All Episodes
Previous Next
July 9, 2014 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:03:39
2743 The Limits of Libertarianism - Rebutted!
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Hi everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Main Radio.
Hope you're doing well.
I'm going to critique an article from Salon called Why I Left Libertarianism, an Ethical Critique of a Limited Ideology.
And this is from a fellow named Will Moyer, who I actually know.
He's been to my house, and I've met him a bunch of times.
Nice fellow, but as Aristotle said in his critique of Plato's forms, Socrates taught us to value our friends, but to value the truth even more.
And so he starts off by saying, All right.
That's a whole lot of I's when you're attempting to criticize an ideology.
You know, the essence of the word ideology is not the first letter.
If you wish to criticize a belief system, then the first thing you do is not talk about yourself and what happened when you were 18 and what kind of cupcakes you like to put on your head, but you begin by defining your terms and finding out where the proposition or the argument fails in a consistent application of its terms or where those terms are self-contradictory.
So, anyway, he talks a lot about he registered to vote.
He never voted for this.
He said he moved further and further to what I consider true libertarianism, eschewing the capital L in politics in general.
I read Rand and Rothbard and Mises, scoured countless articles, and listened to hundreds of podcasts.
Now, well, I'm sure you'll hear this at some point.
Maybe a little shout-out to the old Freedom Aid Radio.
A little shout-out to the old Stephbot.
I know that it was hugely influential, you know, you traveled to come and see me and all that, so interesting that this is not at all present, particularly based on where your argument goes.
So he goes to anarchism was libertarianism fully realized, political libertarianism was a deformation of the ideology only attracted to those who value the sentiments of libertarianism but weren't principled enough to carry it to its logical and moral conclusions.
So, for those who don't know, so there's the non-aggression principle and a respect for property rights.
You can't have the non-aggression principle without a respect for property rights because the first thing that you own is your own body, which other people may not trespass upon with poisons, knives, penises, you name it.
And so because you own yourself, you own the effects of your actions, so the non-aggression principle and respect for property rights is the foundation, I argue, for a rational, moral, and philosophical system, which is generally called anarchism as a result of the propaganda bots who wish to scare you away from the truth with the bitter imaginary thorns of endless propaganda.
So, yeah, he says...
So I stopped calling myself a libertarian, preferring anarchist when labels were necessary.
So, again, this is all very gooey, right?
A label sounds like, well, look, I believe, I feel, I experience, I wave my way like a smoky snake through the sinew of experience, like a fog drifting through a holly bush hedge, and so don't put labels on me, man!
Don't label me!
Something's true or it's false.
You make a valid argument or an invalid argument.
Your argument is rational and supported by evidence or irrational and rejected by evidence in general.
And so labels is one of those words that, hey man, don't label me.
Don't ask me to come to any conclusions.
Don't ask me to hold to any position that I won't reject if it's inconvenient.
So, I still consider most of my beliefs to technically fall under the umbrella of libertarianism.
Now, you see, we're, you know, quite a ways into the article, and There's no argument that has been made yet.
No definitions.
The word truth and falsehood, valid or invalid, empirical or non-empirical, none of these terms have been used.
So, basically, Will looks like somebody who's in one of those, you know, those Japanese game shows where this Tetris-style shape comes rocketing down at you and you have to contort yourself.
It's like, well, this fit.
I responded to this.
You know, I mean, where's the valid or invalid arguments that are going on?
So this essay is a result of an evolution in my thinking, one which has led me further from right libertarianism and strict anarcho-capitalism towards what could be described as radical leftist anarchism, or maybe even libertarian socialism.
I'm always concerned, deeply concerned, and my concern shouldn't mean anything to you.
I'm just telling you what I feel and why.
I'm deeply concerned when people talk about things like an evolution in my thinking which has led me further from this and toward what could be described.
It's all very hazy.
And using the word evolution is simply an argument.
By adjective, which is to say, my thinking has evolved.
It's like, well, that is basically to say it's automatically better.
Like, what was former was primitive.
What is now is better.
Like, my belief originally was a World War I giant phone which were used in the trenches to call in mortar strikes.
Now it is a Galaxy 5.
And so it's an evolution.
It's just an automatic way of phrasing something is better without actually having to make any arguments.
I'm going to make broad generalizations.
It's hard to criticize a body of thought like libertarianism.
There is no one set of definition of what a libertarian is or what they believe.
So for any criticisms there will be countless exceptions.
You can easily play the no true Scotsman game with everything that follows.
A no true Scotsman is a logical fallacy where you say, a Scotsman is a person who lives in Scotland.
Okay, well, I know a person who lives in Scotland who is not Scottish, doesn't claim to be Scottish, has a different nationality.
Okay, well, and you just keep changing the definition of Scotsman until basically you end up with maybe one person or something like that.
So you just keep moving the goalposts.
Yes, many libertarians do think X, but they're not really libertarians.
Therefore, I ask that you view my points as criticisms of general themes and attributes I found in libertarian thought.
Now that is not even remotely philosophical.
Well, come on.
I mean, you can do better than that.
I'm sure you can.
So this would be like me criticizing Marxism and saying, well, look, Marxists believe a lot of different things, so I'm going to make broad statements, but you'll always find people who disagree with something that some other Marxist says, so basically this is just fog.
This is not how you do an intellectual criticism.
The way you do an intellectual criticism is not blur it out by pumping sort of Metallica-style concert fog into a general crowd of ideas, but what you do is you pick someone who is making a specific argument.
And then you rebut that argument.
So I'm not taking this article and saying, well, there are a lot of leftist anarchists and leftist socialists who believe X, Y, and Z, so I'm going to make these broad general statements which you'll find exceptions to.
But that's not making.
Like in the realm of physics, if you want to rebut someone's argument, or in mathematics, or even in logic for that matter, if you want to rebut someone's argument, find their argument and rebut it.
But don't say, well, you know, physicists believe a lot of different things and some people accept this and some people reject that and so on.
And then say, well, I'm going to make broad and general statements about physics.
Like, that's not how you do a critique.
Right?
It's like saying, there are a lot of movies.
I'm going to do a general critique of movies as a whole, and some movies are good, and some movies are bad, and some movies have robots, and some movies don't have robots.
And in some movies, Johnny Depp seems alive, and then there's Transcendence.
And so there's, you know, that's not how you do a movie review.
You find a movie, and anyway, I think you understand.
All right, let's move on.
Okay, the limits of libertarianism begin with ethics.
Oh, yes!
Okay, so we're what, the third or almost halfway through the article and we're getting to some arguments.
Libertarians confine their moral reasoning to something called a legal or political ethic.
All right, again, confined is an automatic word.
It's neurolinguistic programming, which says, you know, I guess it's like truncated, right?
Your frame of reference is truncated because it should be bigger.
So, confined means, look, there's something that's bigger, right?
I mean, the cat likes to roam around, but we confine it in a tiny travel box, right?
So, you automatically are using a sort of language set or a set of...
of ideas that are negative without actually making an argument.
This ethic, based on property rights and the non-aggression principle, is the cornerstone of libertarian morality.
But it is an intentionally limited moral framework.
Well, I guess limited is different from confined.
So he says, if you accept the premises of self-ownership and property rights, it is a logically consistent and powerful framework.
See, This is not aesthetics, for heaven's sakes.
Well, this is not...
Well, you know, if you accept that going to San Francisco is a good idea, then here's how you can get there.
This is not...
If you accept that 2 and 2 make 4, then here's how you would proceed in your mathematical analysis.
If you accept the existence of gravity, then here's how you would construct a building.
It's like, there's no...
The premises are valid or invalid, right?
Now, there are premises that are valid because, you know, they have empirical evidence, like objects fall to earth at 9.8 meters per second per second, gases expand when heated, and so on, right?
This you can test for.
There are things which you can reason, right?
All men are mortal, Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal.
And there are other things which you can't argue against without violating the principle.
So I can't argue against self-ownership without exercising self-ownership, ownership over my voice, in this case my camera, the microphone.
So I can't argue against self-ownership without exercising self-ownership and therefore the argument fails the moment I utter my I can't argue against property rights if I argue against someone who's made an argument and I say your argument is invalid.
Well, I've said that they're responsible for their argument.
The argument is a form of property that they have created as I'm doing in this.
I can't argue against property rights without saying this is Will's article.
Will wrote this article.
Will is responsible for this article.
Will created this article.
This article is an effect of Will's exercise of self-ownership, right?
His typing, his submission, his thoughts, and so on, right?
His keyboard, his computer, whatever he did, however he did it.
So, what he's saying is that the choice of reality is an aesthetic choice, right?
If you accept that the sun is the center of the solar system, then the retrograde motion of Mars makes a lot more sense.
If you think, or if you accept that Earth is the center of the solar system, then the Ptolemaic system of Astronomy makes a whole lot more sense, but this is not an if you accept, right?
You cannot argue against self-ownership and property rights without exercising self-ownership and property rights, which is exactly the case, exactly the same case as me mailing you a letter arguing that letters never get delivered.
Well, if I'm mailing you a letter, I have to accept that letters are at least sometimes delivered.
And if you receive the letter with my argument that says letters never get delivered, then you can just rebut it by holding up the letter and saying, well, wait a minute, you're saying letters never get delivered.
You mailed me a letter, so you only would have mailed me the letter on the assumption that mail at least sometimes gets delivered.
So your argument that mail never gets delivered, which you had delivered to me in a letter, is invalid.
So he says, but if you allow yourself to have wider moral sensibilities...
The framework is woefully inadequate, if not outright grotesque in certain cases.
Now again, these are all just words that describe If you accept this, okay, it makes sense if you accept it.
If you accept that Zeus is our lord and master, then going to the Zeus temple makes perfect sense.
But if you allow yourself, if you allow your mind to expand, have wider moral sensibilities, what the hell does wider have to do with philosophy?
I mean, you know, if you accept that two and two make four, yeah, okay, then math can, you know, be a pretty useful framework in that situation.
But if you allow yourself to have wider mathematical sensibilities and you say that two and two sometimes can make a unicorn and sometimes it can make sweet, sweet love, okay, well, then you've just abandoned mathematics and crawled up your own ass, right?
All right, take Rothbard on parental obligations to children.
And then he writes about how parents may not murder or mutilate their children Parents should have the legal right not to feed the child, i.e.
allow it to die.
The law, therefore, may not properly compel the parent to feed the child or keep it alive.
Yeah, absolutely.
That is a horrible, horrible moral argument.
That is rational, irrational.
It's anti-life.
Basically, it's easy to rebut.
So if you have a child, you have created a prisoner in your own home.
If I take a human being prisoner and lock that human being in my basement, and I do not feed that human being, then I am responsible for murder.
I think we can all understand that.
I'm not obligated to feed my neighbor.
I want to, and I probably would, but I'm not morally obligated.
I can't be forced at gunpoint to feed my neighbor in a free society.
But if I lock that neighbor in my basement, then I must feed him because he has no other way of gaining sustenance.
And therefore, if he starves to death when I've got him locked in my basement, I'm responsible for both kidnapping, confinement, and for murder.
I think we can all understand that because we're not like four years old.
And so, given that a child is biologically imprisoned within the family because of the child, particularly as an infant, the dependent situation, so if If a parent allows a child to starve to death, then the parent is responsible for murder.
It's very easy to rebut.
And this was just terrible thinking and irrational and destructive thinking on the part of Murray Rothbard.
And, you know, guess what?
All thinkers who deal with a wide variety of topics and many thinkers who deal with a narrow variety of topics make mistakes, put out arguments that Are incorrect.
I've done it.
Other people have done it.
Everyone in the world will always put out arguments that are incorrect.
And this was a terrible and wrong and immoral argument that Murray Rothbard made around children.
I don't know if he ever rebutted it for himself.
I don't know if he ever changed his position on this.
This is a terrible argument.
And it has nothing to do with libertarianism as a whole.
It doesn't even have much to do with Murray Rothbard's arguments as a whole, right?
I mean, if I put out 10 scientific theories, hypotheses, you could say, if I put out 10 scientific hypotheses and one of them is incorrect, then that does not have any direct bearing on the truth value of the other hypotheses that I have put forward.
You can find radical inconsistencies in most thinkers.
Newton was an alchemist and a mystic, and lots of people who believe in the scientific method are also devout and fundamentalist religious people.
You examine the argument per its own merits.
So if the argument that Will is putting forward is something like this, Murray Rothbard made an irrational argument About children.
Therefore, libertarianism is false.
That is so irrational that it can only arise out of an emotional reaction to a particular topic.
It simply doesn't make any sense.
Literally, it's like saying, I was stung by a bee when I was seven, therefore I'm never going outside again.
So...
Yeah, a parent can starve their child to death.
We might find this morally reprehensible, as Rothbard surely did, but it's outside the purview of the political ethic.
Walter Block, another prominent libertarian theorist, has attempted to narrow the case where abandonment is permissible, no one is willing to homestead the abandoned baby, but rejects that the non-aggression principle applies to children.
Why?
Because children aren't full humans with all the same rights as adults.
They exist in a superposition between animals and humans, which means it's permissible to aggress against children.
That is, I consider, an entirely irrational argument that is made by libertarians.
And I agree.
Again, does that mean that Walter Bloch is incorrect about his theories of property rights or environmentalism or the non-aggression principle in its broader applications to society as a whole?
No, it simply means that these Newtons have an alchemical streak, right?
I mean, so they can come up with wonderful theories, as Newton did in Principia, about the physical world.
And then they can waste massive amounts of their time writing about alchemy.
But I don't know anyone who says, I've rejected The scientific method because Newton was an alchemist.
I mean, that didn't even remotely make any sense.
Now, one of the arguments that has been made against Will's position is to say, look, libertarianism really is only 40 or 50 years old, and therefore you can't expect it to have ironed out all the problems in the world.
Now, when you look at the scientific method, you could really argue Francis Bacon was writing about this in the early 17th century, so let's say sort of mid-17th century, 1650, 1660, what was the state of science relative to where it is in 2014?
Well, it was very primitive, and still most scientists believed a lot of entirely insane and irrational things by modern standards, but relative to medieval theologians and their view of science or even those who worshipped Aristotle's view And Aristotle had a lot of great things to say about the scientific method.
We would say that it was very primitive.
So the very early stages of a belief system is not how you would judge the entire belief system.
So would you say, like, would you respect the argument of someone who said, well, by 1660, Scientists still held a lot of really irrational ideas.
A lot of them believed in medieval humors.
A lot of them believed, I guess most of them believed, that the Earth was the center of the solar system.
A lot of them believed in life after death, and therefore science is invalid.
I mean, that wouldn't make any sense at all, right?
What you would say is, look, you've got this scientific method.
Let's keep applying it to areas that it has not yet been applied to, right?
I mean, so we've got this non-aggression principle.
So let's keep applying it to areas that it has not yet been applied to.
And let's make sure that we're consistent, right?
And that's what you do with a belief system.
So there are lots of people who are irrational.
This does not mean that we then...
Deny the value of rationality.
In fact, we only know that people are irrational because they are being inconsistent.
Both Rothbard and Block accept that some degree of child abuse either violates the non-aggression principle or delegitimizes parental ownership.
But what constitutes abuse represents a continuum problem for libertarians.
Some attacks on children are okay, but not too much.
It's a big gray area.
It's embarrassing that many libertarians have so little moral clarity on this issue.
Again, embarrassing is one of these words that doesn't have any philosophical validity.
Especially when compared to a website like Jezebel, which has no problem taking a hard stance on aggression against children.
And then he quotes from a piece criticizing a Kansas post-banking bill, says, could just as easily be directed at libertarians and their continuum problem.
Well, look, I mean, I've, for...
Nine years have been railing against the libertarians' lack of commitment to the protection of children and the extension of the non-aggression principle to children.
I have talked about how spanking violates the non-aggression principle.
I've just finished, though, have not yet published an article Rebutting this argument that children are not covered by the non-aggression principle.
So I've been working on it hard, and I've certainly made some progress in talking to libertarians about this.
And to the credit of libertarians, and I'm sure that I do not give them enough credit from time to time, given that I am sort of frustrated in the trenches from time to time.
It's sort of like when you're walking to a high mountain.
If you keep looking at the mountain, then you see, wow, this is a long way to go, right?
And if you look back to where you started, you realize you've come a long way.
So libertarians have been somewhat responsive.
Jeff Tucker, Steph Kinsella have thanked me for bringing this issue up and continuing to hammer it.
But we all know that when people have been traumatized, it is very difficult for them to be rational about that which has traumatized them.
And the vast majority of libertarians were spanked and probably quite a lot.
As children.
And so for libertarians who have been spanked a lot as children, for them to say, look, I'm going to be completely rational and objective about spanking, would be unrealistic.
So, given that we know the effects of trauma and trauma's capacity, in fact almost the commandment for trauma to interfere with the rational process of thinking, I think that we can understand that it is going to take time.
And to say that libertarianism should be rejected because libertarians are having a great deal of difficulty extending the non-aggression principle.
To children is not a valid argument.
You can say, look, libertarianism, a lot of libertarians are inconsistent in this area.
And it's a hugely important area, don't get me wrong.
But when all they do is stare at the state and big long-term patterns of history, looking at spanking is a very tough reorientation with a lot of emotional resistance to it.
So I have been...
I have been fighting this fight a lot longer than Will has, and it is frustrating for sure, but I have never said libertarianism as a whole is invalid because of the lack of commitment to the protection of children within libertarianism.
And of course a lot of libertarians remain Christian, and a lot of those Christian libertarians are fundamentalist Christians who are told by God to, you know, spare the rod, spoil the child, and if you hit your child he won't die, but if you don't bring him to Jesus he'll go to hell forever, and so on, right?
There is a religious aspect to libertarianism, not all, but to a lot of libertarianism, there is a religious aspect which is making it tough.
I think progress is being made, and that sounds condescending.
I just saw an article yesterday on Lou Rockwell by Dr.
Bloch and another writer talking about how wrong it is to circumcise, to mutilate the genitals of your children.
I think it's fantastic.
It's progress.
So, let's see here.
Of religion, he says, Rothbard says, there is no necessary connection between being for or against libertarianism and one's position on religion.
Libertarians believe that liberty is a natural right embedded in a natural law of what is proper for mankind, in accordance with man's nature.
Where this set of natural laws comes from, whether it is purely natural or originated by a creator, is an important ontological question, but it's irrelevant to social or political philosophy.
Well, Murray Rothbard, again, just know a little bit about the people that you're talking about.
Murray Rothbard was married to a Christian, who he, I believe, was an atheist, but he was married to a Christian woman, if memory serves me correct.
That's going to have an effect on his political beliefs.
It doesn't excuse it.
It doesn't mean that he's not being wrong about these things.
But where the set of natural laws come from, is an important ontological question but is irrelevant to social or political philosophy, I don't believe is true.
I mean, the question of the origins of ethics is essential to social or political philosophy.
So, again, he's quoting people who, like Murray Rothbard wrote, I don't know how many tens of thousands of pages on such a wide variety of topics.
But saying that I found something where he's incorrect or inconsistent, therefore libertarianism must be abandoned as a whole, again, doesn't make any sense.
You know, you can find recordings on the web of Brian May hitting the wrong guitar notes in a Queen concert.
That doesn't mean that a giant trapdoor opens him.
He goes into the brain slicer and is never seen from again.
People make mistakes.
People have emotional barriers.
People have emotional blocks.
But it doesn't mean we throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Granted, libertarianism as a body of thought doesn't have to comment on every social issue.
It can say nothing of race and gender and class.
It can be silenced on non-violent forms of hierarchy and inequality.
But then it stands incomplete as a social philosophy.
Well, I don't know.
Libertarianism has had a lot to say about race.
Libertarianism has had a fair amount to say about gender.
And class is a Marxist concept.
And given that libertarianism is anti-Marxist, the idea that That it would have a lot to say about class other than as a rebuttal to Marxism is sort of, you know, it's like saying Marxism doesn't do a lot to praise the entrepreneurial talents of free marketeers.
It's like, well, yeah, that's kind of the point, right?
So...
Many libertarians are actively hostile to those who step outside or attempt to expand the scope of moral reasoning.
Libertarians who are outspoken against aggression against children, take strong stances on religion, or analyze other social issues have faced resistance from others who prefer to cleave only to the foundations of true libertarianism.
Absolutely.
There's no question of that.
There is an aspect of libertarianism that dislikes the state as a competitor to God.
So there's certain aspects, and it's quite fundamental in lots of ways, in many areas of libertarianism.
Why do a lot of people homeschool?
Not because they're radically committed to children's freedom and independence, but because they don't like the secular values that are being taught in government schools.
The tension between religion and the state is age-old and certainly has exploded since the 19th century.
So for the last 150, 175 years, there's been a massive amount of tension between those who wish to have An invisible supernatural hierarchy and those who wish to have an invisible political hierarchy.
So those who are on the left tend to be big state and less religion.
Those who are on the right tend to be more religion and less state.
This is the traditional Republican Democrat bichromatic rainbow called modern American political thought.
And so this is, I mean, we understand this, right?
I mean, so a lot of people who were sons of priests and rabbis in the 19th century ended up promoting communism and being against religion because they kind of got which way the wind was blowing, that religion was fading, and rather than actually become productive and work for a living in a voluntary system,
they wanted to create a new religion called communism or socialism or progressivism wherein they could be in charge And provide people the promise of the promised land in the future, the withered away post-Marxist, post-dictatorship, a classless society and so on.
They could offer people, you know, the good and evil, the good and evil dichotomy, the class conflict, which is the same as the conflict between believers and heathens or God and Satan to create this eschatological war of all against all, ultimate combat, ninja planet of endless combat.
And they simply switched their hierarchies from God to state.
And this is, I think, fairly well understood by anybody who studied a good deal of 19th century thought.
Oh yes, wouldn't you love to sit next to me at a dinner party?
Yawn, I'll put the potatoes in.
Sure, I understand that.
A lot of people who are libertarians dislike the secular state interfering with their religious beliefs and their capacity to indoctrinate their children into religion.
I understand that.
It has no bearing on their arguments with regards to the non-aggression principle.
I have never rejected a thinker because he happens to be Christian.
I try to look at a thinker's arguments and then view those arguments in isolation from the rest of their belief system.
Because it is a logical fallacy to reject someone's rational argument because they are irrational in some other area.
Because then basically you can reject everyone's beliefs.
because everyone is irrational in some area, in some manner, at some point in their life.
So, within the libertarian ethical framework, choice is binary.
Either something was consented to voluntarily or it was not.
This conception of consent marks the line between good and evil.
On one side of the line are socially acceptable behaviors and on the other side are impermissible behaviors.
Theft, rape, murder and fraud all lie on the non-consensual side and therefore are not good.
The other side includes all forms of voluntary human interaction, which again, because we're limited to a political ethic, we can't really say much about.
It's all fine.
But there is some gray on the good side.
Is a rich CEO really in the same ethical position as a poor Chinese factory worker?
In the libertarian view, yes.
Absolutely untrue.
Absolutely untrue.
Well, come on.
Work a little harder than that.
So, the rich CEO in the modern economy, which is far more statist...
Let's just talk about America, and then we'll talk about China.
The modern economy is far more statist than free market at the moment.
So when you're talking about a rich CEO, what you're talking about is somebody who became rich probably as a result of government favoritism, probably as a result of participation in the military-industrial complex, probably as a result of providing goods and services to the government which are paid for through the taxpayers and therefore involuntarily,
probably as a result of having tariff walls placed against competitors as a result of political donations, probably because Probably because they're taking advantage of the patent and copyright system, which is, let's just say, not going to be even remotely close to what it is in a truly free society as it is now.
They are taking advantage of political and economic breaks associated with corporatism, such as not being Criminally responsible for the actions of the corporation in most situations, and being able to take profits out of the corporation when the corporation makes money, but not having to return those profits when the corporation loses money.
So, the rich CEO has nothing to do with libertarianism.
A poor Chinese factory worker.
Oh my god, where do you even begin?
Now, Will, I think, currently lives in China, so obviously he's Not so blind as to not understand that a poor Chinese factory worker is not exactly laboring under an excess of the free market.
One of the things that you can probably tell about the Chinese government's relationship to the free market is that the Chinese government is communist.
They actually forbid you to have more than one child.
How free market does that sound?
Do they have control over the currency, just as the Federal Reserve does in America?
Why, yes, they do!
And so the idea that the Chinese factory worker is somehow representative of a libertarianism, pure respect for property rights, non-initiation of force, state and society, free market, is so delusory that it can only be considered to be highly dishonest and manipulative.
The idea that you can say rich CEO as if That rich CEO is somehow, in the modern world, a product of a completely free market is, again, completely mad.
So the rich CEO is not in the same ethical position as a poor Chinese factory worker.
Of course not, because the rich CEO has access to politicians, can sponsor favorable legislation, and the poor Chinese factory worker is laboring under a communist government.
Neither of these are free market situations.
They're entirely anti-free market situations.
So saying that this is somehow equal from a libertarian view is...
I mean, boy, if you've been studying libertarianism for 10 years, Will, and you somehow think that this is a libertarian situation, I don't even know what to say.
I don't even know what to say.
It's like me getting a PhD in physics and then saying, but remember that all the atoms are driven by tiny bicycles ridden by invisible elves.
It's like, I think that you, I'd like to see that piece of paper that you claim to have.
But choice isn't binary, it's a spectrum.
There's a gradient that we can use to measure how constrained a choice really is.
On one end is outright force, on the other is pure, unconstrained freedom.
But in between is a fuzzy gray area where economic, psychological, cultural, biological, and social forces are leaning on human decision-making.
Right.
Exactly.
So, if you accept that, and obviously you do because it's an argument you're making, then You have to apply this to libertarianism as well.
Libertarianism is a spectrum as well, and there's lots of fuzzy areas where there's economic, psychological, cultural, biological, and social forces leading on human decision-making, which is why libertarians who were spanked have trouble evaluating spanking objectively.
I get that.
So why would you say, well, we need to have a more nuanced view, but I'm rejecting libertarianism.
Anyway.
So, yeah, choice is a spectrum.
But libertarianism is not concerned with which job should I take.
Libertarianism is concerned with should you be forced to take a job.
Now that's kind of binary.
Now you can say, well, you are forced to take a job if you have no money.
But that's not libertarianism.
That's reality.
Saying that people need to eat and that food requires labor to produce is to indict biology and reality, not to indict libertarianism.
Most libertarians would admit that this spectrum exists, but there is still a strong sentiment within libertarianism that any non-coercive relationship is good.
And within the political ethic, even if it isn't, quote, good, it's still permissible.
That's why you see libertarians defending sweatshops.
A poor Chinese factory worker is far more constrained than a rich white businessman.
Agreed.
Of course.
His range of possible options is tiny in comparison.
He is less free.
Absolutely.
The same may be true depending on your race, gender, class, or sexual orientation.
The way you were treated growing up by your parents, teachers, or peers may contribute.
Absolutely.
Of course.
There's no radical egalitarianism within libertarianism.
Equal under the law, equal under ethics is what counts.
Nobody assumes that everyone is born with a beautiful singing voice or a full head of hair or the exact same propensity to good teeth or bad teeth or the same height or with no illnesses.
Of course these things are natural and inevitable.
And fundamentally, libertarianism as an ethical philosophy is not concerned with how tall you're going to be, but whether you can initiate the use of force against other human beings.
All right.
All of these deficiencies of libertarianism result in one thing, a limited vision for the future.
Well, that doesn't sound like one thing.
That sounds like one giant ass cloud.
Libertarians want a world without a state.
No.
No, no, no, no, no.
Libertarians want a world without the initiation of force and with a respect for property rights.
Saying that libertarians want a world without the state is like saying that those against child abuse don't want children hit on the head.
Children being hit on the head is one manifestation of child abuse of which there are many others, including neglect and verbal abuse and other forms of spanking and not getting medical attention to the child when necessary, not giving the child a good diet, not playing with and interacting with the child.
There's lots of forms of deficient parenting.
So it's true that libertarians want a world without a state, but that is not even remotely the sum total of libertarianism, which as a principled set of beliefs has as its anti-statism one manifestation of being against violations of the non-aggression principle.
Beyond that, the philosophy says little about the shape of human culture.
It should be based on property rights and non-aggression.
How can we combat racism?
Ah.
So, last year I was diagnosed with cancer and went through treatment.
I did not say to my oncologist, listen, when you've cured my cancer, what do you have to say about what kind of car I should buy?
Listen, after you've cured my cancer, what should I do with the rest of my life?
After you've cured my cancer, what position should I take on the prevalence of rape in South Africa?
She would say, my job is to cure your cancer.
Now, once your cancer is cured, then my job is to some degree done.
I mean, other than follow-ups.
What you do with your life after I cure your cancer is not a matter for an oncologist.
It may be a matter for friendship and self-reflection and possibly therapists or psychologists.
It may be a matter of journaling.
It may be a matter of whatever, right?
But there is a cancer in the world called the initiation of force.
Libertarianism is the oncologist to that cancer.
We are trying to oppose the initiation of force around the world.
Now, we cannot possibly live long enough to see the end of that battle.
I don't care if you're one minute old at the moment.
Hi, welcome to the world.
Sorry about the national debt.
We will not live long enough.
To deal with that.
And the degree to which my oncologist sits down with me and starts talking about my life as a whole and how I might combat racism after my cancer is cured is the degree to which she's just not curing other people of their cancer.
She is not being a good doctor if she's talking to me about my windy personal narratives and how I might go about combating sexism and racism.
She's actually, her job is to cure cancer.
Libertarianism's job is to cure violence.
And I think given that the non-aggression principle is the foundation, and we can't live long enough to spread the non-aggression principle to everywhere that it needs to be.
So we have more than enough cancer patients as oncologists.
We have more demand than we have as supply, as libertarians.
There's more demand for the cure for violence than we can possibly treat in our lifetimes.
So saying that my oncologist is a bad doctor because she's not sitting down and having three-hour conversations with me, About how I might aid virtue in Pakistan is...
What the hell does that have to do with curing cancer?
It doesn't.
We're aiming to cure violence out of the human condition, which means pushing the non-aggression principle as far as it can go, down to childhood, out to races, out to genders, as far as it can go geographically, out into space, on the Halibut Comet, if it ever comes back.
So how can we combat racism?
Well, there's enough coercion involved in racism at the moment from the state and from private individuals that we can work a heck of a lot and for the rest of our lives full-time if we want to combat coercive-based racism.
What is the place of hierarchies in society, whether it's families or workplace or financial classes?
Property rights and non-aggression.
What role, if any, should religion and superstition play in society?
Property rights and non-aggression.
So, basically, imagine me having this conversation with my oncologist.
How can I combat racism?
Doctor?
Well, first we need to cure your cancer.
What?
How should human beings approach sexuality and gender?
Well, again, first we need to really cure you of cancer.
What is the place of hierarchies in society, whether it's families or workplaces or financial classes?
Listen, Steph, we really, really need to cure you of your cancer.
What role, if any, should religion and superstition play in society?
You're really not getting it.
First we cure your cancer.
Then we can talk about all these things.
But not with me, because my job is to cure the next person who's got cancer.
So, Will says, I recognize that a consistently applied libertarian ethic would make the world a much better place than it currently is.
And I recognize that I'm essentially criticizing libertarianism for only wanting to take down the greatest threat to human flourishing on the planet.
In a world full of people who defend the status quo and apologize for power, those with radical ideas deserve less criticism.
But for libertarians who see the dismantling of the state as the ultimate goal, I have to disagree.
It is not enough!
Okay, so it is the greatest evil in the world, as Will himself says, It is the greatest threat to human flourishing, whatever that means.
It's the greatest evil in the world.
Libertarians are dedicated to diminishing its power or eliminating that greatest evil.
That's not enough for Will Moyer, right?
There's not enough that we can end national debt and the inflation that drops the poor and the controls of the economy that continue to lock the poor in the underclasses and get rid of government schools which indoctrinate and stupefy people on a regular basis and get rid of the intergenerational predation of national debts and allow for the free movement of human beings across the planet in a stateless society.
But for Will Moyer, that is like, that's it?
That's all you're doing?
Ending war?
Ending theft?
Ending the human zoos called countries?
Come on!
Where's your ambition?
Well, I guess it's not megalomaniacal, I suppose.
That would be useful.
While eliminating the state as a massive multi-generational project, it is in many ways only the first step.
Okay, so Will is leaving libertarianism because Buck Rogers in the 25th century might be mildly racist.
Alright, you focus on curing Buck Rogers of his mild racism, we'll take on those who violate the non-aggression principle in the here and now.
And I guess we'll see who does the most good in a tangible, measurable way.
And if libertarians think they can dust off their hands and head home just because the state is in ashes, they're wrong!
The state is the most obvious and brutal source of power and hierarchy, but it's far from the only one.
The state is a giant engine for deforming human culture.
And what's left over once it's smashed isn't a foregone conclusion.
It will be up to humans to reshape and remake culture and society in the way that suits us best.
All right.
This will have to include examinations of race, class, gender, sexuality, relationships, religion, social institutions and traditions in the absence of the state apparatus.
It will have to include disassembling other forms of hierarchy, both violent and non-violent.
Right.
So we're working on the greatest evil...
Which is the state.
Again, this is Will's argument.
So libertarians are working assiduously on the greatest evil.
But once that evil is removed hundreds of years from now, there are other conversations that people will have to have that Will Moyer, unless he's actually an immortal Highlander, will have no part in whatsoever.
He will not be talking with Buck Rogers about the prevalence of sexism in the 25th century.
Not gonna happen.
So basically he's saying, well, I don't want to actually fight against tangible evils in the here and now.
I'm going to windbag myself as a chair-sitting typist about what conversations might be like about gender relations in the year 2507.
That sounds like a doable plan, doesn't it?
Hey, you know, as a businessman, we really do need to make some money this year.
We need to pay our employees.
We need to satisfy our customers.
Will, what do you have to say?
I have prepared a 427-slide PowerPoint on what the economy might look like 450 years from now.
Will, you're fired!
If you think that's the important thing.
Now, the other thing which I find a bit specious in this I know Will has listened to hundreds of my podcasts.
He's been on my show.
We've had lots of conversations about this kind of stuff.
And I talk about the degree to which we're only going to get rid of the state in the long run if we focus on peaceful child-rearing and peaceful parenting and applying the non-aggression principle to children.
So what Will is doing is ignoring hundreds of hours of podcasts listening and hours of conversations he's had with me And he's saying, well, we're just going to get rid of the state and then we're going to have all these social problems like aggression against children and stuff like that.
But he's completely bypassing the arguments that I've made for years about we treat children well and everything else as a domino effect falls into place.
Why he would ignore that foundational argument.
And I run the biggest libertarian show that I know of.
I mean, we're doing like crazy numbers of downloads.
We had like 1.2 terabytes of podcast downloads just yesterday.
So I'm running by far the biggest and most influential libertarian slash anarchist slash philosophical show.
And he knows all about it.
So saying, well, you know, we're going to have all these weird relational problems after we get rid of the state when he's certainly been...
I don't mind if he disagrees with my arguments, fine.
But at least acknowledge them, for heaven's sakes.
You know, if somebody's had a huge and massive influence on your life and you've traveled across the world to sit with them in their home and had hours and hours of conversations about stuff and met up with them a bunch of times and listened to hundreds of hours of their podcasts and been on their show...
You know, it'd be nice to get even a tiny bit of recognition about that and be part of the arguments against libertarianism, but there's obviously a reason why, which we can theorize about as much as we want, but who cares?
It's simply not there, which I think is a shame.
All right, my goal isn't a society...
Okay, let's see.
The degree to which I've moved away from libertarianism is the degree to which I think the ideology is ill-equipped to fight...
These battles.
Once you move your goals beyond the elimination of the state, the ethical framework of libertarianism falls far short.
Its black and white view of choice is shallow and inadequate and truncated when judging the nuances of human interaction and of how power and exploitation affect us.
Okay, so by Will's definition, it is by far the biggest evil, but he's moved beyond fighting the biggest evil which will take Many generations to complete.
So he's like the guy who says, I'm not coming to fight the Nazis because I need to know how daycares might work in the 25th century.
All right, so I guess we'll go fight the Nazis on our own then, won't we?
My goal isn't a society based on property rights.
My goal is human flourishing.
I want an ethical, free, and humane planet.
A world where humans take care of each other and other living creatures.
Yeah.
I want a world without cancer.
Hey, do you feel like contributing to anti-cancer research?
No!
No!
I'm curious about how cancer might be treated in the year 3000.
Well, okay, I guess we'll just work on fighting cancer then, won't we?
I mean, so just basically this is the adjective shotgun that is designed to paint yourself as a nice person while conveying absolutely no philosophical, moral, or rational content whatsoever.
I want an ethical, free, and humane planet.
Okay!
I'm not going to disagree with that.
Who gives a shit what you want?
Who gives a shit what you feel?
Who gives a shit what fits for you or what you can get on board with?
I mean, you haven't abandoned libertarianism.
You've abandoned coherent thought, for heaven's sakes.
I mean, this is just, I want an ethical, free, and humane planet.
Okay, yeah, I mean, that sounds great.
I would like unicorns to deliver my breakfast, but first of all, I've got to find a couple of unicorns, right?
A world with human dignity.
That may be a future where property rights, as we think of them today, don't exist.
It may be a post-scarcity world full of abundance.
It may be a world where our familiar social structures, both macro and micro, are vastly different.
Oh my god.
I mean, what kind of radical BC-based crap do you have to smoke to take that paragraph seriously?
It may be a future where property rights don't exist.
It may be a future where we all live on a giant lemon.
It may be a future where our giant spaceships are made from the insides of toilet rolls and kept together, the vacuum is kept out with force fields at either end, right?
It may be a case where we can eat brambles and drink hedgehogs.
It may be any of these things.
So, are you with me?
It's like, I don't know what you're saying.
You sound completely incoherent.
I don't know what with you means other than maybe I'm in a padded room hugging myself with a little jacket that the nice people made for me.
To those of you, he says, who consider yourself libertarians, I say this.
You don't have to reject your current beliefs, but you must expand them.
Libertarianism's narrow view do a disservice to yourself and to the world.
Oh, disservice.
Well, that sounds like a very philosophical term, Will.
Widen the circle of your radicalism until it encompasses all of society.
Leave no status quo unexamined.
There is work to be done and radicals needed to do it.
Let's go build some cloud castles.
Forget your blueprints.
Forget your physics.
Forget all of your architectural plans, designs, engineering, rational thought, empirical evidence, reality, anything to do with physics.
Let's go build those cloud castles.
Let's go.
Who's with me?
Let's go.
Run, run, run.
Cloud castles, cloud castles, cloud castles.
You don't have to reject your current beliefs.
To those of you who consider yourself physicists, I say this.
You don't have to reject your current beliefs, but you must expand them.
Physics's narrow view on reason and evidence does a disservice to yourself and to the world.
Widen the circle of your radical physics until it encompasses all of stuff that's not stuff that physics already has and its stuffness.
Leave no status quo unexamined.
There is work to be done and physicists needed to do it.
Try giving that speech at a physics conference.
I mean, they'll just look at you like, hey, who let the arts major in?
Anyway, so yeah, a bit disappointing.
And he did respond to a couple of things.
He said, are you advocating for positive rights?
Now, if by positive rights you mean an enforceable obligation on someone who hasn't committed aggression, then definitely no.
I'm not sure you can prove that rights exist at all, but if you're going to have any conception of rights as a part of your society, only the negative kind derived from self-ownership make any sense.
Well, that's kind of the opposite, right?
So he says, well, I don't know.
Rights might be completely different.
Up might be down.
Black might be white.
Unicorns might be pouring out of my nipples at any given moment in the future.
Ah.
But there's no possibility of a particular kind of rights being valid.
Okay, so either rights are going to mutate or property rights are going to mutate into something that could be the complete opposite in some undefined manner, or it's going to be what he says here.
Why don't you believe in property?
Because I'm a big scary commie, just like President Obama.
Boo.
I never said I was against property.
No, because that would actually be to take a stand rather than blow smoke up everyone's ass.
I recognize that in a situation of scarcity and conflict over available resources, private property, homesteading, contractual transfer, self-ownership is the best framework for allocating those resources in a just and rational way.
Okay, so...
He's for property rights, even though in the future, the opposite of property rights might be the very best.
That's great.
I am against racism, but I accept that in the future, extreme racism may be great.
Well, I don't know what the hell you're talking about then.
I mean, why are you wasting everyone's time?
Will says, but I am skeptical of concentrations of power.
Oh, God.
I am skeptical of concentrations of power.
Well...
Like, have you ever heard a mathematician say, I am skeptical of too many numbers?
Ooh, isn't that deep?
I'm skeptical of too many equations.
What does that mean?
Concentrations of power?
What is power?
What is a concentration of power?
What does skepticism mean?
How do you overcome skepticism?
How do you accept?
What does skepticism mean in a philosophical or moral context?
I am skeptical of concentrations of power is a classic word salad with absolutely zero intellectual or philosophical content whatsoever.
One person or one small group owning and amassing incredible amounts of wealth isn't necessarily something I'm on board with.
You know, philosophy is not a train.
It is not something you buy a ticket to and get on board.
Your articles, I guess you can buy a ticket to and get on board, but you're going to end up banging Kate Winslet, drowning in the ice, and possibly, if you're reading this article, falling down the length of a ship and banging your head on a giant propeller.
That doesn't mean I want the stake to take it away from them.
That would be granting even more power to a different small group.
But I'm not going to say, well, if they amassed all that wealth and economic power via the free market, then it must be a good thing.
It might not be a good thing.
I'm open to that.
So having a lot of money, it's like, you know, let's just give an example here so you can see how crazy this is.
So having a lot of money, let's say, it's like sleeping with a lot of beautiful women, right?
Or men, let's just say, sleeping with a lot of beautiful women, right?
But I'm skeptical of concentrations of sexual availability.
Let me put it a better way.
I'm skeptical of concentrations of banging.
And not just rape.
One person banging a lot of beautiful women isn't necessarily something I'm on board with.
That doesn't mean that I want the state to put that person in prison.
But I'm not going to say, well, if they amassed all of that sexual experience by choice, then it must be a good thing.
It might not be a good thing.
I'm open to that.
Again, what does that mean?
If you've earned your money voluntarily, people have paid for your services, they like what you're doing, right?
I mean, I get donations for my show, fdrurl.com slash donate.
What could it possibly mean to say that, let's say, I don't know, someday in the future I get a million dollars a month for my show?
What economic power?
I mean, I'm never going to approach the state with any of that money.
It's all fantasy money, you understand.
But what does that mean?
Have I somehow now got concentrated economic power?
Well, I can buy stuff.
I can save stuff.
But I can't bribe politicians to get preferential...
I won't bribe politicians to get preferential policies.
So, again, what does that mean?
I'm skeptical of concentrations of stamp collectors with more stamps.
Right?
I'm not going to say, well, if they amassed all of those stamps through trade and volunteerism, it must be a good thing.
It might not be a good thing.
I'm open to that.
I'm also open to a possible future where scarcity is not the same concern it used to be.
Well, it's great to know what you're open to.
I mean, would it be nice if I actually made an argument at some point rather than saying, I'm so open-minded my brain has fallen out somewhere at the beginning of this typing mission.
What am I reading?
What am I saying?
I don't know.
Oh, I tripped over something.
It must be my brain.
I think I will lie here for a while.
And let's see.
Okay.
Do you want people enforcing what other people should believe or value?
No, but I'm fine with people persuading, criticizing, shaming, and ostracizing people who believe and value bad ideas.
And no, bad doesn't have to be subjective.
Well, okay, great.
So, if there are bad ideas, perhaps you'd like to tell them, tell us what they are, rather than, I believe this now, in 500 years, it might be the complete opposite.
There is a great evil called the state that libertarians want to overturn.
I'm not going to join them because I want to diddle about whether Buck Rogers is racist in the 25th century.
And there are bad ideas, but I'm never going to define what they are.
I'm just going to say I'm open to everything and it's complete opposite.
So.
Anyway, I think we can end at this point here.
He does say, let's see here.
It makes it even more embarrassing that if it wasn't for one person, this is in his rebuttal to criticism, Stefan Molyneux, this probably wouldn't even be an issue for libertarianism, at least not a hotly contested one.
And when was the last time Stefan Molyneux was invited to a libertarian conference to talk about child abuse?
To whatever degree that libertarians shouldn't be embarrassed about this, it's because of him.
And that's nice.
And I have not been invited to libertarian conferences to talk about child abuse because it is only...
Seven or eight years into this being a significant topic for libertarianism.
I've had debates with Walter Block.
I've had written debates with other people.
I have talked about it at various conferences.
Not libertarian conferences.
I don't get invited to talk about that.
Sure, I understand that.
Absolutely.
Of course.
I'm also not invited to libertarian conferences to talk about atheism, and that is important as well.
Anyway, so I think that there is a retreat from the challenges of Really rigorous thought and evidence here.
I think that basically diffusing your moral outrage into what people may or may not believe a couple of hundred years from now when the state is gone is a way of just saying, this is hard stuff.
And it is hard stuff.
Well, I mean, I get that.
It's hard stuff.
And it certainly can interfere with sexual conquests.
So, yeah, because if women find your beliefs strange or upsetting or unsettling, then it can be harder to date them.
I understand that.
It happens to a lot of people.
I am in the fortunate position of being happily married for 11 years to a woman who does not find my beliefs strange or outlandish, but rather, you know, adorned with an age-inappropriate six-pack.
But, yeah, it's hard.
And I think if you want to give up on the challenge of promoting the non-aggression principle and the challenge of promoting property rights and the challenge of opposing Manifestations of violence in the world in the here and now, I think that's, I mean, if you want to give up, that's totally fine.
I mean, but I don't know why you'd write this long, windy article about how you're really concerned with subjective beliefs in the 25th century when you've admitted that libertarians are fighting the biggest evil.
That's fine.
They just say, look, I don't want to do this anymore.
I mean, it's not fun for me anymore.
It's costing me too much.
Good luck with it.
I'm, you know, I'm sorry that I can't continue.
I mean, that's fine.
That's perfectly honest.
But saying that you've outgrown libertarianism because you are concerned about how hamsters might be treated in the year 2782 is not being honest.
If you want to back away from the fight, I'm not one to say how long people should fight or how much they should sacrifice for the fight.
That's everybody's personal decision.
All that I ask is that people be honest about that and not say they've outgrown A fight which they say is against the greatest evil, which will take many hundreds of years to complete, that you haven't outgrown it.
You've backed away from it.
You've given up because you're tired or it's costing you too much or there are negative consequences in some manner or another.
I think that's perfectly fine.
I mean, if you want to do that, You know, obviously, be my guest.
You can't compel people to stay in a fight against compulsion.
Obviously, right?
But, you know, just be honest, right?
Don't say exercise is too narrow a view of human health.
Just say, I pulled the muscle, I'm tired, and I want to sit down for a while.
▲
Export Selection