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A question for conservatives and/or libertarians. | by Sharku | 2009-12-02 07:52:23 |
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Misanthropy. | by kelli217 | 2009-12-02 11:06:06 |
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Are you a conservative/libertarian? | by Sharku | 2009-12-02 11:12:06 |
| Or perhaps I was being civil, comparatively. |
by kelli217 |
2009-12-02 12:39:50 |
I used to be a libertarian. I still agree with some parts of the philosophy, such as government doing only the minimum necessary to achieve its ends. It eventually occurred to me, though, that the base principles regarding private individuals lead to either 1) acceptance and understanding of the need for cooperation and compromise in the face of ever increasing population and therefore willing abandonment of the strict adherence to libertarian principles; or 2) in the effort to maintain the libertarian ideal of maximum personal liberty, placing oneself in a hermitlike condition so that my interactions with others were placed on my terms rather than in the context of an ever more intricate web of social conditions and norms.
The hermit lifestyle didn't appeal to me. And I have become aware that many aspects of technology today rely on complex interdependencies, even the technologies that foster and/or facilitate INdependence in other ways. These interdependencies result in their own complex webs of cooperation and compromise. The idea of the lone individual staking out his or her own place in the world and defending it from threats and from busybodies is very romantic -- but how does one acquire the means to stake out that place? How does one defend that place? What agreements must we make with others in order to achieve that independence, and is that not contradictory to have our independence dependent on the agreements and compromises we make with others?
The core values of L. Neil Smith style libertarianism and Ayn Rand style objectivism present the individual as supreme, and that compromise and cooperation are for suckers, and that you just need to keep standing up for yourself until you get other people to either do it your way or let you do it yourself, and anybody who doesn't like that should go their own way and do things the way they want by THEMselves and leave YOU out of it. There's also no such thing as the common good. In fact, objectivism even rejects charity. Other forms of libertarianism allow for it and depend on it to handle those who can't manage to be the rugged individuals of the ideal.
These things I have considered, and found my own position to be untenable. I have chosen the aforementioned choice #1, to abandon the strict adherence to libertarian principles and accept the necessity of cooperation and compromise. Those who have chosen to attempt to stick to their principles, I respect for their steadfast position, but for the reasons I have stated, I believe that eventually they must either compromise more and more and thus fall short of the libertarian ideal, rendering their principles no more than lip service, or else find a way to encourage a reduction in population (without actively bringing about that reduction by the use of force) so as to reduce the necessity for compromise.
Note that my arguments are predicated on a very rigid and Darwinistic form of libertarianism based on philosophies expressed in writings like those of Rand and Smith. Other forms of libertarianism that are based on less rigid philosophies, such as decriminalization of self-destructive behavior, efficiency and clarity and validity of purpose in public cooperative endeavors, responsible behavior in the marketplace as a means of advancing society and promoting prosperity, and the use of property rights as a tool for mitigating the tragedy of the commons -- I have no quarrel with these philosophies per se (though sometimes I may disagree with a particular implementation).
To be UNcivil, I could have said that they're evil, cruel, heartless sociopaths with no consideration for anyone's well-being but their own. |
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