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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   29677 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 18, 2023

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The real problem is that these people want this status without doing the work or having the abilities required of an elite class, let alone any love for the people, loyalty to the nation or what have you.

This mentality also finds itself at home with privileged, white and entitled libertarians who want to enact a world where the market solves all problems, and you think you can do away with politics entirely. It's a worldview that says I have no obligations to others, if I can get rich nobody should bother me. It's quite striking how much they idealize the worldview that animates the underclasses and third world countries of the rest of the planet.

Libertarianism does not say you have no obligations to others. This is a ridiculous strawman.

(It does say that your obligations to others are limited, which bleeding-heart liberalism and progressivism do not, but that, as they say, is a "feature")

Libertarianism does not say you have no obligations to others. This is a ridiculous strawman.

Is it? I got blasted pretty hard every time I introduced the concept to PCM. Humor aside, you got better quality political discussion there then you did in actual political subreddits. Maybe not to someone like you who has a more sophisticated understanding of it. But to the rebellious young adults who protested Jesus in the household and found their new Bible in "Man, State and Economy" with an Internet connection, they 'absolutely' think that, and will explicitly tell you as much.

Libertarianism does not say you have no obligations to others. This is a ridiculous strawman.

Have you read any of Bryan Caplan waxing about his "beautiful bubble"?

Instead, I pursue the strategy that actually works: Making my small corner of the world beautiful in my eyes.

Yes. He calls the world outside “dreary, insipid, ugly, boring, wrong, and wicked”, but adds that “Trying to reform it is largely futile” and implies he has no obligation to waste his efforts.

By declaring effort largely futile, he makes it clear any predictably unsuccessful attempts would be mere signaling of “caring” without real effect.

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