Posts Tagged ‘libertarians’

h1

A silver lining to the Trump cloud?

August 19, 2016

Here’s an interesting column by Nick Gillespie at Reason’s blog. I’m not sure that I agree with it, or with Lisa De Pasquale’s column.

Why Libertarians (and Other 3rd Parties) Should Thank Donald Trump
On substance and style, he’s a dumpster fire on steroids, with a hit of crack. But he’s shown how easy it is to destroy a major party.

With just three months to go before the long national nightmare that is Election 2016 transmogrifies into a either a Hillary Clinton or a Donald Trump presidency(!), let’s take a late-summer moment to squeeze some lemonade from lemons. Whatever happens in November, all of us who have political perspectives that are routinely discounted or dismissed by the Republican-Democratic duopoly should thank Donald Trump for creating a blueprint to power for us. […]

The simple fact is, as conservative commentator and Finding Mr. Righteous author Lisa De Pasquale, writes,

There has been much hand-wringing among the right on where Republicans go now that Trump has “destroyed” the party. They complain that the Republican Party has left them, while millions of Trump voters and libertarians believe party leaders and professional pundits left them decades ago. Regardless of whether the #NeverTrump crowd has valid points, it is clear that Trump has done libertarians a favor in busting the Old Guard of Republican kingmakers. The Old Guard isn’t mad that Trump doesn’t represent their principles, but that they no longer hold any power in picking the top of the ticket. The proof is that rather than get behind Gary Johnson, they’d rather trot out a candidate with zero name recognition or campaign infrastructure.

[…]

“A dumpster fire on steroids, with a hit of crack”… Heh!

The problem I have with Ms. De Pasquale’s argument is this: how many reasonably libertarian figures have Trump’s name recognition (or decades of self-aggrandizement)? I can’t think of any, aside from Penn Jillette. And offhand, I don’t think Penn has the personality to be a successful politician.

But maybe what Trump has done proves me wrong. Need someone who’s outspoken and has opinions not generally accepted by establishment figures? That’s Penn, idnit?

Hmmm… I’d probably vote for him. And Teller’s a pretty committed libertarian too… That’s it: Penn/Teller in 2020!

I got $100 says they’d win both Austin and Anchorage.

Update 8/31/16

But perhaps I spoke too quickly. Here’s a recently-published clip of Penn talking about libertarianism and US politics. It takes a few surprising turns.

I’m not fan of the Crony Capitalism Penn gets on about, but I’m even less fond of Crony Government. And that’s what socialist governments frequently end up being. I’m not sure why Senator Sanders’s implementation would be a whole lot different than Hugo Chávez’s.

Posted in US politics | Tagged , | 2 Comments »

h1

Another one bites the dust

September 27, 2014

Paul sends a link to this article at Vice about a utopian settlement project called Galt’s Gulch Chile. Has any utopian settlement ever lasted for more than a couple of decades?

Based on this article, it sounds as though this project didn’t fall apart so much as it never got started.

ATLAS MUGGED: HOW A LIBERTARIAN PARADISE IN CHILE FELL APART

It was a good idea, in theory anyway. The plan was to form a sustainable community made up of people who believed in capitalism, limited government, and self-reliance. The site was already picked out: 11,000 acres of fertile land nestled in the valleys of the Chilean Andes, just an hour’s drive away from the capital of Santiago, to the east, and the Pacific Ocean, to the west. Residents could make money growing and exporting organic produce while enjoying Chile’s low taxes and temperate climate. This was no crackpot scheme to establish a micronation on a platform floating in the middle of the ocean (a common libertarian dream)—this was a serious attempt to build a refuge where free marketers and anarcho-capitalists could hole up and wait for the world’s fiat currencies to collapse. They called it “Galt’s Gulch Chile” (GGC), naming it for the fictional place where the world’s competent capitalists flee to in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.

The project was conceived in 2012 by four men: John Cobin, an American expat living in Chile who once ran unsuccessfully for Congress in South Carolina; Jeff Berwick, the globe-trotting founder of the Dollar Vigilante, a financial newsletter that preaches the coming end of the current monetary system; Cobin’s Chilean partner; and Ken Johnson, a roving entrepreneur whose previous investment projects included real estate, wind turbines, and “water ionizers,” pseudoscientific gizmos that are advertised as being able to slow aging.

That initial group quickly fell apart, though today the principals disagree on why. Now, two years after its founding, the would-be paradise is ensnared in a set of personal conflicts, mainly centered on Johnson. Instead of living in a picturesque valley selling Galt’s Gulch–branded juice, the libertarian founders are accusing one another of being drunks, liars, and sociopaths. GGC’s would-be inhabitants have called Johnson a “weirdo,” a “pathological liar,” “insane,” a “scammer,” and other, similar things. Some shareholders are pursuing legal action in an effort to remove him from the project, a drastic measure for antigovernment types to take. Johnson, who remains the manager of the trust that controls the land, claims all the allegations against him are false. So what happened?

Posted in Libertarianism, Whys & wherefores | Tagged , | Leave a Comment »