Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Libertarian pundits talking about libertarians make me laugh sometimes

Take this sentence from Reason.com's Brian Doherty: "The biggest barrier to Johnson's success are money and attention."

There's a fourth variable that Doherty leaves unnamed that quite obviously explains Johnson's success, money, and attention.

6 comments:

  1. The only barrier to Johnson winning this election is that a vast majority of people completely reject his platform. Other than that factor, he'd be in!

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    Replies
    1. I was going to say "the quality of his positions", but this is probably a more objective way of putting it.

      Bingo.

      There is a point where fundraising windfalls can make a difference in tipping the scales. That is most decidedly not the obstacle Johnson faces.

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  2. Frankly, I've never understood how libertarians can believe that average people are ever going to agree to legalize all drugs and abolish zoning ordinances absent privatization of streets and neighborhoods. No one wants to live next to druggies or factories. In private neighborhoods, druggies and factories could just be banned from the neighborhood by contractual consent. Apparently, libertarians think that the Rothbardian vision would scare the public so they are holding back discussion of it for some later time. 2340?

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  3. Yes, I'm certainly a laughable idiot. Reflexive contextless contempt for libertarianism always makes people feel good about themselves, missing the context that "success" in that article's terms, as per the graf preceding that larfable quote, qualified "success" for GJ as beating one percent or beating the spread between Obama and Romney in an imagined election-swaying swing state. But of course that one percent of the population might vote for libertarian ideas if they had money or media attention is self-evidently absurd.

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  4. And how unsurprising to find Gene "ferocious defender of full-context intellectual charity, when I think Rothbard is violating it" Callahan weighing in with his both context-ignoring and evidenceless assertion. Really? The vast majority of Americans completely reject pot legalization? Ending overseas wars? Balancing the budget? Data?

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