But my largest disagreement is that Tyler misses what is most problematic about modern libertarianism. In my view, modern libertarianism has too narrow a view of social harm and too limited a role for government in encouraging mediating institutions that help ameliorate such harms. Tyler underscores a certain obtuseness on this point by professing not to be able to understand the difference between classical liberalism and libertarianism, except that classical liberalism was a 19th-century philosophy suited to solving the problems of its times, but not ours.It's a thoughtful response.
Friday, January 17, 2020
Update on State Capacity Libertarianism
I posted on this new topic of Tyler Cowan's almost two week's ago. I have seen other commentary since then. Law and Liberty had this mostly-negative take on the idea.
The fundamental flaw with libertarianism is that it treats humans as independent atoms without history, culture, genetics or psychology. In these matters it is very close to cultural marxism and the modern day progressives. It is derisively called "Magic Dirt Theory," because it assumes that immigrants from different cultures and races and histories automatically become one with the natives. The fact that immigration since about 1965 is systematically breaking down White American culture and politics and introducing multidimensional race war is ignored.
ReplyDeleteLibertarians also support free trade as well as free movements of people. (They are the same thing.) And these policies have destroyed the American (White) working class. The opioid epidemic among poor Whites is a direct consequence of those policies. In retrospect, using the black underclass as a model, the drug epidemic among displaced Whites was predictable.
As you might guess, I think libertarianism is as immoral as cultural marxism, its twin.