The Daily Owl, Ep. 19: The Impracticality of "Pragmatic" Libertarianism
There is a dangerous tendency even in libertarian circles, to advocate (if only subtly, implicitly) "ends justify means" collectivist thinking.
Some prominent individuals here on Steemit doing this now are @lukestokes and @adamkokesh, among many others.
In this video I explain why "pragmatic" libertarianism/anarchy is neither pragmatic, ethical, or logical.
Join me in the live chat to share your thoughts.
~KafkA
Graham Smith is a Voluntaryist activist, creator, and peaceful parent residing in Niigata City, Japan. Graham runs the "Voluntary Japan" online initiative with a presence here on Steem, as well as DLive and Twitter. (Hit me up so I can stop talking about myself in the third person!)
My live stream is at DLive
So I watched this last night and was thinking about it while doing some chores today. Allow me to give you a hypothetical if I may.
So a political system that violates even one person is unacceptable. By this regard, if you had a button you could press to somehow destroy all government and bring about Ancaptopia, would you press it? Today, there are people that are dependent or owed things by the government; people that legitimately could not pay rent without a welfare check or veterans who are attending college on a GI Bill scholarship. To press that button would create fewer victims in the form of taxpayers, but those people dependent on government would end up victimized. Could you justify it to yourself to press that button anyway?
(I'm pretty confident that I'd just press it, personally.)
Thanks for the feedback, it means a lot to me.
I’m glad you’ve correctly labeled that question as a hypothetical, and I’d go a step further and say it’s an impossible/extremely unrealistic scenario (I know you know this, but want to make sure I lay the right foundation for this comment). As such, it presents a similar moral conundrum as the “railroad switch” moral dilemma, where one must choose to save 5 adults, or one child, by either flipping (or not flipping) a switch by a railroad track.
I guess I’d know what to do in that moment. That said, the state is illegitimate. Built on theft. However, it is none of my personal business really, deciding who is owed (or more importantly, not owed) what, as we have all been stolen from to “pay in” to the system. How can I blame someone for getting some of that extorted money back through “benefits”?
For me, the simple and reality-based, objective answer is this:
In order for minimal violent conflict to be achieved in any society, there must be a universalizable property norm which holds as uncompromisable the individual self-ownership of each and every individual, and by extension, the natural law right to secure property/resources.
Insofar as a society of group of individual market actors can achieve this without systematically violating anyone (basing policy and rules only on natural law property norms), it should be done. People will certainly argue, and debate, and this is a natural part of civilized human interaction. There would certainly be a process to it. A working out of “kinks,” and to be sure, no society would ever be “perfect,” because “perfect” isn’t a “thing.”
However, this process is entirely different than top-down, authoritarian central planning, which is being advocated by @adamkokesh and other political crusaders. Their blind zeal for this type of centralized control reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of basic anarchist principle, and/or a willing ignorance and will to gain illegitimate (in view of property) influence and power.
So in other words, you wouldn't push the button, since you pushing it would be you acting as a central planner and thus a violation of your principles against that concept. Is that a fair summation?
I don't know man. It is an entirely unrealistic scenario that could never happen in this reality. I might push it, I might not. It doesn't matter because it will never happen, is what I am saying.
If you could tell me what specifically would be ended, it might be easier to answer. I am honestly not trying to be evasive here. Perhaps I just need to think about it a little more.
Would it just erase all all Federal policy, law, procedure, authority, and jobs?
Hey will you be streaming on Dtube now with the new site update or will you stick with Dlive?
They do live streaming now? I haven’t heard about the update, but don’t videos vanish from DLive after a set amount of time? Maybe I’m wrong there. That and really poor playback/uploading was kind of why I switched.
Yeah. It's called DTV. They also got DTalk (Decentralized Messaging that's off chain using Gun) They now serve videos through the video.dtube.top domain and no longer serve it through IPFS although it is still saved there. They are using Ceph as an enterprise data solution now. They have also made an apology for uploading issues so I think it might be better now. You can check out the update info here
Great Post 😆
Good game thanksh