DagSeoul: Positions, Populations, Punk, Poetics

The Insipid Individualist :: The Cheeky Libertarian

thecheekylibertarian:

dagseoul:

If The Cheeky [sic] Libertarian believes organized labor is involuntary and coercive, then imagine what she thinks about voting in elections.

I’m actually fine with unions, but if you’re more comfortable abstracting other people into stereotypes, that’s fine too.

How’s that for a “stereotype”? You praise snark on your blog, but you really have no taste for it. Mark of an self-satisfied, smug hipster authoritarian.

Typical Austin intellectual.

You fucking softy.

thecheekylibertarian:

dagseoul:

If The Cheeky [sic] Libertarian believes organized labor is involuntary and coercive, then imagine what she thinks about voting in elections.

I’m actually fine with unions, but if you’re more comfortable abstracting other people into stereotypes, that’s fine too.

Way to ignore not only the implications of your claim, but the explicit content of your post.

And I’m more than happy to illustrate your complicity with the authoritarian order in capitalism as you ally yourself with employer interests.

"After thus proving clearly that capitalist production would still continue to exist even if it did not exist, Mill now proceeds, quite consistently, to show that it would not exist even if it did exist."

Karl Marx, Chapter 16

Not only is Marx being wonderfully sassy here, but he managed to explain pretty much every libertarian ideologue ever up to this date. We’ve never had capitalism/everyone is a capitalist get fucked.

(via basedlibido)

Since we are on the topic of libertarianism…

(via basedlibido)

One of the many treats in the reading of Marx that acts as a wonderful repellent to the people who refuse to read Marx. ‘Cause they got no answer.

(via adornoble)

"Along with this, an older political economy totters forth, like a shade, and offers us a prodigious new development, namely the reinvention of the market, something about as exciting as the reinvention of the wheel: people can no doubt be left to their own tastes, but no one is going to persuade me that there is anything glamorous about the thought of a Milton Friedman, a Hayek or a Popper in the present day and age."

Fredric Jameson, A Singular Modernity (via hookedonsemiotics)

(via deactiavtedhookedonsemiotics)

Libertarianism is stupid.

ronok:

“If we don’t have slaves, who will pick the cotton?”

—

A comparable argument to the idea that roads and firemen won’t exist if there isn’t a government.

The Many Become One And Are Increased By That One

As you’ll see, I misused horizontally in the post below. I think I wanted to change an instance using FIND and change all instances from vertically to horizontally, which makes for confusing reading. Suffice to say, some of the instances of “horizontally” should read “vertically”. This is what happens when you type and edit posts in between classes. Sloppy, I know. The binary horizontal-vertical is not really cutting it for my purposes, anyway, and is a stand-in while I work out a different way to write about with more useful language.

dagseoul:

In my last post I wrote:

The longer I teach, I began in 1999, the more I become a student advocate, the more I see my role in the school and classroom as vertically integrated with role my students perform. The more I see our role in direct opposition, in a healthy and productive manner rather than destructive, to the administration and state. Being a student advocate permits me to be an advocate for teachers.

(Updated on April 16: Beginnings of an essay I’m writing about producing space in classrooms. I’m trying to figure out how to address my concern with space and horizontal and vertical just don’t cut it. The two words are shitty training wheels for me to get my thoughts straight as i try to find a better vocabulary. One-dimensional v. multi-dimensional and horizontal v. vertical aren’t the best way to put it, but it’ll do for now. Maybe i need to think about words like transversal. Your suggestions, input are always welcome. Love dialogue. Also want to note i’m using a Whiteheadean concept, the many become one and are increased by that one. I didn’t write that. I’m citing it, implementing it.)

I’m going to go with the flow of thought here and see what I can get out of it, so I can see what I think about the ideas implicit in my statement. I’m not sure vertically integrated is the best way to put it. I’m trying to argue that classrooms are spaces typically, uncritically and horizontally [ed. 5.24.12: apparently, I misused horizontally here. I think it’s clear I meant vertically] constructed to reinforce and passively instruct traditional power structures. Most of us would likely agree with this. Only an authoritarian would take issue so soon.

I believe teachers have the ability to dis-include—in this case, I like dis-include more than exclude—and disrupt traditional, passively accepted power structures by teaching in media res so to speak. Simply describing a teacher stepping from the front of the classroom into the middle of it may seem trite but to accomplish such a small step first requires many more complex rhetorical moves than may not be apparent. Many theorists have discussed what it means to teach in media res. It’s not a new idea. So, I’ll leave the groundwork alone at the moment.

Rejecting traditional, vertical hierarchies in the classroom in favor of a horizontal [note: see the binary doesn’t really work. I have to work on this, but I’m stuck with it for now, so bear with me] framework permits active critical thinking, promotes a tolerance for social difference, insists that conflict can be resolved peacefully, and instructs students and teachers that there is more to cooperation in our society than the future cooperation between employee and employer, boss and worker, master and slave. In addition, it allows for the cultivation of a multi-dimensional classroom.

The traditional classroom is one-dimensional. It occupies a particular space in time and insists that it stays put statically reinforcing an important power structure for future members of the workforce, of consumer culture. It becomes a voice in the unconscious, dogmatically instructing citizens how to behave. Students can look back to their notes only to point to what they learned because the traditional, horizontal structure is not dynamic. It’s remembered, stored away, celebrated on anniversaries, nostalgic, lifeless.

I’m trying to get at intention. The vertically-constructed space of traditional classrooms promotes the worst aspects of rugged individualism in our culture. Traditional classrooms are populated with students and teachers who are permitted to possess their own intentions, goals, objectives, and points-of-view only in so far as their claims are articulated within their appropriate positions within the hierarchy. For example, a student can disagree with her teacher as long as she agrees to obey the teacher. (Two things about this need to be developed further: the agreement to obey is silent and conversation about it is generally not permitted; students are taught that they are free to participate (see freedom of contract and employment at will) and that they can have opinions, but they must decide to choose the authorized correct answers exams. Both of these things are considered good cooperation.)

Traditional classrooms construct and model social space that prohibits critical thinking from successfully working. Traditional classrooms conduct discourse that insists dynamic rhetoric exist in static positions. We really do dis-empower the radical potential for public discourse and habituate participants to embrace self-interest as an interest that knows its proper place. Moreover, a student who competes for the highest position must also be willing to dispossess classmates. Self-interest as an interest that knows its proper place is a grotesque representation of the democratic ideal that the many become one and are increased by that one.

This is why selfish and static ideological and political positions represented by libertarianism are so popular with young people. Libertarianism is the unapologetic acceptance of self-interest for benefit of an individual in competition with everyone else and companion to none. For no rational reason, we teach students that this is in everyone’s best interest. We instruct students to become individuals in spite of their communities rather than individuals that produce their communities. Community is represented as a burden. We teach that John Galt is a heroic individual rather than the reality about his static, lifeless, dreadful existence as a sycophant to the wealthy elite.

In traditional classrooms, teachers insist that a community is only as strong as its weakest link. Teachers and students together work to create value for their classroom, as the best communities can make more money, can learn more, can enrich themselves. (See Michelle Rhee, Arne Duncan and Race to the Top.) The traditional classroom passively models the market in such a way that knowledge and experience become much less important than a good work ethic no matter what the task. In this way, the traditional classroom produces a society of slaves to the authority of an elite class.

If we reject, even silently reject, the traditional classroom and produce a vertically integrated space in which to conduct lessons, we can provide classrooms wherein multiple intentions can conflict and daily discourse permits original social difference yet requires grand attempts to reach a healthier consensus. This is the fulfillment of the many become one and are increased by that one.

I suppose the key to what I’m thinking about here is that by teaching in media res—refusing to (re)produce a vertically organized space that promotes status-seeking behavior and refusing to play master to a student’s slave—we can actively destroy the worst aspects of capitalist culture, combat Empire without aggressively politicizing the classroom, encourage students to understand that thinking for themselves doesn’t mean competing with other self-interests, fully recognize a healthy consensus in a society that embraces original social difference, and empower students to be strong, confident, critically-minded individuals because they’re confident that we’re all working together for different ends with similar means towards a common cause.

anarchei:

…you are caught generalising, being selective with history, pointing your finger at the wrong person, and then representing it all as truth.

(Source: Flickr / gazed)

dagseoul:

anarchei:

Anarchism Revisited

Apparently the poster I made previously was wrong in some aspects, so it was revisited with this one. I agree with the points made in this poster, however I don’t see how the points made in the poster I created were wrong. Any ideas?

I wrote to you about why this is wrong when you first published it. It’s still a mess.

First, crass libertarian voluntarism is capitalist and aristocratic. It is not anarchist. It explicitly favors those that own land and lots of stuff. This kind of voluntarism springs from the capitalist myths of merit and upward social mobility, and the Austrian School’s construction of liberty. It assumes that what is owned is justly owned. And it assumes that wealth represents earned ambition. These are white myths constructed by people who can afford to be free from others. The crass libertarian principle is that liberty should be constructed such that individual citizens are constituted in the free market as white subjects, or in classical Austrian, if you will, consumers. This is all fine if you’re born into privilege.

You’re conflating a grotesque sense of voluntarism with classical anarchism. This kind of libertarian wish represents a lack of desire to consider equality and an inability to consider poverty.

Your manifesto is not very solid.

• What does total freedom for the indvidual mean? You don’t mean total as in with no social relation to others, do you? If you do, then how the hell are you going to participate in the free market? Capitalism is not about freedom. Don’t you get it?
• No such thing as self-ownership exists. You don’t know yourself outside of yourself. You’d think you thought we’re all commodities on a Wal-Mart display waiting to be purchased. You cannot own yourself. Your manifesto is a silly summary of complex subjects you really cannot explain because you do not know the classic texts. It’s clear you don’t even know the important foundational texts by Smith, Ricardo, Marx, et al. You don’t know what the self is in the western philosophical tradition. It’s clear you have not done your homework. On the other hand, it is clear you have been to libertarian sites and are paraphrasing pundits’ nonsense about how anarchism can be capitalist. Sorry to say, but it cannot be so.
• Nothing is purely voluntary. No thing. No act. A stateless society is nevertheless a society. I don’t think you know what a state is. In addition, I don’t think you know what it means to volunteer, to need, to desire, to want, nor do you know how these work to create community between others. You’re trying to create a sense of to volunteer that permits to be free from all others. That’s just not possible. You want voluntary to be synonymous with free choice, which in our current paradigm is related to consumer behavior in the free market and regulated by the liberal social order. This doesn’t work.
• You can’t free people from something. Capitalists are idiots about this. People don’t choose freedom like they choose a lifestyle. Stop listening to idiots like Stefan Molyneux. You already are free. Maybe you’re oppressed, but you’re actually at liberty to do what you want. Even in an anarchist society with non-hierarchical relations, you will simply never be free the way you seem to think is possible. Freedom-from is a kind of bondage, and capitalist libertarians just don’t get it. Freedom-from is inauthentic freedom.
• One doesn’t govern one’s self, one governs with others, even in an anarchist society. One lives in relation to others. One knows one’s self only in relation to others.
• Members of society WILL voluntarily offer to help? Really? You have written subjugation into this manifesto. Way to go.
• Tolerance is a law of the heart and, as we know it, is based in white notions of civility. Tolerance is something people can afford, it’s not something equally afforded to all people. After all, what interest do Capitalists have in tolerance? Absolutely none.
• In a voluntarist society, the likes of which capitalist libertarians describe, there would be nothing to tolerate. Your manifesto is based on a misunderstanding of what it means to volunteer. You cannot volunteer if you must do some thing. In other words, tolerance is a demand and that demand is not consistent across social class and ethnicity. The law of the heart is a law that only wealthy people can afford. You must have a surplus to be charitable and to be tolerant. Your manifesto applies an already existing and oppressive ideological structure that represents a distinct hierarchical structure for the free market that will benefit the most wealthy as those who can be most magnanimous with their wealth, as those who are the most tolerant. This is aristocratic. This will cultivate power for those who have more than others. This will destroy the potential for a purely voluntary culture.
• Moreover, you seem to think tolerance means to permit the ownership of private property and leave me the fuck alone. No 5 is troubling pseudo-minarchist crap.
• You write about oughts (YOU MUST) and that’s a sign that you admit a state where you don’t want one to exist, but you want to volunteer to participate, but you want tolerance, and it’s apparent you want services and a market, too. It’s all very confusing. You simply don’t understand what a market is, and I don’t think you understand what a society is and how anarchism might inform it.
• Anarchism does not mean the absence of authority. Anyway, capitalism is discipline. The Free Market is a social organizing force. Your beliefs (from your own blog) are in conflict with this self-contradictory manifesto.

good things on my dash.

rethinksocialism:

““Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.”

—

Frédéric Bastiat (via theyounglibertarian)

If you would read what this is quoted from (The Law) in context, Frédéric Bastiat is clearly speaking of the archaic Utopian socialism. One thing I find hilarious is Bastiat’s suggestion that Robespierre is a socialist! Robespierre wouldn’t even remotely fit the picture of a Utopian socialist — let alone a Marxist (scientific) socialist.

Your posts have consistently proven that you have a complete disregard for facts, that you either do not care to or have never done any research on that which you oppose, and you obviously do not care to try and correct your mistakes or learn from them. You do not even have an ask or submit box where one could take up debate with you.

I’m open any time.

Address your mistakes or at least defend them. 

tell me about it.

(via )

anticapitalist:

Lefties often say – and seem genuinely to believe - that free-marketeers are obsessed with economic data to the exclusion of all else. But I have yet to meet a conservative who thinks that you get more happiness from a bank account than from, say, listening to Beethoven, or walking in the English countryside, or watching your child take his first steps. The argument isn’t about what makes people happy; it’s about what governments can do about it.

I heard you like strawmen, so we put a strawman in your strawman about strawmen so you can being strawmanning while you complain about strawmen.

Governments can’t legislate to make us listen to Beethoven, or enjoy the landscape, or spend more time with our children. What governments can do is to provide a framework in which happiness can be pursued. Indeed, one way to think of economic progress is as a series of labour-saving developments. Because we can afford a car, and no longer have to queue for the tram, we have more time to listen to Beethoven. Because we have a dishwasher, we can switch it on and go for a walk instead of spending the afternoon in the kitchen. Because we no longer have to work on Saturdays to feed our children, we can spend more time playing with them.

That said, there is a legitimate argument about the extent to which governments should strive for equality – or “social justice” as Lefties call it. Again, it is important to be clear about what we small-government types want. We don’t see inequality as a desirable in itself. On the contrary, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that Nordic-type homogenous societies are happier, more orderly and more cohesive than societies with yawning wealth gaps. Our argument is simply that the forcible redistribution of wealth by the state tends to involve a disproportionate diminution of net freedom and net prosperity.

You’re against the forceful redistribution of wealth, unless it is a capital owner who is redistributing the wealth created by the laborer and paying himself. You’re fine with appropriating surplus value, but taxes are “forceful redistribution of wealth”.

To put it another way, the state’s ability to make us happy is limited, but its capacity to make us miserable is not. For most of human history, most people were oppressed by their rulers, often in the form of actual slavery. Although state coercion has not vanished – every regulation, every tax demand, is a small diminution of freedom – we are fortunate to live at a time when most governments are, in some sense, answerable to their peoples. We are fortunate, likewise, to have been freed from the constant quest for food, warmth and shelter. And what freed us from daily drudgey? The Left’s old bugbear, our obsession with GDP.

>Implying that liberals are leftists

>implying that anarchists are not leftists

Putting your crude understanding of basic politics aside, you are also disregarding the social contract.

I’ll quote myself to explain this:

“the wealth of the rich people did not pop into existence. They were created by the workers, who are generally poor or middle class. These workers are exploited to help the rich get richer. Since we are in a capitalist system, and the workers do not control the fruits of their own labor (the owners of capital/property control the workers’ labor), taxing the rich more in order to provide servies to the working class is justified and necessary.”

Also, there is no self made man. We are all part of society and are interdependent. One of the premises of your argument, which I call the “bootstraps fallacy”, is bullshit.

_______________________

Love it when Tories begin editorials with a Samuel Johnson quote. Ugh. Really?!

Anticapitalist quoted himself well, and I’ll attempt to quote myself well.

dagSeoul said:

On Crass Libertarianism & Wealth Redistribution:

When you talk to a capitalist about taxes and government spending, inevitably the capitalist will want to begin speaking about wealth. A common conversation is that we, as in our government acting on behalf of citizens, should be promoting (spending on and investing in) wealth creation not wealth redistribution. Never mind that the claim is unreasonable. Specifically, business owners, entrepreneurs and employers in general do not create wealth. Wealth is a capitalist word that is supposed to be a synonym with value. Wealthy people do not create value. We know how value works, but wealth, you know, is the root in wealthy. So, wealth and the wealthy go together. It’s just common sense. Right? Don’t get pulled into a discussion with such shitty use of common sense and language.

When you hear wealth, you should always insist the conversation returns to labor and value. That’s the most important thing. Capitalists do not want to talk about value. Capitalists want to argue that wealthy people create demand. We know that spending creates demand, but again, capitalists will not want to talk about spending. Capitalists will not want to talk about the fact that money in the hands of the poor is much more stimulative than money in the hands of the rich. Why? Well, for example, capitalist libertarians like to believe that 1$ wealthy people spend is worth more than 1$ poor people spend. It’s that simple. It’s an absurd debate to get into. Always insist the conversation turn to labor and value. Bring the conversation from spending, debt, and wealth back to the basic relationship between the employer and employee.

(Source: lendahandandliftme)

States Rights: Ron Paul fan admits Ron Paul supports a state’s right to choose, not an individual’s right to choose.

Jackie, what does it mean to say “states should decide”? It means that individuals must submit their will/choice about how to live to the will of the mainstream political discourse in their respective States.

State governments are no less corrupt than the Federal government. Last I checked, this is not how we construct liberty. According to Ron Paul, via his actual words, that is not supposed to be for the state to decide. But the States are states. The state is not an individual who can make choices like you and I.

No matter how you look at it, Ron Paul is a careerist politician, a capitalist, with a horrid record in Congress for getting nothing passed who votes No when it won’t hurt his career, or the GOP agenda, and doesn’t vote at all when it might make his campaign suffer. See, not voting No on the NDAA.

In addition, he’s a hypocrite.

Why not illustrate for us how Ron Paul supports the freedom to choose for individual citizens? Illustrate not via his campaign promises or his books. Illustrate using his actions. Show me what he has actually done to promote his capitalist libertarian principles. Not words. Actions.

Good Luck.

ps: the tag for “states rights”. since when did libertarianism become anti-federalism?

jackieangst:

I understand that he’s not always the most articulate and his rhetoric can seem a bit confusing especially to liberals, but politically speaking, Ron Paul is not opposed to gay unions. He’s a religious man who believes marriage is defined as between one man and one woman. As human beings, we’re entitled to our personal beliefs. The idea is not to impose them on the people around us. The fact that Dr. Paul is able to separate his personal views from the people he serves is a true testament to his character. He has never stated that gay people should not be allowed to love who they choose. He has, however, repeatedly stated throughout his career that states should have the right to CHOOSE how they regulate gay marriage/civil unions.

In conclusion, Ron Paul does not hate gay people, nor is he overtly opposed to gay unions of whatever label/type/etc the state chooses. The state chooses.

What he’s opposed to are federal mandates that restrict the freedom of individual state governments. Look carefully at “federal courts’ jurisdiction” and there you have it.

(Source: steviemcfly)

anarchei:

Anarchism Revisited

Apparently the poster I made previously was wrong in some aspects, so it was revisited with this one. I agree with the points made in this poster, however I don’t see how the points made in the poster I created were wrong. Any ideas?

I wrote to you about why this is wrong when you first published it. It’s still a mess.

First, crass libertarian voluntarism is capitalist and aristocratic. It is not anarchist. It explicitly favors those that own land and lots of stuff. This kind of voluntarism springs from the capitalist myths of merit and upward social mobility, and the Austrian School’s construction of liberty. It assumes that what is owned is justly owned. And it assumes that wealth represents earned ambition. These are white myths constructed by people who can afford to be free from others. The crass libertarian principle is that liberty should be constructed such that individual citizens are constituted in the free market as white subjects, or in classical Austrian, if you will, consumers. This is all fine if you’re born into privilege.

You’re conflating a grotesque sense of voluntarism with classical anarchism. This kind of libertarian wish represents a lack of desire to consider equality and an inability to consider poverty.

Your manifesto is not very solid.

• What does total freedom for the indvidual mean? You don’t mean total as in with no social relation to others, do you? If you do, then how the hell are you going to participate in the free market? Capitalism is not about freedom. Don’t you get it?
• No such thing as self-ownership exists. You don’t know yourself outside of yourself. You’d think you thought we’re all commodities on a Wal-Mart display waiting to be purchased. You cannot own yourself. Your manifesto is a silly summary of complex subjects you really cannot explain because you do not know the classic texts. It’s clear you don’t even know the important foundational texts by Smith, Ricardo, Marx, et al. You don’t know what the self is in the western philosophical tradition. It’s clear you have not done your homework. On the other hand, it is clear you have been to libertarian sites and are paraphrasing pundits’ nonsense about how anarchism can be capitalist. Sorry to say, but it cannot be so.
• Nothing is purely voluntary. No thing. No act. A stateless society is nevertheless a society. I don’t think you know what a state is. In addition, I don’t think you know what it means to volunteer, to need, to desire, to want, nor do you know how these work to create community between others. You’re trying to create a sense of to volunteer that permits to be free from all others. That’s just not possible. You want voluntary to be synonymous with free choice, which in our current paradigm is related to consumer behavior in the free market and regulated by the liberal social order. This doesn’t work.
• You can’t free people from something. Capitalists are idiots about this. People don’t choose freedom like they choose a lifestyle. Stop listening to idiots like Stefan Molyneux. You already are free. Maybe you’re oppressed, but you’re actually at liberty to do what you want. Even in an anarchist society with non-hierarchical relations, you will simply never be free the way you seem to think is possible. Freedom-from is a kind of bondage, and capitalist libertarians just don’t get it. Freedom-from is inauthentic freedom.
• One doesn’t govern one’s self, one governs with others, even in an anarchist society. One lives in relation to others. One knows one’s self only in relation to others.
• Members of society WILL voluntarily offer to help? Really? You have written subjugation into this manifesto. Way to go.
• Tolerance is a law of the heart and, as we know it, is based in white notions of civility. Tolerance is something people can afford, it’s not something equally afforded to all people. After all, what interest do Capitalists have in tolerance? Absolutely none.
• In a voluntarist society, the likes of which capitalist libertarians describe, there would be nothing to tolerate. Your manifesto is based on a misunderstanding of what it means to volunteer. You cannot volunteer if you must do some thing. In other words, tolerance is a demand and that demand is not consistent across social class and ethnicity. The law of the heart is a law that only wealthy people can afford. You must have a surplus to be charitable and to be tolerant. Your manifesto applies an already existing and oppressive ideological structure that represents a distinct hierarchical structure for the free market that will benefit the most wealthy as those who can be most magnanimous with their wealth, as those who are the most tolerant. This is aristocratic. This will cultivate power for those who have more than others. This will destroy the potential for a purely voluntary culture.
• Moreover, you seem to think tolerance means to permit the ownership of private property and leave me the fuck alone. No 5 is troubling pseudo-minarchist crap.
• You write about oughts (YOU MUST) and that’s a sign that you admit a state where you don’t want one to exist, but you want to volunteer to participate, but you want tolerance, and it’s apparent you want services and a market, too. It’s all very confusing. You simply don’t understand what a market is, and I don’t think you understand what a society is and how anarchism might inform it.
• Anarchism does not mean the absence of authority. Anyway, capitalism is discipline. The Free Market is a social organizing force. Your beliefs (from your own blog) are in conflict with this self-contradictory manifesto.

"The Austrian free-market economists use common sense principles. You cannot spend your way out of a recession. You cannot regulate the economy into oblivion and expect it to function. You cannot tax people and businesses to the point of near slavery and expect them to keep producing. You cannot create an abundance of money out of thin air without making all that paper worthless. The government cannot make up for rising unemployment by just hiring all the out-of-work people to be bureaucrats or send them unemployment checks forever. You cannot live beyond your means indefinitely. The economy must actually produce something others are willing to buy. Government growth is the opposite of all these things."

Ron Paul (via ronpaulrevolution)

These guys sure are negative. “You can’t do any of this shit” = libertarianism. So much for personal freedom.

(via sonofapritch)

It’s a system that if you don’t give your whole being to believing vanishes right before your very eyes. Didn’t they make this into a movie called the matrix? The libertarians were the sleepers in that one. You know, the fucking energy source.

(via deactiavtedhookedonsemiotics)

Loving this thread.

sonofapritch:

bbcity replied to your post: dagseoul replied to your post: What is the…

uh no. libertarians are consensualists so if you TACITLY STATED YOUR PREFERENCE TO HAVE YOUR BODY PILLAGED, then it’s OK for a brooding architect to knock your door down (symbolism) and possess your body.

“Kicking in the door” = “libertarian sex”

DECONSTRUCTING AYN RAND

What’s “climbing in her window for a snuggle,” then, because that’s what I used to do.

(via deactiavtedhookedonsemiotics)

"Socialism as an “alternative society” to capitalism amounts to the idea of totalitarian serfdom; the abolition of the market and overall nationalization cannot yield any other result. The belief that one can establish perfect equality by institutional means is no less malignant. The world has known pockets of voluntary equality, practiced in some monasteries and in a handful of secular cooperatives. However, equality under compulsion inevitably requires totalitarian means, and totalitarianism implies extreme inequality, since it entails unequal access to information and power. Nor, practically speaking, is equality in the distribution of material goods possible once power is concentrated in the hands of an uncontrollable oligarchy; this is why nothing remotely close to equality has ever been in existence in socialist countries. The ideal is therefore self-defeating. Why the idea of all-encompassing planning is economically catastrophic we know well, and Friedrich von Hayek’s criticism on this point has been amply borne out by evidence from the experience of all Communist countries without exception. Socialism in this sense means that people are prevented by repression from engaging in any socially useful activity unless on orders from the state."

Leszek Kolakowski (via fuckyeahemergence)

Hayek was wrong about just about everything he predicted. And this crass libertarian switcheroo of totalitarianism for socialism is a cute cold war trick, but stupid. It lost its luster post 1980s. Capitalism is the new totalitarian system, it turns out. Corporations the new citizenry and the US military and NATO its police force.

(Source: whakatikatika, via taxidermiedtaxattorney-deactiva)