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Comment by enraged_camel | Hacker News Reader

>>And I think that would be especially true of the libertarians I have known. If I were to generalize about them, I'd say that on average they're unusually thoughtful and unusually principled. Most people don't even try for a coherent political philosophy.

Libertarianism will look like a "coherent political philosophy" only if you're a young white kid from an affluent family.

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Yeah, I certainly think people in the libertarian end of the pool tend to value coherence more than completeness. But the conflict between coherence and completeness is much smaller for people who have led very comfortable lives. So that would fit.

Or someone from a former soviet block country, or Cuban/Venezuelan expats.

This is the most original and convincing argument against libertarianism that I've heard.

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic, but it's about as original and convincing as saying that "liberalism is a 'coherent political philosophy' only if you are a poor inner-city black kid whose parents are on welfare".

They make for witty-sounding quips, but both are ad-hominems[0] that do little to actually address and argue against the tenets of either philosophy.

[0] (In before someone points out that this is not a true ad-hominem because it attacks a stereotype (and a straw man at that) rather than a specific individual).

This definitely isn't an ad hominem, and it isn't even analogous to one. Enraged_camel is implying that libertarianism is missing something that is easy to miss if you have led a relatively comfortable and unchallenging life. The criticism is oblique rather than explicit, but that doesn't make it anything like an ad hominem, because ad hominems are essentially distracting with irrelevancy.

Libertarianism will look like a "coherent political philosophy" only if you're a young white kid from an affluent family.

Or, anybody else.

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