Saturday, April 9, 2016

Libertarianism is a White Nerd Thing

This is from The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker (H/T to Ex-Army).

First, open borders libertarians/anarchists have no sense whatsoever. Which means they have no understanding whatsoever of human nature, and therefore put theory above fact.


"When law enforcement vanishes, all manner of violence breaks out: looting, settling old scores, ethnic cleansing, and petty warfare among gangs, warlords and mafias. This was obvious in the remnants of Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, and parts of Africa in the 1990s, but can also happen in countries with a long tradition of civility. As a young teenager in proudly peaceable Canada during the romantic 1960s, I was a true believer in Bakunin’s anarchism. I laughed off my parents’ argument that if the government ever laid down its arms all hell would break loose. Our competing predictions were put to the test at 8:00 A.M. on October 17, 1969, when the Montreal police went on strike. By 11:20 A.M. the first bank was robbed. By noon most downtown stores had closed because of looting. Within a few more hours, taxi drivers burned down the garage of a limousine service that had competed with them for airport customers, a rooftop sniper killed a provincial police officer, rioters broke into several hotels and restaurants, and a doctor slew a burglar in his suburban home. By the end of the day, six banks had been robbed, a hundred shops had been looted, twelve fires had been set, forty carloads of storefront glass had been broken, and three million dollars in property damage had been inflicted, before city authorities had to call in the army and, of course, the Mounties to restore order. This decisive empirical test left my politics in tatters (and offered a foretaste of life as a scientist)."

5 comments:

sth_txs said...

I'm for extremely limited government. Though there can never really be such a thing as pure anarchism either since there would still be some rules to follow and be enforced by somebody.

The publik skools do a poor job of teaching anything resembling independent thought. Why did I never hear of Lysander Spooner? Or how voting is just another slave's suggestion box?

Jim Johnson said...

All crooks agree that the government should get off their backs.

kurt9 said...

Prominent libertarians such as Frederick Hayek believed in the necessity of government and law enforcement. He outlines the necessary minimum standard in his book "Road to Serfdom". I highly recommend it if you have not read it. Another well-known libertarian, Milton Friedman, said you have a social-welfare system or you can have immigration. But you cannot have both.
The point that many libertarians are making is that we have far more government regulation and control over our lives than Hayek's minimal standard. Not all of us libertarians are dreamy anarchist types.

Perhaps the name "libertarian" needs to be changed. Advocates of limited government (defined by Hayek's "Road to Serfdom") should call themselves "minimalists" instead.

Glen Filthie said...

Libertarianism and non-aggression principles only work if everybody plays by the rules. As we can see by our prisons we know that without proper enforcement and deterrence ... Most people won't!

Most libertarians I know are obnoxious, sanctimonious pot heads or greasy hicks that can blather about freedom... But have no concept of personal responsibility.

Unknown said...

Since minimal government works best, the more deluded think the no government works best of all. The few societies that had almost no government had societies full of thieves and murderers. Take a look at ancient Iceland and the Reivers of Scotland and northern England. Both by the way, were settled by my ancestors.