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Progressives and Libertarians

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Clarissa

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Why does progressivism hate libertarianism so much? They have a lot in common. Open borders, freedom of migration, unconstrained freedom for capital, no policing, no nation-state, no army, no war on drugs. So many affinities, yet progressives detest libertarians.

The reason, I believe, is that libertarians support all these things on principle. They don’t see themselves as morally superior. And for progressives, moral superiority is the entirety of the game. Libertarians spoil the whole deal for progressives. If you can be for all these things and not constantly point out to everybody how exceptionally virtuous you are, then why do progressives do it so much? Like a woman with Botox, fillers and hair extensions who despises a naturally pretty woman, progressives hate libertarians for giving the game away.

24 responses to “Progressives and Libertarians”

  1. Avatar
    Anonymous

    Unless Mamdani, Warren, AOC and Bernie are not representative Progressives by your definition, you are 180 degrees from correctly perceiving Progressives’ attitude about unrestrained capitalism.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Attitude or words? Yes, they give a lot of promises about increasing welfare. But they do the exact opposite. I heard garbage is already not being collected and the homeless are already dying in the streets of NYC. What matters more, reality or words? Why do you believe the words these people say instead of the things they actually do?

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      1. Avatar
        Anonymous

        Tell that to all the lenders tortured for years by Warren’s Orwellian named: “Consumer Financial Protection Bureau”. All of the egregious compliance costs of course, by necessity, passed on to borrowers and consumers, making everything more expensive.

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          I’m sure there’s a whole list of ways in which some people made out like bandits as a result of this. Capital accumulates upwards.

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  2. Avatar
    Anonymous

    Libertarians: want all that stuff, but don’t want to control anybody else.

    Progressives: want all that stuff, but also want to police everybody else’s behavior down to the most minute grammatical inflection.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Exactly. This is where the virtue part comes in. Once you get to the point where the opposing worldview is immoral, you’ll have to dedicate yourself to stamping out the immorality.

      Libertarians take on the “thou shall not judge” position while progressives want to be the judge, the jury, and most crucially the executioner.

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  3. Avatar
    Anonymous

    Libertarians obsess over how intellectually superior they think they are. It’s why they expect they:d come out on top in the anarchy they wish for.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      So true. This is the biggest downfall of libertarians. They think they are very special cookies.

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      1. PaulS Avatar
        PaulS

        In SA, classical liberalism was the ideology of people who believe in their own superiority, see Musk. The opposing ideology, apartheid, was specifically invented to protect white working classes from job competition with cheap black labor.

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          We have gone a step further in the US. Cheap black labor is fucked to accommodate cheaper Mexican labor. African Americans are being phased out through abortion and labor replacement. BLM is their consolation prize. I like African Americans and believe that their subculture adds something extremely important to the overall American culture so I’m upset on their behalf.

          And yes, there’s a lot of dysfunction in the African American culture. But it doesn’t deserve to be phased out anyway.

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  4. ed Avatar
    ed

    Libertarians are all about “live and let live.” Progressives hate that; they wanna tell you how to live very badly.

    Liked by 1 person

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  5. mitchellporter Avatar
    mitchellporter

    I think it’s even simpler than what people have said so far: Progressives disapprove of the accumulation of wealth, libertarians think it’s OK. Progressives think that getting rich is just selfishness in action, hold it in contempt for that reason, and believe it leads to bad consequences for society.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Have you noticed that all of the rich people everywhere hold extremely leftist political beliefs? You will not find a conservative among the business elite, in Hollywood or anywhere where rich people hang out. The richer a person is, the likelier he is to be far left.

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      1. Peter Avatar
        Peter

        hold extremely leftist political beliefs or merely proclaim those beliefs.

        There are thousands of hypocrites in the UK who fail to take advantage of https://www.gov.uk/guidance/voluntary-payments-donations-to-government and I am certain that the same is true in the USA.

        Please send the equivalent link to anyone who advocates tax increases and ask them how much they contributed in the previous tax year!

        From a UK perspective Tim Worstall has shown this hypocrisy for years.

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      2. oldcowboy3 Avatar
        oldcowboy3

        In business that certainly appears to be true when the wealth is largely inherited: but those that actually earned the wealth are more likely to be conservative, if often more generous to the needy — perhaps because they understand that their abilities are to some extent an unearned gift. Hollywood does not follow those patterns, perhaps because most of their conservatives must hide their beliefs.

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          That might have been true in the past but it’s no longer so. Wealth is extremely leftist these days.

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      3. mitchellporter Avatar
        mitchellporter

        That may be so but the average progressive is not a rich person, it’s probably a middle-class redditor.

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          All of the fancy people are extremely left-wing. And when I say all of them, I mean 100%.

          Working class people are majority right.

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      4. Avi Avatar
        Avi

        The richer a person is, the likelier he is to be far left.

        I wonder why. Do they feel ashamed of their wealth? Do they subconsciously think that their wealth was ill-gotten and illicitly accumulated even when it was not?

        What is it with virtue signalling and wealthy elite people?

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          It’s good for business. Open borders, disordered lives, chaos. All this is excellent for business.

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        2. Avatar
          Anonymous

          Sam Walton at least talked conservative.

          His kids who inherited the business: progressive globalists to the core.

          Do you think they are unaware of what the business did to locally-owned retailers and retail wages and working conditions?

          -ethyl

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          1. Clarissa Avatar
            Clarissa

            Yep. When it was profitable to have a stable, reliable pool of workers who’d show up on time every day, speak the same language and be rooted in family and community, big capital loved conservatism and the nation-state. Once it became more profitable to shed attachment to any specific nation and flit around the globe in search of opportunities and a highly portable workforce, they all became globalist.

            I hate to keep unleashing the n word on people but unless we forget all that outdated crap about socialism and all that and learn the term neoliberalism, we won’t be able to understand this. It’s the “everything is fluid” mentality. Once you see this, it all becomes very clear.

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            1. PaulS Avatar
              PaulS

              Captial always moved around the world looking for opportunities. Even then American flag has obvious similarities to the East India Company flag.

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    2. Avatar
      Anonymous

      How’s Mamdani’s net worth compare to the US median?

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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