I’m a libertarian, and I think you’ve got an interesting question there. Libertarianism was developed when technology wasn’t changing as fast as it is now, and the gold standard is a solution to a real problem of serious inflation.
I’ve still not sure it makes sense that people need to be fooled(?) into making sensible purchases and investments though mild inflation.
However, cheap oil does support the cornucopean hythpothesis, and it didn’t take a libertarian society—just modern tech and governments that aren’t extremely oppressive.
Anyway, I don’t know if there’s a libertarian consensus about gold these days, or whether an electronic currency is a reasonable substitute.
Before the big drop in the price of oil, I saw people doubting peak oil (the idea was that exploration is regulating by the expectation of returns, so it wasn’t going to look as though there was more than 30 years worth of oil), but I didn’t see anyone predicting cheap oil. Has anyone seen that sort of prediction?
Incidentally, there’s oil from shale in Atlas Shrugged—with no hint of what tech would be needed to get the oil out.
Libertarianism was developed when technology wasn’t changing as fast as it is now, and the gold standard is a solution to a real problem of serious inflation.
When do you consider libertarianism to have been developed? I think of libertarianism (in the modern American sense) as originating around the early 20th century with HL Mencken and Albert Jay Nock. If anything that seems to be near the historical peak of technological progress.
When do you consider libertarianism to have been developed? I think of libertarianism (in the modern American sense) as originating around the early 20th century with HL Mencken and Albert Jay Nock.
Lao Tzu, section 75 of the Tao Te Ching, written in the sixth century B.C.:
The people starve because those above them eat too much tax-grain. That is the only reason why they starve. The people are difficult to keep in order because those above them interfere. That is the only reason why they are so difficult to keep in order.
I’d disagree with him as a matter of fact, of course, but historians of libertarianism typically put him as one of the earliest examples, and there seem to be lots of strong intellectual connections that may or may not be known well today. (I know some people who tout Lysander Spooner as the bridge between the libertarians before and after him who were previously thought unconnected, for example, but I don’t know enough to say whether or not that’s true.)
We may as well call Laozi an “anarchist” as a “libertarian”; he seems rather more interested in a classless society than a market-driven one. Or we could call him a “reactionary”, since he writes about a supposed lost golden age in which society operated harmoniously.
Put another way — We should be careful about pattern-matching ancient authors onto modern ideologies, because we are likely to make useless but contentious claims.
We should also be careful to distinguish between political ideologies and movements. The difference is similar to that between religious creeds and churches: one is a collection of beliefs, while the other is a collection of participants with some sort of continuity between them.
Lots of people like to find old forerunners to their modern beliefs! I’m rather fond of the notion that Adam Weishaupt (1748-1830) of the Bavarian Illuminati, would support the LW and CFAR mission of rationality education. But that’s pretty different from saying that LW and CFAR are part of the Illuminati.
I once read a book which made a pretty convincing case that the Tao Te Ching was written as a mystically-worded manual of statecraft for a totalitarian regime, pointing out the context of the times (the pre-unification period offering many other works like that), translation issues, and similarities of the passages about keeping the people ignorant and simple to other passages in statecraft manuals like the Book of Lord Shang. Ever since, I’ve been a bit dubious about how well we can understand classical Chinese thought...
We may as well call Laozi an “anarchist” as a “libertarian”; he seems rather more interested in a classless society than a market-driven one.
I think that anarchists are contained within libertarianism; yes, he doesn’t look like an anarchocapitalist or a minarchist or so on, but that doesn’t mean he’s not libertarian. (I don’t think it’s quite fair to say “libertarianism in the modern American sense means anarchocapitalism,” but that may be because I’m more familiar with the variation in the modern strands of American libertarianism than the median American.)
Lots of people like to find old forerunners to their modern beliefs!
Well, I think that’s because there are lots of old forerunners to modern beliefs. Ecclesiastes has it almost right:
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.
There is a cottage industry in going back to old academic works and finding the ideas that were before their time—that is, ‘modern’ discoveries that were discovered before and not recognized as important (or underdeveloped in some crucial way). It seems to me that we should suspect similar, if not greater, levels of reinvention in philosophy as math, and that we should also be unsurprised when it’s direct influence instead of reinvention.
I’m a libertarian, and I think you’ve got an interesting question there. Libertarianism was developed when technology wasn’t changing as fast as it is now, and the gold standard is a solution to a real problem of serious inflation.
I’ve still not sure it makes sense that people need to be fooled(?) into making sensible purchases and investments though mild inflation.
However, cheap oil does support the cornucopean hythpothesis, and it didn’t take a libertarian society—just modern tech and governments that aren’t extremely oppressive.
Anyway, I don’t know if there’s a libertarian consensus about gold these days, or whether an electronic currency is a reasonable substitute.
Before the big drop in the price of oil, I saw people doubting peak oil (the idea was that exploration is regulating by the expectation of returns, so it wasn’t going to look as though there was more than 30 years worth of oil), but I didn’t see anyone predicting cheap oil. Has anyone seen that sort of prediction?
Incidentally, there’s oil from shale in Atlas Shrugged—with no hint of what tech would be needed to get the oil out.
When do you consider libertarianism to have been developed? I think of libertarianism (in the modern American sense) as originating around the early 20th century with HL Mencken and Albert Jay Nock. If anything that seems to be near the historical peak of technological progress.
Lao Tzu, section 75 of the Tao Te Ching, written in the sixth century B.C.:
I’d disagree with him as a matter of fact, of course, but historians of libertarianism typically put him as one of the earliest examples, and there seem to be lots of strong intellectual connections that may or may not be known well today. (I know some people who tout Lysander Spooner as the bridge between the libertarians before and after him who were previously thought unconnected, for example, but I don’t know enough to say whether or not that’s true.)
We may as well call Laozi an “anarchist” as a “libertarian”; he seems rather more interested in a classless society than a market-driven one. Or we could call him a “reactionary”, since he writes about a supposed lost golden age in which society operated harmoniously.
Put another way — We should be careful about pattern-matching ancient authors onto modern ideologies, because we are likely to make useless but contentious claims.
We should also be careful to distinguish between political ideologies and movements. The difference is similar to that between religious creeds and churches: one is a collection of beliefs, while the other is a collection of participants with some sort of continuity between them.
Lots of people like to find old forerunners to their modern beliefs! I’m rather fond of the notion that Adam Weishaupt (1748-1830) of the Bavarian Illuminati, would support the LW and CFAR mission of rationality education. But that’s pretty different from saying that LW and CFAR are part of the Illuminati.
I once read a book which made a pretty convincing case that the Tao Te Ching was written as a mystically-worded manual of statecraft for a totalitarian regime, pointing out the context of the times (the pre-unification period offering many other works like that), translation issues, and similarities of the passages about keeping the people ignorant and simple to other passages in statecraft manuals like the Book of Lord Shang. Ever since, I’ve been a bit dubious about how well we can understand classical Chinese thought...
I think that anarchists are contained within libertarianism; yes, he doesn’t look like an anarchocapitalist or a minarchist or so on, but that doesn’t mean he’s not libertarian. (I don’t think it’s quite fair to say “libertarianism in the modern American sense means anarchocapitalism,” but that may be because I’m more familiar with the variation in the modern strands of American libertarianism than the median American.)
Well, I think that’s because there are lots of old forerunners to modern beliefs. Ecclesiastes has it almost right:
There is a cottage industry in going back to old academic works and finding the ideas that were before their time—that is, ‘modern’ discoveries that were discovered before and not recognized as important (or underdeveloped in some crucial way). It seems to me that we should suspect similar, if not greater, levels of reinvention in philosophy as math, and that we should also be unsurprised when it’s direct influence instead of reinvention.