ana036: Post-Libertarianism | A Strategy for Libertarian Communities?

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.

 

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.

Links/Resources

• 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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