While the ideas and policies promoted by the libertarian wing of the Republican Party have made CEOs and billionaire investors very, very rich in recent decades, it’s killing the rest of us.
This is most comprehensive short article I have ever read on libertarianism. Buyer beware. I now have to see my libertarian friends with a totally different eye. If they actually believe this stuff they have been lying to me. Actually they have been glossing over most of this just to say they love Liberty. They're loving Liberty is great but, that is only tip of the ugly iceberg underneath the black waters of republicanism that is libertarianism and now religious politics.
This Report is a good depiction of many desiring a modern day Colosseum. That strong gladiator standing alone against the wild animals is how Trump sees himself. It's on all the cards and coins he sells to his cult. Just like Hickman, he is more than willing to carve others up to increase his wealth.
Psychopathy is likely on a scale. How that intersects with a Libertarian-ism scale remains to be found, but I'd bet it relates. Some empathetic people cannot wrap their head around this despite seeing the damage both have done to the least of us.
George Conway is trying to get this across with his political ads from Psycho PAC. Desperate times, desperate measures. Trump is not a one-off, but we keep thinking we are BEYOND these psychos. Silly us!
The only medical advice about the psychopath in your life is to get away from them before they can do any further damage. VOTE DEMOCRATIC!
"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness." John Kenneth Galbraith. One of my favorite quotes.
Ayn Rand told sociopaths what they wanted to hear. Greenspan and others of his ilk didn't need the justification for themselves because feeling justified in whatever they did was a part of their sociopathy. Still, it gave them a cover to the rest of society to perhaps cause them to question their "Golden Rule" values and get on board with their selfish way of thinking. After all, look how famous Rand's books were. How can you argue with wealth and fame? I read that Rand also used her sexuality to persuade men of her way of thinking.
Proponents of horseshoe theory argue that the far-left and the far-right are closer to each other than either is to the political center. Ayn Rand, the "objectivist," and her followers at the Chicago School, i.e. Milton Friedman, were no different than Nazis and Commies. See Eric Hoffer, The True Believer.
In 1970, the Socialist Salvador Allende was elected president, promising a democratic and legal path to socialism—Chilean-style, a socialism “with red wine and empanadas.”
Three years later, he was ousted by a military coup. The dictatorship led by Augusto Pinochet murdered and exiled many of its opponents—and worked to remake the relationship between state, economy, and society. To do the latter, it followed the advice of a group of economists known as the “Chicago Boys,” for most of them had trained at the University of Chicago, where their teachers included Milton Friedman (who became the most famous) and his colleague Al Harberger (who cared most about Chilean development). But Chicago’s economics department was not just any program. Its tendency was to trust markets and to mistrust regulation. The Chicago Boys extended the reach of market logic as deeply as they could: slashing state employment, dismantling unions, and creating a privatized pension system. By the time the regime left power in 1990, Chile was considered among the most “neoliberal” societies on Earth.
You are so right Daniel Solomon. I went to the University of Illinois when freedom was teaching there. No I didn't take his class but I knew a number of people at the university who had taken his class. I say I knew them because none of them became my friends. Yes, I was a radical lefty and I knew they were just plain radical. I did not Believe then nor have I ever believed that trickled down economics was a fact of life. I own instead of trickle down and economics as a method whereby the very rich p on the very poor and those not up to par for their class.
Thanks for these sources, Daniel. Thom also covered this Chile, Friedman, Chicago Boys failed experiment in Chapter 6 of his book, Hidden History of Neoliberalism. Although I found Thom's audiobooks through Hoopla at our local library, I prefer to own the books to use as references because I am terrible at filing and finding sources. However, I remember reading on the topic from "somewhere."
Gloria are you aware that Greenspan and Ronald Reagan robbed social security? For those who don't remember or don't know of this episode once that's some eyes and crossing t's. Good old Ronnie Reagan said he would not increase, taxes after increasing the taxes, I believe, five or six times. But I needed money. Where to get that money? Greenspan came up with the answer. He told Reagan that he could get the money from the social security fund and thus would not have to raise taxes. They wanted to the social security fund and robbed the place blind. Oh they left IOUs in a place of the money but as we know today that didn't help because they were bothered to pay it back. And we wonder why social security is low on funds today. They are low on phones because Republicans stole the money. What are they trying to do today with social security and Medicare? They are trying to steal the money!
Of course they are, Howard. Are they waiting for a considerable distraction to get away with it? I heard years ago that they "borrowed" from the Social Security fund but never heard more about it until you just now reminded me.
I expect Ayn Rand, though Jewish, saw Adolf Hitler being as "heroic" as her characters that she based on a psycho killer. And so it goes. Her present-day followers would never admit to an admiration of Hitler, but they are nonetheless in philosophical consonance with him, as well as Rand.
Love this argument. One point: “Their principal argument was that if everybody acted separately and independently, in all cases with maximum selfishness, such behavior would actually benefit society. There would be no government needed beyond an army and a police force, and a court system to defend the rights of property owners. It was a bizarre twisting of Adam Smith’s reference to the “invisible hand” that regulated trade among nations.”
The real estate banking dudes did not come up with this social Darwinism + math + capitalist ideology (aka “textbook economics”). The Chicago School of Economics (under the tutelage of Milton Friedman) officiated the marriage of 19th century free-market claptrap with the racism inherent in Social Darwinism and that toxic mix birthed neoliberalism/libertarian hogwash.
Every day you write these very important lessons that provide history and context, yet these lessons are not reaching enough people. You have written another of many great ones. Most people have no clue as to how we've gotten here, and the propaganda keeps them right where it wants them. I have kept coming to the same term "Selfishness", and I just don't understand how so many people can think this way. Yet, I can't entirely blame them for not stumbling onto the truth.
Capitalism is inherently selfish and anti-social. The problem is in trying to reconcile our notion of capitalism with our ethics and it cannot be done. The big myth is that there is a free market when nothing could be further from the truth. The wealthy gain at the expense of others but this is omitted from our school books and college economics textbooks.
No one wants to admit that their wealth is in part the result of luck or their choice of parents. Better to claim that others are lazy or stupid and undeserving. Now that the billionaires own 99% of the media in all forms, their message is all that those of the working class receive. They are told that unions are bad or evil and that charity from the wealthy elites is benevolent.
Unfettered Capitalism is Monopoly on steroids. Regulated capitalism ie social democracy or democratic socialsim provides opportunity to get rich and provides for the wellbeing of the citizen at large. Unfettered socialism is what gave us the former Soviet Union. Regulated socialism is regulated capitalism looked at from another angle. Unregulated anything is a recipe for disasater - Taliban, Evangelicals incuded.
I read an Ayn Rand book in 1st year university. Very thin volumn. Cant recall the name. Bit as I tell people, over the years I have gone from somewhere to the right of Chingiss Khan to somewhere to the left of Malcom X. America, you know the assignment. Harris Walz 2024
Alan Greenspan, head of the U.S. Fed, is a big Ayn Rand fan. Yet he presided over The Most Interventionist economic institution in America. Hypocrisy much?
The Federal Reserve was created to intervene in the economy, on the side of financial institutions. Title 12, US Code, the purpose is to manage the credit of the nation.
Financial institutions hate inflation, inflation robs them of profit. As an example, during the German hyperinflation of 1922, a factory worker could and did pay off the mortgage on his home with one hours wage. On the other hand, the love deflation. Deflation means that they can foreclose on loans and thus acquire real wealth, hold it and when the market rebounds they sell it at a 100% profit and start all over again.
Inflation is not a problem for the working person, the commoner, the citizen IF (I said if) wages are indexed to inflation, but they aren't because the money powers have destroyed the power of unions, taking advantage of stupidity, short sightedness and greed, by convincing them that they don't need to pay union dues, and thus right to work for less laws.
The New York Times article "Job Insecurity of Workers Is a Big Factor in Fed Policy " states that Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the US Federal Reserve, declared before the US Senate in 1997 that job insecurity had played an important role in wage moderation and low labor conflict in recent decades. (The Federal Reserve Board." Somebody coined the term "precariat," a new word to define insecure workers that were a combination of proletariat and precarious.
What I take from this history, among other things of course, is that rebellion against the popular consensus is seen as a necessary good without discerning why or how rebellion (including violence and mayhem) will lead to something better, and that dependence indicates inferiority, weakness, and a needless drain on "society" regardless of the reasons one has become dependent or vulnerable. Libertarianism is incredibly simplistic, simple-minded, and stupid, in fact. The reactions of Ayn Rand to her personal circumstances and life were highly irrational and neurotic. My question, as always, is why do so many millions of people fail to see through the smokescreen and the unrealistic, idiotic rhetoric and mindless logic? What have we lost that we once had? It seems rather obvious to me. It seems that we are inured to the grave dangers of authoritarianism. "You must obey to be good". "Sit down, shut up, and get back to work at your desk".
The cult of Rand has emotional appeal, on it's surface. All ideologies (secular or sectarian) have emotional appeal on the surface, and humans are surface swimmers.
Wow, I wasn't aware of the story behind Ayn Rand. What a cold heartless woman. It is horrible the influence she has had on the current Republican party. We need to return to the high tax rates for the wealthy that we had in the 50's and regrow the middle class. If the morbidly rich threaten to take their wealth out of the country, let them. The way they spend their wealth has little effect on the rest of us. Better to cut out losses and start over on a system that works for all. There's a lot of work to be done.
I participated with a Libertarian Cult in the mid-'70s called The Free Enterprise Institute (FEI), founded by Andrew Galambos. I was a high school dropout working in the fledgling Natural Foods Industry when the company for which I worked got taken over by a "Libertarian." At one point I was attending lectures four nights a week and often on weekends. Lectures were supposed to be a couple of hours in duration, but Galambos would often speak for upwards of 5 hours a night. I ceased my participation shortly after reading the Los Angeles Times' articles on The Jonestown Massacre and how 'sleep deprivation was a common issue in Jonestown, Guyana, where cult leader Jim Jones required loyalty tests that involved sleep deprivation.' Shortly before I left FEI, Galambos asked a question to his audience, "Which is the superior man? He who does as he wants or he who does as he should?" And I, in my naivete (formed from previous associations with criminals who did what they wanted to do), answered, "He who does as he should." Galambos thundered from the lectern, "He who does as he wants."
Imagine my surprise when a decade later I discovered the writings of Aleister Crowley who famously wrote, "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. Love is the law. Love under will." The Wiccan Flower Children will add, "As long as it harms none. but Crowley never said that. Crowley said ...
"1. Man has the right to live by his own law
2. Man has the right to eat what he will
3. Man has the right to think what he will:
4. Man has the right to love as he will
5. Man has the right to kill those who would thwart these rights.
“Love is the law, love under will.”
...
and ...
Fifty years later ... ...
We are all exquisitely sensitive critters, shaped by our respective environments.
Libertarians really want to believe they earned their way. But that's just a belief.
I wound up believing in Luck. And if this species is lucky ... ...
Luck
“Every breath, son, is luck. Achievement? Depends on luck – to be born in the right place at the right time and be of the right color. To live long enough to be in the right place at the right time to make one’s fortune. Yes, hard work and talent make up the difference. They are crucial, and you know I’d never argue different. But the foundation of all lives is luck. Good or bad. Luck is life and life is luck. And it’s leaking from the moment it lands in your hand.
“… … Sometimes you make your luck. But other times it makes you.”
This is most comprehensive short article I have ever read on libertarianism. Buyer beware. I now have to see my libertarian friends with a totally different eye. If they actually believe this stuff they have been lying to me. Actually they have been glossing over most of this just to say they love Liberty. They're loving Liberty is great but, that is only tip of the ugly iceberg underneath the black waters of republicanism that is libertarianism and now religious politics.
S howard, you really nailed it.
I am listening to a new book called "The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory" by Tim Alberta. It's about how actual religion plays a part.
Thanks for resurrecting the Edward Hickman story, most Ayn Rand proponents don’t know about her admiration for him when I bring it up to them.
The Hickman story is quite shocking, and even more so that Ayn Rand admired him and used him as a role model for hero characters in her books.
This Report is a good depiction of many desiring a modern day Colosseum. That strong gladiator standing alone against the wild animals is how Trump sees himself. It's on all the cards and coins he sells to his cult. Just like Hickman, he is more than willing to carve others up to increase his wealth.
Psychopathy is likely on a scale. How that intersects with a Libertarian-ism scale remains to be found, but I'd bet it relates. Some empathetic people cannot wrap their head around this despite seeing the damage both have done to the least of us.
George Conway is trying to get this across with his political ads from Psycho PAC. Desperate times, desperate measures. Trump is not a one-off, but we keep thinking we are BEYOND these psychos. Silly us!
The only medical advice about the psychopath in your life is to get away from them before they can do any further damage. VOTE DEMOCRATIC!
"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness." John Kenneth Galbraith. One of my favorite quotes.
Ayn Rand told sociopaths what they wanted to hear. Greenspan and others of his ilk didn't need the justification for themselves because feeling justified in whatever they did was a part of their sociopathy. Still, it gave them a cover to the rest of society to perhaps cause them to question their "Golden Rule" values and get on board with their selfish way of thinking. After all, look how famous Rand's books were. How can you argue with wealth and fame? I read that Rand also used her sexuality to persuade men of her way of thinking.
Gloria, mine too! The time is ripe for a Galbraith renewal.
Unfortunately most people are unfamiliar with John Kenneth Galbraith.
BTW, Hickman was the archetype for all of Rand's hero's. Her first was Dan Renahan in "Little Street", then Roarke, then John Galt.
My favourite quote also. Used it many times
Proponents of horseshoe theory argue that the far-left and the far-right are closer to each other than either is to the political center. Ayn Rand, the "objectivist," and her followers at the Chicago School, i.e. Milton Friedman, were no different than Nazis and Commies. See Eric Hoffer, The True Believer.
Put into practice in the Chile fiasco. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/project/chile-documentation-project
In 1970, the Socialist Salvador Allende was elected president, promising a democratic and legal path to socialism—Chilean-style, a socialism “with red wine and empanadas.”
Three years later, he was ousted by a military coup. The dictatorship led by Augusto Pinochet murdered and exiled many of its opponents—and worked to remake the relationship between state, economy, and society. To do the latter, it followed the advice of a group of economists known as the “Chicago Boys,” for most of them had trained at the University of Chicago, where their teachers included Milton Friedman (who became the most famous) and his colleague Al Harberger (who cared most about Chilean development). But Chicago’s economics department was not just any program. Its tendency was to trust markets and to mistrust regulation. The Chicago Boys extended the reach of market logic as deeply as they could: slashing state employment, dismantling unions, and creating a privatized pension system. By the time the regime left power in 1990, Chile was considered among the most “neoliberal” societies on Earth.
From https://newrepublic.com/article/172441/milton-friedman-met-pinochet
And now Millea (sp?) is trying it down in Argentina. Louise and I were there the day he was elected…
You are so right Daniel Solomon. I went to the University of Illinois when freedom was teaching there. No I didn't take his class but I knew a number of people at the university who had taken his class. I say I knew them because none of them became my friends. Yes, I was a radical lefty and I knew they were just plain radical. I did not Believe then nor have I ever believed that trickled down economics was a fact of life. I own instead of trickle down and economics as a method whereby the very rich p on the very poor and those not up to par for their class.
I hate AI voice. Rewrite. I went to the University of Illinois when Friedman was teaching there.
Thanks for these sources, Daniel. Thom also covered this Chile, Friedman, Chicago Boys failed experiment in Chapter 6 of his book, Hidden History of Neoliberalism. Although I found Thom's audiobooks through Hoopla at our local library, I prefer to own the books to use as references because I am terrible at filing and finding sources. However, I remember reading on the topic from "somewhere."
That horseshoe was evident in campus demonstrations where students where pro Israeli (probably Proud Boys) and Prop Palestinian protestors faced eachother chanting Fuck Joe Biden. https://www.mediaite.com/politics/unity-pro-palestine-and-pro-israel-protestors-chant-fck-joe-biden-in-unison/
Gloria are you aware that Greenspan and Ronald Reagan robbed social security? For those who don't remember or don't know of this episode once that's some eyes and crossing t's. Good old Ronnie Reagan said he would not increase, taxes after increasing the taxes, I believe, five or six times. But I needed money. Where to get that money? Greenspan came up with the answer. He told Reagan that he could get the money from the social security fund and thus would not have to raise taxes. They wanted to the social security fund and robbed the place blind. Oh they left IOUs in a place of the money but as we know today that didn't help because they were bothered to pay it back. And we wonder why social security is low on funds today. They are low on phones because Republicans stole the money. What are they trying to do today with social security and Medicare? They are trying to steal the money!
Of course they are, Howard. Are they waiting for a considerable distraction to get away with it? I heard years ago that they "borrowed" from the Social Security fund but never heard more about it until you just now reminded me.
Howard, I believe the right wingers want to steal everything of value from the left wingers, including their lives!
I expect Ayn Rand, though Jewish, saw Adolf Hitler being as "heroic" as her characters that she based on a psycho killer. And so it goes. Her present-day followers would never admit to an admiration of Hitler, but they are nonetheless in philosophical consonance with him, as well as Rand.
Love this argument. One point: “Their principal argument was that if everybody acted separately and independently, in all cases with maximum selfishness, such behavior would actually benefit society. There would be no government needed beyond an army and a police force, and a court system to defend the rights of property owners. It was a bizarre twisting of Adam Smith’s reference to the “invisible hand” that regulated trade among nations.”
The real estate banking dudes did not come up with this social Darwinism + math + capitalist ideology (aka “textbook economics”). The Chicago School of Economics (under the tutelage of Milton Friedman) officiated the marriage of 19th century free-market claptrap with the racism inherent in Social Darwinism and that toxic mix birthed neoliberalism/libertarian hogwash.
Every day you write these very important lessons that provide history and context, yet these lessons are not reaching enough people. You have written another of many great ones. Most people have no clue as to how we've gotten here, and the propaganda keeps them right where it wants them. I have kept coming to the same term "Selfishness", and I just don't understand how so many people can think this way. Yet, I can't entirely blame them for not stumbling onto the truth.
Capitalism is inherently selfish and anti-social. The problem is in trying to reconcile our notion of capitalism with our ethics and it cannot be done. The big myth is that there is a free market when nothing could be further from the truth. The wealthy gain at the expense of others but this is omitted from our school books and college economics textbooks.
No one wants to admit that their wealth is in part the result of luck or their choice of parents. Better to claim that others are lazy or stupid and undeserving. Now that the billionaires own 99% of the media in all forms, their message is all that those of the working class receive. They are told that unions are bad or evil and that charity from the wealthy elites is benevolent.
Unfettered Capitalism is Monopoly on steroids. Regulated capitalism ie social democracy or democratic socialsim provides opportunity to get rich and provides for the wellbeing of the citizen at large. Unfettered socialism is what gave us the former Soviet Union. Regulated socialism is regulated capitalism looked at from another angle. Unregulated anything is a recipe for disasater - Taliban, Evangelicals incuded.
I read an Ayn Rand book in 1st year university. Very thin volumn. Cant recall the name. Bit as I tell people, over the years I have gone from somewhere to the right of Chingiss Khan to somewhere to the left of Malcom X. America, you know the assignment. Harris Walz 2024
Well said, Bruce.
Libertarianism is a cult, it has a goddess, Ayn Rand, and like Ayn Rand it is sociopathic, narcissistic, and solipsistic.
And off topic. This situation in Georgia where election officials won't certify the vote,is worrying.
It takes 270 Electoral votes, and if one state won't certify the votes, then the election goes to the Congress.
In Congress each state gets one vote. Guess who has the most votes in Congress, Republican states or Democratic states.
How many states will follow Georgia's lead. I am worried, very worried.
Alan Greenspan, head of the U.S. Fed, is a big Ayn Rand fan. Yet he presided over The Most Interventionist economic institution in America. Hypocrisy much?
The Federal Reserve was created to intervene in the economy, on the side of financial institutions. Title 12, US Code, the purpose is to manage the credit of the nation.
Financial institutions hate inflation, inflation robs them of profit. As an example, during the German hyperinflation of 1922, a factory worker could and did pay off the mortgage on his home with one hours wage. On the other hand, the love deflation. Deflation means that they can foreclose on loans and thus acquire real wealth, hold it and when the market rebounds they sell it at a 100% profit and start all over again.
Inflation is not a problem for the working person, the commoner, the citizen IF (I said if) wages are indexed to inflation, but they aren't because the money powers have destroyed the power of unions, taking advantage of stupidity, short sightedness and greed, by convincing them that they don't need to pay union dues, and thus right to work for less laws.
We are the instruments of our own misery.
The New York Times article "Job Insecurity of Workers Is a Big Factor in Fed Policy " states that Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the US Federal Reserve, declared before the US Senate in 1997 that job insecurity had played an important role in wage moderation and low labor conflict in recent decades. (The Federal Reserve Board." Somebody coined the term "precariat," a new word to define insecure workers that were a combination of proletariat and precarious.
What I take from this history, among other things of course, is that rebellion against the popular consensus is seen as a necessary good without discerning why or how rebellion (including violence and mayhem) will lead to something better, and that dependence indicates inferiority, weakness, and a needless drain on "society" regardless of the reasons one has become dependent or vulnerable. Libertarianism is incredibly simplistic, simple-minded, and stupid, in fact. The reactions of Ayn Rand to her personal circumstances and life were highly irrational and neurotic. My question, as always, is why do so many millions of people fail to see through the smokescreen and the unrealistic, idiotic rhetoric and mindless logic? What have we lost that we once had? It seems rather obvious to me. It seems that we are inured to the grave dangers of authoritarianism. "You must obey to be good". "Sit down, shut up, and get back to work at your desk".
The cult of Rand has emotional appeal, on it's surface. All ideologies (secular or sectarian) have emotional appeal on the surface, and humans are surface swimmers.
Chuckle of the day, William.
Wow, I wasn't aware of the story behind Ayn Rand. What a cold heartless woman. It is horrible the influence she has had on the current Republican party. We need to return to the high tax rates for the wealthy that we had in the 50's and regrow the middle class. If the morbidly rich threaten to take their wealth out of the country, let them. The way they spend their wealth has little effect on the rest of us. Better to cut out losses and start over on a system that works for all. There's a lot of work to be done.
We need to round up all of the Ayn Rand supporters and send them back to Russia where they belong! All of them!
They are not well people.
I participated with a Libertarian Cult in the mid-'70s called The Free Enterprise Institute (FEI), founded by Andrew Galambos. I was a high school dropout working in the fledgling Natural Foods Industry when the company for which I worked got taken over by a "Libertarian." At one point I was attending lectures four nights a week and often on weekends. Lectures were supposed to be a couple of hours in duration, but Galambos would often speak for upwards of 5 hours a night. I ceased my participation shortly after reading the Los Angeles Times' articles on The Jonestown Massacre and how 'sleep deprivation was a common issue in Jonestown, Guyana, where cult leader Jim Jones required loyalty tests that involved sleep deprivation.' Shortly before I left FEI, Galambos asked a question to his audience, "Which is the superior man? He who does as he wants or he who does as he should?" And I, in my naivete (formed from previous associations with criminals who did what they wanted to do), answered, "He who does as he should." Galambos thundered from the lectern, "He who does as he wants."
Imagine my surprise when a decade later I discovered the writings of Aleister Crowley who famously wrote, "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. Love is the law. Love under will." The Wiccan Flower Children will add, "As long as it harms none. but Crowley never said that. Crowley said ...
"1. Man has the right to live by his own law
2. Man has the right to eat what he will
3. Man has the right to think what he will:
4. Man has the right to love as he will
5. Man has the right to kill those who would thwart these rights.
“Love is the law, love under will.”
...
and ...
Fifty years later ... ...
We are all exquisitely sensitive critters, shaped by our respective environments.
Libertarians really want to believe they earned their way. But that's just a belief.
I wound up believing in Luck. And if this species is lucky ... ...
Luck
“Every breath, son, is luck. Achievement? Depends on luck – to be born in the right place at the right time and be of the right color. To live long enough to be in the right place at the right time to make one’s fortune. Yes, hard work and talent make up the difference. They are crucial, and you know I’d never argue different. But the foundation of all lives is luck. Good or bad. Luck is life and life is luck. And it’s leaking from the moment it lands in your hand.
“… … Sometimes you make your luck. But other times it makes you.”
Dennis Lehane, “Live by Night.”