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There was a book I read years ago and for the life of me I can’t remember who the damn author was or what the title of it was, but it was by a prominent American Jewish lawyer (not Alan Dershowitz).
He was a radical advocate of social and economic laissez-fairism. To such an extent he thought if you were someone who harbored racist beliefs and wanted to hang Neo-Nazi slogans on the window of your business, you should be able to do that. Or if you were a prejudiced business owner who wanted to refuse someone because of their religious beliefs you could turn away anyone you wanted for any reason.
I think there’s a point where unconstained liberty brings you far too close to the breakdown of society and it just becomes unworkable. Large segments of society refuse to cooperate with each other. Everyone is suspicious of their neighbor. People have to travel far out of their way to buy groceries or make a living. Violent retribution is always a looming concern. Corporations may refuse to provide power to your neighborhood’s electric grid. Who knows, police may refuse to help you if you get into trouble; depending on who you are. But at least you have freedom of speech and expression.
But without the metapolitical and social prerequisites that allow a shared community to flourish, it’s ultimately worthless. It’s why when the program of economic “shock therapy” was introduced into Russia under the Yeltsin era, hitmen and assassinations were a readily available service in the Russian free market.
I mean this is just feudalism.
Which is fine, hell I like it, but let's not act like it's some newfangled oddity. A society built out of ad hoc contracts between everyone is one of the most common ways of human organization historically speaking.
Aside from the fact that I've actually met libertarians who are fine with privately own cities operating as if they were corporate fiefdoms and see that as the highest form of social organization, in reality it'd be a world so full of hate that no human being would want to live in it.
Lots of people want to live in Dubai. This place has its own problems, it is not exactly known as land of freedom, but no one described it as "full of hate".
Dubai has Sharia And Civil Law dude, it’s not a socioeconomic laissez-faire society.
In libertarian world, society is as laissez faire as owner of the society (technically, land where the society is) wants it to be. Do not like it? Pull yourself by your bootstraps and build your own society.
And in the real world, don't blame people for not following in lockstep with the libertarian fantasy when they decide to pull themselves up by their bootstraps by pulling out a gun and robbing you of your personal property. Otherwise, have fun homesteading on the eastern plateau of Antarctica. This is why the "libertarian world" will never become what we can the "real world," at any point.
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But like he said, lots of people want to live there. And who wants laissez-faire anyway?
Then why does he keep responding to an argument I’m not making?
“Yeah yeah, I understand what you’re saying but I’m going to ignore it and replace your statement with one you didn’t make and reply to that instead.”
My entire statement was about a socially and economically hands off, laissez-faire society. That is absolutely ‘not’ what Dubai is, and not by a long shot.
Your argument was that private and corporate owned cities would be "world so full of hate that no human being would want to live in it." Dubai is closest real world example of propertarian utopia.
Dubai isn't even remotely close to something like that. Perhaps the closest thing I can think of to an anarcho-capitalist (i.e. "feudal") society is something like minimal, positive non-interventionism in Hong Kong. Have some people benefitted? Sure. If you're one of the 220,000 people that still live in cages, probably not. I'm not going to bid on that kind of future.
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Yeah, well, that's just, like, your opinion, man.
I've personally chosen to live in one of these and it's been a massive improvement to my quality of life and that of my friends and family. Mostly out of not having to worry about constant petty crime anymore. But in fact I've observed the exact opposite of what you're claiming. People are a lot nicer and more respectful of cultural differences than I've seen in supposedly enlightened liberal democracies.
I choose to trust my personal experience over your conjecture.
You live in Tamaulipas? Because we definitely aren’t talking about the same thing if that’s not the case. And I don’t know of any rich trillionaire that owns an entire city outright, so I’m going to call it that you don’t live in such a city.
You have quite the unheard experience from anyone on planet Earth if that’s the case.
I'm not sure what to make of your evaluation of what's a common human experience if the concept of a king is such a novelty to you.
There are people that have whole nations as their estates, it's one of the most common government forms in history. And you'll be hard pressed to argue that nobody has ever enjoyed such an arrangement.
I understand new worlders are fanatically down on aristocracy, but that's not a bias everyone shares.
Look at what you replied in agreement to.
An unabashed attack on the idea of organic society from what I can only surmise is a proponent of republican/liberal centralism. At least that's how I'm reading it.
Well much as such sentiments would like to think that the debate ended in 1789, not everyone actually agrees that centralized social engineering is desirable.
Not even close.
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I mean, there is a reason Nick Land decided to immigrate to Shanghai.
There's clearly something I'm missing here. Shanghai isn't Hong Kong last time I checked.
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