Damn It, Women Screw Up Everything

[debrand]

cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education-libertarian

I did a search and we have touched on libertarian Peter Thiel's idea to seastead; however we've never actually discussed his essay, The Education of a Libertarian.

Most importantly, I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.

He is down in the dumps that his youthful desire to create a world without"confiscatory taxes, totalitarian collectives, and the ideology of the inevitability of the death of every individual" has failed.

Who does he blame for the fact that The Golden Age no longer exists?

The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics. Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of “capitalist democracy†into an oxymoron.

'

Ah, I get it now. Women got the vote and destroyed the world!

He is surprised by that women are pissed off because he said they might have destroyed life as we know it.

I had hoped my essay on the limits of politics would provoke reactions, and I was not disappointed. But the most intense response has been aimed not at cyberspace, seasteading, or libertarian politics, but at a commonplace statistical observation about voting patterns that is often called the gender gap.

It would be absurd to suggest that women’s votes will be taken away or that this would solve the political problems that vex us. While I don’t think any class of people should be disenfranchised, I have little hope that voting will make things better.

My Interpretation:Women's opinion or freedom? Pshaw, how does that matter? Let's all talk about his brilliant ideas on seasteading

[JaChelle Sugar]

What the hell is seasteading, and why should we.care?

[ViolaSebastian]

Huh, well today I learned:

Evidently seasteading is taking and modifying a cruise vessel, oil platform, or anti-aircraft platform and essentially making a floating city out of it. The upside for Libertarians is that they're economic exclusion zones and aren't subject to any nations laws, and can presumably keep nation destroying women from voting. I have to admit, some of them look pretty awesome.

[snarkopolis]

Seasteading sounds fun, right up until they have to touch land and get buy supplies from all the people they don't like. What then? Guess he better rethink this process.

[debrand]

Seasteading sounds interesting and might perhaps help somewhat with overpopulation.

You can bet your butt that I plan to vote against most Libertarian laws. He is threatened because most women don't agree with his views and he doesn't want people who disagree with him to have a voice.

Thiel does not believe that democracy and liberty can coexist. What form of government does he think would replace democracy?

[RachelB]

Seasteading sounds interesting and might perhaps help somewhat with overpopulation.

You can bet your butt that I plan to vote against most Libertarian laws. He is threatened because most women don't agree with his views and he doesn't want people who disagree with him to have a voice.

Thiel does not believe that democracy and liberty can coexist. What form of government does he think would replace democracy?

I am guessing here, based on people I know who like him a lot (ALL the side-eye), he'd favor anarcho-libertarianism (i.e., Going Galt).

I am fine with this so long as he decides to get his "liberty" on somewhere else and doesn't mess with voting rights for those of us who like and want to keep them. I think going back to restricting voting to property owners, or people who make a certain amount of money a year (UGH) would be a far shittier outcome than losing all the rich people who don't want to pay taxes for social services they're not using (yet).

[Coco]

Seasteading sounds fun, right up until they have to touch land and get buy supplies from all the people they don't like. What then? Guess he better rethink this process.

Or get rid of waste, or obtain fuel. Or need medical attention. I guess they're drinking rain water and eating fish all the time? Sign me up! :lol:

[Coco]

Who does he blame for the fact that The Golden Age no longer exists?

Ah, I get it now. Women got the vote and destroyed the world!

I am guessing here, based on people I know who like him a lot (ALL the side-eye), he'd favor anarcho-libertarianism (i.e., Going Galt).

I am fine with this so long as he decides to get his "liberty" on somewhere else and doesn't mess with voting rights for those of us who like and want to keep them. I think going back to restricting voting to property owners, or people who make a certain amount of money a year (UGH) would be a far shittier outcome than losing all the rich people who don't want to pay taxes for social services they're not using (yet).

The 1920's was just after the industrial revolution. That was no Golden Age unless you were a man with land. America had the oppressed immigrant population and child labor, as well as all the things going on in Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" exposé. Not to mention civil rights violations still rampant and near-slavery in the south. No wonder women wanted a voice in politics, to stand up to the fat cats and land owners. I've made people mad before saying this, but if you look at the middle east, you see what happens when women have no power. A bunch of dudes wagging their dicks and fighting stupid wars ad infinitum. In a very general sense, women want consensus, working in collaboration to take care of the next generation, and men want to be the king of the hill and thump their chests.

(looking at you, Michael Pearl, Steve Maxwell, Doug Phillips, Scott Brown).

Of course that statement doesn't apply to every man and every woman, but it proves that we need every person to have a voice, a right to speak out and some power to change whatever injustice exists.

[Mama Mia]

So if I become a seasteder that means I can be Queen of a Cruise Ship ? !. :clapping: :cupcake: :dance:

Sign me up, cause that sounds like amazing fun. Except of course that not everyone would get to be queen and someone would still have to do that crap jobs that no one wants, which is kind of the problem with any utopia.

[Curious]

So if I become a seasteder that means I can be Queen of a Cruise Ship ? !. :clapping: :cupcake: :dance:

Sign me up, cause that sounds like amazing fun. Except of course that not everyone would get to be queen and someone would still have to do that crap jobs that no one wants, which is kind of the problem with any utopia.

I'm sure in this guy's world that would still be the women, particularly now that they can't own land or vote like the good old days :roll:

[debrand]

I just wanted to make this correction. I used the term, Golden Age but I meant Gilded Age.

All the reasons that Coco lists are why no one with any compassion or common sense would want to return to the Gilded Age.

The older I get, the more I realize that people who claim that they are logical and rational often are not logical or rational. They might be intelligent and can calmly express themselves but if their basic premise is flawed, their results are incorrect no matter how logical they think that they are. In this case, returning to a time period with rampant poverty, no child labor laws, no FDA etc would be very harmful to society. Of course, if you believe that liberty means that you can do what ever you want as long as you are strong and rich enough then it is logical to dislike the fact that a portion of society votes to protect themselves from you.

I want the extremists among the Libertarian party to seastead. Let them try to run their little communities away from us and when all hell breaks lose, governments should refuse to help them.

[bumblebee]

I want the extremists among the Libertarian party to seastead. Let them try to run their little communities away from us and when all hell breaks lose, governments should refuse to help them.

Exactly. Sea steading sounds fun in theory, but you can bet a lot of the people who actually go through with it because they hate the government/women/taxes etc will just find other ways to be miserable onboard whilst blaming it on something else, and that's a best case senario if they have a boat full of people thinking the same thing who are also armed.

[MissA]

Is it wrong that I read this article and went "Awww, what a cute idiot?"

Seriously, though. "The ideology of the death of every individual." Which is one hell of an ideology since apparently it's suckered in 100% of the human population born before 1900. Comparing getting Stanford to revoke some speech codes to WWI trench warfare. The complete obliviousness involved in the writing of this entire paragraph:

"The higher one’s IQ, the more pessimistic one became about free-market politics — capitalism simply is not that popular with the crowd. Among the smartest conservatives, this pessimism often manifested in heroic drinking; the smartest libertarians, by contrast, had fewer hang-ups about positive law and escaped not only to alcohol but beyond it."

[Coco]

Exactly. Sea steading sounds fun in theory, but you can bet a lot of the people who actually go through with it because they hate the government/women/taxes etc will just find other ways to be miserable onboard whilst blaming it on something else, and that's a best case senario if they have a boat full of people thinking the same thing who are also armed.

:lol: Next M. Night Shyamalan movie coming up in 3, 2, 1...

[Geechee Girl]

Somehow I doubt he considered he'd have to defend his seastead against pirates. :confusion-helpsos: Good luck with that! :nenner:

[antares]

Heads up, thiel is actually one of the founders of paypal

[debrand]

I wish that we could donate to sending the more extremists among the Libertarian Party to floating sea communities. They could give up their citizenship so that no nation would be responsible for them.

I admit that Libertarianism confuses me. At its extreme is Libertarianism become anarchists or do they want to create an oligarchy? Occasionally, Libertarians will make a point with which I agree but then there seems to be so much other things that they believe which would end up hurting anyone who isn't rich or powerful.

[super skeptic]

What really irks me is that none of these morons realize that they are not and will never be self-made. No one is created in isolation. You benefit from the COLLECTIVE taxation of people. You and you and you and you. You can be the richest man in the planet and you still benefit from it, in the shape of paved roads and law enforcement protection and national security and workers who are educated by the public system. Your taxes cannot individually pay for any of these things, which is why we all benefit from the SUM of EVERYONE'S money.

Do you want to be a libertarian? Fine. Go find a patch of unclaimed sea but leave behind all the food, clothes, books, education, guns that someone else fabricated. Go live in a barren place with no roads and no education. Raise your own food and your own workers and grow the animals and seeds you need to make your own fabrics to make your own clothes. You don't get to buy anything, either, because it was probably made by someone who received their skills and sustenance from the collective (public schools, etc). You don't want to contribute to society? Fine, you don't get to benefit from it, either.

[JaChelle Sugar]

This. All of this.

[JaChelle Sugar]

Tho that seasteading setup looks extremely cool.

[Talitha Cumi]

Tho that seasteading setup looks extremely cool.

Yes but can you imagine what would happen in a big storm? :shock:

[RachelB]

Yes but can you imagine what would happen in a big storm? :shock:

Or in any kind of crisis, really. He talks about wanting to establish relations with the nearest country(ies) that would allow sea-steaders both some level of protection while preserving their complete autonomy. Those things are generally tradeoffs.

[debrand]

Theil wants countries to protect him and his group but doesn't want to follow the individual country's rules? Let me guess, he probably doesn't want to pay taxes to that country either. The egotism and lack of self awareness makes my brain hurt.

Can you imagine if we all showed up at Theil's house and demanded that he protect our right to camp on his front lawn but we want to be able to do whatever we want? He'd have the police on us in a heartbeat.

I think that seasteading would be a good idea for ocean farming to feed the world's population; however, living on a man made island with a bunch of entitled, whiny, gun toting brats is not my idea of fun. It has always seemed to me that extremists on the Libertarian side are narcissistic with large egos.I can't imagine how they would all deal with one another in a small place. They would probably kill one another over who got served first in the buffet line.

Theil or Thiel, I am too lazy to find the correct spelling.

[semiliberate]

What really irks me is that none of these morons realize that they are not and will never be self-made. No one is created in isolation. You benefit from the COLLECTIVE taxation of people. ...

I think I love you. And I've decided that most of coworkers that think they are Libertarian, but don't at all agree with a woman's right to choose, or losening pot laws, aren't; they are really Consitutionalists. But try telling them that... ugh

[salex]

The more things change the more they stay the same

motherboard.vice.com/blog/sea-nations-that-washed-out

Though they abhor both lemmings and nation-states, libertarians can't seem to help heading to the sea to found countries. As with lemmings, the result is always the same, but there is nevertheless fascinating history of libertarian sea states, where grandiose ambitions run aground against obstacles like nature, privateers and actual nations.