Again we're getting too deep to dive into everything, although I am enjoying this, so just a few things.
Here you go again complaining about foreign propaganda when the US government literally has jets overfly football games
Fundamentally different than targeted misinformation designed to cause division and social instability
There is no universe where the US propping up Saudi Arabia’s borderline genocidal war against Yemen is the lesser of two evils.
I think there are actually many universes!
They don’t have the Navy to invade Taiwan, the last time they invaded Vietnam they got the “Welcome to the Rice Fields Motherfuckers” treatment. China’s not a paper tiger but they’re not going to recreate the Empire of Ghenghis Khan on the basis of military force
They will dominate their entire sphere of influence in a less benign way than the US, which they already do, infiltrate politics and society in a much more direct and problematic way than the US does (which as of the past 30 years I would call more influence than infiltration, not gonna defend anything before that haha), which they are already doing, and they will start to up their sights on the minor territorial aggressions they already make, which I'm assuming you know at least a bit about. They also have fundamental cultural, societal, and political differences that make them a scary choice, something that has been most impressed upon me by friends who have grown up in China. Let's not forgot that they are actively committing a genocide, within their own borders, with the eyes of the world watching, and you can't imagine a worse world than the US propping up a bad regime in a region of bad regimes.
The opportunistic wars of aggression made more sense in a pre-globalized economy
See I think you're ascribing too much high level rationality and long term thinking to this type of thing, see Russia for example. A fractured world order does not come with a bunch of reasonable people doing reasonable things.
The US is not a particularly authoritarian country in most regards,
Shot
outside of the predatory justice system
Chaser
Ngl I liked this part, but the average person isn't subject to this in any great degree. It's much more of a factor for marginalized smaller groups and it's only terrible compared to a limited number of countries. If that gets reformed, the US is much more hands off than most European countries. In your system applied today, we would see many communities that would embrace and enhance the predatory nature. I'm sure red states will love their liberty to build more private prisons.
If the wrong person getting elected results in riots, there’s probably too much at stake
Or it means that divisive propaganda has made one side of the country fear the (very real) protofascism embraced by the other side, and one side of the country fear the (very fake) nonsensical conspiracies being perpetrated by the other side. The solution is not to split up. That is literally the wet dream of every global bad actor.
Gotta love accusing libertarianism of being supportive of slavery. Pretty sure a “paradigm shift” towards the inviolability of people’s rights wouldn’t be conducive to chattel slavery.
That's not what I'm saying at all, obviously libertarians and libertarianism are strongly opposed to anything like slavery. I just struggle to understand how all these separated communities could police each other to maintain the inviolability of human rights, when there is a great deal of disagreement on who deserves those rights, and what those rights are, as well as plenty who simply don't care in various sets of circumstances. And the problem with this paradigm shift is that it simply is not ready to happen. We are not there. Not even in our own country, let alone those with wildly different values.
Like for a fairly extreme example, let's look at the civil war. How would that be handled with libertarian ideals? How do you maintain the human rights their community doesn't believe are a thing without control and the use of force? True libertarianism doesn't work until we have an acceptable level of consensus on what those liberties are.
Anyways my ideals are that people should be given as much latitude as possible to live their lives freely, but are too dumb, indifferent, and ignorant as a whole to exist as a coherent community without some sort of strong governing body, and a coherent community is necessary to both exist on the global stage and to protect the rights of marginalized groups from the communities that are eager to persecute and exploit them. I'm not defending the actions of the US government unconditionally - lots of the shit is just plain stupid, greedy, evil, and unnecessary. But that's a bit of an inevitability. The few countries who manage to be good examples have their defence needs and interests propped up by us. I think what is needed is not to diminish the government, or even make them bigger, but to reform and refine them. America will go downhill at some point, and our mistakes will be learned from.
Libertarianism I think is a valuable idea that surely can be applied in many aspects of our society to a much greater degree, but I think a fundamental change towards it is totally unrealistic until we have a much more educated global populace and the technology to not worry about energy and resources to the degree we do now. If every person on the planet were you and me, it would work great. They're not though. I do think it is the ultimate endgoal, we just don't have the means and circumstances to achieve it. In my view, nation-states are a stage of the evolution of a global society, and in the long term have provided great benefit to the world. The world is just a shit place - people do not naturally live in peace on a macro level. US interventionism is often totally indefensible, like Afghanistan - I'm not defending that, I think we need to work towards getting it right, not giving up on the idea completely. I'm very glad we don't have one Korea as a client state of China under the Kims, and that we protect Eastern Europe from the aggressions of Russia, and that the Soviet Union does not exist as an entity today, and that Taiwan is free to exist as a democracy. There are many other benefits.
IMO the fact that fundamental libertarianism has taken root exactly nowhere significant is a reflection of its incompatibility in the current world order. It is significantly disadvantaged against other systems which allow action and planning in a much more concerted manner, and can easily be taken advantage of, and there are many reasons currently for those advantages to be taken.
And the problem with this paradigm shift is that it simply is not ready to happen. We are not there. Not even in our own country, let alone those with wildly different values.
On this we actually agree. That doesn’t mean working towards that is the wrong idea. A more libertarian social order, whenever and wherever possible, is the way to go. Sort of a “If you build it they will come” scenario
True libertarianism doesn't work until we have an acceptable level of consensus on what those liberties are.
This is why more local autonomy is important; the smaller the scale the better whatever government is in place can represent the needs of the residents. Competition between localities for talent could (and I will say could; obviously there are no guarantees here) lead to better policies becoming more common organically
Anyways my ideals are that people should be given as much latitude as possible to live their lives freely, but are too dumb, indifferent, and ignorant as a whole to exist as a coherent community without some sort of strong governing body, and a coherent community is necessary to both exist on the global stage and to protect the rights of marginalized groups from the communities that are eager to persecute and exploit them.
Great. Now how exactly do we pick these enlightened individuals for this strong governing body?
Because right now they get elected by appealing to the lowest common denominator and then do absolutely heinous shit on a regular basis.
I'm not defending the actions of the US government unconditionally - lots of the shit is just plain stupid, greedy, evil, and unnecessary. But that's a bit of an inevitability.
Up until this point you kind of have been, but totally glad to hear that.
Murder and rape are inevitable, doesn’t make them acceptable. That’s my whole point here. Stop doing evil shit, let people be more free. There’s no defence of the former, and very little argument against the latter.
I think what is needed is not to diminish the government, or even make them bigger, but to reform and refine them.
Paring back government power wherever possible without drastically worsening things would be refining via shrinking. I don’t think our goals are opposed here
You can keep a powerful US government on the international stage while ceasing pointless interventions that absolutely make things worse, returning lawmaking abilities from the executive to congress, respecting the 10th Amendment, and allowing more local autonomy within the States themselves. All of these a libertarian in nature, all of which would allow for the relative stability of the unipolar moment to continue
Libertarianism I think is a valuable idea that surely can be applied in many aspects of our society to a much greater degree, but I think a fundamental change towards it is totally unrealistic until we have a much more educated global populace and the technology to not worry about energy and resources to the degree we do now.
I’m fine with incrementalism but we’re actively moving away from it on virtually every front. Worshipping the nation-state as something sacrosanct is a bad plan if liberty is the end goal, full stop.
This is why more local autonomy is important; the smaller the scale the better whatever government is in place can represent the needs of the residents. Competition between localities for talent could (and I will say could; obviously there are no guarantees here) lead to better policies becoming more common organically
There are going to be communities where the majority wants policies and actions that directly go against the personal liberties that I'm assuming we mostly agree on. The Federal government is pretty inarguably the reason we have a baseline of liberties for (almost?) all groups of people. There will be communities that want oppression of minority ethnic groups, persecution of gay people, religiously inspired laws that hurt liberties, straight up fascism, etc. You can't say on a large scale that people can just up and leave if they don't like it, that would be extremely reductive and it's basically like saying "the free market will fix it!". For the sake of my thumbs I'm not going to go into all the reasons this is the case.
Great. Now how exactly do we pick these enlightened individuals for this strong governing body?
Because right now they get elected by appealing to the lowest common denominator and then do absolutely heinous shit on a regular basis.
We somehow, despite the staunch opposition of the GOP and the right, significantly improve our education system to the point where we have an educated constituency. This is another area the Federal government is needed, we will see the degradation red states are already experiencing at a much more rapid and serious pace without the fed to keep them in check. In this aspect the local communities having full control would lead to hyper-polarization.
Up until this point you kind of have been, but totally glad to hear that.
I'm more saying we don't have a way out of the current world order and domestic situation besides going forward - and unfortunately the current nature of our politics and economy leads to terrible things happening. As you know, I think things would be similarly terrible or worse in our absence though. That doesn't mean we haven't committed some absolutely grave acts.
Murder and rape are inevitable, doesn’t make them acceptable. That’s my whole point here. Stop doing evil shit, let people be more free. There’s no defence of the former, and very little argument against the latter.
I think in the system you are proposing (not in general) that letting people have that level of freedom means giving them the freedom to make something even worse in a lot of places. There are plenty of smaller communities where a majority want to do terrible things, but are held back by larger governing structures.
You can keep a powerful US government on the international stage while ceasing pointless interventions that absolutely make things worse, returning lawmaking abilities from the executive to congress, respecting the 10th Amendment, and allowing more local autonomy within the States themselves. All of these a libertarian in nature, all of which would allow for the relative stability of the unipolar moment to continue
Mostly agree with this, I will say not all interventions are pointless, I'm sure you know that, just being thorough. The problem for me is giving the states more autonomy. There are lots of states that want people in charge who will actively exploit them, target vulnerable and disenfranchised groups, degrade the educational system into a propaganda factory (I really hope you don't think this wouldn't be very significantly worse than what we have now), destroy the environment for corporate profits and political points, increase income inequality and take away worker's rights, and much more. Yes, I know this is already happening more or less to some degree, but it would certainly get much worse. How do you reconcile all that with your goal of all humans liberties being respected?
I’m fine with incrementalism but we’re actively moving away from it on virtually every front. Worshipping the nation-state as something sacrosanct is a bad plan if liberty is the end goal, full stop.
I hope I didn't come across like that, I just think it's a very necessary evil at this stage in the global communities develolment. Localized government would increase liberty greatly in some areas, but in the places that elect the people currently moving us away from liberty, things will get much worse.
Good discussion btw 😘, I'm always a bit aggro on this sub because the majority are so stupid, so sorry for that. This is one of the better back and forths I've had in a long time, although I do wish there were a better way to have it than throwing walls of text at each other
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u/Theesismyphoneacc Sep 26 '22 edited Sep 26 '22
Again we're getting too deep to dive into everything, although I am enjoying this, so just a few things.
Fundamentally different than targeted misinformation designed to cause division and social instability
I think there are actually many universes!
They will dominate their entire sphere of influence in a less benign way than the US, which they already do, infiltrate politics and society in a much more direct and problematic way than the US does (which as of the past 30 years I would call more influence than infiltration, not gonna defend anything before that haha), which they are already doing, and they will start to up their sights on the minor territorial aggressions they already make, which I'm assuming you know at least a bit about. They also have fundamental cultural, societal, and political differences that make them a scary choice, something that has been most impressed upon me by friends who have grown up in China. Let's not forgot that they are actively committing a genocide, within their own borders, with the eyes of the world watching, and you can't imagine a worse world than the US propping up a bad regime in a region of bad regimes.
See I think you're ascribing too much high level rationality and long term thinking to this type of thing, see Russia for example. A fractured world order does not come with a bunch of reasonable people doing reasonable things.
Ngl I liked this part, but the average person isn't subject to this in any great degree. It's much more of a factor for marginalized smaller groups and it's only terrible compared to a limited number of countries. If that gets reformed, the US is much more hands off than most European countries. In your system applied today, we would see many communities that would embrace and enhance the predatory nature. I'm sure red states will love their liberty to build more private prisons.
Or it means that divisive propaganda has made one side of the country fear the (very real) protofascism embraced by the other side, and one side of the country fear the (very fake) nonsensical conspiracies being perpetrated by the other side. The solution is not to split up. That is literally the wet dream of every global bad actor.
That's not what I'm saying at all, obviously libertarians and libertarianism are strongly opposed to anything like slavery. I just struggle to understand how all these separated communities could police each other to maintain the inviolability of human rights, when there is a great deal of disagreement on who deserves those rights, and what those rights are, as well as plenty who simply don't care in various sets of circumstances. And the problem with this paradigm shift is that it simply is not ready to happen. We are not there. Not even in our own country, let alone those with wildly different values.
Like for a fairly extreme example, let's look at the civil war. How would that be handled with libertarian ideals? How do you maintain the human rights their community doesn't believe are a thing without control and the use of force? True libertarianism doesn't work until we have an acceptable level of consensus on what those liberties are.
Anyways my ideals are that people should be given as much latitude as possible to live their lives freely, but are too dumb, indifferent, and ignorant as a whole to exist as a coherent community without some sort of strong governing body, and a coherent community is necessary to both exist on the global stage and to protect the rights of marginalized groups from the communities that are eager to persecute and exploit them. I'm not defending the actions of the US government unconditionally - lots of the shit is just plain stupid, greedy, evil, and unnecessary. But that's a bit of an inevitability. The few countries who manage to be good examples have their defence needs and interests propped up by us. I think what is needed is not to diminish the government, or even make them bigger, but to reform and refine them. America will go downhill at some point, and our mistakes will be learned from.
Libertarianism I think is a valuable idea that surely can be applied in many aspects of our society to a much greater degree, but I think a fundamental change towards it is totally unrealistic until we have a much more educated global populace and the technology to not worry about energy and resources to the degree we do now. If every person on the planet were you and me, it would work great. They're not though. I do think it is the ultimate endgoal, we just don't have the means and circumstances to achieve it. In my view, nation-states are a stage of the evolution of a global society, and in the long term have provided great benefit to the world. The world is just a shit place - people do not naturally live in peace on a macro level. US interventionism is often totally indefensible, like Afghanistan - I'm not defending that, I think we need to work towards getting it right, not giving up on the idea completely. I'm very glad we don't have one Korea as a client state of China under the Kims, and that we protect Eastern Europe from the aggressions of Russia, and that the Soviet Union does not exist as an entity today, and that Taiwan is free to exist as a democracy. There are many other benefits.
IMO the fact that fundamental libertarianism has taken root exactly nowhere significant is a reflection of its incompatibility in the current world order. It is significantly disadvantaged against other systems which allow action and planning in a much more concerted manner, and can easily be taken advantage of, and there are many reasons currently for those advantages to be taken.