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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022

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A principled libertarian probably wouldn't support the government mandated service provider monopoly/duopoly that creates the conflict in the first place either. One that accepts the public utility infrastructure principle applied to last mile (libertarians here, not anarchists) would probably want something like local loop unbundling rather than strict net neutrality. But regulating common infrastructure such that it cannot discriminate between private parties isn't heterodox within that philosophical framework. Right libertarians would typically favor auctioning services while left libertarians would favor a common carrier equal service regulation.

I always find this genre of "that's not really libertarian" when applied to already very regulated industries strange. It's like that joke where someone offers to sleep with you for a million dollars and you say yes then changes the offer to $1 to the objection of "what kind of woman do you think I am" with the reply of "we've already established what kind of woman you are, now we're just haggling", except we've cut off the part were I accepted the first offer.

Yes, I'd prefer the world where capitalism reigned and I had 80 different ISP options that will fight with each other to serve me as well as possible. But we don't live in that world, we live in the world where these companies are granted a monopoly and I have, if I'm lucky, two choices in ISP that both spend more money lobbying than on maintaining their service. And if we're going to regulate this industry how about doing it in the interests of the citizen instead of the lobbyist.

I find the idea that right libertarians believe that natural monopolies don't exist, both true, and disappointing. As a right libertarian myself.

One that accepts the public utility infrastructure principle applied to last mile (libertarians here, not anarchists)

There's no such principle in libertarianism. For anarchists, "public" doesn't mean anything at all, since there's no state. For libertarians, "public" means "operated by the government", and the only thing that can be so is the institutions that are dedicated to preserving natural rights (e.g. the police putting murderers in jail) and enforcing contracts (e.g. if you promised to pay your bills, you better pay them or else). I don't see much place for "public utility infrastructure principle" here. Now, you may like the practical benefits of this, whatever it means - but if we're talking about "dogmatic basis", there's just no place for it, and anybody who accepts it may be dogmatic anything, but not a libertarian. Just as somebody who accepts private ownership of means of production is not a communist, even though there are probably much proven benefits to that concept.

left libertarians would favor a common carrier equal service regulation.

They may favor anything they like, but they're not any kind of libertarians then. It doesn't make sense to use the label "libertarian" for somebody that accepts regulation they like and rejects regulation they don't - everybody is "libertarian" like that, the label will provide zero selectivity then.

I think this is an overly restrictive reading. A communist still accepts that capitalism exists. Likewise, a libertarian may accept as a matter of fact that state regulation exists. Then starting from that position, the libertarian may have an opinion on what manner of adjustment to that regulation makes the system more free, or less free, even in a libertarian sense.

The domain of opinion of a political system is not limited to a complete instantiation of that system - and well so, because otherwise it would be impossible to reshape society to your wishes. You have to be able to target smaller steps than complete instantaneous replacement.

A communist still accepts that capitalism exists.

Sure, there's a difference between what communist wants to happen, ideally, and what's existing on the ground now. So a communist may push for higher taxation of private business - but always with the ultimate goal in mind that these businesses should eventually be all nationalized and under the control of Gosplan. So if we talk about tactical flexibility, then yes, that's a thing. But if we're talking about dogmatic position - then I can't call someone who accepts capitalism a dogmatic communist. And I can't see any libertarian support regulation of private business on a purely dogmatic basis. On the tactical grounds, as a political move to improve an imperfect situation and make it less imperfect - sure.