LARPing libertarianism and fairy tales about anarchism

A friend sent me The Insidious Libertarian-to-Alt-Right Pipeline by Matt Lewis (The Daily Beast). It’s OK. He said it was 2/5 but was interested in my opinion on it.

I wrote him something like the following (it’s lightly edited for clarity):

LarpingLibertarianism is a superficial dead-end that has a deeply unempathetic core. While its proponents will tell you all day long that communism could never work because people suck, they never acknowledge that, by that logic, libertarianism is doomed to the same Hobbesian nightmare for the same reason.

The author mentioned Reason Magazine. I’ve been a subscriber for years and I’ve listened to the occasional Nick Gillespie podcast (though he’s a smug sonofabitch). I’m not even close to a libertarian but they have some good writers and it’s good to keep an eye on alternative points of view. It’s better than the Atlantic, the NYT, etc. simply because they don’t just regurgitate the opinion that the state demands of them. They’re critical of the state even when Trump’s not president.

The argument of “I should be able to smoke crack if i’m not hurting anyone with it” is a good summation of how many people see libertarianism. I think the more nuanced form has to consider not only societal utility (are you doing something useful in addition to smoking crack?) but also the degree to which pathological behaviors are addictive and will overwhelm the system.

How large a percentage of freeloaders can a society bear before it collapses? What even is a freeloader? If all you do is smoke crack and crap on the sidewalk, you’re going to wear out your welcome quickly. If you also happen to be an expert at keeping the water-filtering plant running, then … hmmmm, … I guess beggars can’t be choosers.

If you’re the crack-smoking sidewalk-crapper but you’re also congenitally mentally disabled, then what? Compassion, right? This is where simpleton libertarians already stumble and get cruel. But it’s also where so-called liberals are unable to admit that there is an upper limit to how much slack a society is both capable of and willing to take up.

Libertarians want to throw useless people into the ocean, and also are quick to define a pretty low bar for “useless.” Some liberals define the bar so high that they forget that society has to limp forward somehow and that there’s only so much labor you can redistribute from underperforming individuals to thankless backs before there’s also revolution.

This article is all fine and good—and, honestly, pretty well-established by now—but I am 100% still waiting for a mainstream rag like the Daily Beast to discuss the also-extremely-powerful-and-influential, if not more influential-and-powerful “insidious Progressive-to-Neoliberal-to-Neocon” pipeline, where so-called progressives “progress” from caring about many things holistically, to caring only about themselves, their in-group, and its safety and security, to actively promoting wars around the world in order to maintain that status quo, damn everyone else to hell.

The dog-eat-dog instructions pounded into your brain by nearly every part of society (advertising, news media, education) lead naturally to people adopting superficial forms of libertarianism. Perhaps a richer form of libertarianism would be closer to anarchism but it’s hard to tell if that’s being too generous, simply because of how the word “libertarian” has been tainted by its deviant proponents over the years. In a way, it’s the same with anarchism, which people think of in terms of punk gang members robbing grandmothers rather than, say, Noam Chomsky or David Graeber.[1]

There is nothing antisocial about anarchy. The state wants you to think it would be violent chaos so that you stop looking over the fence at the greener grass there and settle for the violent chaos you’ve been given.

Anarchism posits that all of the “system X won’t work because people suck” theories fail to point out that it’s more like “desperate people suck” or “desperate people will exchange their principles and humanity for mere survival.” A logical person might think that you could also solve problems by keeping people out of desperation. They’d be nicer to each other because there’s more to gain than by being cut-throat jerks.

The solution we’ve settled on is to build a society that promotes cut-throat jerks and keeps everyone else miserable and sniping at each other so that they don’t notice who’s picking their pockets. This sets things up so that the cut-throat jerks pick the pockets and make sure that the two sides blame each other. Rinse, lather, repeat.

Exhibit A is the psychotic degree to which nearly the entire U.S. is focused on what is very obviously not its biggest problem, which is immigration.

My interlocutor responded with the following flurry of thoughts.

“I think that everyone has good in them, and they need only be given a chance to show that niceness.

“it seems to me that libertarianism is cynical anarchism. So, instead of, “Without older brother we can self organize like starlings” you get, “I want noone entreating on my personal freedom to smoke scrack in society.” The differing sentiments, for my money, being the preservation of individualism in the latter.

“With some cursory research, libertarians believe in a minimal government for upholding, “individual liberties”. […] I’m old enough to know that “upholding of individual liberties” means “we play by my rules”.”

I responded with my own.

“Without older brother we can self organize like starlings”

Such a pretty phrase.

“I think that everyone has good in them, and they need only be given a chance to show that niceness.”

This is where I’ve landed, if I’m honest. Perhaps I’d write “almost all people” to offer a carveout for the handful of incorrigibly depraved, congenitally broken, or institutionally shattered.

“minimal government for upholding, “individual liberties””

Without stronger social obligations and programming, this inevitably devolves into storm troopers. The word “minimal” is quickly blown out of reach by the strong wind of authoritarianism.

The thing about the “lemme do what I want with me” is that we live in a society. While you think you’re being an individualist, you look like a narcissist to everyone else. Your loved ones are not only neglected, they’re forced to take up your slack. Mom and Dad are getting neither a call nor a visit.

And what does “not bothering anybody” even mean? Can you fly your drone over the pristine mountains of Switzerland, imbuing square kilometers of the idyllic landscape with a high-pitched whine? Can you ride your E-bike/E-motorcycle up any hiking trail because bikes aren’t expressly prohibited? Can you jet-ski on a lake others are trying to swim in?

There are always going to be disputes about how much “I’ve got mine, Jack” is too much.