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caper_estTired of reading liberals' lazy anti-libertarian caricatures on the Internet, I thought it was time I created a properly researched one of my own. All of the wisdoms below the cut have been encountered in speech, text, or action, up and including Number 30, from persons professing some sort of libertarian affiliation or other. Whilst I could certainly come up with a selection just as bad from other political stances, it is not my job to suggest to anybody how to be a piss-poor progressive or a crappy conservative, so I shall leave those tasks to others more closely concerned with them.
1. Freedom from unwanted facts is the greatest freedom, and makes all other freedoms possible.
2. True liberty means the freedom to be an arsehole. Use it or lose it!
3. Complaining that I am talking like an arsehole is a violation of my right to free speech, you statist arsehole!
4. The plausibility of a scientific theory is inversely proportional to the amount of collective action which people would demand if they believed in it.
5. A proposition is objectively true if, and only if, its assertion competes successfully against its denial on the free market.
6. Liberty is a virtue, so people with more freedom than me are to be admired and respected, whereas those with less are to be despised and reviled.
7. Money is the liquid form of liberty. See also 6.
8. There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch; privilege would be a free lunch; therefore, privilege is a myth.
9. The free market would be exactly like capitalism today, only better.
10. Socialism would be exactly like revolutionary communism yesterday, if not worse.
11. If it looks like a government and shoots like a government but it has owners, it isn't a government, it's just aggressively asserting its private property rights!
12. Public property is the same as government property.
13. All commons are necessarily a tragedy. Take that, Elinor Ostrom!
14. Taxation, like failure to pay random private rents, is theft.
15. The tree of liberty must be refreshed from minute to minute with the bloodthirsty rhetoric of me and my mates on the internet. It is its natural bullshit.
16. Taxation stops being theft when you give the proceeds to a corporation, just as tyranny ceases to be tyranny when you sell the Property Right Formerly Known As Tyranny on the open market.
17. Unjust historic property confiscations are most justly and efficiently reversed through the gradual impartial processes of the market, and will totally not be repeated by the same bastard bosses at the end of the cycle.
18. Legalism is the true liberty.
19. Everything I have is my just deserts; everything I don't have is the government's fault.
20. The relatively high popularity of libertarianism amongst rich white men must indicate... our innate mental superiority, Bob!
21. Selfishness is the higher generosity.
22. Unions are thugs, whereas corporate goondahs are warriors for justice. I will not accidentally get this the wrong way round.
23. Economic disequilibrium in a free market does not exist. Not so as you'd notice. Because it doesn't matter. Nothing to see here. Move along!
24. Intellectual property is the most important kind. Free speech does not extend to product libel, naming or quoting anything proprietary, or chattering amongst ourselves during the advert break. Because that would be stealing!
25. To the extent that court decisions can be bought and sold, this is not a sign that the poor are not morally bound by them, but rather that they are being made in the most economically efficient manner.
26. The public ought to enforce all private contracts, however stupid or obnoxious they may be, and however expensive the enforcement may prove.
27. If I am not free to sell myself into slavery, I can never be truly free!
28. Narcissus Preened is the greatest book ever written, and the protagonist is my role model.
29. Minarchy is a great idea. A government confined to its proper sphere of national defence and law enforcement will lose its police-state tendencies very quickly.
30. Unfortunately normal peacetime liberties must be suspended in dealing with nightmare totalitarian ideologies which constitute existential threats to all liberty, such as Communism/ Greenery/ Islam/ Creative Commons Licensing/ Freemasonry / [Menace To Be Arranged].
31. Failure to accept the Non-Aggression Principle constitutes obvious preparation for aggression, so deadly and decisive force is the only answer, and we must exterminate all non-libertarians immediately! EX-TER-MIN-ATE! EX-TER-MIN-ATE!
32. Yes, this includes those no-good anarchists! You can't have liberty or property without order!
33. And those fuckers in the IWW and the Libertarian-Left Alliance and the Libertarian Liberation Front of West Drayton, they've got it coming too! Collectivist bastards!
34. Hey, wait, if there was only me left, all force and fraud would be mathematically impossible forever! I have discovered the secret of the One True Utopia...
35. Help, Eleutheria, help!! All the mean Wobblies are mocking the shit out of me on the Internet! I AM CALLING THE FBI FOR THIS CRIMINAL UNFAIR USE INFRINGEMENT, THEY ARE NOT ANSWERING, THIS IS ALL BOLLOCK HE-SANE?! OSAMA'S FAULT!!! MY HEAD ASS PLODE!!!!*!)!^!!!@!!
36. [No signal]
1. Freedom from unwanted facts is the greatest freedom, and makes all other freedoms possible.
2. True liberty means the freedom to be an arsehole. Use it or lose it!
3. Complaining that I am talking like an arsehole is a violation of my right to free speech, you statist arsehole!
4. The plausibility of a scientific theory is inversely proportional to the amount of collective action which people would demand if they believed in it.
5. A proposition is objectively true if, and only if, its assertion competes successfully against its denial on the free market.
6. Liberty is a virtue, so people with more freedom than me are to be admired and respected, whereas those with less are to be despised and reviled.
7. Money is the liquid form of liberty. See also 6.
8. There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch; privilege would be a free lunch; therefore, privilege is a myth.
9. The free market would be exactly like capitalism today, only better.
10. Socialism would be exactly like revolutionary communism yesterday, if not worse.
11. If it looks like a government and shoots like a government but it has owners, it isn't a government, it's just aggressively asserting its private property rights!
12. Public property is the same as government property.
13. All commons are necessarily a tragedy. Take that, Elinor Ostrom!
14. Taxation, like failure to pay random private rents, is theft.
15. The tree of liberty must be refreshed from minute to minute with the bloodthirsty rhetoric of me and my mates on the internet. It is its natural bullshit.
16. Taxation stops being theft when you give the proceeds to a corporation, just as tyranny ceases to be tyranny when you sell the Property Right Formerly Known As Tyranny on the open market.
17. Unjust historic property confiscations are most justly and efficiently reversed through the gradual impartial processes of the market, and will totally not be repeated by the same bastard bosses at the end of the cycle.
18. Legalism is the true liberty.
19. Everything I have is my just deserts; everything I don't have is the government's fault.
20. The relatively high popularity of libertarianism amongst rich white men must indicate... our innate mental superiority, Bob!
21. Selfishness is the higher generosity.
22. Unions are thugs, whereas corporate goondahs are warriors for justice. I will not accidentally get this the wrong way round.
23. Economic disequilibrium in a free market does not exist. Not so as you'd notice. Because it doesn't matter. Nothing to see here. Move along!
24. Intellectual property is the most important kind. Free speech does not extend to product libel, naming or quoting anything proprietary, or chattering amongst ourselves during the advert break. Because that would be stealing!
25. To the extent that court decisions can be bought and sold, this is not a sign that the poor are not morally bound by them, but rather that they are being made in the most economically efficient manner.
26. The public ought to enforce all private contracts, however stupid or obnoxious they may be, and however expensive the enforcement may prove.
27. If I am not free to sell myself into slavery, I can never be truly free!
28. Narcissus Preened is the greatest book ever written, and the protagonist is my role model.
29. Minarchy is a great idea. A government confined to its proper sphere of national defence and law enforcement will lose its police-state tendencies very quickly.
30. Unfortunately normal peacetime liberties must be suspended in dealing with nightmare totalitarian ideologies which constitute existential threats to all liberty, such as Communism/ Greenery/ Islam/ Creative Commons Licensing/ Freemasonry / [Menace To Be Arranged].
31. Failure to accept the Non-Aggression Principle constitutes obvious preparation for aggression, so deadly and decisive force is the only answer, and we must exterminate all non-libertarians immediately! EX-TER-MIN-ATE! EX-TER-MIN-ATE!
32. Yes, this includes those no-good anarchists! You can't have liberty or property without order!
33. And those fuckers in the IWW and the Libertarian-Left Alliance and the Libertarian Liberation Front of West Drayton, they've got it coming too! Collectivist bastards!
34. Hey, wait, if there was only me left, all force and fraud would be mathematically impossible forever! I have discovered the secret of the One True Utopia...
35. Help, Eleutheria, help!! All the mean Wobblies are mocking the shit out of me on the Internet! I AM CALLING THE FBI FOR THIS CRIMINAL UNFAIR USE INFRINGEMENT, THEY ARE NOT ANSWERING, THIS IS ALL BOLLOCK HE-SANE?! OSAMA'S FAULT!!! MY HEAD ASS PLODE!!!!*!)!^!!!@!!
36. [No signal]
(no subject)
Date: 2012-07-07 06:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-07-07 07:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-07-09 11:14 am (UTC)From inside the signal-to-noise ratio is notably higher, due to the fact that I'm hearing more of the actual conversations in proportion to the random Angry Uncle Rants, Drunken Blowhard Orations, and juvenile dummy-spitting episodes which tend to earhole an impatient public; but, as you noticed to begin with, I'm still a trifle unhappy with the standard in both contexts.
I think one of the downsides of the Internet, otherwise so enabling for holders of somewhat fringey opinions not frequently met in RL contexts, is the way that every empty vessel is now permanently tied in to the global discourse like so many old cocoa-cans on bits of string. The din, and everything associated with it, becomes abominable.
And alas, libertarianism does have its specific attractions to... certain fairly unpleasing sets of tastes. (Especially one-way 'libertarianism'; but every ideology has to deal with that disciple!)
By the way, my overview in the main entry was still excessively rosy. #35 is, of course, all too commonly observed in the wild. #36 by contrast is - at least in the case of people subscribing to the rest of the manifesto - observed not nearly often enough, chiz chiz!