Hacker News Reader

Comment by flyinRyan | Hacker News Reader

Well yes, I rather intended it to be insulting as I find the fact that in today's world of instant connections to information, the fact that people still see Libertarianism itself as legitimate as insane and insulting. Any movement that considers Ayn Rand anything other then the uninventive, unoriginal hack she was is worthy only of ridicule.

And I suspect any international "Libertarian" parties are actually american expats. The international community does have something comparable though: ancaps. I feel the same about them.

View on HN

You are mixing things up. Ayn Rand is more associated with the right-conservative movement. Libertarianism (with a lower-case l) is simply the belief in a voluntary society - one without coercion. The problem with most peoples political beliefs is they are ego-centric and are based the individual thinking their way is correct and they are so certain of it, they're willing to force others to comply via the barrel of a gun (or proxy gun - aka, military, police, etc) using property confiscation (non-voluntary taxes) as the primary means.

Ask yourself, are you so certain of your position that you are willing to shoot or imprison me even if I'm causing you no harm? This is the modus operandi for both the left and right.

You have some reading to do. Start here: https://mises.org/rothbard/newlibertywhole.asp

>Ayn Rand is more associated with the right-conservative movement.

Then why was she all over those links you gave me? I think your movement has moved on without you.

>is simply the belief in a voluntary society - one with coercion.

You meant without here, right? Then we're talking anarchism. Since libertarians always talk about free markets, that would make it ancap. Which is an oxymoron.

> they're willing to force others to comply via the barrel of a gun (or proxy gun - aka, military, police, etc) with property confiscation (non-voluntary taxes) as the primary means.

A but this is exactly my issue with libertarianism: it's so much more complex than this but libertarians just hand wave all the problems away. Just a few more incantations of "laissez faire" and Utopia will arrive.

I'm not pro-coercion, I simply recognize that capitalism itself implies a level of coercion no matter how you package it up.