From: Cato Unbound: The Education of a Libertarian
Core Takeaway
The fate of our world may depend on the effort of a single person who builds or propagates the machinery of freedom that makes the world safe for capitalism.
To Thiel. Capitalism in it’s purest, least regulated form is freedom. However, as he stated earlier, “capitalism simply is not that popular with the crowd” and therefore will be under constant and continuous siege by the proletariate as long as democracy is extended to them. Specifically he fears the “increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise [of democracy] to women” because they are “two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians”.
Other Key Points
The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics. Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of “capitalist democracy” into an oxymoron.
Facebook’s caustic effect on democracy was not a negative side effect. Rather it was its purpose
(1) Cyberspace. As an entrepreneur and investor, I have focused my efforts on the Internet. In the late 1990s, the founding vision of PayPal centered on the creation of a new world currency, free from all government control and dilution — the end of monetary sovereignty, as it were. In the 2000s, companies like Facebook create the space for new modes of dissent and new ways to form communities not bounded by historical nation-states. By starting a new Internet business, an entrepreneur may create a new world.
The future of technology is not pre-determined, and we must resist the temptation of technological utopianism — the notion that technology has a momentum or will of its own, that it will guarantee a more free future, and therefore that we can ignore the terrible arc of the political in our world.
From: Cato Unbound: Your Suffrage Isn’t in Danger. Your Other Rights Are.
Voting is not under siege in America, but many other rights are. In America, people are imprisoned for using even very mild drugs, tortured by our own government, and forced to bail out reckless financial companies.
- Voting did not get us here. This is an incoherent take.
- Cato Unbound The Old View
- the longer a problem has existed, the less likely it is that it can be solved the obvious way
- Do these men realize that there are freedoms outside of economics and capitalism?
- Do these men not understand that optimizing for the maximum freedom of only the most ambitious will only lead us to perfect inequality as measured by the gini index?
- There’s a benefit of tying the most competent in society down to the wellbeing of the concentration of mankind! There will always be a reason that we must wait for rights, that we must endure pain for the greater good that has only just now come into view. There is no individual who is above this flaw.
- The best system is one that educates and then allows everyone a vote. I trust in the education of all. If they are unhappy with how people are voting then they should provide them more education.
- Hmmm but could it be though that at various points in the ladder of knowledge that it appears that one must go right or left or neither such that the education of all considering that where people end up will fall on a bell curve and their inclusion in the franchise of democracy?
Let me again make it clear that everything I say is related to the goal of achieving a substantially freer society. If the current United States is a 5 on the 1-10 scale, we’re looking for an 8 or higher. With this goal, it is simply ludicrous to think that a good way to achieve it is running for public office in a country that is 85% – 95% non-libertarian, and uses a system (democracy) that is clearly (in both theory and empirical evidence) antithetical to economic freedom. No one is saying that becoming a public official has no effect. But I would like to hear a plausible path via which electing a few libertarians to local or state offices results in the dissolution of the DEA, BATF, and IRS.
