Egregoros

@Eiregoat @feld

> the socialists hadn't purged their allies

This seems to be the most essential ethos of what passes for the left. The minute they have the slightest amount of actual power, they go on a campaign of purity testing and purging their ranks of all but the most unhinged extremist authoritarians.

Whether one agrees with everything about libertarianism or not, I personally like it best because it actually has a backbone to it's philosophical principals. It's not just a bunch of histrionic theatrics whose pretences evaporate the minute the power dynamics change. In my view libertarianism is the only truly left-wing ideology that exists today, true to the roots of the term, with everything else being just wolves in sheeps' clothing.

It depends what you consider left of course, but I do like libertarianisms ideological purity. Personally I still consider myself a libertarian but I don't like to use the term because it's a thoroughly poisoned well at this point.

The most consistant definition of left vs. right I've seen so far is "equality vs. excellence." Most movements called "left wing" focus on promising equality in at least some metric, whereas "right wing" movements throw equality out the window and focus on making everyone as good as they can be.

By that metric I'd say right wing philosophy is more grounded in reality, and left wing ideas are self-defeating.

As for where libertarian ideas fit into that... depends on the flavour, could go either way. Bastiat would probably be right wing by that metric.

@Eiregoat @feld

This is a bit of a tangent, but I tend to dispense with the right/left false dichotomy and focus more on how people conceive of "rights". There are basically two conceptions of rights, "dissent" vs "need".

The first is designed to protect one's ability to dissent without experiencing reprisal. Specifically "Take 'No.' for an answer in respect to other's person and lawfully owned property." That's where you get things like free speech, gun rights, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, etc. The other conception is designed to protect people's lives and health, which is where you get ideas like the welfare state, universal healthcare and so on. It's essentially philanthropic.

However those two definitions are at odds with each other, because on the one hand, property rights tend to favour people's greed and selfishness, including established monopolies, whereas need based rights can only really be enabled through state sponsored theft and extortion, which in the extreme scenario transfers wealth from the productive members of society to the freeloaders.

But I think there is still a middle ground. What needs to happen in my view is to place a limit on the amount of wealth an individual can accrue, particularly insofar as it poses barriers to others' access to the needs of subsistence/prosperity. It should never occur that a single person or group (eg. corporation) owns all the farmland, for example. Nor drain an aquifer or otherwise prevent others from accessing potable water. And so on. If there is to be a rules based society, then there needs to be reasonable limits on the amount of natural resources which can be taken out of the public sphere and made inaccessible to those who need them for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Conversely, taxation should not be allowed, because that's simply a euphemism for extortion. Instead there should be crowd funded ventures which people can subscribe to voluntarily if they want the associated benefits. One possible exception to that is military service. The one role of government which is indispensable in my view is to defend the community from external threats. While I don't necessarily support conscription, I think that military training should be a required part of the educational curriculum and a criterion for membership in the community concerned. That includes making reasonable contributions to provide necessary material supplies (arms, armour, etc).

If I have one criticism for right libertarianism is that it tends to focus too much on person and property, without paying any attention to the inevitable inhumane consequences of allowing that to go to an extreme. Similarly when it comes to left liberatrianism, there's too much in the way of saccharine platitudes about the common good and equality, while disregarding that it can only truly be based on the individuals' right to dissent from the group. Equality shouldn't focus on people having the same outcome, but on everyone having the same opportunities without artificial legal barriers. The rest is up to individuals to sort out between themselves based on mutual goodwill without use of force.

Not sure if you've come across it, but that distinction is mostly described as "positive" vs. "negative" rights. A positive right is a right which requires someone to take action on your behalf (like provide you with services or material goods). A negative right is requires them to avoid doing some action or behaviour (like trying to silence your speech or prevent you from owning guns).

The concern you have with limiting wealth is a marxist concept called "capital accumulation." It's the idea that a wealthy person can use their wealth to gain more wealth and inevitably the wealthiest in society will only ever become more wealthy until they own everything and everyone else is their slaves.

This is true under some circumstances, but usually only where there's a government powerful enough to intercede on their behalf and protect them from competition. I can't think of any circumstances where plutocrats "pulled themselves up by their bootstraps" rather than bribing officials and sidestepping the market. For the most part competition and freedom of association are enough to stop any one person or family from becoming economic dictators.

Agreed about voluntary funding. If you look back at most of our social services and civic projects they all used to be voluntarily funded and it worked pretty well. I don't think military service is an exception to this, think of all the gun nuts and gearheads out there who voluntarily buy guns and cars and boats just because they think they're cool, even though they'll probably never have a practical use for them. Now imagine they're in a militia and they get to actually blow shit up with the stuff they're buying. That's how things used to work in the classical world and it was very effective. Wealthy men used to buy warships just so they could be the one to drive it into the enemy when the opportunity came up. Even in highly centrally planned wars like WW2 there's all kinds of examples of groups of guys who dropped out of the system and innovated their own weapons and tactics, usually very effectively.

I think individual property rights are an important foundation for society in that they're a good final line in the sand against tyranny, but I agree that it'd be foolish to stop there: No one wants a building that's all foundations and no walls, and foundations are rarely the most interesting part of a building anyhow.

Bottom line... extreme authoritarianism is unnecessary and inefficient when it comes to whites. Whites are already pretty good at wanting to do the right thing and figuring out how to do it. Small governments can be useful to get people moving in the same direction but any more than that and they just get in the way.

@Eiregoat @feld

> "positive" vs. "negative" rights

Sure. While that's a good and well established idea, it's not precise enough to identify the specific goals which are at play. So I prefer to get to the heart of the matter by identifying "dissent" and "need" explicitly. But more generally speaking though, that's correct.

> For the most part competition and freedom of association are enough to stop any one person or family from becoming economic dictators.

I used to think so too, but one of the instructive examples to the contrary is what happened to the Icelandic Commonwealth. In many ways it was originally designed around the same kind of concepts I'm describing, but eventually (post-Christinanity) the goðorð system got monopolised by a small handful of the most wealthy families, who after a period of infighting for dominance, eventually sold out to the king of Norway in order to secure their own hegemony.

https://www.medievalists.net/2020/09/medieval-icelandic-commonwealth/

In an imaginary word where libertarian society can live in a vacuum and not have to contend with outside forces acting against it, perhaps some kind of internal harmony would establish itself and not eventually cause it to fall apart. But I rather doubt that's the case, and just having libertarian/anarchist principals isn't in itself sufficient to prevent people from behaving ignorantly and selfishly, especially when the cohesion of their shared identity and cultural pride is attacked by ideological schisms like what happened between the Pagans and Christians in Iceland.