I am putting a video link below the fold here – I don’t know why I am doing that, as no one will follow it. I would not either. It is too long. It is a debate between Peter Joseph and Stefan Molyneux. Both are self-absorbed.

Molyneux is one of of those people, like a television news reader, who opens his mouth and produces a cascade of words that seem intelligent as they roll out. But he’s not, and worse yet, he is dishonest and full of rhetorical trickery. I found myself wanting to do the old Kids In the Hall trick, and crush his head between my thumb and forefinger. He is that annoying.

Joseph had one simple idea he was trying to get across to Molyneux, that the distinction that libertarians draw between “government” and “free markets” is false – that there is no difference. It’s a very simple concept: Those who amass market power also control government. So debating the relative merits of the two is nonsensical, like trying to distinguish between weather and climate. They are interwoven. There are no free markets, and government is the slave of those who own the contrived marketplace, the only one that exists.

Molyneux reflexively went back to his back yard garden and spoke incessantly of the beauty of the free market, that idyllic place where everyone acts voluntarily and all outcomes are naturally wholesome – government ruins his garden. (Libertarians have stolen the word “freedom” and abuse it, clubbing it like a baby seal.)  It is the curse of Utopian thought, to force an ideal into place in the real world. His garden yields a cornucopia spilling abundance and nourishment. It is all he can see. He is so full of shit.

And this is the problem with libertarians – they have reached a level of intelligence that seems so sensible that they stop there. Libertarian theory sounds smart, and is so easy to mouth. And is so full of holes. Libertarians exhibit what one of my kids’ high school teachers described so well, “supreme stupidity.” (I think the concept was described by Goethe, who said “there is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity.” Indeed.)

I have written elsewhere about the holes in the theory, and will stop here with just one: People who want power don’t care how they get it.

Continue reading “Aggressive stupidity and the libertarian philosophy” →