Society & Culture
We grapple with the recent “Post-Libertarian” vs. “Lolbert” schism in the broader liberty movement.
Are libertarian principles antithetical to achieving a libertarian society?
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View full show notes at http://anarchitecturepodcast.com/ana036.
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Intro
What is Post-libertarianism? Are we Lolberts?
Discussion- A schism in libertarianism: Post-libertarians vs Lolberts
- The Covid response – Threats of authoritarianism are no longer theoretical
- Ease of putting draconian measures in place
- The message of liberty isn’t enough. People aren’t interested in our kind of freedom
- They will never leave you alone
- Pete Quinones – the "actually records podcast episodes" strategy
- The Not Racist throat clear
- Zoning is racist
- The left runs right to the bottom of the slippery slope
- Class issues as race issues
- We solved racism
- Post-libertarianism – What’s it all about?
- Mostly about racism LOL
- Former libertarians more focused on pragmatism
- Lolberts – Libertarians who aren’t serious about actually achieving liberty. Like us!
- The non-aggression principle – not a complete moral theory
- Adherence to NAP is a means, not an end
- We’re all shooting for Christ
- Consequentialist – Free markets tend to lead to better outcomes
- Misesian utilitarianism – Do my selected means actually achieve my stated ends?
- All morality is subjective
- Fruitarianism – A weird thing to get worked up about, just like libertarianism
- Centralized hierarchies are efficient
- We haven’t released an episode because of a crisis of faith
- What kind of organization is most efficient?
- Curtis Yarvin – monarchist thing
- Good Will Hunting 2: Hunting Season
- “I’ve read shit you’ve never even heard of”
- Right-wing takeover is not a realistic strategy
- Hoppean covenant communities – big fish in a small pond
- A canonical libertarian solution
- Libertarians are averse to power
- Voting Good Actually
- The most revolutionary thing you can do is go to an area that’s already Republican and vote Republican
- Disempowerment by Democracy
- Strategies for liberty
- The Free State Project – Electoral success
- The Mises Caucus – Splitting the vote?
- Post-libertarian Strategy – Localism approach, oppose left-wing Democrats with right-wing Republicans
- Living in a cabin in the woods actually not a great strategy
- Community – The greatest strength of the Free State Project
- Clubhouses – The Shell, The Praxeum, The Quill, (Keene Clubhouse???)
- Dave Smith – The next libertarian presidential candidate?
- Spreading the message on big platforms
- L is for Liability
- If you can’t win, get them talking about issues you care about. Force the debate to happen.
- The Post-Libertarian strategy – Raise up local elites
- Bring libertarian message to elites
- Meta-strategy – An ecosystem of complementary strategies
- Localism
- Australia’s Agenda 21 regional governments
- New Hampshire’s town hall meetings
- The Joe’s garden to Fruitarian pipeline
- A false dichotomy between liberty and power
- “Freedom” (a word Tim made up) = The ability to act (“Power”) according to your will (“Liberty”)
- Political power, economic power, technological power
- Liberty – Other people don’t have the ability to prevent you from acting in the way you want to act
- Political liberty, social liberty, economic liberty
- Post-libertarians oppose having people who don’t agree with you having power over you
- Power is conserved?
- No – Power is not a zero-sum game
- “If I were President”
- The Iron Law of Oligarchy
- Could an anarcho-capitalist society be stable?
- Competing corporations act as a shadow government for a Yarvinian AnCap revolution
- How we get there matters
- Anarcho-capitalist trash service – $6 a week
- Schools – Have the money follow the student
- Groceries – Pay for food based on the value of your house (property taxes)?
- Disconnect between what people use, costs of services, and what people are willing to pay
- Roads – Fees for use
- Replace government in incremental ways, not wholesale
- The Anti-Tax – Local sovereign wealth fund
- Local governments are insolvent
- Failed infrastructure is a default
- Strong Towns – Align payments with cost of infrastructure
- Sovereign wealth requires wealth
- Comparing strategies
- Who’s funding your coup?
- The “listen to our podcast” strategy
- Ancap strategy – Decentralize institutions and hope they can stay decentralized
- Post-libertarian strategy – Assume institutions will become centralized and get your friends into the oligarchy
- Ancap strategy – Competitive market of corporations with limited scope.
- Competition and stratification. Resilient to the Iron Law of Oligarchy?
- Liberalize individual services rather than replacing government wholesale.
- Fees for service and use – More fair payment, better alignment of demand with costs
- Government services that aren’t funded by taxes aren’t a “government” service
- Levels of government ownership:
- City owns trash trucks and employees, funds with property tax
- City bids out trash collection service, funds with property tax
- City bids out trash collection service, mandates and charges each house for their trash pickup
- City offers trash pickup service for a fee but does not mandate it. People can use the city service, hire their own trash pickup service, or take their own trash to the dump.
- City does not offer trash pickup service and does not mandate it. People choose to pay for their own trash pickup or take their trash to the dump themselves.
- 10,000 Lichtensteins
- Geographically decentralized, autonomous political units
- “Europe started out as 10,000 Lichtensteins, and now they have one Lichtenstein and one EU.”
- Need to trade with each other, discover efficiencies through consolidation
- Just keep your friends in power – high risk, high reward strategy
- Finite and Infinite Games
- Finite Game – You win, then use force to quash your enemies. High-time preference
- Infinite Game – Point is to keep playing. Win-win, self-reinforcing. Lower time-preference
- Power games are pencils standing on their ends – they require force to maintain.
- If monarchy is your strategy, then who’s your guy?
- The problem is always getting the right people in power.
- Covenant community – We’re going to get a whole group of the right people together. This is a challenge.
- What happens down the road?
- Does the community get a say over who you sell your property to?
- The bigger the community gets, the harder it is to remain cohesive
- The more authority and property rights you cede to the community, the further you get from the type of liberty you wanted in the first place
- Covenant community strategy assumes away the fundamental problem of political theory: How do you get people with different interests to live together peacefully?
- The smaller the community is, the less power and amenities you have
- The larger the community is, it becomes harder to maintain the original set of values
- If you have to write it into a covenant, you’ve already lost
- Agreeing to physical removal.
- Future generations – I didn’t sign shit.
- Hoppe’s physical removal – Community seizes ownership of private property to remove communists
- Buy them out instead?
- Community decision making – Stuff doesn’t get done.
- What is the threshold to justify removal?
- Hard to maintain community cohesion in a highly mobile society
- You can’t build a community around strategy alone
- Postlibertarian focus on culture rather than ideology
- Traditional development depended on strong community, then reinforced it
- Inverse relationship between technology and community
- Transportation and communication technologies free people from interdependence on their local community
- Shared culture can give a community a sense of purpose
- Blood and soil – People care about their place, family, and national identity. Also a dog-whistle.
- Culture – Just because you can understand it doesn’t mean you can change it
- The water you swim in
- Cultures can change through attraction, but it’s not just a club. There is no such thing as a Culture Club.
- Post-libertarians finding common cause with anti-woke culture
- “Groomer” – Serves the same function for the right as the word “Racist” does for the left.
- Transgression signaling.
- Post-edgelord
- Critical mass effect – Doesn’t need to achieve majority support to be effective
- Are we Lolberts?
- Post-Libertarianism – Actually still libertarian
- There’s more than one viable strategy
- Joe protests against protesting
- We need to take practical action in the world
- Anarchitecture exists to test libertarian theory against the real world of the built environment.
- The Pete Quinones Show – https://freemanbeyondthewall.com/
- Fruitarianism (It is a real thing) – http://fruitnut.net/
- Curtis Yarvin – https://graymirror.substack.com/
- Good Will Hunting 2: Hunting Season (Explicit) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnESedN4vSI
- Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s covenant communities – Summary by Stephan Kinsella – https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/hoppe-on-covenant-communities-and-advocates-of-alternative-lifestyles/
- Disempowerment by Democracy (Joe’s 2016 article) – https://anarchitecturepodcast.com/democracy/
- The Free State Project – https://www.fsp.org/
- The Shell Community Center – https://shellnh.org/
- NBC Boston Free State Project Documentary showcasing The Shell (Episode 3) – https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/coming-soon-life-liberty-and-the-pursuit-of-new-hampshire/2961708/
- Dave Smith – Part of the Problem podcast – https://gasdigitalnetwork.com/gdn-show-channels/part-of-the-problem/
- The Anti-Tax – Andrew from Popular Liberty on The Pete Quinones Show – https://freemanbeyondthewall.libsyn.com/episode-624
- Hans-Hermann Hoppe 2022 interview arguing for 1,000 Lichtensteins – https://mises.org/wire/hoppe-my-dream-europe-which-consists-1000-liechtensteins
- Hans Hermann-Hoppe’s 1997 “What Must Be Done” – A touchstone for post-libertarianism, promoting his “10,000 Lichtensteins” strategy – https://mises.org/library/what-must-be-done-0
- Pete Quinones’ argument for the 10,000 Lichtensteins strategy – https://petequinones.substack.com/p/how-do-we-win
- Lysander Spooner – I didn’t sign shit – https://mises.org/wire/spooner-we-didnt-consent-constitution
- Jeff Deist – Speech referencing “blood and soil” – https://mises.org/wire/new-libertarian
- “The Romance of Revolution” – Joe’s protest song against protesting – (track 4 on “Late to the Game”) – https://diametricband.com/
Episodes Mentioned
- ana020: The Power of Place-Based Community | Tim’s Freecoast 2018 Speech
- ana019: Public Space: The Missing Link Between Freedom and Property | Tim’s Porcfest Speech 2018 – Critiqued Hoppe’s covenant communities and taxpayer ownership of infrastructure, roads, and public space
- ana023: Strong Towns for Libertarians | Chuck Marohn Interview
- ana024: Stroads to Destatalization | Chuck Marohn Interview Breakdown
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