Comment on Why I Haven't Seen Any Trump Supporters In Fediverse (Lemmy and Mastodon)?
Schmoo@slrpnk.net 2 weeks agoSilicon Valley techno-libertarians (a group I identify with)
I hate to break it to you but these are definitely the worst ones. It’s what the Gadsden flag waving canned food and gun hording preppers turn into if they end up with tons of money. These are the morons that build bunkers in New Zealand and try to brainstorm ways to keep their post-apocalyptic security guards loyal to them with remote-detonated bomb collars or holding their families hostage.
ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
The preppers are different because they want to be left completely alone. They don’t see any acceptable role for government in their lives. I don’t think they’re being realistic. Freedom isn’t free, as the saying goes.
The techno-libertarians are much more engaged with society and do see a role for government, even if that role is small and (at least according to some of them) bizarre by normal standards. I’m not going to deny that the bunker-building types are involved in the movement. I often don’t agree with the weirder people involved, but I like that techno-libertarians are willing to hear people out and judge their ideas rationally rather than shunning them for being weird.
(I think I might have a bunker built if I was rich enough. The expected utility of it is higher than that of, say, a second yacht. Human guards are a dead end. Probably the best thing that can be done if civilization totally collapses is blowing up the entrance so that anyone who wants to get to you has to move a thousand tons of rock first. You probably won’t ever get to leave, but its better than what would happen if you did.)
Schmoo@slrpnk.net 2 weeks ago
The bunker-building impulse demonstrates what’s wrong with libertarianism very well, an irrational attachment to individualism in all things. Libertarians refuse to acknowledge the positive role of nature and community in their lives, instead focusing on the negatives and spending all their energy fighting the very thing that keeps them alive. How long do you think you can last alone in a bunker without any support?
ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
I acknowledge that almost all people (including me) couldn’t survive on their own. Even those that could survive (let’s say that their bunkers have robust long-term life-support systems) still couldn’t live completely alone for many years without going crazy.
I don’t reject relationships with other people, but I think they should be between independent individuals who associate with each other only because they both want to. (Violating this principle is sometimes necessary but always undesirable.) You appear to think otherwise, and I suppose that’s a fundamental value difference that can’t be resolved through debate. I do want to point out that if I were in charge, my rules wouldn’t prevent you from voluntarily living life your way. I suspect that your rules wouldn’t leave me the analogous option.
Schmoo@slrpnk.net 2 weeks ago
I also believe in autonomy, but everyone has relationships with people they did not choose to associate with due entirely to unavoidable circumstance. This doesn’t just apply to family, but to everyone on earth to varying degrees. You are just as dependent on community as you are dependent on nature, a complex web of relationships of which you are a small part. Refusing to acknowledge that these relationships exist because you did not choose to enter them is childish, and it enables you to behave selfishly because you do not take responsibility for your externalities. This is the same pitfall that capitalists dive into to justify pollution and all manner of horrible things.