Libertarian Paradise

[stewstewstewdio.livejournal.com]

Beloved friends and comrades... the national Libertarian Party is dead. - L. Neil Smith

Ron Paul, the voice of Libertarianism in America and costar of the movie Brüno, is being ignored by the American press. 

It was pretty much established in another post that the Libertarian model doesn't credibly exist in practice anywhere in the known universe.  This has to be frustrating to those that advocate the philosophy.  I don't think it would be any stretch to say that installing it in the United States would require more to be undone than to be done for it to work this century.  What it needs is a clean slate.  Ladies and gentlemen.  I give you.....Afghanistan.  Please consider the following:

• Ron Paul's followers believe he has what it takes to turn a country around
• Afghanistan has little government, little taxes, little health care and little, if any, regulation
• The free market is alive and well there.  Anything can be bought.  That includes the military, police and government officials
• There is already an insurgency started.
• Labor is cheap
• There are no restrictions on drugs
• There are no restrictions on guns
• The have an established national religion.  It's not Christianity.  It's Muslim.  The other brand.
• They have a Constitution, just like we do.
• They don't have a public madrassa system
• The only infrastructure to support is 1 paved road that runs through the country.
• They are sitting on about a trillion dollars of mineral deposits including lithium, which is a hot item for rechargeable batteries.  It is used to power electric and hybrid cars.
• The US will pay anything to have a democracy established there.
• There are no campaign funding restrictions
• The tribal areas and the central government can be played against each other.
• The tribal areas can be called a grass roots organization.
• The central government can be manipulated under the premise of national defense.

This is an opportunity for the Libertarian Party to shine and put their principles into practice.  They have their leadership with Ron Paul and possibly his son Rand.  Being able to operate in the background will allow capitalism to sufficiently manipulate government to the point that government would be pretty much irrelevant.

This seems far superior to standing in a fantasy land of faeries and unicorns and taking pot shots at a working American economic system.  Until an actual Libertarian socioeconomic system is in place, Libertarians are pretty much on par with the 16 year old welfare mother.  They just rage against a system that doesn't work to their liking waiting for the world to happen to them instead of happening to the world.

Comments

[soliloquy76.livejournal.com]

They're already planning to build libertarian islands in international waters:

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/silicon-valley-billionaire-funding-creation-artificial-libertarian-islands-140840896.html

Should be an interesting experiment. When it ultimately fails, likely due to invasion or a Lord of the Flies scenario, maybe we can have one less fly buzzing in the ear of American politics.

[stewstewstewdio.livejournal.com]

Should be an interesting experiment.

It should be interesting to say the least. That is really the gist of the whole post. Until a measurable model of libertarianism is created and its purity is sustained for some time, its credibility is going to be in question.

Even a theory needs to have the ability to be measured, be independently reproduced and observable.

[yahvah.livejournal.com]

Hasn't a "Libertarian socioeconomic system" existed in an active state previously to some extent? Isn't that what Ron Paul means by "going back to the constitution"? The biggest flaw in your position is it ignores a constitution with an intended purpose of protecting liberty and prosperity. If there were people calling for the constitution's spirit and letter to be obeyed instead of brushing it off or making illogical, specious arguments, then we'd have our liberty and all your assertions of corruption reigning supreme would have no merit. Like the U.S. Attorney's arguments that alternate, precious-metal-based currency advocates are domestic terrorists, you have to sustain your position that you're providing a system resulting in prosperity. The only reasonable level of prosperity you can sustain is how relative it is compared to less fortunate nations.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

No, no: you want the Middle Ages, after the collapse of the Carolingians to the rise of the Habsburgs. It's libertarianism in a perfect fashion, with the feudal lords entrepeneurs who ran everything and there being no government to restrain them.

[yahvah.livejournal.com]

What a pile of bullshit.

[stewstewstewdio.livejournal.com]

Hasn't a "Libertarian socioeconomic system" existed in an active state previously to some extent?

In a word, no. The system that Ron Paul is talking about is pretty much cherry picked. There has always been government subsidy and protection of the economy.

The only reasonable level of prosperity you can sustain is how relative it is compared to less fortunate nations.

Which is thanks to the current American model of the economy.

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

Seriously. We're probably less protectionist in trade policies, at least, now than we have ever been at any point in our history. But apparently we need to go back to the olden days of the free market, when we carried out trade wars with all comers through use and abuse of the tariff.

I remember those days.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

People were perfectly free to own other people.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

On the contrary we did see libertarianism allowed to flower for quite some time. We call it the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Ages and they were a nasty, vicious anarchistic time of savage puritanical extremism mixed with a complete privatization of everything that arose from the collapse of the Carolingian Empire. An age of more than sufficient faith to warm the hearts of modern theocratic libertarians and with no public sector whatsoever. Not coincidentally it looks like an ass-backwards mire of poverty, chaos, and violence relative to the Roman Empire and contemporary Europe. And this, mind, is relative to a Roman Empire that used civil war to change out emperors on a regular basis.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

You realize that any medievalist who reads this will fall off his chair laughing, right? I mean, this entire set of beliefs was rejected 50 years ago, if not more.

Anarchistic? Puritanical? Which is it? You can't really have it both ways. Either is was a no holds barred free for all orgy of rape, mayhem and chaos or it was a straight laced theocratic dictatorship with draconian punishments for those who fell out of line.

Libertarianism? Privatization? No public sector? These concepts have no basis in medieval culture. You'll start talking about capitalism and the proletariat next and I'll have to blow milk out of my nose.

Ass-backward? Compared to what? When? We are talking about a thousand years of history spread over a continent. At different times and in different places you could find any sort of evidence to support any theory you wish. Romans and Greeks used to decide major policies based on the mutterings of a priestess high on fumes, the color of an animal's liver or the way birds flew across the sky. All you are proving is that human nature is generally unpleasant and often prizes ignorance. Congratulations, Capt. Obvious, do you want me to show you a dozen ways we are no better?

Chaotic? Relative to the Roman Empire? Which Roman Empire? The year of the Four Emperors?? The year of the Five Emperors? The year of the Six Emperors? Relative to contemporary Europe? Which contemporary Europe? The one with collapsing currency markets and resurgent fascism? The one of 1914-1945? Or the garden party that was The 30 Years War?

Give me a break with your unrelenting bullshit.

[jerseycajun.livejournal.com]

Thank you for saying this because it saves me having to.

It's sadly all to easy to read history in a way that ends up confirming bias and reinforcing biases rather than to take the more difficult but honest step in realizing that history is a lot more dependent upon the vast uncounted circumstances of a specific time than any specific system or train of thought. There's simply too much going on that factors into the way society is to draw these simplistic conclusions.

But our minds tend to enjoy simplicity like a drug, and it's always more difficult going through the withdrawal that comes from recognizing complexity than it is to continue in self-righteous bliss.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Why are anarchy and puritanism necessarily contradictory? Puritanism historically touched off a massive civil war that put England into anarchy and military dictatorship, it was no recipe for stability. The post-Carolingian states and societies were anarchistic but with a puritan brand of it that was opposed to the "hedonistic" type of existence the backwards, poor Carolingian state had created.

The concept of a public sector *did* exist in the Carolingian and Roman Empires, it was not referred to by that specific term and the existence of it was rejected in feudalism partially because states no longer existed to support libraries, armies, doles for the urban poor....

The Carolingian Empire was ass-backwards relative to the Ummayyad and Abbasid Caliphates which were themselves ass-backwards relative to any of the Chinese dynasties. Sure, the Roman Empire depended on the legions but the Carolingians were barely able to find literate officials and their empire disintegrated extremely rapidly due to inheritance into a mess of warlords and brawling clerics. At its territorial height Roman civilization seems a primitive version of modern times, at the height of the Carolingian Empire it seems a pale, sad ghost of the worst parts of Roman society.

Medieval Europe was chaotic because in the wake of more foreign invasions and the collapse of an empire you had a situation unparalleled until the Russian Civil War of 1917-22. There was no recognized order, there were repeated invasions and attempts by lords and clerics to secure monopolies on power at the expense of what had been a pale ghost of the Roman Empire. The new order was a barebones version of the Roman Empire, the chaos succeeding the rise of the Medieval order left that barebones and ascetic order as the starting point and went downhill from there.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

That being said, I might ask why we're comparing libertarianism to a society devastated by 30 years of civil war? It's not exactly the best comparison that could be made given that Afghanistan has no real ideology or actual control here, where a realistic libertarian state would produce the inversion of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalinism without really that much Maoism or Leninism because libertarian ideology is suited to skip those steps and go straight to the Stalinist blend of totalitarianism with ultra-modern military ideas that self-destruct and recreate themselves.

If we are to speak of libertarianism there's been only one valid modern example: the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederate_States_of_America which was an inefficient and incompetent state that like the Communist ones did amassed great power despite what the ideology would theoretically incline itself toward.

Afghanistan's not that libertarian and the region's a core of Perso-Islam which tends to embody the more state-inclined traditions of the Muslim world, not the anarchistic warlord trends like say, the Arabian Peninsula.

[devil-ad-vocate.livejournal.com]

IT'S A BIRD! IT'S A PLANE! IT'S...

Nice comparison with Afghanistan.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

Just as Afghanistan is sandwiched between the empires of Russia, China, India, and Iran, Redneckistan is sandwiched between the empires of Laidbackistan, Uptightistan, Canada, and Mexico.

Re: Nice comparison with Afghanistan.

[404.livejournal.com]

I thought Redneckistan was a state of mind.

Re: Nice comparison with Afghanistan.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

And Ron Paul is campaigning to capture the imagination of that state of mind.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

Canada is Soviet Kanukistan and mexico is cervezistan.


A large part of the corporation I work for is in juarez mexico, I can say that.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

Another name for the town could be El Punto because it is like a suburb of El Paso. (Or is that vice versa?)

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

Libertarianism is a juvenile belief that one could see being held by a young teenager who has no idea what the world was like before government made it illegal for grocers to sell poisoned food.

[terminator44.livejournal.com]

Yes, but in exchange we got the War on Drugs.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of how towns without ordinances banning people spitting on the sidewalk are routinely covered in rivers of spit because people will do bad things unless it's illegal.

Lay off the hyperbole. It's a juvenile tactic that teenagers do when they latch onto a belief that is unreasonable and can't tolerate or comprehend anything else.