Libertarian Lies

[Galraedia]

Run time: 09:58 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55vGTBr-EjM   Posted on YouTube: November 24, 2011 By YouTube Member: Licentiathe8th Views on YouTube: 31   Posted on DU: November 26, 2011 By DU Member: Galraedia Views on DU: 2010

 

[HDPaulG]

1. "This video has been removed by the user. "

I'd like to send to my Libertarian Fox viewers.

[stockholmer]

3. if they watch the horrid Fox News,odds are extremely high they are NOT libertarian of any stripe

They may say or even think they are, buy that just betrays their true ignorance on that (and probably most) subjects. I would lay money they are just corporatist reactionary lackeys, who have a false sense of identity with their overlords. The last thing their masters will allow is for governmental regulation to be stripped away. See my post immediately below.

[stockholmer]

2. very weak work, this has nothing to do with US-style right-libertarianism (a form I mostly

disagree with by the way, except for their anti-war/empire stance). Libertarians come in all flavours, including left-wing, socialist, and anarcho.

Even more laughable the video showed a picture of MILTON FRIEDMAN (as an example of a libertarian, lololol), who is a monetarist, a right-wing big government interventionist (ie pump money into the supply side) the antithesis of free-market thought.

The video states "Obama put Larry Summers and Tim Geithner in charge of the economy. If that makes him socialist, I'm the King of Peru." Summers and Geithner ARE indeed socialist, CORPORATE socialists (ie fascists), total puppets for the bankster/multi-nationals, so I guess this is a video made by a King. Oooopsie! Peru doesnt have a KING! Another fail.

The video did throw in Ayn Rand (more objectivist than anything else, but she did espouse some right-wing libertarian styled thoughts), who is basically discredited in most serious academic circles as it is, but then she always provides a convenient 'dog to kick around' for the unsophisicated type of argument.

The National Inflation Association (the main target of the video) is about as 'libertarian' as a can of dog food. They are (as the video correctly points outs) a scam outfit, but have nothing to do with so called-libertarian thought. They may claim this to simply bait in and broaden the pool of suckers, but that label is useless when applied to them. Peter Schiff, who actually IS somewhat of a right-wing leaning libertarian rips NIA all the time, in fact he calls for their prosecution on securities fraud.

This video is a mishmash that conflates neo-con war-mongering fools like Glenn Beck with ANTI-CORPORATISTS like Gerald Celente. Celente tears into Beck all the time, yet another example of the confusion this video maker has. This whole thing is pure psy-ops. I suggest the maker go back and learn basic ideological terms before they start tossing them around so un-carefully.

The one thing I always say to people who conflate certain types of American libertarians with corporatists by calling them supporters of 'Anarchy for rich white men' is to point out that if this were indeed the case, why do not rich white men support the US libertarians? Far from supporting them, they revile them, as the truly powerful banksters and multinationals are fused in a nexus of corporate fascism that relies on big government regulations to crush their competition from small and mid-size firms.


This is the fascistic model that's been in place in the US since the so-called Progressive Era of Teddy Roosevelt and the creation of the Federal Reserve under Woodrow Wilson.


What you have is an artificially constructed choice called either 'deregulation' by the so-called right-wing, OR 'government oversight' by the so-called left-wing. Both are false paradigms. The last thing the systemic controllers want is a 'level playing field'.

The problem with the US experiment is not big government per se, it is big government that has morphed in all areas over the last 100 years into nothing more than an enforcement mechanism for the systemic controllers. Agencies that should be for the public good are simple the tools of the elite designed to to crush all competition from small and mid-size firms.

This started in the USA during the above-mentioned Progressive Era under Theodore Roosevelt, wherein huge monopolies like Standard Oil, etc, utilized a 'don't throw me in the briar patch' argument to get the force of government into regulating business practices (regulations that many times in the 100 years since they have written, then had a bought and paid for Congress pass). Far from creating a free market, this quashed their rivals in so many cases, and made it exceedingly hard for small entrepreneurs to compete.

The US Animal ID act is a perfect example, wherein a small sized chicken farmer has to pay exorbitant licensing fees per chicken, thus forcing them out of business, whilst monstrously huge consortiums like Tyson, etc, simply are allowed to buy one large bulk license that covers millions of birds.

Check out New Left historian Gabriel Kolko, who in his book "The Triumph of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation of American History, 1900-1916." In it, he lays out a case for the rise of modern corporatist system during the Progressive Era. This in turn, allows for the violation of a anti-fascistic principle – No socialization of losses and privatization of gains (ie the confluence of big business and big government in mutual reinforcement).

http://www.amazon.com/Triumph-Conservatism-Gabriel-Kolko/dp/0029166500

http://www.4shared.com/document/Psy6aMNF/Gabriel_Kolko_-_The_Triumph_Of.html pdf


Kolko was soon joined by other New Left historians such as William Appleman Williams in challenging the reigning "corporate liberal" orthodoxy. Rather than "the people" being behind these "progressive reforms," it was the very elite business interests themselves responsible, in an attempt to cartelize, centralize and control what was impossible due to the dynamics of a competitive and decentralized economy.

.............in advancing the corporate liberalism idea whereby the old Progressive historiography of the "interests" versus the "people" was reinterpreted as a collaboration of interests aiming towards stabilizing competition . According to Grob and Billias, "Kolko believed that large-scale units turned to government regulation precisely because of their inefficiency" and that the "Progressive movement - far from being antibusiness - was actually a movement that defined the general welfare in terms of the well-being of business" .

Kolko, in particular, broke new ground with his critical history of the Progressive Era. He discovered that free enterprise and competition were vibrant and expanding during the first two decades of the twentieth century; meanwhile, corporations reacted to the free market by turning to government to protect their inherent inefficiency from the discipline of market conditions. This behavior is known as corporatism, but Kolko dubbed it "political capitalism." Kolko's thesis "that businessmen favored government regulation because they feared competition and desired to forge a government-business coalition" is one that is echoed by many observers today . Former Harvard professor Paul H. Weaver uncovered the same inefficient and bureaucratic behavior from corporations during his stint at Ford Motor Corporation (see Weaver's The Suicidal Corporation <1988>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Kolko
http://users.crocker.com/~acacia/kolko.html
http://miltenoff.tripod.com/Kolko.html
http://www.stateofnature.org/liberalElitesAnd.html





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Here are some links on left libertarians, anarcho-socialists, etc:


Noted left-libertarians and anarcho-socialists:

Michael Otsuka

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctymio /

Peter Vallentyne

http://klinechair.missouri.edu/Web%20Admin/Vita_Revised.htm#personal


Noam Chomsky (he has called his libertarian socialism an anarchist philosophy)

http://planetchomsky.com /

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Other links to left forms of democratic workplaces and social structuring:


"The Democratic Worker-Owned Firm" by David Ellerman

http://www.ellerman.org/Davids-Stuff/Books/demofirm.doc



"Libertarianism Without Inequality" by Michael Otsuka

http://ebookee.org/Michael-Otsuka-Libertarianism-without-Inequality_341064.html


Why Left-Libertarianism Is Not Incoherent, Indeterminate, or Irrelevant: A Reply to Fried

PETER VALLENTYNE,
HILLEL STEINER, AND
MICHAEL OTSUKA

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctymio/leftlibP&PA.pdf

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http://newpol.org /

New Politics, published since 1986 as a semi-annual, follows in the tradition established in its first series (1961-1978) as an independent socialist forum for dialogue and debate on the left. It is committed to the advancement of the peace and anti-intervention movements. It stands in opposition to all forms of imperialism, and is uncompromising in its defense of feminism and affirmative action. In our pages there is broad coverage of labor and social movements, the international scene, as well as emphasis on cultural and intellectual history.

Above all, New Politics insists on the centrality of democracy to socialism and on the need to rely on mass movements from below for progressive social transformation.

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"Political rights do not originate in parliaments; they are, rather, forced upon parliaments from without. And even their enactment into law has for a long time been no guarantee of their security. Just as the employers always try to nullify every concession they had made to labor as soon as opportunity offered, as soon as any signs of weakness were observable in the workers' organizations, so governments also are always inclined to restrict or to abrogate completely rights and freedoms that have been achieved if they imagine that the people will put up no resistance.

Even in those countries where such things as freedom of the press, right of assembly, right of combination, and the like have long existed, governments are constantly trying to restrict those rights or to reinterpret them by juridical hair-splitting. Political rights do not exist because they have been legally set down on a piece of paper, but only when they have become the ingrown habit of a people, and when any attempt to impair them will meet with the violent resistance of the populace .

Where this is not the case, there is no help in any parliamentary Opposition or any Platonic appeals to the constitution."


– Rudolf Rocker, Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory & Practice, 1947


http://www.iwa-ait.org /

http://www.iww.org /

http://workersolidarity.org /

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More libertarians and anarcho socialists:

Cornelius Castoriadis

http://www.agorainternational.org

Antonio Negri

http://www.generation-online.org/t/translations.htm#negribm


Murray Bookchin

http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bookchin/bio1.html


Arran Gare

http://en.scientificcommons.org/arran_gare

[napoleon_in_rags]

4. +1 whenever I hear somebody here bashing Libertarianism or any third party I read between the lines.

I work in mental health. Whenever you have somebody with a less functional mind, they often have certain behaviors, which can be managed through certain "tricks". One of the most powerful is the dialectic: Say somebody with a mental disability comes up to you, and asks for a candy bar. There's none he can have, but he can't tell the difference between these innate limitations and you denying him something out of cruelty, so if you say "no, you can't have one", he will be angry, and smash things. On the other hand, you can mitigate the rage by offering him a choice: "Well, you can look in your room for change so you can buy one at the store, or you can wait till Monday when you get your spending money. What will you do?" It works every time: he won't be mad, because he feels empowered and free to choose, and will pick one of the options. Yet his physical circumstances haven't changed in any way, he's been given nothing.

The non-thinking bipartisian system of politics is just a higher level example of the exact same trick. But unlike the helper working with the disabled person, sometimes they are not helping us, we really can have the candy bar, but they don't want to give it. The trick works the same. That's why whenever I hear somebody bashing libertarians or any thinking outside the right left dialectic, I hear somebody saying "forget that and focus an the two choices that have been defined for you!" IT takes a strong mind to not fall for it, and I always admire people like who don't.

[stockholmer]

5. I love your candy bar analogy, thanks for posting

:hi:

[walerosco]

6. Wow, what a response

I don't get the irrational fear of anything libertarian on this site, on several occasions I have seen to suggest that libertarianism is a lot more dangerous than corporate bailout loving, war supporting and civil liberty infringing conservatives. Ofc libertarianism has it many flaws, but its in no way as destructive to our society than regular mom and pop conservatism.

I agree mostly with your post and I will add this your regulation section. I was in the home health care business a while back working for $10/hr. During the period I realized that my company was charging medicare $30/hr and the paid me $10. With this new info, I tried to go off on my own as a private contractor, I posted on craigslist, the local paper and even went to hospitals to pass out my services since I knew I could undercut the big home care agencies that were dominating the market. To cut a long story short, the regulatory hurdles put in place by the government(written by industry insider) would have cost me tens of thousands of dollars to clear before I would be able to receive medicare funds.

The truth is that those regulations written by ex employees of the industry that it was meant to regulate end up favoring big corporations.