(Part 2) Top products from r/EnoughLibertarianSpam

Maybe you could quote what you think is relevant there?


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BB%26T

>BB&T (Branch Banking and Trust) is one of the largest financial services holding companies in the U.S. with $222.6 billion in assets and market capitalization of $30.6 billion (as of September 30, 2016).


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_A._Allison_IV
>In 2008, Allison was nominated by Morningstar as one of the best CEOs of 2008.

So Allison has an explicitly Objectivist world view, was the CEO of BB&T, and BB&T was extremely successful.


Allison is still extremely admired in the business world.

https://www.amazon.com/Leadership-Crisis-Free-Market-Cure/dp/0071831118#productDescription_secondary_view_div_1483292088690

>John A. Allison is President and CEO of the Cato Institute. Previously he served for twenty years as Chairman and CEO of BB&T, one of the largest financial institutions in America. Allison is a former Distinguished Professor of Practice at Wake Forest University. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award from American Banker, was named one of the decade’s top 100 most successful CEOs in the world by Harvard Business Review, and is the recipient of six honorary doctorate degrees.

>Hailed by Forbes magazine as “one of the most important books of the year,” John Allison’s breakout bestseller The Financial Crisis and the Free Market Cure

How am I wrong?

I wrote a paper analyzing Chilean politics last year. The thesis was that libertarianism, Friendmanite neoliberalism, etc., in pure form, can only exist under authoritarian or totalitarian (in the case of Ayn Rand's objectivist capitalism) regimes and are logically incompatible with democracy.

The conclusion was that if people are ever given a vote, they will by and large vote against purist constructs of these political theories, and I used Chilean politics to demonstrate the point. I presented the argument in class and the logic of it was accepted, even by the two libertarian leaning classmates, but sadly it didn't move them at all. They concluded essentially that political freedom is unnecessary for real freedom™.

EDIT: If anyone is interested in learning more about the very fascinating "libertarian" dictatorship in Chile, and how it was implemented with the help of Milton Friedman, I suggest checking out Naomi Kline's The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. She's definitely a leftist, and so it should be read with her bias in mind, but she's a fantastic writer and journalist and there's enough factual information to form your own perspectives on the matter without relying completely on her analysis.

GR has a lot of amazing history you can find. Anything that has happened nationally, happened nationally because it was in a lot of local areas, so even Grand Rapids has its own piece that plays a role, but with its own twist. The book I mentioned before shows why GR has historically had low union membership rates. You may be interested in a couple other books I'm getting to this year:

• City Within a City: The Black Freedom Struggle in Grand Rapids
  
• African Americans in the Furniture City: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Grand Rapids
  
• Early Days of Aviation in Grand Rapids
  
  It would be cool if teachers presented local history when reviewing national history. There's a lot to be learned from the struggles within our own localities.

That entire fiishing analogy and the whole Irwin 'The Tax Dodger' Schiff and Peter 'The Gold Shill' Schiff book: How and economy grows and why it crashes is aimed squarely at shallow thinkers. It appeals very well to those who would like to believe everything is just so simple.

That said I do actually like the book from a stylistic point of view, it really does present Austrian Economics spam in a interesting and easy to understand format, the style is brilliant I think.

But unfortunately dunning krugerand libertarians read it and subsequently think they are experts at socio-economic policies because herp derp everything in society is just like two men on an island fishing.

Private ownership of natural resources, discrimination, historical oppression all doesn't real and doesn't matter even if they were.

Our complex society can just easily be hyper reduced to two men fishing in the sea. (Two men who started off on equal footing btw)

As you said once you change the scenario to where one man owns the entire island and everything on it and the second man only has the option to either pay rent by working as a chattel slave or rely on mother nature and hope he can evolve into an aquatic mammal before he runs out of energy and drowns in the ocean., the fairy tale doesn't sound as great any more does it.

I'm not for you creating news, then crossposting it here. It's just noise.

You got 90+ comments. A few people agreed with you. It reads like it went OK, given initial conditions. I don't know if you'd believe me, but for the most part, libertarianism isn't completely bankrupt, you just can't apply it to absolutely every part of society. I've read the Ayn Rand set, I like parts of the philosophy, but I also understand there is a place for government, regulation, taxes, and polite society.

Some guy wrote a great post about "going to die on the hill" when people bring up private roads. Libertarians want to deregulate drugs, get us out of foreign wars, and reduce regulations that monopolies use to stay monopolies.

There should be a common ground.

You going over there to deliberately post what is essentially garbage about a dictionary definition of "tyranny" isn't going to build consensus or get us any closer to political utopia. You're just making enemies.

I think in the end many of us want the same things, but starting out from the paradigm of "we are enemies, here are some shitty goalposts, let's debate", (Jesus Christ, there is a /r/AskLibertarians/) ... it's caustic.

Real people don't run on "logic, reasoning, and unambiguous verbiage". You're thinking of robots. I would recommend some books on Debate.

No amount of "being right" will make up for "being respected". If you want to win people to this position, I'd work on the mechanics of convincing others.

(I feel for you, this is a problem I'm very aware of myself, but you need honest feedback, not a circle-jerk.)

****

Edit. Deleted the posts under (nothing of value) and unsubscribed.

Well, you're not far off. This book is very popular in libertarian circles: https://www.amazon.com/Economics-One-Lesson-Shortest-Understand/dp/0517548232

Actually, if you read the Ayn Rand Reader, like I did in College, it specifically spells out that the entire philosophy is based on the idea that amoebas don't give a fuck about anyone else, and neither should we.

It's "our duty" as organisms to look out for ourselves and only ourselves. "The Virtue of Selfishness" is what their philosophy is based on. It doesn't even "border on" eugenics, it IS eugenics. "Survival of the fittest" etc.

Here is a history.com article also:

http://www.history.com/topics/origins-of-the-mafia

I haven't read this: http://www.amazon.com/History-Mafia-Salvatore-Lupo/dp/0231131348/ref=tag_dpp_lp_edpp_img_in

But it appears to be a good source for Mafia History.

That's actually not anything an-cap at all, but an anarchist history of nomadic stateless peoples in Asia through the lens of groups of people avoiding the rule of southeast Asian states. It's a pretty interesting book, although I'm not sure about the author's arguments or conclusions.

It seems libertarians/an-caps have appropriated it, though.

I agree. This macro is unfair and is Exhibit A on why I don't like image macros to begin with.

Some libertarians exhibit certain characteristics of cult behavior (cutting yourself off from family is the most extreme I've seen), but nothing like the psychopaths at Scientology. Most local chapters of any political organization/party require some kind of dues to provide basic communication and organization. Paying $25 per year is pretty damn low. Comparing it to joining SeaOrg is ridiculous.

Read Lawrence Wright's current book and tell me the Libertarian Party is the same.

When Affirmative Action was White

What are you talking about? They've already read the greatest work of mankind.

People who can't answer this should read Economics in Two Lessons: Why Markets Work So Well, and Why They Can Fail So Badly.

You are the second dumbest person I've ever spoken to on this website. Maybe the first if it turns out my theory is right and number 1 is a sockpuppet account.

Educate yourself: http://www.amazon.com/From-Hegel-Marx-Intellectual-Development/dp/0231096658

99.9% of the time, i would say you are right. in this case, these specific people are probably disparaging other white people aka "hillbillies".

Appalachia is a disoriented place (a peripheral, internal colony to the larger nation) that is very much divided against itself. in a ridge community of 30 households, there will be 15 tiny churches, few of whom care much for each other. communities on opposite sides of a ridge don't associate, often regarding each other with suspicion. people who live in the county seat consider those "out in the counties" to be backward, while those out in the counties consider those in-town to be pretentious, corrupt and politically connected. some families names are blacklisted by other family names, and they can't abide anyone with that name getting anything.

northeastern capital and their agents / strike breakers did (and still do) a hell of a number on these people. these are the geographies capitalism ravaged long before the suburban randroids and ancappers wanked themselves silly to propertarian dreams and rugged individualist mythos.

source: did community organization / anti-poverty work pretty much right around there.

if you want a very well researched book about this region--it also speaks to the Mississippi delta, which has its dispossession fall much more "neatly" along racial lines--i recommend:
World's Apart: Why Rural Poverty Persists in America

Cons are still pissed off that we are not living in The Jungle.

Well I'll go ahead and express my bias, because I do know a thing about *eminent domain. My family homesteaded property here about 100 years ago and we were always battling eminent domain with utilities and the parks dept.

As I explicitly said about 3 times already, fuck Bundy, but fuck the BLM 5 times harder.