2mo ago

What were you wrong about for a long time? How did you realize you were wrong?

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I thought libertarians were cool. Then I learned about the “fiscally conservative “ parts.
- Throw back to when I was young and naive and considered myself an "independent" who argued both sides. Then I found out who the real snowflakes were
- Libertarianism is only viable if you have the ability to effectively evaluate every option you were presented with, so as to maximize your benefit.
  Unfortunately, this excludes the lower-90% of the population. Only the top-10% are wealthy enough to afford the mental headspace to do this.
  
  It's not just thinking that's required. You also need the resources to hold out for the best option. When you're going to be homeless and starve next month if you don't have a job, you take what they're offering regardless of if they would have accepted a better offer later. Libertarianism works if there's no coercion. That's not a world that exists though, so we need the government to protect people from it.
  I'm all for government not controlling people's lives, by more importantly nobody should be controlling people's lives; whether that's the state, a corporation, or someone with a gun to your head. We need government to enforce this. They should not tell people what they can/can't do, but they should protect then from other entities doing that.
  
  It's not just thinking that's required.
  Oh, absolutely. It’s just an exclusive first step that needs addressing before anything else. As such, it becomes an insurmountable barrier for the vast majority of people long before the resource aspect comes into play.
  That's not a world that exists though,
  And with how Capitalism is violently coercive (“be profitable to someone else or suffer poverty, destitution, homelessness, and even death”), this also means that it will likely be impossible to achieve until we eradicate greed from our society and make wealth accumulation a mark of deep shame instead of something admirable. Because until that happens, the Parasite Class will continue to find violently coercive ways to maintain and increase that labour-free stream of wealth they have stolen from the working class.
  We need government to enforce this.
  And until we develop benevolent AGI that have no “skin in the game” (no ways of being coerced and no desire to pick sides) to do the job of administration for us, we will continue to have inadequate governance. Because it isn’t so much that power corrupts, but rather that power attracts the corruptible. Exhibit A: Orange siphilis-dementia’d man with the incoherent talk.
  
  There is a lot of merits to left libertarianism (social anarchy) that I would put into the "ideal" category.
- My dyslexic ass read librarian and for a whole minute I was confused why this should be connected to reading and sorting books professionally.

167 comments