Yes she could see the problems. But she failed to take human nature into account when she formulated her plan for promoting "Enlightened Self-Interest." Where humans are involved, when self interests are the motivation enlightenment goes out the window.

It seems the idea of libertarianism is freedom from any law.

@eschatologyguy
Not at all…
It just promotes minimum laws and government power and interference.
Something both the left and right fears.

@Hanno as Ronald Reagan defined it, those on the Right are for minimalist government.

@eschatologyguy
Except when it comes to personal rights.
Then those on the right wants to control who you may marry, what drugs you may use, Who you may have sex with, when you may have an abortion etc etc.

Then suddenly the right wants to interfere through government.

Just as you think that those interventions are “good -and right”. So does the left think their economic interventions are “good and right”.

You both want government control, just of different things.

@Hanno What I was getting at was, you got the thing between the Right and the Left wrong. The Right wants small government and the Left wants lumbering bureaucracies. Fascism has always been the Left's bogeyman, as being of the Right. In reality, Fascism is an offshoot of Marxism. It's of the Left.

@eschatologyguy

I said nothing of the SIZE of governments. Neither did the OP. I talked about government power and control.
I also said nothing of fascism.

Just because what the right wants to control, personal freedoms, requires less bureaucracy than the economic control the left wants, does not mean that governments have less control of you. It is just different control.

Libertarians wants small governments, both in size and in control. That does not mean no laws, just less laws controlling our personal AND economic freedoms.
Libertarians still want strong local government, able police and military, as well as proper education and health systems appropriate to the populations development and wealth.

I most definitely do not have left and right wrong.
You don’t understand what libertarianism is.

Once you do, you might discover you are a libertarian after all.
There are very good videos on libertarianism on YouTube.

@Hanno

You don’t understand what libertarianism is. Once you do, you might discover you are a libertarian after all.

It's definition is available, so it's no big mystery. I understand it enough to realize that it makes society vulnerable to the machinations of the Left. When I see a drunk on the streets, I see a libertarian. When I see people wasting their life savings in Vegas, I see libertarians. When I read gays in pride marches and teaching children about the LGBT lifestyle, I'm reading libertarians. When I see women having their kids murdered in the womb on a whim, I see libertarians. Many libertarians may not be doing these things, but since they find no problem with those who are doing it, they make it possible for societal decay to set it.

@eschatologyguy
And there you describe exactly why you are wrong about the right wanting minimalistic governments.

All the moral laws you believe requires more government, not less.

And just like you think governments need to enforce your moral views on others, so does the left believe governments should enforce their social views on others.

Both the left and the right want to force therir own views on others and governments to do that.

And then on your narrow and judgmental view of people. I have been to many countries and lived and worked in them.

The more religious a country, the more abuse I saw and more discrimination. The less religious the country, the less I see the very things you describe.
Just look at rape cases per capita between a very low religion country like Finland and a super religious country like South Africa.

Hi Willy. Mind if I butt in?

What's your take on General MacArthur's desire to lay waste to Korea and China with nukes to win the Cold War before he was canned?

What? And make Korea and China victims? That wouldn't have worked. It would have made more bleeding hearts like yourself sympathize with them. I doubt that would ever have gotten by Congress anyway - it was just wishful thinking on his part. As it is, the people of North Korea and China are victims of their own governments and America doesn't have to hang its head in shame.

Is that what anti-authoritarian individualism looks like?

No. it is what trying to maintain your Constitution and system of government from internal threats looks like. It is supposed to be a free country not an unfree authoritarian collectivist country.

@FrankZeleniuk Haha, was kind of hoping you would. No notes.

@FrankZeleniuk Though if y'all aren't down with nuking Korea and China, how does that square with "Star Wars" military contractors funding Birchers all these years?

Douglas MacArthur was a megalomaniac who couldn't get big enough to rise out of the perceived shadow of his grandfather who was a hero in the Civil War. Toward the end of his life, Dugout Doug wanted to become a dictator after the Roman model to right all the wrongs he thought he saw in the world. He did not understand the Atom Bomb and wanted to use it because he thought it was just another form of high explosive that was more efficient at killing the people he perceived as enemies.
However, now that I have given you my take on Dugout Doug, how does MacArthur pertain to economics?

@FuzzyMarineVet Support for making the Cold War hot (or hotter than it already was), along with the other things I mentioned, were key ingredients in the creation of the conservative movement.

@WilyRickWiles

how does that square with "Star Wars" military contractors funding Birchers all these years?

Are "Birchers" the only one's who the Star Wars military contractors funded? But then the contractors didn't lobby Birchers, for contracts, they lobbied government and political warhawks, bought contracts from it and pushed for wars.

Remember, if you don't like conservatism, "There is nothing more conservative than a liberal institution." - P.J. O'Rourke.

A funny story he relates in his book, "Don't Vote - It just encourages the Bastards!". During his college years he attended a political communist meeting and got home a bit late. His grandmother asked him where he'd been and he answered he had been at a communist meeting and that he was now a communist. "Well, she said, "at least you're not a Democrat.".

@FrankZeleniuk Bircher-types -- those in that network and with similar beliefs. And yes they influenced liberals, who existing in the same economy compromised with them.

@FrankZeleniuk And yes, the line between neocons/neolibs and Bircher types is blurry and there's a pipeline from the reformist left.

@FrankZeleniuk Think tank New America comes to mind.

@WilyRickWiles They were key to corrupting some conservatives into neo-cons who were more likely to support globalist causes so loved by Democrats today.

@FuzzyMarineVet Aren't the "globalists" generally presumed to be pro-China?

@WilyRickWiles Yes they are. Which is why individualists do not support globalism. At the same time the Democrat party and the establishment Republicans have joined forces with the globalists to elevate the People's Republic of China and suppress the Republic of China on Taiwan.

@FuzzyMarineVet Putting that aside, surely it's a fine line between being your anti-China advocacy and the militarism of the Birchers.

@WilyRickWiles

Think tank New America comes to mind.

The Project for a New American Century (PNAC)? Dick Cheney and that neocon bunch?
Well, you know, a bunch of old warmongering Socialists that tried to make it look like they were Republicans. They were as bad as Obama.

Agenda 21 was in effect and the UN was probably busily installing globalists in key positions and grooming Senator Obama for his 2008 presidential run. Cheney and that bunch were easy to fool because they were narcissists and national socialists and aligned with the warmongers and globalist socialists in the Democrat party, people like Hillary Clinton.

In my opinion PNAC were closer to national socialists and were excellent tools for the globalists.

@FrankZeleniuk Imperialist development scenario planning like Agenda 21 is meaningless without knowing the national and institutional membership of the cartel in charge. You can just as easily have a strictly anti-China one. Bircher isolationism, even if it omits nuking Asia, is false. Capitalism can't exist without a global market -- conservatives largely are anti-China because they want to restore the KMT as capitalist partners (instead of partnering with the CPC), not because they want to wall our economy off from the world.

@WilyRickWiles The line between me and the John Birch Society members is as broad as the Grand Canyon at its widest point. They have their heads in the sand and only want to be the government they hate so much. I find it offensive that you use that as your ad hominim against me. Hitler and Mussolini were both left wing socialists who added a nationalist flavor to counteract their rival socialist foes, the communists. I don't call you a Hitlerite, a Fascist or a Stalinist. I don't see you filling any of those molds.

@FuzzyMarineVet Fair enough. Curious Frank's take.

Marx invented the term capitalism. Before then it was called free enterprise, as Ronald Wilson Reagan was fond of calling the system of free markets. And the definition he gave to capitalism, a modification of European Feudalism, is precisely the thing he wanted to impose with himself as emperor. Alas, language has morphed over the century and a half since Karl wrote his evil screed, and so many people have equated free enterprise with capitalism that we think capitalism predates Marx. No Tim, Capitalism and Free Enterprise are not the same. Capitalists exploit free enterprise to amass power over their customers, their workers and their governments. Today's capitalism is international, like the communism that Marx wanted to institute. That is why the communists and capitalists in America have formed such a powerful alliance. Big Tech is capitalist. The mom-and-pop retail store or small local factory is Free Enterprise.

@FuzzyMarineVet "Bullsh*t.

"The term "capitalist", meaning an owner of capital, appears earlier than the term "capitalism" and dates to the mid-17th century. "Capitalism" is derived from capital, which evolved from capitale, a late Latin word based on caput, meaning "head"—which is also the origin of "chattel" and "cattle" in the sense of movable property (only much later to refer only to livestock). Capitale emerged in the 12th to 13th centuries to refer to funds, stock of merchandise, sum of money or money carrying interest.[20]: 232 [21] By 1283, it was used in the sense of the capital assets of a trading firm and was often interchanged with other words—wealth, money, funds, goods, assets, property and so on.[20]: 233"

"Capitalism, also called free market economy or free enterprise economy, economic system, dominant in the Western world since the breakup of feudalism, in which most means of production are privately owned and production is guided and income distributed largely through the operation of markets." 

@TimTuolomne No dictionary written since the end of the 19th century fails to falsely conflate capitalism with free enterprise. But just like Reagan, I an see the distinction, and so can you if you only look at practices of capitalists and entrepreneurs. The latter practice free enterprise, the former exploit it.

@FuzzyMarineVet Only if you have fallen for the adolescent circular logic of Marx.

@TimTuolomne The point is that the term capitalism was coined by Marx and according to his definition has little resemblance to free enterprise. Meanwhile he has won the propaganda war because we all use his term as though it were a synonym for free enterprise. The free and open exchange of goods an services between people without any outside control is foreign to both capitalism, in which the capitalist controls others through economic means, and communism/socialism, which uses political power and control of others to accumulate wealth.

I think the author of the post has equated corporatism with capitalism. Big businesses are run from a central authority, a Founder who is essentially a dictator. A publicly owned corporation would be run by a board of directors. There are just similar hierarchical structures between how a collectivist nation and a corporation is run. Of course the big difference is the workers in a corporation have the option, freedom, choice, whatever to participate or not. That freedom does not exist in a collectivist state.

@FrankZeleniuk In the huge multinational corporations that I qualify as collectives, it's not a lack of freedom to leave, but a lack of freedom to join unless one supports the corporate agenda, which doesn't necessarily line up with the interests of the individual share holders. For the smaller, localized corporations, the model followed is free enterprise. And while they do form a community of like minded business people, they do not form a collective as Marx envisioned in Das Capital.

@FrankZeleniuk This logic depends on an unspoken dividing line between a lemonade stand and a corporation. There is no difference, unless one intends to vilify business. The problem with that is without business, even socialism fails. Presuming evil generally, is the equivalent of judging by group, instead of individual responsibility for an individual's action. Even large corporations are held responsible legally by the individuals and their actions. Only tyrannical regimes condemn by group - like Hitler.

@TimTuolomne The problem with corporations today is that many have abandoned the profit and loss regulator from economic law to compete, innovate, expand and sustain itself. They employ the ESG rating where customers are not given consideration at all and profit and loss are not considered either. Value is rated by a committee according to sustainability of the environment, societal structure and government. Nothing really to do with economics at all. Go woke. Go broke.

@FrankZeleniuk These are no longer businessmen. They are obviously ideologues.

@FrankZeleniuk That is not a systemic issue. WEF infiltrators are in the position to enforce government recommendations. Strictly speaking, government control of private industry (which is what ESG amounts to) amounts to Fascism, so you're argument has morphed into something else.

@TimTuolomne I'm glad you see that. They aren't making it plain!! I don't think al ot of CEO's see that.