianism was one of them.
>>
>> I recognize the drift from that here over the years,
>
> I'm a newcomer to the group, David. Only a year, and like most, I came by
> drawing my own conclusions based on experience and observation and so by the
> time I got here I knew some of the fundamentals. The rest I learned quickly.
> The subtleties and incidentals, however, eluded me for some time and often
> still do.
>
> Politics--and economics--are two elusive issues that are often obliquely
> referenced here that I still haven't got a handle on. One of the first
> threads I became interested in was on patent and intellectual property
> rights, and though no one informed me this group used to have a libertarian
> bent, I could certainly sense the tendency in some of those early
> discussions.
>
> I also understand that political discussions were for a time here verboten
> because of some messiness that had occurred in the past. I'm glad that's not
> the case now. I believe politics, and particularly the economic outlooks
> that come with them, could not be more relevant to the transhumanist schema,
> if we can be said to have one (or two, or three.) I'm glad the list has come
> to a place where we can discuss these things without acrimony or prejudice.
> For my part, I'm just trying to understand.
>
> d.
>
> On Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 2:20 PM, Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
>
>> On Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 12:10:25PM -0500, David Lubkin wrote:
>> > Darren wrote:
>> >
>> >> I understand there are some libertarians in this group.
>> >
>> > It's surreal to read this. I was one of the earliest of subscribers to
>> > the original extropian list, twenty or so years ago. I was delighted to
>>
>> Does the list go back to 1990, or was there a dialup BBS before?
>>
>> It's too bad we cannot read the early archives, but I understand
>> why.
>>
>> > join and help build a community that shared so many of my (even then)
>> > long-standing interests. One of the ideas was that it was a place where
>> > we didn't have to defend or explain the fundamentals. And the dominant
>> > sentiment was that anarcho-capitalist libertarianism was one of them.
>> >
>> > I recognize the drift from that here over the years, and the reasons for
>> > it, but your posting still feels weird. Like someone saying "I
>> > understand there are some Jews in Israel."
>> >
>> > I guess the paleo-extropian label is appropriate; it's easy to feel like
>> > a living fossil.
>>
>> It's nice to be a part of one of the longer-lived Internet communities.
>>
>> --
>> Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
>> ______________________________________________________________
>> ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org
>> 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
>> _______________________________________________
>> extropy-chat mailing list
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>>
>
>
>
> --
> *There is no history, only biography.*
> *
> *
> *-Ralph Waldo Emerson
> *
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> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 12
> Date: Sat, 19 Feb 2011 13:33:52 -0500
> From: Richard Loosemore <rpwl at lightlink.com>
> To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
> Subject: Re: [ExI] Call To Libertarians
> Message-ID: <4D600D10.2090008 at lightlink.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> spike wrote:
>>> ... On Behalf Of Richard Loosemore
>>
>>> ... people coming together and realizing that it is in everyone's best
>> interest if the community is forced to pool their resources to pay for
>> things like roads and theaters and bridges and schools and police forces...
>>
>> Indeed? The critical difference in my thinking and yours is found in this
>> one sentence. People coming together for roads, bridges, schools and
>> police, yes. Theatres? No. That is exclusively the domain of private
>> industry, and the root of the tension between libertarian and statist. It
>> is not in everyone's best interest to pool resources to build theatres.
>
> The inclusion of "theaters" was strictly optional: not essential to my
> argument. A throwaway.
>
> So let me see if I understand: you are saying that without the word
> "theater" in my description, what I said bore no resemblance to the
> philosophy of libertarianism?
>
> Would it be more accurate, then, to say that Libertarianism is about
> SUPPORTING the government funding of:
>
> Roads,
> Bridges,
> Police,
> Firefighters,
> Prisons,
> Schools,
> Public transport in places where universal use of cars would
> bring cities to a standstill, or where poor people would
> otherwise be unable to escape from ghettos,
> The armed forces,
> Universities, and publicly funded scholarships for poor students,
> National research laboratories like the Centers
> for Disease Control and Prevention,
> Snow plows,
> Public libraries,
> Emergency and disaster assistance,
> Legal protection for those too poor to fight against the
> exploitative power of corporations,
> Government agencies to scrutinize corrupt practices by
> corporations and wealthy individuals,
> Basic healthcare for old people who worked all their lives
> for corporations who paid them so little in salary that
> they could not save for retirement without starving to
> death before they reached retirement,
> And sundry other programs that keep the very poor just above
> the subsistence level, so we do not have to step over their
> dead bodies on the street all the time, and so they do not
> wander around in feral packs, looking for middle-class people
> that they can kill and eat...
>
>
> .... but it is about NOT supporting the government funding of theaters?
>
>
> In that case I misunderstood, and all western democracies are more or
> less libertarian already, give or take the 0.0001 percent of their
> funding that goes toward things like theaters and opera houses.
>
>
>
>
> Richard Loosemore
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 13
> Date: Sat, 19 Feb 2011 14:41:39 -0400
> From: Darren Greer <darren.greer3 at gmail.com>
> To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
> Subject: Re: [ExI] Call To Libertarians
> Message-ID:
> <AANLkTiktMXwrDJupyh0npgyaN=TmKTOvL+PW3y1+5XGU at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> Thanks Richard. I wasn't really dismissing the comments. Only the lack of
> explanation behind them. I don't think it's assuming too much to ask for an
> explanation of a wry comment to an earnest question. So thank you for
> providing that. Much food for thought.
>
> I turned on the TV shortly after this discussion got cooking and the first
> words I heard was "Somalian pirates." Thought that was coincidental and
> amusing.
>
> Darren
>
> On Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 12:51 PM, Richard Loosemore <rpwl at lightlink.com>wrote:
>
>> Darren Greer wrote:
>>
>>> Only different to those who cannot understand the inevitable end-point
>>>>
>>> of libertarianism.<
>>>
>>> Just as the end-point of democracy is a stagnant bureaucratic state? The
>>> end-point of capitalism is fascism and plutocracy? The end-point of
>>> socialism is military dictatorship?
>>> The end-point of any system is a situation of extremes and therefore not
>>> desirable. When I asked the question I made the assumption that was
>>> understood. I was looking for a bit of a nuanced interpretation, much like
>>> the one Fred gave. I understand that political discourse tends to evoke
>>> passionate responses, but I should have made myself clearer: I was looking
>>> for an intellectual response, not a politicized, emotive one. My error.
>>>
>>
>> I think you mistake the seriousness behind my reply (and Olga's).
>>
>> Systems settle down into a balance of exchanges -- a state in which all the
>> players locally are trying to get what they want in various ways, so that a
>> situation emerges in which those players more or less accept a set of
>> exchanges that satisfy them.
>>
>> Looking at the list of political systems you give above -- democracy,
>> captialism, socialism etc. -- we can OBJECTIVELY ask questions about how
>> those kinds of systems will settle down, given enough time. We cannot find
>> perfectly good answers to our questions (or we would all be Hari Seldons),
>> but we can do some "sanity checks" on the basic ideas in those systems.
>>
>> One sanity check (according to people like myself and, perhaps Olga (though
>> I make no pretence to speak for her)) yields one glaring, massive difference
>> between the fundamental philosophy held by most libertarians and the
>> philosophies held by those who cheer for the other political philosophies
>> that you list.
>>
>> Libertarianism contains a glaring contradiction within it, which makes it
>> clear that it could never actually work in practice, but would instead lead
>> to Somalia-like anarchy and chaos. In what follows I will try to explain
>> what I mean by this.
>>
>> Libertarianism cherishes the idea that "government" should be reduced to
>> the smallest possible size, and that individuals should take full
>> responsibility for paying for -- or cheating others out of -- the things
>> they need. But at the same time Libertarians also want the advantages of
>> civilization. The problem is, that the things that they want to cut or
>> drastically reduce are the "commons" aspects of modern civilisation .... all
>> those aspects that have to do with people coming together and realizing that
>> it is in everyone's best interest if the community is forced to pool their
>> resources to pay for things like roads and theaters and bridges and schools
>> and police forces.
>>
>> The core of the contradiction is that what the Libertarian wants to do is
>> LOCALLY sensible, but globally crazy. From the point of view of the
>> individual libertarian, nothing but good can come from getting the
>> government out of their wallet. Every libertarian on the planet would see
>> an immediate increase in their well-being if that happened. But that
>> increase in their well being is predicated on the assumption that nothing
>> else changes in the society around them: that all the balances and exchanges
>> now established continue to operate as before. If society continues to
>> operate as normal, the local well-being of every libertarian is immensely
>> increased, withiout a shadow of a doubt, but that is only true if everthing
>> else continues to run as it always has done.
>>
>> The mistake -- the glaring contradiction -- is this assumption that
>> everthing else will stay just as it is while all the libertarians are
>> counting the new money in their pocket, and setting up their own private
>> arrangements to pay for healthcare, to pay road tolls on every street, to
>> hire private police forces to look after them, to pay for their kids to go
>> to school, to pay for a snow plow to come visit their street in the winter,
>> and so on. Why is this assumption wrong? Because the entire edifice of
>> modern civilisation is built on that assumption about taxation and pooling
>> of resources for the common good. Taxation and government and
>> redistribution of wealth are what separate us from the dark ages. The
>> concept of taxation + government + redistribution of wealth was the
>> INCREDIBLE INVENTION that allowed human societies in at least one corner of
>> this planet to emerge from feudal societies where everyone looked after
>> themselves and the devil took the hindmost.
>>
>> This fact about libertarianism is so easy to model, that the conclusion
>> about "SOMALIA == the Libertarian Paradise" is almost a no-brainer. What I
>> mean by "easy to model" is that when we try to understand the end point of
>> other political philosophies it really is pretty hard to see exactly where
>> they will go. But in the case of libertarianism, it only takes a few
>> questions to start revealing that terrifying, inevitable slide toward
>> feudalism. The questions we would ask are questions about what exactly
>> would happen when all the libertarians set up accounts to pay for their
>> toll-roads, healthcare, schools, snow plows etc. etc., but the vast
>> underbelly of modern society cannot do the same because they do not have the
>> resources. Questions about what directions the private police forces would
>> go when they have a client base that they must make happy, rather than a
>> hierarchy that goes up to the nation-state level. And so on. We can model
>> those local changes quite easily because we have plenty of examples of what
>> happens when those circumstances are set up.
>>
>> So in the case of libertarianism, the answers to those questions are really
>> REALLY easy to come up with, and they all point toward anarchy and
>> feudalism. There are simply no good answers to those questions (i.e. no
>> answers that clearly demonstrate that there is a way to push the system
>> toward a stable state).
>>
>> This is the reason why the world has had, over the years, plenty of
>> "democracies", "stagnant bureaucratic states", "capitalist states", "fascist
>> states", "plutocracies", "socialist states" and "military dictatorships"
>> ...... but not one "libertarian state".
>>
>> Or rather, according to the analysis of those who have thought about it in
>> an objective way, the world HAS had many libertarian states: they were all
>> the rage in the dark ages, and they are now springing up like wild mushrooms
>> in a bog, in places like Somalia.
>>
>> So, those were really not just shallow comments that I made, and that Olga
>> made, for all that they were delivered with a wry smile. There is a
>> difference between the searches for an end-point of all the various
>> political philosophies: libertarianism is a glaringly obvious
>> "locally-smart + globally dumb" philosophy, whereas the others are all much
>> much harder to call.
>>
>>
>>
>> Richard Loosemore
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> extropy-chat mailing list
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>>
>
>
>
> --
> *There is no history, only biography.*
> *
> *
> *-Ralph Waldo Emerson
> *
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> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 14
> Date: Sat, 19 Feb 2011 14:46:42 -0400
> From: Darren Greer <darren.greer3 at gmail.com>
> To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
> Subject: Re: [ExI] Call To Libertarians
> Message-ID:
> <AANLkTikvQBFs=TgdEPKCtDrfKaW7gZnYWSUHD7ViSbTG at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
>>Theatres? No. That is exclusively the domain of private
> industry, and the root of the tension between libertarian and statist.<
>
> The U.S. government did during the 30's fund the theaters, in something
> called the national theatre program. It turned out to be too socialist for
> them, so they canned it. Canada has the Canadian Council which provides
> grants to professional artists for project creation. They don't care what
> you write as long as it's good. They've saved my butt a bunch a times.
>
> d.
>
> On Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 2:33 PM, Richard Loosemore <rpwl at lightlink.com>wrote:
>
>> spike wrote:
>>
>>> ... On Behalf Of Richard Loosemore
>>>>
>>>
>>> ... people coming together and realizing that it is in everyone's best
>>>>
>>> interest if the community is forced to pool their resources to pay for
>>> things like roads and theaters and bridges and schools and police
>>> forces...
>>>
>>> Indeed? The critical difference in my thinking and yours is found in this
>>> one sentence. People coming together for roads, bridges, schools and
>>> police, yes. Theatres? No. That is exclusively the domain of private
>>> industry, and the root of the tension between libertarian and statist. It
>>> is not in everyone's best interest to pool resources to build theatres.
>>>
>>
>> The inclusion of "theaters" was strictly optional: not essential to my
>> argument. A throwaway.
>>
>> So let me see if I understand: you are saying that without the word
>> "theater" in my description, what I said bore no resemblance to the
>> philosophy of libertarianism?
>>
>> Would it be more accurate, then, to say that Libertarianism is about
>> SUPPORTING the government funding of:
>>
>> Roads,
>> Bridges,
>> Police,
>> Firefighters,
>> Prisons,
>> Schools,
>> Public transport in places where universal use of cars would
>> bring cities to a standstill, or where poor people would
>> otherwise be unable to escape from ghettos,
>> The armed forces,
>> Universities, and publicly funded scholarships for poor students,
>> National research laboratories like the Centers
>> for Disease Control and Prevention,
>> Snow plows,
>> Public libraries,
>> Emergency and disaster assistance,
>> Legal protection for those too poor to fight against the
>> exploitative power of corporations,
>> Government agencies to scrutinize corrupt practices by
>> corporations and wealthy individuals,
>> Basic healthcare for old people who worked all their lives
>> for corporations who paid them so little in salary that
>> they could not save for retirement without starving to
>> death before they reached retirement,
>> And sundry other programs that keep the very poor just above
>> the subsistence level, so we do not have to step over their
>> dead bodies on the street all the time, and so they do not
>> wander around in feral packs, looking for middle-class people
>> that they can kill and eat...
>>
>>
>> .... but it is about NOT supporting the government funding of theaters?
>>
>>
>> In that case I misunderstood, and all western democracies are more or less
>> libertarian already, give or take the 0.0001 percent of their funding that
>> goes toward things like theaters and opera houses.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Richard Loosemore
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> extropy-chat mailing list
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>>
>
>
>
> --
> *There is no history, only biography.*
> *
> *
> *-Ralph Waldo Emerson
> *
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