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2278 sats \ 22 comments \ @elvismercury 12h econ

I love Brett Scott -- a deep thinker, and an informed one. When bitcoiners say stuff like "I've never seen someone who understood bitcoin reject it" I always think of Brett. He's hard to characterize, but he puts his thinking in the open, so you know exactly how he gets to his conclusions, and you know the axioms that hold up the tower of what he believes in.

This moral judgement can merge with that aforementioned horror about modern money being ‘created from nothing’. In the eyes of the purist then, state fiat money becomes an unnatural abomination based on debt. They imagine a utopia of debt-free individuals, and create an image of true money as a debt-free commodity voluntarily chosen by these free individuals. The money is supposed to be ‘apolitical’. It’s supposed to come from something. It’s supposed to last forever and ‘keep its value’. It’s supposed to facilitate a transcendent system of free trade between free individuals. That’s true capitalism, right?

Wrong. That’s ideal type capitalism, a hypothetical projection that emerges out of a hypothetical starting point which doesn’t exist, which then gets projected onto what actually exists. When the projection doesn’t match, reality must either be shoehorned into it (e.g. ‘mega-corporations that use the US dollar are examples of the free market’), or rejected (e.g. ‘true capitalism would have no corporations or US dollars! That’s crony capitalism we’re seeing, not real capitalism!’)

I'd be interested in reactions that actually engage with the points made. I'm guessing basically everyone here will violently object, but exactly what you are objecting to, and why, is what I'd like to know.

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27 sats \ 1 reply \ @optimism 6h

There's something that I agree with as there is, in this whirlwind of text including the previous article he linked to in the beginning (Detachment Theory), one thing that I would say is not an entirely wrong observation:

These moments are selected by the libertarian imagination

I think he's right about the narrative being tailored to the expectations of the narrators. I also think that it's nothing special, because that's what narratives always do - if it didn't need that, no narrative would be there. It's simply human nature to try and make sense of things we know today and come up with supporting arguments why our plan is supposed to deliver us our intended outcome. There is always a measure of confirmation bias involved in this; after all, we are biased towards our plan succeeding.

Many people I know including myself stack sats and as a consequence start thinking deeper about and being attracted to (often cherry-picked) austrian economic principles and this is exactly because we need to put the situation we find ourselves in into context; a context that is contrary to the fiat world we see around us but we resist through the sats we stack. If there were no schools of thought opposing the world we live in we'd have a much harder time validating the plan that drives our choices.

Because I think at least that part is right I'm looking forward to the promised next article about the SBR and I hope I will feel a little more content afterwards; most of this article nor the preceding one made an impression tbh, because it's full of what I think I can safely call non sequitur - as pointed out in the other comments.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @elvismercury OP 2h

I think he's right about the narrative being tailored to the expectations of the narrators. I also think that it's nothing special, because that's what narratives always do - if it didn't need that, no narrative would be there.

This, to me, is what is so interesting about this.

Everyone's head is a teeming hive of beliefs about the world that constitute an implicit (and sometimes explicit) Theory of Everything. I won't claim to know what the Platonic Libertarian believes, exactly, but the actual examples I meet in the flesh (including online) often exhibit exactly the ideological structures Scott describes: that the atomic unit of the human animal is the individual, and society is built up of aggregates of individuals, who attach voluntarily from their natural isolated state, and if we could only construct our laws and institutions up from that premise, a Utopia is sure to emerge.

Scott (and anthropologists, sociologists, and neuroscientists, among others) have gone on to refute the "individual primacy" belief set; and yet it is foundational in much political thought, as the essay demonstrates. This is not to say such a framework doesn't have its uses, but we ought to know where the system departs from reality, since, as you say, this worldview will be the lens through which everything is interpreted.

If you build your house on a swamp, look out.

57 sats \ 16 replies \ @Undisciplined 12h

I can't tell if he's arguing fundamental points or knocking down beliefs of naive libertarians. It's definitely not a steelman, but it doesn't have to be if he's just raising issues with extant lines of thinking.

There's no particular reason "true capitalism" can't be an unrealized ideal. The argument would then be that it isn't possible to reach for various reasons and we could argue about the validity of those reasons.

I only had time to skim the opening, so I can't really evaluate what he's trying to do, yet.

23 sats \ 15 replies \ @SimpleStacker 10h

Eh, I skimmed the first few paragraphs... and I think he's attacking a strawman (whether he realizes that is another question)

I just didn't detect any semblance of a characterization in there that resembles my own thought.

He talks as if libertarians believe that every individual can be self sufficient and that trade only arises optionally out of that state of self existence. I'm not sure that's what libertarians believe. I'm pretty sure most would agree that trade between individuals is necessary for survival and for civilization.

So... "starting points matter"... well the starting point of this article matters too...

72 sats \ 14 replies \ @elvismercury OP 10h

What is the "attack" that you're detecting?

91 sats \ 13 replies \ @SimpleStacker 10h

Kinda tricky to talk about this because I am trying to explain his view on libertarianism, which he thinks is wrong, but that I think his view of libertarianism which leads him to think it's wrong is itself wrong.

He says that libertarians start from these three points:

That an individual is a real phenomenon. You have to believe that it actually is possible to exist apart from others

This in turn implies that you believe that everyone is potentially self-sufficient

This is turn leads to the belief that the self-sufficient individuals are motivated into making connections with each other by choice, not by necessity

I'm not sure that's the starting point for most libertarians(?). I'm not a capital L Libertarian so I wouldn't really know, but I consider myself "libertarian leaning" and I certainly wouldn't agree with those three points.

57 sats \ 10 replies \ @Undisciplined 9h

I share your impression and reaction. I didn't want to say that it's a strawman, because you do see people who sort of fit his description, but it definitely doesn't describe my thinking or any of the libertarians who interest me.

I actually think libertarians appreciate our interdependence more than almost any other ideological group.

I found it most ironic that he brought up the complex supply chain as something libertarians don't appreciate, when that idea was most famously articulated by the libertarian author Leonard Reed in "I, Pencil".

23 sats \ 7 replies \ @elvismercury OP 2h

The reality is different. The pencil is certainly created by a massive chain of people, but each of them is not fundamentally free, because there is no option to ‘walk off’ and not be part of the meta supply chain any more. There’s no fundamental ‘independence’ that precedes and follows acts of interdependence. In fact, what we call ‘independence’ is just a secondary phenomenon situated within the strictures of interdependence.

From his prev essay.

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39 sats \ 1 reply \ @SimpleStacker 8h

Yeah I think the libertarian point is that such complex supply chains can only really arise out of many rational actors making individual decisions on their own. A planner couldn't have envisioned these things on their own.

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71 sats \ 1 reply \ @elvismercury OP 10h

Got it. I might be in the same boat as you -- Libertarian-curious, but don't have the membership card. Do you know what your own "axioms of pseudo-Libertarianism" would be?

651 sats \ 0 replies \ @SimpleStacker 9h

Good question. I certainly would agree with Brett Scott that we're not self sufficient as individuals and that we need interdependence in order to survive. But where I'd explain my own leaning towards libertarianism / individualism is more like the following:

The individual mind actually does exist. It can be influenced by society, but is still does exist on its own and is capable of forming thoughts contrary to prevailing societal views.
Every individual has different preferences and desires
No individual can fully know the desires and preferences of another individual
The desires and preferences of one individual can and often do run in contrary to those of other individuals
Resources for helping individuals achieve their desires are limited

I think these are pretty non-controversial. Next come some moral statements. I'm less confident that I can justify these apart from the existence of some transcendent morality (which I do hold to.)

The moral right to property exists. That is, individuals can own resources, and no individual has the right to steal resources owned by another individual.
The moral right to life exists. If we consider our biological life as a resource, then it fits in the above category.
If someone violates one of the above moral laws, it becomes morally justified to enact some kind of punishment in order to deter future violations of the moral law. The level of the punishment should be restorative and deterrent, but not punitive. Punishment must also only be enacted under some standard of evidence.

I'm literally thinking of these off the top of my head, so apologies if they're pretty half baked.

Lastly, come the pragmatic arguments.

Because society is made of many individuals with different needs and preferences, it is impossible for one individual (or group of individuals) to make decisions about resource allocation that would be broadly satisfactory for the whole group
The best way to allocate resources is therefore for people to trade freely between the resources they own and are able to produce out of their own effort.

I'm sure there's a bunch of stuff I missed... but this is broadly how I view my libertarian bent

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55 sats \ 2 replies \ @Aardvark 12h

What I disagree with is his definition of what "true capitalism" is. Who says capitalism is supposed to be debt free? I was under the impression that people wanted banks to act responsibly, and give loans based off actual reserves not a money they can conjure out of thin air.

His argument, while not without merit, is based on a strawman to begin with.

42 sats \ 1 reply \ @elvismercury OP 12h

What do you think his argument is, that it suffers from that bad definition?

35 sats \ 0 replies \ @Aardvark 11h

All of it, he set the definition for true capitalism and then argued against his own definition. Who's saying that true capitalism wouldn't have corporations? I'm not even sure exactly what is argument is besides utopia doesn't exist.