*promote the master!
welcome back @blankfist
ya'all need to start taking notes.

this guy was super entertaining,i thought he was gonna have an embolism at the halfway mark.

hiiiiilarious!!!

look,no matter which direction you approach this situation the REAL dynamic is simply:power vs powerlessness.

we also should establish which form of libertarianism we are speaking.cultofdusty criticizes the bastardized american version and this dude come from a more classic libertarian (sans the unbridled capitalism).so there should be no surprise they are at odds in their opinion.this man is defending a libertarianism that cultofdusty may not even be aware of at all.

libertarianism has little or nothing in common with the republican party.

so when this dude posits that the corporation is the fault of government,while not entirely accurate,it is also not entirely wrong.corporations in the distant past were temporary alliances of companies,with the blessing of the people (government) to achieve a specific job or project and once that project was complete,the corporation was dissolved.

it was a cadre of clever lawyers,representing powerful interests who convinced the supreme court that corporations were people and hence began the long road leading us to where we are now.

so it was partly the government that fascillitated the birth of the corporation.

i do take issue with this mans assessment of public education.his commentary is the height of ignorance.while i would agree that what we have now can hardly be called 'education".his blanket and broad statements in regards to public education TOTALLY ignores the incredible benefits that come from an educated public.he ignores the history of public education,as if this system has been unchanging for 100 years.

that is just flat out...stupid..or more likely just lazy,regurgitating the maniacal rants of his heroes without ever once giving that 100 years some critical study.

so let me point to the the late 50's and 60's here in the USA where our public education was bar-none the best in the world.what were the consequences of this stellar public education?
well,...civil rights marches,anti-war movement,womens rights movement and a whole generation that not only questioned authority and the entrenched power structures but openly DEFIED those structures.

this absolutely petrified the powered elite.
during the height of the anti-war movement nixon was forced to baricade the white house with school buses and was quoted as saying to kissinger " henry,they are coming for me".

again,the fundamental premise is,and has always been -power vs powerlessness.

so over the nest few decades public education was manipulated and transformed into a subtle indoctrination to teach young minds to tacitly submit to authority.

which this man addresses and i agree,i just disagree with his overly generalized non-historically accurate puke-vomit.

my final point,and its always the point where libertarians lose their shit on me like an offended westboro baptist acolyte (its actually two points) is this:
1.if we can blame the government for much of the problems in regards to concentrated power and the abuse that goes with that power,then we MUST also address the abusive (and corrosive) power of the corporation.many libertarians i discuss with seem to be under the impression that if we take away the symbiotic relationship between corporations and government that somehow..miraculously..the corporation will all of a sudden become the benign and productive member of society.

this is utter fiction.
this is magical thinking.
many corporations have a larger GDP than many nation states.this is about POWER and there is ZERO evidence any corporation will be willing to relinquish that power just because there is no government to influence,manipulate or corrupt.

which brings me to point number 2:
my libertarian friends.
you live in a thing called a society.
a community where other people also live.
so please stop with this rabid individualism as somehow being the pinnacle of human endeavour.im all for personal responsibility but nobody lives in a vacuum and nobody rides this train alone.the world does not revolve around YOU.

but i do understand,and agree,that the heart of the libertarian argument is more power to the people.i also understand their arguments against governments,which directly and oftimes indirectly disempowers people.

i get that.its a good argument..
BUT...for fucks sake please admit that the corporation in its current state has GOT TO FUCKING GO!

because if you dont then ultimately you are trading one tyrant for another and in my humble opinion,ill stick with the one i can at least vote on or protest.

there aint nothing democratic about a multi-national corporation.they are,by design,dictatorships.

so i will agree to wittle the government down and restrict its powers to defense (NOT war),law and fraud police,if you agree to dismantle and restructure the seven headed leviathan that is todays corporation.

deal?

@GeeSussFreeK @truth-is-the-nemesis

The Libertarian point is that we can't assume we know what's best for other people. Yes, there are extremes to every line of reasoning and every principle, and that's where they usually start to break down. For many people, the principle of freedom starts to break down when your choices are causing harm to someone else.

It's the classic Libertarian vs. Utilitarian argument. If you're interested in hearing a lot more about this philosophical subject, watch this series:
http://www.justiceharvard.org/

The idea that's missing from most Libertarian arguments is community. As the world becomes more interconnected, our choices increasingly affect those around us. The idea of personal liberty in the philosophical sense has been around since the Enlightenment. Libertarianism, as a philosophy, is a little dated because the roots of its arguments come from a time when people were nowhere near as socially and economically connected as the world is today.

I like that Ron Paul is putting these arguments forth. I think it's a valuable discussion to have in America right now. Our government tries to do way too many things out of this sense of "must do what's best for the greater good". Chief among these are monetary policy and the drug war. The fact that anyone thinks it's a good idea to control the economy with Keynesian models is ridiculous to me, and the idea that anyone should be put in jail for possession or sale of marijuana is equally as ridiculous.

However, extending the principles of personal freedom all the way to legalizing all substances is a little sketchy. The problem is, Paul putting the "Libertarian" stamp on what he's saying and then taking things to crazy extremes often invalidates the entire principle of Libertarianism to people who don't like those extremes.

Guess we need a new word for it...pragmatic libertarianism or something much more catchy.

He seems to be talking about something else and using the word neoliberalism, or that is what I was getting out of his talk. Academically speaking, neoliberalism dates back much, much further than 1980 which he seemed to propose, moreover there is hardly a consensuses on what is "correct" neoliberalism. Perhaps something was lost in translation and he meant to say this is when the last real bastions of classical "libertarian" liberalism died (the USA) and "central planned" neoliberalism took its finally ideological rival captive?

I tried to find some information on things this person has published to clear some light on the subject, but alas I don't speak french so my search is slightly stymied.

Edit: Here we go, found a whole bunch of his stuff. http://www.jourdan.ens.fr/levy/biblioa.htm#AN1992
Going to read some and see if I can find some insight

>> ^rychan:
I have no patience for anti-government types. Go live your libertarian / anarchist dream in Somalia.


Classic Libertarians and Anarchists are actually in favor of a very strong government that's run by the people. Libertarians in America are not like that in the least, no one would want to live in an American Libertarians World, it would collapse immediately.

I'd like to point out that Libertarianism in America is much different than Classic Libertarianism in Europe which is closer to Anarchism, which is also what Noam Chomsky supports.

EDIT: Furthermore I've read a LOT of Chomsky, he had a clever way of explaining corporate tyranny. First of all a Corporation is top down format, completely undemocratic. Secondly we don't live in a Free Market society, but one of the most protectionist in the world with subsidies for big corporations constantly, basically we live in a Corporate Welfare state. Also corporations doing advocate "Choice" they pigeonhole you into specific choices. Take LA, if I want to get around in LA a fairly large area I have a choice, get a car. It's the only realistic choice...and although I have hundreds of different cars to choose from I can't choose say, the old public transportation trolley system. Because it was bought up by the oil companies and dismantled. They now count on me to buy a car (hopefully a big one) so I can buy tons of their gas.

As to the allegations of Chomsky in a tax hideout and such. I read the article and it seems very attack oriented, not even allowing him to speak for himself but instead breaking down what I'm sure was a lengthy response and filtering it for the reader to achieve the desired effect.

About The Political Compass

In the introduction, we explained the inadequacies of the traditional left-right line.

If we recognise that this is essentially an economic line it's fine, as far as it goes. We can show, for example, Stalin, Mao Tse Tung and Pol Pot, with their commitment to a totally controlled economy, on the hard left. Socialists like Mahatma Gandhi and Robert Mugabe would occupy a less extreme leftist position. Margaret Thatcher would be well over to the right, but further right still would be someone like that ultimate free marketeer, General Pinochet.

That deals with economics, but the social dimension is also important in politics. That's the one that the mere left-right scale doesn't adequately address. So we've added one, ranging in positions from extreme authoritarian to extreme libertarian.

Both an economic dimension and a social dimension are important factors for a proper political analysis. By adding the social dimension you can show that Stalin was an authoritarian leftist (ie the state is more important than the individual) and that Gandhi, believing in the supreme value of each individual, is a liberal leftist. While the former involves state-imposed arbitary collectivism in the extreme top left, on the extreme bottom left is voluntary collectivism at regional level, with no state involved. Hundreds of such anarchist communities exisited in Spain during the civil war period

You can also put Pinochet, who was prepared to sanction mass killing for the sake of the free market, on the far right as well as in a hardcore authoritarian position. On the non-socialist side you can distinguish someone like Milton Friedman, who is anti-state for fiscal rather than social reasons, from Hitler, who wanted to make the state stronger, even if he wiped out half of humanity in the process.

The chart also makes clear that, despite popular perceptions, the opposite of fascism is not communism but anarchism (ie liberal socialism), and that the opposite of communism ( i.e. an entirely state-planned economy) is neo-liberalism (i.e. extreme deregulated economy)

The usual understanding of anarchism as a left wing ideology does not take into account the neo-liberal "anarchism" championed by the likes of Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman and America's Libertarian Party, which couples social Darwinian right-wing economics with liberal positions on most social issues. Often their libertarian impulses stop short of opposition to strong law and order positions, and are more economic in substance (ie no taxes) so they are not as extremely libertarian as they are extremely right wing. On the other hand, the classical libertarian collectivism of anarcho-syndicalism ( libertarian socialism) belongs in the bottom left hand corner.

In our home page we demolished the myth that authoritarianism is necessarily "right wing", with the examples of Robert Mugabe, Pol Pot and Stalin. Similarly Hitler, on an economic scale, was not an extreme right-winger. His economic policies were broadly Keynesian, and to the left of some of today's Labour parties. If you could get Hitler and Stalin to sit down together and avoid economics, the two diehard authoritarians would find plenty of common ground.
A Word about Neo-cons and Neo-libs

U.S.neo-conservatives, with their commitment to high military spending and the global assertion of national values, tend to be more authoritarian than hard right. By contrast, neo-liberals, opposed to such moral leadership and, more especially, the ensuing demands on the tax payer, belong to a further right but less authoritarian region. Paradoxically, the "free market", in neo-con parlance, also allows for the large-scale subsidy of the military-industrial complex, a considerable degree of corporate welfare, and protectionism when deemed in the national interest. These are viewed by neo-libs as impediments to the unfettered market forces that they champion.


International Chart

A diverse professional team has assessed the words and actions of internationally known contemporary leaders to give you an idea of how they relate to each other on the political compass.

We regret the present exclusion of some major leaders, especially in the developing world. This is due to our inability so far to contact independent experts.


How You Can Help Us

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If you should come across any such sites, please let us know, so that we can take appropriate action.

A few critics believe that we should blow with prevailing political winds and narrow the actual parameters. Please see our FAQ 20.

Thanks from the Political Compass team.
US Primaries 2007
A few words about "The Extreme Right", and a look at the parties in England's local elections
ICONOCHASMS: How well do you know your political icons ?

New material is regularly added to The Political Compass - please keep coming back !

Check out the scale for the US 2007 primaries. http://www.politicalcompass.org/usprimaries2007

A few words on Ron Paul's politics:

"The usual understanding of anarchism as a left wing ideology does not take into account the neo-liberal "anarchism" championed by the likes of Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman and America's Libertarian Party, which couples social Darwinian right-wing economics with liberal positions on most social issues. Often their libertarian impulses stop short of opposition to strong law and order positions, and are more economic in substance (ie no taxes) so they are not as extremely libertarian as they are extremely right wing. On the other hand, the classical libertarian collectivism of anarcho-syndicalism ( libertarian socialism) belongs in the bottom left hand corner."

http://www.politicalcompass.org/analysis2