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Warming up to Libertarianism

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Clarissa

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I never liked libertarianism. Not that I hate it or anything but it’s simply not my thing. But now that I spend a chunk of my professional time interacting with Ukrainians, I’m really warming up to it. Ukrainians are very libertarian, in case people don’t know.

It’s really pleasant when you don’t have this huge bureaucratic superstructure dominating every activity. Everything is easy. Everything happens fast and effectively because it’s just people doing what they believe they need to do. No compliance paperwork. No paperwork of any kind. It’s just people talking to people and getting things done. It’s kind of really cool.

I now feel a strong desire to reread Ayn Rand because I’m in touch with this very Randian environment, and it’s definitely attractive.

5 responses to “Warming up to Libertarianism”

  1. methylethyl Avatar
    methylethyl

    Nah, Rand is still gross. But you might dig Von Mises, Hayek, and Rothbard…

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  2. cliff arroyo Avatar
    cliff arroyo

    “I never liked libertarianism”

    I have some sympathies but it doesn’t scale up long term.

    I think what’s going on with Ukraine is a very tiny bit like the early 90s in Poland…. the existing bureaucracies pretty much stopped existing and people just carried on and many things worked better than they had earlier.

    People often didn’t realize what was and wasn’t legal so they mostly went for what worked and all sorts of things happened that weren’t bad but could never happen now…. you want to open a business in an empty spot in a building? Talk to the owners/managers and go to town. Don’t have the capital for that? set up a table and start selling on the sidewalk. Sidewalk sellers were actually more reliable than the state enterprises that were still limping along…

    It also worked at the institutional level. I was hired after a 10 minute conversation that I hadn’t even realized was a job interview and which I only understood half of (it took a few years to understand the accent and weird way of talking of one of the interviewers).

    An acquaintance was hired in a similar way. When they decided the acquaintance wasn’t working out they just didn’t hire them again.

    I made other research-related institutional contacts just by going there and talking to whoever was there without any kind of appointment structure and got all types of access that now would require all sorts of jumping through hoops.

    But as fun and liberating as a lot of it was it was too far against the grain of the culture and so bureaucracies gradually got built back.

    Current Ukraine trauma is a lot more acute than anything from the early 90s but when things get back to normal bureaucracies will also be rebuilt.

    Nobody likes them but bureaucracies are absolutely necessary for the longterm functioning of any kind of advanced complex culture to function.

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    1. cliff arroyo Avatar
      cliff arroyo

      “I was hired after a 10 minute conversation”

      By way of contrast the unit I work in broke away from our old Faculty (roughly College at a US university) after a several year long hiring freeze. The Dean even said that it would take 6 leaving to hire 1 new person and that new hire would not necessarily go to any unit that had lost faculty but to whatever unit the Dean wanted….

      And the reasoning was not just economic (as normal people understand the term). Not only was it impossible to replace those leaving, the teaching shortfalls then had to be made up in ways that were even more expensive than simply hiring new teaching staff….

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  3. Stringer Bell Avatar
    Stringer Bell

    I never cared for libertarians when I was on the left and I don’t care for them now, but for different reasons. They’re deliberating choosing not to wield the ultimate power (the State) to hurt their enemies and reward their friends. If you’re not going to wield that power, someone else will, and you won’t like the results. Just look at what has happened with the Left completely infiltrating every institution of the state to advance their interests. I get the principle of it, but it’s simply unworkable in the world we live in. Power hates a vacuum.

    People who care will always win out against those who want to be left alone (with their cute little contracts that can be declared null and void at the stroke of a pen).

    https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/14/elon-musk-war-on-delaware-may-change-how-companies-make-big-decisions.html

    The Delaware Chancery Court decision to void Elon Musk’s $56 billion Tesla pay package could have far-ranging consequences for corporate board composition, CEO pay and state incorporation decisions.

    Also, see State of New York vs Trump. 🙂

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  4. Avi Avatar
    Avi

    @Stringer Bell

    You are absolutely right. Power infiltrates any vacuum left. Once it is established it is very difficult to dislodge. And when it strikes, it strikes with a vengeance.

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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