My Relationship with Libertarianism and PaleoLibertarianism

Speaker 1 00:00:00

What's up, weirdos? Hey, me shit. I got me a little something. Rolled the lights alone. We're about to chop it up with Abigail on the Manic Pixie Weirdo podcast, a safe space for weirdos of all shapes, sizes, colors, and creeds to relax and speak their piece. Speak. So grab your glass of wine and grass the chief as I get off the mic so the main weirdo can speak. Peace. Peace. God.

Speaker 2 00:00:23

What is up, weirdos? You're listening to the Anna Pixie Guardo. I'm Abigail, your host, and this is the podcast where we talk about all the different kinds of relationships that you can have in your life. And this week is the beginning sorry, this week is the beginning of the series that we are going to be doing for the next couple of weeks. Yeah, so this week we're going to be talking about my relationship with libertarianism and more specifically, like, paleo libertarianism, because I have no idea what that one is. So we're going to dive into it a little bit, sort of get some perspective, some insight, hopefully, and a little bit better understanding, I think, of libertarianism and sort of like the different branches of libertarianism. So, yeah, let's just go ahead and I will start with this definition that I found. And this is on the Cato Institute. I'll put all of the sort of like sources that I pull from in the show notes. So just kind of like keep a lookout for that. They're not super in depth. They're just sort of like very general things to give you an idea, a better idea, an understanding of kind of like where I got some of my information from. This from the Cato Institute says, libertarianism is the belief that each person has the right to live his life as he chooses, so long as he respects the equal rights of others. Libertarians defend each person's right to life, liberty, and property. In the libertarian view, voluntary agreement is the gold standard of human relationships. If there is no good reason to forbid something, a good reason being that it violates the rights of others, it should be allowed. Force should be reserved for prohibiting or punishing those who themselves use force, such as murderers, robbers, sexual assaulters, kidnappers, and defrauders who practice a kind of theft. It then goes on to say stuff like, most people live their lives by the code of ethic, by that code of ethics. Libertarians believe that that code should be applied consistently even to the actions of governments, which should be restricted and protected, which should be restricted to protecting people from violations of their rights. Governments should not use their power to censor speech, conscript the young, prohibit voluntary exchanges, steal or redistribute property, or interfere in the lives of individuals who are otherwise minding their own business. Okay, so that sounds really good to me, right? I'm like, okay, who's not getting on board with this? What's happening here? So I dove a little bit deeper. And on the Cato Institute, if you go to like, they have a link to Libertarianism.org. It's just libertariannism.org, justice, property, responsibility, tolerance, cooperation and peace. Many people believe that liberty is the core political value of modern civilization itself, the one that gives you substance and form to all the other values of social life. They are called libertarians. So that's kind of like that. But what I kept just sort of running into when I was doing my research on what libertarianism is and what it is that they firmly believe, I kept running into the difference between, like like, I kept running into this word liberty, you know, and sorry, okay, had to cough. This is going to be a rough episode. Sorry, guys, I've been sick, right? So liberty kept coming up the word liberty kept coming up in my research when I was looking up what libertarians believe and what like. So it kind of got me wondering, what is it and what does that mean, liberty? Because there are a bunch of different kinds of definitions to liberty. There's the definition that says liberty is a man's right to breathe. And then I found this definition which is from Liberty explained. So liberty, according to this website, is the freedom to choose or to do or not to do a thing without interference from outside forces. The less outside interference in a decision, the freer we are. So, like, the most common form of interference being threats of violence or force if the wrong choice is made. But it got me thinking, like, okay, well, what's the difference between freedom and liberty? So according to the same website, which they said, and this website fully admits that they got these definitions from Wikipedia, so just keep that in mind. So what they say freedom is freedom is generally is having the ability to act or to change without constraint. In philosophical discourse, freedom is discussed in the context of free will and self determination balanced by moral responsibility. Liberty, broadly speaking, liberty is the ability to do as one pleases. So it's a synonym for the word freedom. Now, that kind of, I don't know, was a little bit annoying to me. I guess that they are synonyms, but they don't really have like there's not really like a distinction, like, or a difference really between the two. Basically, from what I come to understand, liberty is like, the state of being. So liberty is the state of being free. So that's what this says in modern politics. Liberty is the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one's way of life, behavior, political views. But freedom itself is like, it's not an action. Freedom is not necessarily like an action. Freedom is freedom is the ability to do in action. Okay? So freedom is the ability to do something without outside forces, like coming in and telling you, like, no, you can do that. Whereas liberty is the state of being. When you are expressing freedom or your freedom, liberty is like that state of being. It's that feeling that you get when you do it, if that makes sense, that ability to do things. Liberty is under the action. Freedom is more of, like, the action, but liberty is the will to be able to do it kind of a thing. I think, at least that's how I understand it from the various cinnacenry definitions that I got. We kind of went down a rabbit hole there, but anyway, it's okay. We kind of went down a rabbit hole. It's fine. I kind of want to talk a little bit more about libertarianism before we get into Paleolibritarianism. And I think libertarianism is much like many different systems of government where it sounds fantastic on paper. It's amazing. It sounds great on paper. You read all these things about, like, oh, it's about freedom, and it's about freedom of expression and being able to do stuff. And obviously there are things that you don't have the freedom to do, like murder someone or sexually assault someone or those kinds of things. That's not what they mean by freedom. What they mean by freedom is your ability to choose. Your ability to choose, like, hey, I don't really want to get the COVID vaccine. I don't trust it. I don't want to do that. It seems super Susse to me. I don't really feel like that's a thing for me at this point in my life. So that would be, like, freedom of choice. So, like, freedom to choose another freedom would be, like, freedom from something where, like, you are free from like, you're free from outside forces influencing you and telling you, like, you have to believe this. You have to believe whatever we tell you. Which, again, you know, like, it all sounds fine. Like, that sounds fine. Like, of course, like, I don't, you know, I don't like the idea of someone coming in and telling me, like, someone or a body of someone coming in and telling me, like, hey, you can't do that, and the answer is, like and then when you ask the question, like, well, why? And the answer is, like, well, because we said so, that's never been a satisfactory answer for me, okay? That's just a little bit about me. It's never been a satisfactory answer. It's never something that I have sort of just accepted. I've never been that person to just be like, well, okay, I guess that's fine. That's just not how I think or how I operate. So I think that kind of brings me to the whole I forget what the name of it is. Hold on. We'll look it up really quick. Okay. Found it. So it's called the non aggression principle or the non aggression axiom. Again, this is from Libertarianism.org, and basically, well, this part isn't, but that's what the that's what it's called this principle is called it's called the non aggression principle. So the basic idea is, if I swing my arms, I can swing my arms as fast, as hard, as slow as I want, right? But the minute that my arm, that one of my arms touches someone else or interferes with someone else's stuff, it's not okay. It's not okay anymore. So that's kind of like the basic idea behind the non aggression principle. And I understand that. I get that it sounds great. It really does. It sounds fine in theory, all in theory, I think it sounds fine. I found a list of what the Libertarian Party like, what their platform is, sort of just like in the United States kind of a thing. I found this article. It's on ThoughtCo.com. This article was published in August of 2019. So it's possible that these things have changed since. This is just kind of like a very brief, broad overview as to what the Libertarian Party platform is here in the United States. So, like their fiscal policy, they oppose taxation in all forms, and it deals with revenue loss by opposing entitlement programs across the board. Okay. And then, like, corporations, the Party would eliminate all federal subsidies to private corporations as well as all antitrust laws. Public services. They would like to do things like eliminate the postal service. It wants to transfer all government services from public schools to land fills to private ownership. Property rights big thing. The Party would restrict the public domain and immediately use to immediate public use and sell or give away most public property to private owners. Criminal justice. It would eliminate all anti drug laws and legalized prostitution, as well as end random police roadblocks. I'm all for legalizing prostitution. Let's do that. Let's get that shit done. Legalize drugs, I'm fine with that. As long as we have well, that's a different thing. Free speech. The Party would abolish the FCC and allow private ownership of broadcast frequencies. It opposes all restriction of free speech, including that in the name of national security. Interesting, church and state. The Libertarian Party calls for reduced IRS regulations and monitoring of tax exempt churches. I mean, I'm not opposed to monitoring tax exempt churches. I don't think that there's a problem with that. I can't foresee any reason why that would be an issue. The draft. It calls for the abolition of the selective service system and amnesty for citizens who have never resisted the draft. Reproductive rights. The Libertarian Party is pro choice. It opposes all federal funding of abortion and federal entitlements for women who will choose to carry their pregnancies to term, including the child tax credit. It opposes involuntary or fraudulent sterilization. Interesting, LGBT rights. The Party opposes the don't Ask, don't tell doctrine. It believes that marriage is a private contract, and as such, it should yield no government benefits, regardless of the gender of the parties, of the partners. Excuse me. I mean, I don't have a problem with with that as far as like, yeah, the government shouldn't be able to tell you yes or no who you can and cannot get married to or whatever. But I don't think anybody should be allowed to tell you that, not just specifically like the government immigrant rights. The Libertarian Party argues that borders should be open, but surveilled everyone who does not pose a threat to public health or national security should be allowed to enter the country legally. It would deny all federal benefits to undocumented immigrants. And it goes on the article kind of goes on to like but those are kind of the big ones, I think. So that's just sort of a little bit about that as far as what their platform is, what it is that they stand for, like here in the United States. And I think I don't know, it seems very individualistic. It seems kind of like the ultimate form of individualism or like individualism on steroids, where it's like everything is about the individual and about the self. And I don't sorry, I don't know how I feel about that necessarily because I don't necessarily think that any one person does anything by themselves, even to a certain extent. Like this podcast, yes, I do like the editing and I do the recording and it's like it's my show, all that stuff. Yeah, I do like all of it by myself, but I don't either because I do have people that I interview and I have somebody who did my intro. And to me it's more of like kind of a collective group effort. More that's sort of like how I see the world is that it's more of like a collective group effort. Nobody does anything by themselves and I don't think that anybody should have to do something by themselves. I think that we should be willing to help people kind of a thing. I don't know. It seems like an incredibly individualistic and the self and the individual are the most important thing within this system, within the libertarian system. And I don't know, in my mind, in order for that to be the case and in order for the system to work kind of in that fantastical fantasy utopian version where this is what we translated everything from the paper into the real world and it all works perfectly kind of a thing. I don't really have like an issue as far as it is concerned on that level because at the root of it, it seems like there is a lot of faith that is being applied to people, like to individuals and to people. And by that, I just mean there's a lot of faith in the fact that people are going to do the right thing, because within this system, the system doesn't work unless everybody kind of has an understanding of what the quote unquote right thing to do is and what the quote unquote wrong thing to do is. And it just feels like there's a lot of faith and a lot of trust being placed onto everyone. And don't get me wrong, I don't have an issue with that. I don't have an issue with that. That's kind of beautiful in my mind. It's kind of like a beautiful, fantastical notion because personally, I just don't see the world like that. I don't have that much faith and trust in human beings on an individual level. That's like a really scary thought for me that I would need to put that kind of trust in faith. And I guess to a certain extent an argument could be made that I already do that by living my life. I already do that when I got Mulu to do the intro for the show or when I ask people to come beyond the show. There is some trust and there is some faith that I have to implement there so within myself that I have to implement with other people and other individuals. And so I could see an argument being made like well, I'm already kind of doing it. My argument to that, though, is that I kind of feel like I'm not because I'm a control freak and letting go of allowing somebody to me that's just not like an infinite amount of trust. That's a very specific situation in which trust has been applied or faith has been applied into another individual. And also, to a certain extent, like in the case of Mulu, I paid him, I donated to his stuff. So it's kind of like I paid for kind of a good and service sort of a situation. And to me that kind of like removes some that removes most of the fear there and the lack of trust and the lack of faith that is required of me to have in another person because I paid for it kind of a thing. I don't know if that makes sense. I don't know if any of that makes sense. But that's sort of my whole point in saying all of that is that it seems like a lot of faith and a lot of trust that I just simply don't have right now. I really don't have that. And I don't really know what it would take for me to get to a place where I would feel comfortable having that kind of faith and trust and hope on an individual basis not to do something that would put people in danger or be a detriment to the society. Because society is like a collective group. In order for society to work, we all have to work together for society to work in whatever direction that is. We all work in this capitalistic healthcape system kind of a thing. And so it works. It continues to work as it is being not laid out but as we progress. And so the system like systems only work if everybody's sort of on board with it. And one of the things that is required within the libertarian system that seems to me that I just, like it's like, freaking me out, like a little bit. Like I'm getting a little bit of anxiety even thinking about and talking about having to put that much faith and trust into other people. I don't know if I could do that. That's like a lot I think that's asking a lot of people. We're just not like, I'm just not there yet, I guess is the thing is that I'm just not there yet. So the other thing that I kind of wanted to know was like, okay, well, what are the other sort of pitfalls, I guess, of libertarianism? And I think that I did find a good article that sort of goes into a little bit about what the because it sounds, you know what I'm saying? Everything sounds amazing when it's on paper and you are reading about it and you're like, oh, okay, this sounds cool. Maybe I might be entertaining the idea of being a libertarian or maybe what does that mean? But everything sounds like rose colored glasses. Like you have your rose colored glasses on when you're reading it on paper and when you're reading the theory about it. But the implemented practice of it is a totally different thing. Trying to bring that into reality is a totally different thing. That's not to say that there aren't like, success stories with it. My only sort of issue with bringing up success stories of a libertarian society would be that you could kind of say that for anything. And so, I mean, it sort of negates the argument to me if like, if I can point to other systems of government that also worked for long periods of time, you know what I'm saying? It's sort of like, yeah, but you could say that about any form. So that doesn't really to me, it doesn't really help sort of understand how to bring it into the real world. Because that's always the rub that's the catch is trying to bring these systems of government into and implement them in the real world where we have things like humans who kind of like, fuck shut up a lot of the time. Which is another reason why I'm really struggling with the whole having faith and that much trust in people. I was wondering, what are the problems with libertarianism? Why would somebody not want to be associated with libertarianism? Or why would somebody not like the idea of it? And I found a couple of things that were kind of the same as far like the lists were all kind of the same as far as what the pitfalls were. One of the big pitfalls that I found was that libertarians don't believe in a minimum wage. And I think that that has a lot to do with the fact that there are schools of thought of like, what am I trying to say, libertarianism is very much like small government and it's very it's very, very small government. It doesn't think government is the solution to problems. It thinks that government is the problem and that people are the solution. Sorry, so sorry. I told you guys it's going to be kind of a rough one, but anyway, and so I think that that sort of stems I think that not having a minimum wage is kind of like an extension of that. And that's really sort of the rabbit hole that I went down, was the idea that it does seem like libertarians believe that government is the problem, like big government is the problem and individuals or groups of individuals are more of the solution to all of these sort of systemic issues that we have within the United States. Specifically. Specifically? The United States. I like the idea of the minimum wage. I like the idea of someone being like, you can't pay your workers two cent, like, an hour. That's not okay, you cannot do that. That's not no, that's not livable nobody can do that. Nobody can live on that. And I don't like the idea of somebody just being like, well, I should be allowed to pay my employees two cent if that's what I want. Come on. No, please, no. Again, I don't have that kind of faith. I don't have that trust. I do not have the ability to trust other people that much to not be because of the outrage. Like, I could totally see myself in a scenario in which somebody were to tell me something just, like, obtuse, like that where it's like, yeah, so I only pay my employees, like, you know, a dollar 25 an hour. And, you know, the federal government says, like, I can do that because it's fine, and, like, just, I know myself well enough to know that I would just be like but it would break my brain, if that makes sense. It would break my brain a little bit and I would have to be like, okay, walk away, because it would just be a huge mix of emotions and very I don't know, I would have issues with that. So that was one of the big things that I noticed, especially when I was sort of diving into it, was like, okay, so that's sort of a pitfall, I guess. And I don't know if that's accurate as far as like, I just know that's how I would react to it. I think most people would react to it, and I don't think that most people would agree that, like, if you want to pay your workers a dollar 25 an hour, then you should be allowed to pay your workers a dollar 25 an hour. Like, no, no, there has to be a standard. And see, that's the other sort of like thing for me where that libertarianism sort of breaks my brain a little bit as far as the faith and the trust and that sort of thing goes is because that's what I mean by a lot of faith and trust is that you would have to trust that people are not going to be greedy. You would have to trust that people are not going to exploit other people, that people are not going to discriminate against other people based on really kind of bullshitty things. And by bullshitty things, I mean like things that nobody has, things that you don't necessarily have control over. So like your sexual orientation, your race, your gender, like things like these are things that you don't necessarily like have control over once you get here on planet Earth. Does that make sense? And so I think what it really comes down to is I don't have that much faith and trust in people and this system and this system requires me to have a lot of faith and trust in other people and other individuals and I just I'm very uncomfortable with that. I'm very, very uncomfortable. And I think that says more about me and the kind of person that I am rather than more of a reflection on the libertarian system as a whole. I think that's much more of a reflection on myself and who I am and how I operate. I don't know. I don't have that. I don't have the ability to have that kind of faith and trust in people in a way that on a massive scale to where I think it would legitimately work. I don't know if that makes sense. We are going to take a quick break and then when we get back, we will talk more about libertarianism and paleo libertarianism, but we'll be right back. What is it, you guys? I wanted to talk to you a little bit about our sponsor for this episode newsletter. It's an audio app for iOS and Android where they basically take articles from all over the world and all the trending topics that are on the web at any given moment and it reads them to you in like a natural voice, like a human being would. It's basically the first time in the history of the internet where the entire web becomes listenable. It's really cool, you guys. They have all different kinds of articles from all different kinds of topics so that you can stop scrolling and start listening, which I really love. 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So let's kind of get into paleolibritarianism. And paleolibiterianism is just like a subset of libertarianism. So there's all these different there's, like, libertarianism is, like, the concept. So if you have like, a bubble, I forget what kind of diagram it is, but if you have like, a bubble libertarianism, libertarianism is in the middle. And then there are a bunch of offshoots of libertarianism. So there are different types of libertarianism, and paleolibritarianism is one of those types. This isn't like exclusive to libertarianism, like all sort of systems of government or schools of thought, if you will have offshoots and have various and uncending different ways of thinking about whatever that center idea is. But it's all like some version of these root based ideas and paleolibritarianism. So I found this website. It's a blog, actually. It's called libertarian. Bella liberty is beautiful. I'll put a link in the show notes to it. It actually is pretty comprehensive, and it was updated most recently in March 29, 2002, specifically 2022. Excuse me? Specifically, if you want to know a little bit more about that, just like how recent it is. Okay, so it says that paleo libertarian thought emerged out of well being, out of a well being established classical liberal tradition that put private property and market activity on a pedestal. The paleo qualifier is used due to how the paleo libertarian ideology has its origins and classical right wing thought. And then it just goes on to kind of talk about who were the most influential in the 19th and 20th century, just a little bit about the history of it, you know, people like Lord Action. British historian Lord action in the 19th century, you know, and then you have people like Howard Buffett, senator Robert Taft, writers such as Garrett Garrett and Albert J. Knock, you know, that kind of thing. And but I did want to read this, this little bit about okay, the schism within libertarianism. The libertarian movement experienced a significant rise in the 1970s and quickly witnessed the libertarian party emerge as America's leading part leading third party. The Koch brothers, Charles and David helped form the Cato Institute along with Murray Rothbard in 1977, signaling a promising new age for libertarians. So the Koch brothers, along with Murray Rothbard, created the Cato Institute. So. Remember earlier when I referenced the Cato Institute? I just want you to keep that in mind when just, like, understanding the sources of where things come from. And so you have a better understanding of who is writing the stuff and what it is they're saying. That's the only reason I really wanted to I sort of wanted to just clarify that within what the Cato Institute is and who founded it and that sort of thing, but apparently okay, so paleo again, I really liked this blog post for a lot of different reasons because it really breaks it down. And so like so this the title of like this section, I guess, of the article or the blog post is the Paleo's Break from Conservatism. So during the Cold War, apparently it temporarily united libertarians with conservatism through the fusionist movement, which coalesced around the issue of preserving a market based economy and resisting a totalitarian a totalitarian state. Excuse me, I'm so sorry. However, once the Soviet Union collapsed, the alliance started to gradually collapse, which is where you get things like neoconservatives and stuff like that. Paleo cons are not as hostile towards economic interventionalism and in fact favor protectionist measures such as tariffs. Additionally, some paleo cons favor using the state to break up major companies that hold excessive market power and provide subsidiaries to promote family formation. Paleo cons are not afraid to use the state to proactively push forward their traditional values. And by traditional values, I assume they mean like JudeoChristian traditional values. Just give me like 2 seconds. So no, actually I was wrong. They do not mean like traditional Judeo Christian values. Apparently there's not really like a good general consensus of what that means. The only real answer to what that means as traditional values are is I found this website called Study Smarter and it talks about like this list and this guy, Robin Williams, not the comedian, I had to look it up to check, but Robin Williams in 1965, specifically, he created a list of ten American values. So they are as follows success and achievement, individualism, hard work and endurance, efficiency, science and technology, materialism freedom, democracy, equality and group superiority. So those are what is meant. Pretty like the general consensus is that, yeah, this guy kind of nailed it and this is what is meant by traditional American values. I would agree with some, not with others, but that's neither here nor there. That's not really relevant. That's what that means. Side quest. Just kind of wanted to put that out there for everybody to know about. I'll put that in the show notes too, if you because the article or it's not really an article, it's more just like it's a part of a sociology helpful stuff, tips kind of thing, goes through like definitions and things of that nature. So I'll put a link to the show notes to that if anybody cares to look at it. So, yeah, so that's apparently what it means by what people mean when they say traditional American values. And those were specifically like, American, just so you know. Okay, so the paleo philosophy. Apparently, Paleo libertarians opposed the initiation of force both in the private and public spheres. The latter is of the utmost importance since the state is perceived as the biggest source of aggression and violator of property rights. Okay, okay, let's see. Sophalia libertarianism is definitely opposed to the welfare state, central banking, and foreign policy interventionalism. Yeah. Libertarians of all stripes view the state in a negative light. However, Paleolibritarians believe that the state is an inherently evil institution and a mechanism of perpetual mischief. Okay, interesting, interesting. This is how they view, like, market interactions and voluntary action is seen as morally superior forms of activity. Private property would be a crucial pillar of this system, and it is viewed as a hallmark of a civilized society. In addition, Paleo's view the church communities, the family, and other meditating excuse me, mediating institutions as building blocks of a healthy civil society that maintain social order. Additionally, these mediating institutions protect individuals from state encroachment. Yeah, and then it just goes on to talk about, like, the traditionalist tendencies it's a galitarian or Paleoliberitarians reject egalitarian ideals, just all the things. This is a really great blog post, so I will definitely link this in the show notes. It's really just a very I don't want to say crude. It's more of that because that's not the right word. It's just a very traditional way of viewing libertarianism teams, and they pull from the Austrian economic system of thinking for economics and stuff. We won't go into all of that. But yeah, so that's sort of Paleo libertarianism in a nutshell, I would say. But yeah. So that's kind of that. If you have thoughts, if you have feelings, if you'd like to know more about it or anything like that, you can reach out to me@manfixywordoprotomal.com. You can follow me on Twitter at MP. Weirdo podcast or the TikTok and Instagram are the same. The underscore main underscore weirdo one. Thank you guys so much for listening. I really appreciate your time. I hope you liked it. I hope you learned something. I did. Yeah. So thank you guys so much. I love y'all as always. Be kind and stay weird. Have a good one.