I find it amusing that at least within my circles, the overlap between “taxes are theft” Libertarians and cyber-bros is so high. I wouldn’t go so far as to call them “incels” as they seem to date. But many of them are in their 40s now with no sign of ever getting married or having kids. Which in and of itself is fine. But taken as a whole they seemed to have adopted this world view that they should be able to do whatever they want, whenever they want in life and not have anyone tell them otherwise.
Exactly. They aren’t getting rid of government. The only way to do that is for every single person to go off and live on their own. They’re just replacing the people and systems currently in place with their preferred systems and people. It’s still a government, just a different one than the one we currently have.
And of course an obviously worse one. That should go without saying.
Specifically, systems where they or their fellow travellers are in charge.
They don’t hate government. They just hate government that they aren’t immune from and in charge of. They definitely want to live the “laws are for thee, not for me” life.
Or the Niven story , Cloak of Anarchy, where a “free park” suddenly gets not so nice after the automatic guardian system shuts off.
But, we are told that Liberitarianism works precisely because it takes human nature into account with each individual only acting in his own self interest. 
Both Communism and Liberitarianism require a magical population that will put the system ahead of their own interests, but at least Communism is consistent about it.
But its much lighter if its removed from the rest of the body. 
I used to outrage a fairly left-wing mother of a friend, with the phrase “property is theft” (original “La propriété, c’est le vol”, anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon)
But I was young and had no property.
Not exactly. Communism does require everyone to magically put the system ahead of their own interests.
Libertarianism requires the system to magically continue to work if everyone puts their own interests ahead of everyone else’s.
At least with communism and regular anarchism the proposed utopian society, however implausible, does actually sound nice. A truly egalitarian society where the workers control the means of production and everyone gets what they need without oppression, who wouldn’t like that?
With this anarcho-capitalism crap even the perfect utopian society they are proposing sounds goddamn awful, way worse than what we have at the moment with mean old government ruling over us. Not that, as with communism, the reality if we did decide to abolish government and set up an anarcho-capitalist society would’nt be way way more terrible. But even the society they are saying will happen if everything goes down exactly as they say it will is crappy.
I’m a veteran of early-90s dialup bulletin boards. People have been talking about libertarian-utopian seasteading since at least that long, if not longer. They are utterly unfazed that there’s been no critical momentum in 30 years. The same suckers are very sure Elon Musk is going to do it on Mars (spoiler: a man who’s making zero investment in long-term harsh-environment habitat is not planning to go to Mars).
The whole thing is just third-way wishcasting. We don’t have to engage with the messy complicated left-right paradigm. Bo-ring! There’s a magic different easy way that doesn’t require any real sacrifice from anyone! (well, at least not from me, which is the most important part)
Which in turn requires everyon to buy into the whole scheme of renuciation of coercive force, even if using such force in the individual’s interest. Hence the contradictory nature of the system.
I just want to say that this SO needed to be said. These laughable concept sketches with dragon capsules landing at some magically established mars base always caused strain of my eye rolling muscles.
Here is a real life example of something quite similar:
Louisa May Alcott, 10: Child Laborer at the Fruitlands Commune - New England Historical Society.
Louisa May Alcott actually wrote a rather amusing, though a bit sad fictional account of a Fruitlands sort of commune. I don’t remember the title and can’t seem to find it today. The Fruitlands experiment mixed Transcendentalism with Utopian ideals with anarchy. Benson Alcott, from what I’ve read of him was a nut case, and a lazy bigot towards his own wife and daughter.
In this form of anarchy Transcendentalism was supposed to prove that humans were intrinsically good and that the rot in society caused people to do bad things. From what I’ve read of the whole thing (and I admit it’s been decades since I was researching the younger Alcott) Fruitlands proved that humans are almost the opposite of what they set out to prove. Transcendentalism was just another form of anarcho capitalism that replaced government and society with different bunch of guys (and in this case men) who liked to laze around, contemplate their navels, and tell other people what to do, and expect those other people to feed them.
Another good example, though fictional, is The Blythedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne.
I endorse the OP’s meme in full. Libertarians have no problems that that can’t be solved with a change in venue. They should set sail for the Western Sahara, an area currently administered by Morocco and disputed by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia el-Hamra and Río de Oro. They could dock in Nouadhibou, Mauritania, march some 170 miles to the Zug metropolis (population 833) where they will be greeted as liberators. All problems of food, water, and local hostility can be resolved by the Principle of Non-coercion, competing private armies, and freedom.
Barriers overlooking contested territory in the Western Sahara:
Which of course they’d never do, right? Libertarians want all the benefits of civilization and its infrastructure without having to pay any of the costs.
Rousseau believed that people are essentially good, and were made bad by the society that had become corrupted over the centuries, as opposed to those noble savages across the Atlantic with whom Rousseau had had no actual experience.
OTOH, St. Augustine found it telling the condition of our birth: Inter faeces et uriname nascimur. With Nelson Algren’s addendum “wherever you go, there you are.”
Moving forward, I predict the slow demise of libertarianism. Nobody really believes it, as revealed by the thin opposition to the authoritarian Donald Trump among the Liberts. If they believed their own words, they would be among the vanguard Never-Trumpers. But they don’t, so they are not.
The GOP is becoming more forgiving of pot and other drugs, and sexual mores have shifted as again shown by the GOP’s embrace of Trump and Gaetz. Log cabin Republicans have also cracked the prudish edifice. Libertarians may distrust evangelical conservatives, but the latter don’t believe what they say either, so the 2 groups have a lot in common. The animating forces separating libertarians or classic liberals or whatever delusional labels they attach to themselves from ordinary conservatives are breaking down. Ayn Rand is a consistent counter-force, propped by fanatical nonprofits, but old tales about high tech railroads will only get you so far.
tl;dr: Dude, you’re a conservative. Own it.
I sort agree. Mostly.
If a true libertarian despairs of the US ever evolving to their satisfaction, then tearing it down becomes the only way to affect great change. Some may have embraced trump as the Great Tearer-Downer, and the Libertarians would emerge from the wreckage following trump’s life to rebuild their desired utopia upon the ashes (and dashed dreams) of old-style D & R Americans.
Maybe.
It has seemed to me for some years now that libertarian was more a code word for a stoner with delusions of legalization than any more extensive political philosophy. To the degree that’s true, once the stoners have their de facto, if not completely de jure, legalization, belonging to a fringe political party serves no purpose.
This is what liberals do. They create pretzel-logic hypotheticals showing that if you squint through a kaleidoscope in a fun-house mirror building in an alternative universe maybe conservatives are acting in good faith.
Hey, I’m a liberal: I understand the impulse. And on this board we’re here to fight ignorance, so LSL’s point needs to be made IMHO. I’m just continuing the process. Big picture: ISTM that the burden is on US conservatives to demonstrate their good faith, given that an authoritarian has taken over the US’s conservative party, and given their bad faith complaints about Obama’s tyranny.
And we should keep Sam Stone around to give the allegedly patriotic opposition to liberalism a chance to say their piece. Also for laughs. Also, @Der_Trihs has been vindicated. We live in his world now: also hilarious.
And we should keep Sam Stone around to give the allegedly patriotic opposition to liberalism a chance to say their piece. Also for laughs kicks.
I retract the “Laugh” part. Bad form, in this case.