Is Libertarianism as Wrong About Human Nature as Communism?

Uh Libertarianism is as wrong about human nature as communism. And I disagreed. You agreed though. Yes. Uh so you're gonna have to you're gonna have to go first again. Uh yeah, uh again, I I obviously am far more sympathetic to libertarians than communists. If we ever need to run the Reds out, I know I can, you know, count on all of your helicopters, and I appreciate that. Um, but but I do think that there is a fundamental flaw that exists at the core of I I should, you know, of course, libertarianism, as you know, I've I've argued with Dave Smith and you and many other people, it's too broad of a term. I really need you guys to get together and have like break the base libertarians into something. Call anything, I don't care. Hoppy and whatever. Free standard perfect. Just not libertarian, because I'm sorry, but you and Bill Amar are not the same people, okay?

Uh so the the but uh ultimately I think the problem with many libertarians, not all, not all, the many fine people, uh, but the problem the problem with uh the the libertarian ideology is it tends to be fundamentally materialistic. It tends to treat economics as the be-all end-all of human behavior. It takes something that it is very right about, which is generally Austrian economics, and then try to turn that into a system of everything. And that is always a a mistake. Universal systems are always a failure. The attempt to yeah, kind of put this under one universal understanding that flows from economic interactions is always an issue. And so I think that this creates problems. Libertarians often assume things that are just fundamentally incorrect about human nature, like the idea that everybody values liberty, everyone can live.

You know, the fact that the free state is understanding you actually most people don't live this way is in fact a rejection of what libertarians have often spoken about for a long time. So in the sense that you guys are doing this now, you're correct. But that is a fundamental rejection at some level of this idea of a universal understanding that can be uh kind of put under the mis m materialist rubric. And because both communism and uh libertarianism are kind of these economic theories that try to expand themselves into the understandings of sociology and morality and you know metaphysics and everything else, this is where they fail. It's not that libertarianism libertarianism is wrong about everything, it's not that it you know makes mistakes about everything or even most things, but it's it does fail, I think, pretty importantly in its anthropology.

And when you have bad anthropology, other mistakes flow from it pretty regularly. Well, this is unsurprisingly the strongest disagreement that I'll have with you, although still be nice about it. Uh, you know, I think I think, and of course, it depends on what you mean by libertarianism. Sometimes people even ask me why I still consider myself a libertarianist, because they see me as like having drifted in some ways, although I don't think I have having read the literature. But the key thing that libertarians get that I think too much of the right, the dissident right, the neo-reactionaries, whatever, don't always get, although I will say a lot of the neo-reactionaries get it, is markets. Uh, the power of markets, the power of voluntary exchange. Markets have done more for the world than any government, than practically anything.

The fact that we're having this podcast, you know, how many uh thousands, millions, tens of millions of people, you know, went into producing all of the things in this room, you know, that sort of I pencil type of argument of all of all of the countless voluntary, bottom-up interactions that produced all of this stuff. And so as someone who, despite having problems with modernity, appreciates a lot of it. I'm never gonna starve to death. My children aren't gonna starve to death. I don't have to fear death from an animal. I can go into my air conditioned house. I I don't live in Europe. Uh, you know, and they it's m it's markets that have produced these things. And to me, markets are one of the most beautiful things that and uh, you know, uh that that sort of exists in in the world to me. Markets are very beautiful kind of thing in that bottom-up uh way uh that that of what humans can make and what we can build and what we can produce when we voluntarily associate and we do that in this bottom-up way.

And to me, that's libertarianism. There's not another political philosophy that really gets to lay claim to that idea. And communism done nothing. It's done fuck all. Uh, this is my podcast, so I can swear. Uh, there uh there's it's it's done nothing. It's very it's impossibly wrong. It's fundamentally wrong. Whereas libertarianism, I think there are excessive versions of it, but but they really do deserve that mantle of of being the political philosophy of voluntary association and markets, and those I those ideas are remarkable, are are responsible for so much of human progress. And uh and I think libertarians don't get enough credit. I think the and I think the right needs to like i if I could like pick up and like shake the people on the right that I disagree with, I'd be like, read Hayek and understand Hayekian knowledge, you know, because this is the idea that I think is the most missing among the right who is disdainful of libertarians who who believes that they can produce these outcomes in in these sort of top-down ways, and and it and it's just not possible.

And uh so that's my sort of defense of libertarianism for uh you know, for the right. Well, I don't believe in progress, so that's a problem. But uh and and of course you're right that well, go live in a cave, have we ever uh but uh don't tempt me. Um but but I think the you know one of the issues that kind of loops back to one of our previous propositions here was the preconditions required for liberty, right? I don't think markets create liberty, I think particular traditions created markets, and those markets are very effective operating inside those traditions. The farther they get outside of them, the more sideways they get, right? Like ultimately is China gonna end up proving to be you know more dynamic under its, you know, let's be frank, fascist understanding of markets than America under what I guess we could say is a you know severely botched understanding of free markets.

That's a good question. Can we maintain markets without those preconditions? Are the markets themselves the miracle, or were the people who made markets available the ones that are ultimately necessary for that? And I also think, uh, you know, I don't want to get Nick Landian on us here. Uh, but there's also the the problem that markets are themselves really a feedback loop of uh intelligence. They they are their own form of intelligence gathering information over time. And it's a powerful force, but it also makes us slowly less human. It starts to deprioritize uh human concerns for uh uh concerns of independent systems. Um but that might we might be getting far too too deep into the weeds on that one, so perhaps that's a whole nother debate.