This is parody, right? (Meme about extreme libertarianism)

The BBQ Pit
201

I haven’t read the whole discussion, but isn’t this scenario just feudalism? Won’t it almost immediately devolve into 'lords" defending territory from other lords with the equivalent of paid warriors (knights) and virtually everyone else forced to serve them in exchange for protection?

I thought we got through the Dark Ages and revived safety for farmers and trade routes through, um, the rise of widespread new … government (Charlesmagne, the Ottoman Empire).

But of course, libertarianism is attractive to the worst people in society – teenage boys and the heartlessly selfish. The former have an excuse, at least for a while.

202

You know, just for the record, I’m a registered libertarian. :wink:

And have been for around 30 years.

But… it’s more tactical/situational than heartfelt. So, first let me say that I agree 100% that the current crop of people identifying as Libertarians are nothing more than reactionary conservatives embracing a “I’ve got mine, and screw the rest!”

For myself, now almost three decades ago, I was interested in balancing the budget and not leaving ever increasing debt to the next generation, smaller government costs (not abolishing it), but with extreme support for social and civil liberties. Or as I would have said it at the time Socially liberal, fiscally conservative (before that became a dodge of it’s own).

I had disagreements with Democrats because I felt that there was a lot of magical thinking about where the money for the social programs would come from (and still do, as I fully wanted to increase the tax on the wealthy and cut military spending but saw the realities of passing such legislation), and loathed the Republicans for sucking up to the Religious Right.

So I registered Libertarian when I became voting age, and enjoyed getting to select the lesser of evils in whichever primary I chose to vote in.

Which… well, since I said I can determine the lesser of evils, means that I’ve voted a near straight Democrat ticket (some differences on local/state level, and not even that since MAGA) because, well, yeah, on the current scale, Democrats don’t even register as a minor evil compared to where the (R) team has gone.

:man_shrugging:

I guess I could re-register, since the MAGA-rot has eaten away even the flimsiest of distinctions between Libertarians and Republicans, and probably should at some point. But it is still nice to get to look at both primaries and make a choice sometimes.

(I did vote in the Republican presidential primary this year for slightly-less-crazy options to stick a fork in Trump’s eye by NOT voting for him as an example)

203

You sound more like a pragmatic idealist.

204

I didn’t know that registering as a Libertarian gave you the choice of voting in either primary in some states, if I understand you properly. Huh.

Another potential life saver for Libertarians or Greens would be widespread adoption of instant runoff voting. Once political power became an attainable thing, I would expect political professionals to supplant vanity candidates in Libertarian/Green party leadership. But at that point these ideological buckets would morph into very different things.

205

Some states have open primaries where you can vote for whomever you want. Others are closed and you can not vote in your party’s primary.

206

Here in Colorado where I’ve lived almost continuously since college, if you aren’t registered for either majority party, they send you both primary ballots with clear instructions to only submit ONE or the other. So, that’s how it works here. Your state may manage things differently of course.

I should say another pragmatic reason for my registration is that I get substantially less junk mail from (D) and (R) [ read fundraising requests ].

207

Here in Washington State they send a ballot with both Democrat and Republican categories. You can only vote for one person on the entire ballot. So if you give a vote to a Republican you can’t give a vote to a Democrat, and vice versa.

208

In Oregon you have to be registered with a party to vote in the primary of your registered party. Independents can’t vote in the primaries.

209

I see from Ballotpedia that Colorado has a semi-closed primary system. Not open, not closed, but somewhere in between.

Five states have top-two primary elections: they are California, Alaska, Louisiana, Washington State, and Nebraska.

210

Nitpick: You meant “can not vote in a primary except your own party’s”, right?

211

I think that “not” was supposed to be an “only.”

212

The process in Massachusetts:

You don’t need to enroll in a party to vote in a primary in Massachusetts. All registered voters can participate.

If you’re registered in one party, however, you can’t vote in another party’s primary.

You can vote in the party primary of your choice if you’re:

If you want to change your party to vote in a different party’s primary, you’ll need to update your voter registration at least 10 days before the primary.

There’s more at that link about whether voting in a primary enrolls you in that party, and how the process works with a mail-in ballot.

213

5 posts were merged into an existing topic: Gigabyte’s posts now live in the cornfield

214

You should have read the thread, or the OP. @griffin1977 mentions it as some form of anarcho-capitalism in the second sentence of the OP. It’s come up more than a few times in the thread. The portion of the title in () was added by mod Miller after the fact to give some clarity to the sort of material being discussed.

216

Yes. Here’s a 6-month old thread making this point in spades …

Some peoples’ reality has so thoroughly jumped the shark that nobody can tell it from parody any more.

217

What I see is endlessly repeating cycles of the following:

A: “I have this opinion about {term}”.

B: “{Term} inevitably means {this}”.

A: “No no no, {term} doesn’t mean {this}, it really means {that}”.

B: “So you say, but despite all your objections {term} really does mean {this}”.

A: “Fine, have it your way; I will now use {newterm} to refer to {that}. Now, I have this opinion about {newterm}”.

B: “{Newterm} inevitably means {this}”.

… lather, rinse, repeat.

218

There are plenty of other comments about it being a parody or ironic presentation of the subject. Starting from post, say, 3. The point made is that even -if- produced as a parody, it is more-or-less accurate at describing the philosophy, although (and again, this has been discussed) it ignores the facts that all political and economic systems are formed by people. Most of whom will fuck up the system in search of personal improvement.

So, yes, you should work on the presentation, and humble-bragging about not reading the thread doesn’t do much for us taking you seriously either.

219

Actually, a lot of the religious conservatives are nowadays embracing the ‘leaders can be the embodiment of the 7 sins’ but that is ok because ‘that way God is enabling good Christians to do the right things unhindered.’

While Cyrus is not Jewish and does not worship the God of Israel, he is nevertheless portrayed in Isaiah as an instrument of God — an unwitting conduit through which God effects his divine plan for history. Cyrus is, therefore, the archetype of the unlikely “vessel”: someone God has chosen for an important historical purpose, despite not looking like — or having the religious character of — an obvious man of God.

For believers who subscribe to this account, Cyrus is a perfect historical antecedent to explain Trump’s presidency: a nonbeliever who nevertheless served as a vessel for divine interest.

For these leaders, the biblical account of Cyrus allows them to develop a “vessel theology” around Donald Trump, one that allows them to reconcile his personal history of womanizing and alleged sexual assault with what they see as his divinely ordained purpose to restore a Christian America.

Controlling the Supreme Court is a big deal here because it does not matter if the leaders they get are more libertine. The corrupted supreme court will enforce their misguided ideals for society.

So, the modus operandi now is for several religious conservatives is for the “plebeians” to still get the punishment of their “sins”, while leaders can be forgiven, thanks to very twisted biblical reasoning.

221

Or it’s explaining current events in Eastern Europe. Countries B through H have an agreement to defend each other, so that the gangster (country A) should be afraid to act. But country A does invade country B, and then each of the other countries asks itself whether that mutual defense agreement they signed was really binding. And it turns out there’s no court that can force superpower C and regular countries D through H to do as they promised.

222

So if it’s not anarcho-capitalism, then, what is “extreme libertarianism”?

Of course, according to the Bible, aside from not being a worshiper of Yahweh, Cyrus is depicted as being a basically decent person. He’s nothing at all like Trump.