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I'll start. I found out about a private security firm in Zimbabwe that...has blatant Ancap imagery.
What did you guys think of the interview. Some various thoughts of mine:
1 - The MSM's response and spin is so over-the-top it's both insulting and hilarious. It's also really interesting what they don't report on. E.g., the BBC doesn't report about the claim that Boris stopped the peace talks. The German DW doesn't talk about Putin saying that he thinks he's fighting the U.S. _and Germany_--he names those two countries in particular. They also make it sound like Tucker made Putin look like a saint and was unprofessional when in fact...
2 - I think this interview made Putin look terrible. Like on the level of "I'm surprised both Putin and the Kremlin were completely O.K. with this, what the fuck?" I was expecting more of a propaganda spin for their Ukraine war. Instead, it kind of makes me root for Ukraine more.
3 - Man, the first half of the interview is a real slog, picrel. However, it makes it plainly evident that Putin really honestly believes in irredentist foreign policy. It surprised the shit out of me since I kind of thought we left that behind in the previous century. This was the biggest takeaway for me.
4 - He's clear that the war was for Black Sea access.
5 - He doesn't see the U.S. as the most powerful country anymore, he sees China as the most powerful country now and therefore is just seeing what he's doing as moving into their alliance block. He talks about Chinese trade and waning U.S. influence to a surprising extent that it feels like he doesn't even consider thinking about the U.S. anymore.
6 - He doesn't have any actual proof that the U.S. did Nordstream. (I did find the bit of Tucker saying, "I was busy that day" and Putin replying with, "Well, maybe you have an alibi" pretty funny, though)
A long time back the Mises website used to run their own forum. We had a troll on the site named "Socialist Gerry" (Socialist Gerry -> Socialist German -> Nazi). He was irritating, he messed up the board, but everyone replied to him all the same and he stayed around until eventually he got bored and left the site and was replaced by some other moron.
Now, even on libertarian forums, I've noticed trolls like this get banned. But should they?
Yes, under libertarian ethics it's allowed. Yeah, it's private property. Private property owners can do that. This is not an ethical argument I'm making, it's more of a cultural/moral one. Like I get you don't want someone running naked on the libertarian party stage, but there's a matter of degree here, and I'm not asking to let communists into your neighborhood, but I am asking that maybe there's a more general moral argument that should be shared so that libertarians and others alike can just...not all turn into HOA Karens.
More generally than just the libertarian sphere, I feel like all across the internet the amount of tolerance has slipped dramatically. I think that internet communities tend to be more and more ban happy and gatekeepy, and it's getting worse as time goes on. This doesn't appear to be a government issue; it appears to be a cultural issue.
Personally, I'm making this post because--and this might be because I've become a worse individual over the years--but I can't really find any other places to post anymore. I personally follow a rule that when a forum temporarily bans me or deletes my posts, I treat it like a permanent ban, leave, and go find someplace else. I do this because I don't want to be on boards or communities that are that exclusive. In the past, I used to be on boards for years or until they shut down. At the moment, I'm pretty much left to this place and two, maybe three other chans on the webring, that's it, and I'll probably have to move again in a year.
Tl;dr:
- How can the cultural decrease of tolerance of speech be reversed?
- How can I find more speech tolerant/less banhappy/gatekeepy places?
I've heard a theory exposited that I'd like to hear the opinion of other libertarians on:
The current rich elite are highly anticapitalist because they inherited their wealth from their parents without any work of their own. This leads to psychological deep rooted feelings of guilt, paranoia, and fatalism. This in turns leads to a high degree of self-hatred. This self-hatred manifest as self-destructive behavior. This self destructive behavior is the reason that trust fund babies are supporting socialist causes which undermine their own interests and the interests of others.
c.f. https://archive.is/0OU0i
when you cant sign up and/or post using a vpn to protect your privacy. I hate redditors so much.
We'll see if that holds up.
License Plate Surveillance, Courtesy of Your Homeowners Association
Flock Safety works with police to market scanners to hundreds of private community groups — which have no privacy safeguards.
At a city council meeting in June 2021, Mayor Thomas Kilgore, of Lakeway, Texas, made an announcement that confused his community.
“I believe it is my duty to inform you that a surveillance system has been installed in the city of Lakeway,” he told the perplexed crowd.
Kilgore was referring to a system consisting of eight license plate readers, installed by the private company Flock Safety, that was tracking cars on both private and public roads. Despite being in place for six months, no one had told residents that they were being watched. Kilgore himself had just recently learned of the cameras.
“We find ourselves with a surveillance system,” he said, “with no information and no policies, procedures, or protections.”
The deal to install the cameras had not been approved by the city government’s executive branch.
Instead, the Rough Hollow Homeowners Association, a nongovernment entity, and the Lakeway police chief had signed off on the deal in January 2021, giving police access to residents’ footage. By the time of the June city council meeting, the surveillance system had notified the police department over a dozen times.
“We thought we were just being a partner with the city,” Bill Hayes, the chief operating officer of Legend Communities, which oversees the Rough Hollow Homeowners Association, said at the meeting. “We didn’t go out there thinking we were being Big Brother.”
Lakeway is just one example of a community that has faced Flock’s surveillance without many homeowners’ knowledge or approval. Neighbors in Atlanta, Georgia, remained in the dark for a year after cameras were put up. In Lake County, Florida, nearly 100 cameras went up “overnight like mushrooms,” according to one county commissioner — without a single permit.
[...]
Flock Safety, which began as a startup in 2017 in Atlanta and is now valued at approximately $3.5 billion, has targeted homeowners associations, or HOAs, in partnership with police departments, to become one of the largest surveillance vendors in the nation. There are key strategic reasons that make homeowners associations the ideal customer. HOAs have large budgets — they collect over $100 billion a year from homeowners — and it’s an opportunity for law enforcement to gain access into gated, private areas, normally out of their reach.
Over 200 HOAs nationwide have bought and installed Flock’s license plate readers, according to an Intercept investigation, the most comprehensive count to date. HOAs are private entities and therefore are not subject to public records requests or regulation.
[...]
In generating partnerships with private neighborhoods, however, police capitalize on a loophole in law: getting around restrictions on data collection. In Washington state, where it’s illegal to track plates, HOAs like Alder Meadow, in a wealthy Seattle suburb, share their access to the technology with local police. And since Fourth Amendment privacy rules do not apply to private citizens, HOA boards are not subject to any oversight.
https://theintercept.com/2023/03/22/hoa-surveillance-license-plate-police-flock/
Cuckservatives and fascists have /pol/
Leftist fags have /leftypol/
Do you not organize anywhere? Is this and 8.moe/liberty/ all you have?
Most 'ex-libertarians' weren't truly libertarian to begin with. The ones that went fascist were impulsive control freaks who want to mold society in their perfect image regardless of what anyone else wants. If you're about that, you're not a Libertarian. You're just a LARPing fagola.
WHEN THE FUCK IS THIS RECESSION GOING TO HAPPEN?!
The yield curve has been inverted for a record long time.
FED is finally inching down interest rates.
P/E ratios are INSANE.
Stock markets and prices are at all time highs.
WILL YOU FUCKING CRASH ALREADY?!
Have any of the cryptoanarchists thought up any solutions to the problem of fedposting?
Specifically the following playbook:
>Forum with actual freeze peach.
>Feds want to shut it down.
>Feds post cp on it.
>Feds claim, "You're hosting cp."
>No way to show that they've been framed.
>"Give us backend access to spam it the fuck with fedposting bots, or get shut down."
>Those that don't have a tor site get shut down.
>Those that do have a tor site, "Fuck off, we're resistant to censorship."
>Feds spam the everloving fuck out of the board--usually with cp anyways
>Have to put up a captcha.
>"Give us backend access or we shut down the captcha provider :)."
>Only freeze peach forums left are those with like 3 users who post every few months.
How did we go from everyone agreeing that guilds are a bad idea to just calling it "occupational licensing" and everyone protecting the idea?
Why don't the same arguments that worked to destroy guilds work yesterday work to destroy occupational licensing today? Was the downfall of guilds really due to their loss in the battle of ideas?
Who do you want to win? Are you neutral? I'm sure no one here backs Harris, but the Project 2025/Vance thing has hurt Trump's momentum a lot.
Seemed okay when I first browsed it a few months back but since the elections started gearing up, the culture war BS is seeming to amplify
What is the right-wing libertarian answer to Transhumanism?
Are you ready for muh soggy knees, /liberty/?
Are women less likely to be libertarians because:
>Of "empathy blocking."
E.g., due to sexual diphormism differences in the human brain, female brains have a larger limbic system, causing certain logical conclusions to be less likely to reach them. The slightly more positive way of phrasing this is "Females are so empathetic [that it blocks their cognition]."
>They are less likely to suffer the consequences of their actions.
Women are able to escape living conditions caused by policies they support either by marrying up, or otherwise using their overall cultural appreciation to make their decisions seem less bad to them on the margin.
>Both.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNKIjLLZMWs
>Women actually admire totalitarianism because they admire those traits sexually, and this manifests in the kind of government they likewise support.
Alternatively, "Because men are weaker today, they look to government to be their strong man."
>They don't have the centuries of cultural tradition that men have.
In the scope of human history, women have only received suffrage relatively recently, and therefore have been making poor decisions because cultures have not evolved with the concept of women suffrage taken into account.
>Because of posts like this! You need to encourage a more welcoming, diverse, and inclusive environment and the problem with libertarians are posts that denigrate the female mind and perspective just like the supposed "options" from this misogynistic post.
...
Howdy fellow autists (auatrians)! Dont normally post in liberty boards but this one seems nice and has some non-retarded people so ill give it a shot.
Let's stop infighting and making the same theoretical arguments over and over again and discuss something new. There is enough theory already! Let us discuss ancap praxis; how should freedom best be achieved...
The greatest failure of modern lolbertarianism has been its utter lack of any practical means to establiah freedom. Rothbard himself had lots of failed aliances, Hoppe had a few, Rand was Rand. Now everything has stagnated and all iq has been deposited into intellectual boomer circlejerks in Mises Institute and the PFS, who's only purpose is to ejaculate this autismo economics onto young impressionable college students. They have never even heard of Monero! All the cool edgy kids now read Moldbug instead.
What we want is one single free community! Afterwards land can be purchased from neighbouring states, thats not a big concern after sovergnty is established. But how has libertarianism existed for this long without a single successful experiment? 69 years after the communisy manifesto we got the bolshevik revolution. Its been 50 years since For a New Liberty, and what have we got to show for it? Free state project and the crypto grifters and larpers in liberland? When Brazil is driving the movement, you know its bad.
Here is my promt for a productive discussion: what are in your opinion the most feasable strategies for liberty in our lifetime? The aim is for a stable and ultraconservative, homogeneous community, with posibility for future territorial expansion. No retarded larps of liberland or seasteading or mars or muh online communities. I will list some good and bad strategies for you to rank. Motivate your rankings!
National libertarian party politics
Cryptoanarchy
Gun proliferation
Ghost guns
Digital freedom/copyleft movement
Underground militias
Vote with ones feet
Homesteading unclaimed land
Declaring a micronation
Homeschooling
Agorism
Ideological debate and discourse
Writing
Secession
Local politics
Self-sufficiency and owning land
Getting hella buff and picking fights with antifa
Uniting with ethnonationalists
Tyrannicide
Muh states rights
Debating glowies and bots on discord and /pol/
Forcing your friends to read Rothbard
Accelerationism
Monero & cryptocurrency
Im sure i forgot some
Have fun! I will come back eventually with my thoughts and write essays on some of these. Eventually that can be turned into a book, that would be cool.
I've been reading a lot about the Black Plague recently, and have been chilled by how much better things got after the Plague hit. Labor saving devices. Increased productivity. The beginnings of the industrial revolution Better working conditions. Better civil liberties. It's enough to give me pause for Malthus.
What would happen if millions of people stuck in poverty and debt today all committed mass suicide on the same day? Would there be any sort of 'shock effect' caused by such a bizarre protest of human condition?
Given the collapse of demographics going on, why isn't that priced into labor markets? Surely, businesses must see that human population is going to drop off a cliff in the next few decades. E.g., in places like Japan and South Korea especially it's going to completely and utterly fucking collapse.
What is /liberty/'s ideal currency? Is it gold, silver, or perhaps something else all together? What does /liberty/ think of 1930's germany tying their money to labor? Is barter superior to currency?
Why did libertarianism die so fucking hard since '08?
I see libertarian sentiment slowly making a comeback while this culture war has been going on and reactionaries have routinely disappointed people by either going way too far or just being obvious grifts. The Mises people (Institute, not Caucus) are still going strong. This all has shades of the Paleo Strategy, which Murray Rothbard and Lew Rockwell would regret soon after the paleocons had irreconcilable differences with them and compromised on far too much.
Which has had a bigger impact on ending slavery
1 - The abolitionist movement
OR
2 - The industrial revolution
?
Which has had a bigger impact on limiting modern day inflation
1 - Ron Paul's End the FED movement
OR
2 - Bitcoin
?
Concluding leading question: which matters more for furthering libertarianism
1 - Ideas
OR
2 - Technology
?
How would the NAP deal with noise complaints?
This has been bugging me for a while. I'm probably not going to say anything new, but I think a thread discussing the matter here would be nice. If we want to have perfect ethics, why should we apply the NAP only to humans? Why would one justify aggression against other animals? But in fact, why just animals? Why not also apply it to every other living being? Perhaps to non-living things as well: maybe it's atoms that have the property right, or maybe it's subatomic particles that do.
Also, all this poses a big problem. If it's true that it's not justified to violate their property right (if they have it), this makes it impossible for us to do anything without violating ethics, since merely developing the land or even just existing causes the death of some other beings or things, and it would make us aggressors by default.
This might all sound quite extreme, but I wanted to push the argument to the absolute limit.
>Argentina
>Things get worse and worse and worse every year.
>Hyperinflation, massive unemployment, government completely corrupt.
>Argentines vote for a libertarian only because they're so sick of the current system. Even with the current political party spending nearly 2% of GDP on advertising for the mainstream parties campaign. Thing have just gotten that bad.
>Meanwhile in Public Education Land...
>Covid remote schooling antics have turned out kids with incredible poor metrics.
>Basic reading, writing, and arithmetic skills are absolutely appalling.
>Kids spend their time talking about gender and sexuality.
>Home schooling, fuck now even UNschoolers are performing better.
>Parents keep their kids in public schools.
How bad do things have to get?
Dear new people entering the board. Let's discuss basic economics.
#1 - Price Inflation is caused by printing loads of money. Not because of "corporate greed." Nearly every money supply metric showed an enormous increase in 2020, and its taken time for that absolutely insane monetary inflation to hit the rest of the economy.
#2 - Even if one country can produce everything more effectively (they have an "absolute advantage"), they still have an economic incentive to trade due to the opportunity costs in producing one product over another. This concept is known as "comparative advantage." This is why criticism against "dumping" doesn't make sense.
Thank you for your attention.
If you had to rank the following
>Hayek
>Mises
>Friedman
>Hoppe
>Rothbard
>Bastiat
>any unmentioned
Where would you place them?
Why is the U.S. Democratic party so pro-corporatist in practice when they're able to claim that they're anti-corporatist in all their messaging?
I'mma go down the list ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_the_Democratic_Party_(United_States) ):
>Democrats support a more progressive tax structure to provide more services and reduce economic inequality by making sure that the wealthiest Americans pay the highest tax rate.
Immediately jump to increasing income tax rates in their messaging, and in practice never touch the corporate tax rate or god forbid capital gains, which is about the most pro-corporatist tax policy you could think of. Even when they talk about eliminating tax loopholes, it's always "for the rich," not for corpos.
>They oppose cutting social services, such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid
>Democrats call for "affordable and quality health care" and favor moving toward universal health care in a variety of forms to address rising healthcare costs.
The biggest cost for corporations are pensions and healthcare benefits. It's the largest corporate subsidy in the world.
>Minimum wage
This is the only one I can think of that isn't blatantly pro-corporatist. But I believe the Democratic party just has this for looks. I mean, it's always way under inflation growth, it's always "$15/hr" and not "lock it in with inflation," and from what I can see this is completely all bark and no bite because they never follow through on it.
>They also support universal preschool and expanding access to primary education
To make sure corporations have less of their labor force concerned with childcare.
>They call for slashes in student loan debt and support reforms to force down tuition fees.
Gigantic subsidies for major financial institutions.
>Environment
Holy shit if there wasn't a bigger pro-corporatist agenda, I'm going to break this one down:
>Environmental regulations
If you actually read through these they are SPECIFICALLY tailor made not just for big corporations' benefit, but down to the specific patents. The biggest example is just go talk to a refrigeration guy about the new rules that come into effect regarding certain kinds of refrigerants that are banned. The only ones that are accepted are basically DuPont's, and all the ones they're banning are ALL CONVENIENTLY THE ONES THAT THE PATENT JUST EXPIRED. It's just rife with regulatory capture, and when you acutally look at any of these policies, they arguably increase greenhouse gases.
>Green subsidies
My god, what a direct pro-corporatist grift.
>Anti cars/walkable citites
Reducing labor mobility decreases major corporations' costs.
>immigration policy
Blatant policy to keep down labor rates.
>Gun control
Grift for major security firms
It's like every single item is tailor made to give a very "pro-proletariat" viewpoint, but is insidiously the biggest pro-megacorp party in the world. How the fuck do socialists not see this?
There's an anecdote that Walter Block told that happened in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. There was a huge shortage of ice, and a man was in a van selling ice out of the back at very high prices. People were in a long line for the ice, and due to the high price, one of the people who was waiting to buy the ice, called the police on him for price gouging. The police came, arrested the man, took his van and ice, and according to the story the people waiting in line cheered. It's a clear cut case of the ultimatum game in reality, where people are willing for both sides to have _nothing_.
The remote chance of a possibility of this happening fed me with a sense of despair that libertarianism would ever be possible politically. Particularly because the rejection of the ultimatum justifies price controls, welfare redistribution, protectionism, and nearly every government program. Rejection of the ultimatum game, and its corresponding inequity aversion, forms an ethical basis that serves as the justification for so many government programs.
Ever since, I've been thinking about the ultimatum game quite a bit recently, and I think it suggests why, biologically speaking, people are not libertarians. Therefore, biologically speaking, libertarianism is impossible to achieve, even though libertarianism may be ethically superior. My big jump of an assumption in this argument is that the degree to which you are always willing to accept the deal in a single, non-repeated ultimatum game increases the degree of likelihood that you do not have inequity aversion, and the degree to which you do not have inequity aversion increases the degree of likelihood that you will accept libertarian principles, and that inequity aversion is genetic.
I'm just curious how anyone here could make the case that the US was ever freer than ancient rome especially when looking at the USA. Having local laws on top of federal laws just leads to tyranny as a lot of local laws end up contradicting or eradicating constitutional rights (which are supposed to be guaranteed). In ancient rome, you could believe what you wanted to believe as long as it wasn't disruptive/destructive to society. America from the very onset did not allow you to believe what you wanted to believe. All US states had a law against homosexuality at one point and if your religious views allowed sodomy, then you have been stripped of your supposed right of religious freedom. The US has never been a free country and modern day America is proof of how much of a failure it is at being a free country. State laws being piled on top of federal laws only makes it so that people are always committing crimes even if those crimes are totally harmless. People should not have to look into laws from county to county and state to state just to see what they are allowed to do
Discussion: Spotting Closet Socialists
We identify various defining characteristics in the socialist. He deeply suppresses his innate tribalism and believes all peoples are equal and entitled in his country. He perceives himself as a lowly member of the working class. He is being held down by the man: a fabulously rich business exec who chainsmokes cigars. Charity is a moral necessity. The poor are due their hand-outs as compensation from the "exploitative" bourgeoisie. He throws "fascist" around as an epithet for all those who dare to speak out in the sake of preserving their own culture.
He is an egalitarian, a victim, a comrade, he is "proletariat" (Starbucks™), "anti-fascist," a Californian: he is the closet socialist.
How can we spot these people in our day-to-day lives so that we can avoid them?
Are the Austrian and Chicago schools friends or enemies? I know Rothbard hated Friedman but Rothbard hated everyone.
Just to let you know that I love you guys. Capitalism ho motherfuckers.
Murray Rothbard 100 GET
Let this board have its 100th post dedicated to one of the most influential and beloved Economist and philosopher who advanced the liberty worldwide.
The primary objective of any anarchistic minded individual is the elimination of the state. While there are multiple manners by which to move toward, and ultimately achieve, such a goal, the suffocation of the state by means of denying it its filthy stolen fiat seems to be one of the most practical and potentially most effective courses of action for the individual. Though the state now appears nakedly willing to simply fabricate whatever fiat it requires or desires, the reduction of costs to the individual when not paying the state at every turn is still beneficial to the anarchistic individual. Therefore the utilization of the grey and black markets appear imperative for individuals, and ultimately for larger groups of like minded individuals. Such participation in said markets is what is known as agorism.
>how do i into agorism
Don't give the state no fuckin money dipshit.
>but how???
When your neighbor, friend, or family member need help that they're willing to pay for simply ask to be paid in shiny rocks, digital currency, or if absolutely necessary, cold hard fiat. Regularly seek smaller local markets and sniff out if there are any that don't chew boot leather for lunch, pay them for goods you need tax free with the above mentioned currencies shiny rocks, crypto, fiat. You may also inquire if they are in need of work that you can perform in your spare time as a trade for goods.
>are regulated or unregulated currencies the only way to participate in the agora (market)?
Of course not. Simple trade of anything, for instance a screwdriver for a hammer, is full participation in the agorist market. Another example would be me trading being a fag for making this OP.
>are anarchists the only ones who could benefit from the agora?
Of course not. In fact, any and every individual or group that wishes for the end of their state, regardless of their reason, equally benefits from such a practice. Yes, even those who desire total state authority, yet wish for the end of the state that currently exists, benefit. The wonderful thing about agorism is that it allows people with polar opposite views and wants to join together in the common goal of bringing an end to the current state. Yes, fascists and communists, monarchists and chaotic anarchists, all share the desire of the current state. Its total elimination.
>so only statist faggot cocksuckers would be against agora? why would anyone other than centrist pussies not engage in agora?
The only people that would stand against agora are those that wish for the current state to continue unabated. These are either those that have simply bought into the current state and its myriad of lies, or those that pretend to hold views contrary to the state yet are either too afraid of their side ultimately losing the battles of minds and might or are outright chickenshit pretenders who like rebelling on the Internet with the political thing they just learned from someone else. Perhaps too dull to actually understand politic in the first place.
Proofreading is like taxes - I dont.
I've never considered myself explicitly Libertarian, I am a strange sort of hybrid that is probably absurdly contradictory and hypocritical in more ways than I realize. I think that unless the state can exert absolute 100% control over something it should be privatized or the state shouldn't be involved with it in any way. It's about finding a balance between not letting the government fuck you over and not letting corps fuck you over either.
Another idea is that people should have the choice on what taxes they want to pay and where the money goes. Your tax form has a long series of checkboxes where you want to pay your taxes, such as waterworks, sewer, emergency services, roads, etc., and if you pay your taxes voluntarily for that service then you can use that service, because a lot of people pay taxes for services they never use or can't use. Social security and medicare can be included in this as well, teach people to invest their own money their way instead of relying on the gubmint to do it for them, while also depriving boomers of their golden parachute.