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