[extropy-chat] electing ideas [was Re:Fahrenheit 911 -objectivereview?]

[Samantha Atkins]

On Aug 16, 2004, at 1:18 AM, Brett Paatsch wrote:

> Brent Neal wrote:
>
>> ..  voting on the principle of least incompetence.
>
> If only it would catch on.
>
>> http://www.reason.com/0408/fe.bd.john.shtm
>
> Good article.  Maybe some will read excerpts that won't read
> 16 pages.
>
> " ..by virtue of our abdication, a very authoritarian, assertive
> form of government has taken over. And oddly enough, it is
> doing so in the guise of libertarianism to a certain extent. Most
> of the people in the think tanks behind the Bush administration’s
> current policies are libertarians, or certainly free marketeers.

I am sorry but the current government-corporate love-in has nothing to 
do with free markets.  With the exception of Cato, none of the major 
think tanks remotely qualify as or claim to be libertarian AFAIK.   
This is a gross insult to libertarians by those who haven't the 
foggiest idea what libertarianism or free markets are about.


> We’ve got two distinct strains of libertarianism, and the
> hippie-mystic strain is not engaging in politics, and the Ayn
> Rand strain is basically dismantling government in a way that
> is giving complete open field running to multinational
> corporatism."
>

OK, this is sloppy far beyond any need to deal with it further.


> -s