“С туши одного миллионера могут наесться множество пролетариев.”
“Many proles can feed off one millionaire’s corpse.”
Watching the current Democrat promises, I’ve realized they are a party of scavengers who don’t content themselves with waiting for their prey to die of natural causes. Compared to them, the craziest of the religious nuts who talk to their pet gods by two-way radio are harmless eccentrics.
I just keep wondering why leave-us-alonians aren’t very popular in the US or everywhere else…
Why we aren’t popular? Because to many people have in them this feeling that they have to help others, whether they want it or not. They generally believe that if it offends them, it is wrong and harmful to others and most be gotten rid of. This is doubly true if this “wrong” thing makes others happy.
Current Democratic promises? Could you be more specific? Beats the lies and outright ignorance of the Republicans.
Don, I am very much not a fan of the Republican party at the moment. Saying one is better than the other isn’t a glowing endorsement.
I see one of the effect of the Obama (and compliant Congress) meddling with medical services already: medical equipment manufacturers are now subject to additional excise taxes, leading directly to mass layoffs over the past several weeks. So alleged benefits of “Obamacare” aren’t yet in effect but the damage from it is already happening.
As usual, Ron Paul 2008 & 2012.
Oh, “leave me / us alone” is a VERY popular ideology. Unfortunately, people haven’t quite figured out that “leave me / us alone” also means “leave him / them alone”, too.
Tim Covington raises a good point:
[M]any people have in them this feeling that they have to help others, whether they want it or not.
Exactly. Charity is a wonderful thing, and the impulse to help others is noble and should be encouraged. But when it gets to the point (as he says) of, “I’m gonna help you whether you like it or not”, it’s not much better than benign tyranny, and decent people should take a stand against it.
(Perhaps I’m undermining my own argument, but I suppose that I should make an exception for people who aren’t competent and really need somebody to help them whether they like it or not, such as the mentally ill and small children.)
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” – C. S. Lewis
That C.S. Lewis quote came to mind immediately upon reading the preceeding post. Thanks for posting it.
Oleg, what promises did you mean, and, who’s living corpses?
I was watching Penn of Teller a couple nights ago,
http://iamrising.wordpress.com/2012/08/31/penn-of-penn-teller-views-on-being-a-libertarian/
and came to the conclusion that the biggest problem with the libertarian party is their very principles almost hold them, er well, us, I’m one, at a stand still. Since I can’t force my views on you, or be guilty of the disrespect crime, then I have very little way of standing up in a loud, earth-shattering manner, for our mutual benefit. Even thinking that way puts me on the same par as the naughty guys. So, you end up with a team of people who are disorganized, leaderless, and easily dispersed into hiding with threats from the dark side of “We’ll take your freedom away! Rawr! Beware the LIST! OoOOOOOoooH!” Not to suggest that the libertarian bunch isn’t incredibly passionate and extremely aware and informed, just, they equally are very disinterested in pushing their views around. They’re that respectful of others’ freedom to think for themselves.
It’s pretty hard to win a cake contest when the other guys are busting out a free for all whipped cream fire house and an infinite maraschino cherry fountain.
No one eats the gluten-free dog biscuits of reality voluntarily when they’re laid out on the same table as the Chocolate Chewie Paradise and Creme de’la Peanut Butter Cup.
It’s easy to see why the general public, raised from birth in public education camps, wouldn’t feel very compelled to break the bonds of delusional security and join the party of laissez-faire, when they realize doing such means considerable more personal accountability and risk of failure in an every-man-for-himself world. Would it be a better world? Well, pfft, yeah. But only to people who are over themselves and looking at the bigger picture. Convince that to the guy who’s been taught to line up, show his card number, and get handed his bread ration after being stripped of his arms, his hope, his name, and his freedom from birth. Meanwhile, the other side scares the bejezus out of him with “OooOO end the fed? Visit the Depression!” while he tucks his kids in bed at night.
When this system collapses, one of the only things that will prevent those who desire bread&circuses from simply replacing it with something worse, will be for folks to offer reasonable replacements.
If someone wants his life run for him, then it sounds like there’s a business opportunity there. Companies which can offer all manner of services should be formed, such that John Q. Public can actually have even more of his life run for him than he currently does, and at a lower price, if that’s what he wants.
The only problem with your idea is that you will be competing with government . You shouldn’t do that because those in government view that as stealing from them . They have a very effective way of dealing with folks who steal from them & that is to shoot them in the back of the head(by accident of course) while they are face down on the floor in handcuffs .
Hence why that is labeled as “after” the system collapses, not while it’s still in place.
Libertarians assume that people will follow their own best interest if it is explained properly to them. Bullshit.
People do what their subconscious wants them to do … and most folks have a rabid ape at the controls and don’t know it.
When the LP learns to persuade people, to appeal to emotion, and to make use of social and peer pressure to enact political change, and do the really hard fucking work of organizing, it will start getting somewhere.
As long as its members continue to just write screeds, flashmob non-binding Republican caucuses, and argue endlessly about whether or not voting equals violence, it will continue to be a 10% of the vote third party.
“Libertarians assume that people will follow their own best interest if it is explained properly to them. Bullshit.”
Actually, you’re wrong.
You’re conflating individual intelligence and group intelligence. At the individual level, Humans tend to have their own best interests at heart. When that individual becomes part of a group, they often begin to think in terms of that group. The larger that group becomes, the less intelligent the group as a whole tends to become — it’s the mob mentality.
Just because the actions of a group appear idiotic does not mean that the individual members that make up that group are a bunch of mindless simpletons.
Of course not. But Democrats and Republicans know how to use the power of big stupid groups to their political advantage. We don’t, because we focus on converting individuals rather than creating the social and emotional conditions for the formation of (yes, big and stupid) libertarian of groups that have the power to attract and keep people who are libertarian-leaning but currently non-committal. There are many more forms of persuasion than simply rational debate. I think that was what Kristopher was saying.
Also, the free market is a negative-feedback system. Managed markets run on positive feedback. As anyone who’s work with any sort of control system can tell you, positive feedback leads to wild oscillations and uncontrolled operation, which is why negative feedback is used.
All the free market requires is that a large percentage of the economic actors act with rational self-interest. The internal feedback will account for the “noise” of those who act irrationally. The more of them who act in a rational manner, the smoother things will operate, but as long as there’s a clear signal of rationality, a lot of noise can be overcome.
A managed market requires planners with near-perfect knowledge, near-perfect skill, and near-perfect incorruptibility. Imagine replacing a clock’s weighted pendulum with a stick, and hiring two guys to toss it back and forth to keep the clock in time. They’d need to have perfect knowledge of the rate at which it should oscillate, perfect skill at converting that knowledge into action, and neither could ever decide that he was tired and wanted to take some time off for himself.
Sorry, but my experience differs from your sincerely held beliefs and wishes.
Everyone likes to think they are 100% rational, but the subconscious is really running the show. Self-interest triumphing over beliefs and programming is unfortunately rare. I do my best to be rational myself, but I recognize that often I will fail.
Marketing and persuasion works, and it works astoundingly well. Men like Hitler were able to use such techniques to cause an entire country to go batshit insane.
Ignoring this truth will keep Libertarians in that 10% hole forever.
Sorry, but the actual evidence differs with your “experience,” which is subject to confirmation bias and not indicative of the real world.
Also, this isn’t a popularity contest. The American Revolution never gained the support of 50% of the population, until after it was a done deal. It takes a lot of “batshit insanity” to cause a population to move in an irrational direction. It doesn’t take as much, to move it in a rational one.
Libertarians are as ignorant of the real-world consequences of their ideology as your typical college-campus Leftist wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt driving around in a Prius sporting a “Hope And Change” bumper sticker.
Libertarianism is not an all-or-nothing affair; Just because you perceive libertarians to be a bunch of starry-eyed Paulian fanatics does not mean we all are.
Truth HSR47, but the loons and the useless predominate.
When I was running the LP in Oregon during the 1990s, we had three main groups in the party:
The stoners, who were all socialist who had learned to parrot ZAP in order to get us to help with legalization petitions
The conspiracy loons, who had learned to parrot ZAP in order to haul out their soapbox at party functions and rail about whatever the fuck they were insane about.
Actual libertarians, who were subdivided into two groups:
Anarcho-capitalists, who considered even voting to be a ZAP violation, and Libertarians, who wanted to elect libertarians to office.
Of that last group, only a fraction would get off their butts and actually organize and electioneer, instead of just writing internet screeds.
We had maybe a half dozen folks in the whole state that would actually work at getting people elected.
I can see how that happens. Democrats and Republicans generally want elected positions to get something done. Libertarians want to be placeholders who do no harm and perhaps reverse some of the past legislation. It’s hard to get voters enthusiastic about wanted to do nothing with a position unless the voters already view the government as such harmful entity that anything would be better than elected officials doing their jobs at everyone else’s expense.
Does not help that the 2 party system has rigged it to be much harder for a 3rd party to even get on a ballot.
Oregon is hardly a representative sample.
And no actual anarchist opposes voting. The idea that “voting legitimizes the system” or such is part of that system. If someone believes that, then he still, in actual fact, believes in that system, and is not an anarchist.
An actual anarchist recognizes that voting is nothing more than a ritual followed by the religion of Statism, and it has no meaning whatsoever to his life. He can vote, just as he could sit quietly with his head bowed while a Christian says Grace, even if he is an atheist. Neither has any special meaning to him, so it harms him not to pay them lip service.
“Libertarianism is not an all-or-nothing affair; Just because you perceive libertarians to be a bunch of starry-eyed Paulian fanatics does not mean we all are.”
This may shock you, but I was a small-“l” libertarian for most of my life, until recently. There is a reason I am not any more.
Thank God that broad generalizations about Leftists are rarely made on this site by the blog host and his readers. And when such broad generalizations about Leftists are made, paragons like yourself are quick to point out how wrong it is to do so.
Somebody who posts under the name “Workaround” on ArsTechnica wrote a coment a few weeks ago that’s so good I’m going to steal it:
Libertarians also assume that they know what’s in an individual’s best interests, and get angry/condescending/frustrated/etc. when the individual chooses something else.
As one professor put it, “Libertarians are obsessed with microeconomics. Everything has to be about rational individuals calculating their preferences and incentives. They have so little comprehension of how people actually behave in real social situtions that it is pointless to talk with them about anything except the stock market.”
The libertarian idea that human beings are homo economicus is just as wrong as the Communist idea that human beings could be molded into homo sovieticus.
I suggest reading David Brin’s “Essences, Orcs and Civilization: The Case for a Cheerful Libertarianism“. ( “This transcription — of a keynote address delivered to the Libertarian Party National Convention in Indianapolis on July 5, 2002 — is the best-edited of more than a dozen of these unconventional consultations.”)
Americans are notoriously ill-educated about history, and equally notorious for believing that they know a lot! For example, if you were exiled to almost any past era, which elite group would be most likely to oppress you? Elected officials and bureaucrats? Or those who manipulated society’s rules to minimize social mobility and to maximize the close-holding of inherited wealth? In other words, aristocrats and kings.
In the Old South, would you have fought the slaveholders? In the France of Louis XIV, would you have sided with serfs, whose lives and bodies were legally owned by the rich?
Today, freedom faces subtler threats, and you are right to see government bureaucracy as one of them. But remember how coercive authority manifested for 99% of human history! Have we made completely obsolete the potential for abuse that was always inherent when status and wealth were automatically inherited?
My own definition of libertarian mindset is simply consistent application of the non-aggression principle. I am not saying that we can or even should install a purely Randian society, only that voluntary cooperation is usually superior to coercion. Then again, Ursula LeGuinn’s “The Dispossesed” had a nice parody of a libertarian society in which social pressure makes life every bit as miserable as codified mercantilism.
Is it voluntary cooperation if, in the fine-print of some 50,000-word lawyer-drafted document-called-a-contract, somebody “agrees” — regardless of whether or not the consent is legal fiction — to be a slave?
Would your libertarian response be to invoke the concept of unconsionability? Or would you tell the new slave “Contracts are sacred. You agreed to it. If you don’t like it, you should have known better.”?
Consider the future of “Emily’s Debt“, where
“In the very near future, where failing to pay student loan debts is a crime, Emily is in big trouble. She has a large student loan and no job. She’s heard, of course, that student loan debtors weren’t sent to jail. Instead, they’re rented by the government to corporations and businesses so that their work can help pay off their student debts. But renting becomes purchasing, and crafty lawyers and greedy companies turn student debt bondage into slavery with hardly anyone paying attention.”
I’m not the first person to realize that in the real world, libertarianism has descended from a belief that markets are cool and a way to ensure maximum prosperty, to “policy is simply the things that defend the power and hierarchy of creditors, the rich and the elite… There’s almost a Nietzschean zeal for the wonk world to first and foremost accept creditors [and, I would add, corporations] as a master class to whom all policy bends.” (I prosecuted an FDCPA case last year. It was an eye-opening experience, and I’m writing a book about it right now).
Ayn Rand expended a lot of ink saying that Collectivists hate the Individual. Unfortunately, over the past 3 – 4 years, I’ve detected a lot of contempt for the Individual from conservatives and libertarians who favor Collectivist entities known as corporations.
A corporation isn’t necessarily collectivist — I know plenty corporations of one. But I also suspect that corporate law of the libertarian world would be rather different, same as a labor union in the USSR wasn’t the same as in the US.
“Is it voluntary cooperation if, in the fine-print of some 50,000-word lawyer-drafted document-called-a-contract, somebody “agrees” — regardless of whether or not the consent is legal fiction — to be a slave?”
No. A contract is not words on paper – that’s merely a record of a contract. A contract is an agreement – a meeting of the minds. “I will do X and refrain from doing Y, and you will do A and refrain from doing B.” If there is no meeting of the minds, then no contract exists. Writing it down is merely a convenience, and does not replace the actual contract, which consists solely of the understood agreement.
If a contract needs, for its intended purpose, to be complex, then it would behoove all parties to have it vetted by an outside party to ensure that it is fully-understood. Presumably, that outside party would be bonded and insured, such that it would absorb the cost if it were found to have failed to perform its duty in that regard – sort of like hiring a title company to make sure that a property is actually free and clear, before purchasing it.
“Would your libertarian response be to invoke the concept of unconsionability? Or would you tell the new slave “Contracts are sacred. You agreed to it. If you don’t like it, you should have known better.”?”
He could still walk away from it, even if it was fully understood that it was a contract into slavery. He would simply owe damages to the other party, because he failed to perform his part.
A contract does not bind you to perform. It binds you to perform or pay damages to the party/parties who reasonably expected your performance as per the contract.
“Is it voluntary cooperation if, in the fine-print of some 50,000-word lawyer-drafted document-called-a-contract, somebody “agrees” — regardless of whether or not the consent is legal fiction — to be a slave?”
Generally speaking, long documents in halting legalese are largely a construct of our legal system. Partially due to the complexity of codified law, but more due to the the nature of legalese.
At it’s core, legalese is a language as defined by the judicial system. Over time, certain words and phrases have been clearly defined by court decisions that set precedent; This has led to words generally understood to have a general meaning taking on a very specific meaning in the right legal context.
Also, the fact that lawyers typically demand high rates of hourly compensation tends to cause such documents to only grow longer over time as new language is added while none is subtracted. End-user license agreements for software are a prime example of this; Try reading one sometime, and I guarantee you’ll have Déjà vu by the third paragraph.
“Libertarians also assume that they know what’s in an individual’s best interests, and get angry/condescending/frustrated/etc. when the individual chooses something else.”
Since when? The old saying goes, that “libertarians are pro-choice on everything.”
You can live however you like, with whomever consents to live that way, with you. If you want to live under a fascist dictatorship, go for it; I won’t stop you. The only thing – the singular, long act – that libertarians would prohibit, is to violate the consent of another. To force him to live with you in that fascist dictatorship, even though he does not want to.
Start a commune, if you like communism. Start robber-baron-land, and pay per footstep every time you walk on another’s property. Just don’t try to force me to join either. Are you telling me that’s too much to ask?
In “Essences, Orcs and Civilization: The Case for a Cheerful Libertarianism”, Brin said that
According to the philosophical tradition first expressed by Plato, our world is made up of “essences” or quasi-linguistic elements that are more fundamental than the murky world of complex physical people and objects. Belief in these essences retarded the arrival of Galilean science for 2,000 years, because it was so widely assumed that a real thinker would prefer to spend time pondering pure thoughts, than getting dirty with experiments.
To a religious person these essences are articles of faith. To men of reason, they can be logical syllogisms or well-wrought ideological principles. (Ain’t it odd that faith and reason are so often viewed as polar opposites? To a pragmatist, they look like very close cousins, operating under the same very questionable assumption — that words can somehow over-rule gritty reality.)
A few years later, blogger Timothy B. Lee, in “F.A. Hayek, Liberal” wrote that
One of the more pernicious influences of Rand and Rothbard on the libertarian movement was their tendency to treat every policy problem as almost reducible to a logical syllogism. Too many libertarians act as though they don’t need to know very much about the details of any given policy issue because they can deduce the right answer directly from libertarian principles. The practical result is often to shut down internal debate and discourage libertarians from thinking carefully about cases where libertarian principles may have more than one plausible application.
And that is one of the problems with libertarianism. It is not pragmatic.
I find it interesting that the two novelists mosts cited by libertarians are Ayn Rand and Robert Heinlein. Yet Rand and Heinlein had diamatrically oppossed views of an individuals role in and moral obligations to the larger society they live in.
I found early to mid Heinlein to be close to how I structure my life. Within my circle of friends and business colleagues, libertarian approaches have worked extremely well. So I base my political preferences on what’s working for me in daily life.
“I am not saying that we can or even should install a purely Randian society”
“I found early to mid Heinlein to be close to how I structure my life.”
Mr. Volk,
Which parts of Randianism do you reject, and which parts of Heinlienism do you use to structure your life?
“And that is one of the problems with libertarianism. It is not pragmatic.”
Pragmatism is one of the most sinister memes to invade human consciousness. There is no act so vile or depraved, that pragmatism cannot find a “reason” it should be supported. Pragmatism is not reason, of course; it is desire, with no concern for any higher motive than self-pleasure. Rapists are pragmatic. Serial killers are pragmatic. Muggers are pragmatic. The worker who turned on the gas in the concentration camp was pragmatic – it got him a paycheck and a lot of other benefits, didn’t it?
Pragmatism is the realm of the animal, and it’s no fault in them. I won’t hate a bear for attacking me, because I got too close to her cub. She is under no obligation to apply reason and attempt to determine whether or not I am a threat. To debase a reasoning being into such as that, however, is an act of depravity.
“I find it interesting that the two novelists mosts cited by libertarians are Ayn Rand and Robert Heinlein. Yet Rand and Heinlein had diamatrically oppossed views of an individuals role in and moral obligations to the larger society they live in.”
I’m not entirely sure I understand exactly what you’re referring to, but I’ll give it a shot anyway.
As I see it, it’s mostly a matter of scale. Both seem to have the same idea of how interactions should go with those who are OUTSIDE the household (be they neighbors, strangers, or the government), and that’s really what matters.
When it came to household matters, many of Heinlein’s characters seem to take the stance of “it’s my house, therefore I make the rules” which is TOTALLY in line with libertarian principles, but may not seem so to some.
In essence, all politics boils down to who gets to be the dictator; Libertarianism is the idea that each man should be his own dictator.
So, while it may seem to be communism, authoritarianism, or other such systems being advocated in Heinlein’s works, what’s REALLY being advocated is the ability of the character to decide how to run his own household. Note, that all members of such households are there by MUTUAL consent–theirs, and that of the head of the household. That is libertarianism; the head of the household sets the rules, and if the other members of the household don’t like it, they can live elsewhere.
Rand follows the same basic set of ideas, but it seems to me that her primary goal was to expound upon her political beliefs where Heinlein’s was to tell stories. Therefore, they took the same set of ideas and applied them on a wholly different scale.
On the whole, I’d say that the real difference between Heinlein and Rand is how they viewed government; Heinlein seemed to view government as a necessary evil that should be minimized, while Rand seems to have believed that it could be wholly eliminated.
“Heinlein seemed to view government as a necessary evil that should be minimized, while Rand seems to have believed that it could be wholly eliminated.”
I think you have that inverted. Heinlein was a die-hard anarchist. He acknowledged that government exists, when it did pre-exist the story, but in any situation in which one of his characters got to set up a “government,” that character set up an anarchic system.
Rand specifically believed that government should exist, to provide for national defense, police, courts, and the like. She just didn’t want it to go further than that.
Hyperbolic nonsense is hyperbolic.
Indeed. The idea that folks will end up having to sell their children into slavery in order to afford food if only the government doesn’t steal on their behalf, is pretty ridiculous.
The hyperbole that comes from socialists is truly ridiculous.
“The hyperbole that comes from socialists is truly ridiculous.”
Whereas the hyperbole that comes from the Right is not?
What is “the Right,” in your mind? That term is nearly without meaning (same as “the Left,” for that matter).
Ku Klux Klan members are overwhelmingly members of the Democratic Party, for instance, but most folks you ask would probably call their ideology “right wing.” Or, for that matter, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party is often referred-to as a historical example of a “right wing” party. I would say that both of those groups have engaged in ridiculous hyperbole.
If you could define an actual group, I could address whether their statements were hyperbolic or not and, if so, whether the sort of hyperbole in question was or was not ridiculous.
The National Socialist Workers Party was right wing… for European politics. They have long had a balance between socialism at one extreme, and facism at the other.
It’s not “socialism or fascism.” Fascism is a particular type of socialism.
“The hyperbole that comes from socialists is truly ridiculous.”
Are you talking about Reformist Socialists, Revolutionary Socialists, State Socialists, Libertarian Socialists, or Democratic Socialists?
And what on God’s green Earth makes you think I’m any type of socialist?
“Are you talking about Reformist Socialists, Revolutionary Socialists, State Socialists, Libertarian Socialists, or Democratic Socialists?”
Doesn’t matter. Socialism is based upon a total lack of comprehension of basic mathematics, let alone complex economics, so any rhetoric issuing from socialists is, by definition, ridiculous.
“And what on God’s green Earth makes you think I’m any type of socialist?”
I don’t recall actually saying that I thought that. Could you point out where I did?
Or did you, personally, make the socialistic promises which Mr. Volk condemned in his post? If you authored them, then I suppose I would have to believe you were a socialist, but I would not have known of the connection so, again, could you point out where I made any such statement?
Did you go to the Saul Alinsky School Of Debating And Logic? Because it seems that way.
“I don’t recall actually saying that I thought that. Could you point out where I did?”
at September 1, 2012 at 9:29 pm, just 4 posts above this one
“The hyperbole that comes from socialists is truly ridiculous.”
Um, yes, that was a reference to socialists engaging in ridiculous rhetoric. It was not in reply to anything you said. Nor were you mentioned in any way within that posting.
Mr. Volk complained about socialists. Endif complained about hyperbole. I complained about hyperbolic socialists.
Or do you just imagine that anyone who says something, anywhere, must be talking about you, personally? You may want to get that checked, if so…
And why is it that when somebody critiques “the Right” or “libertarians”, they’re suddenly required to differentiate all the subtle differences betweent he various flavors, but the varous type of Leftists can be lumped into one block?
Answer: For years, when the blog host and his readers use terms like” conservative”, “liberal”, “libertarian”, “socialist”, “progressive”, “left-wing”, “right-wing:, etc., most intelligent people knew what the author meant, especially in the context. Most readers also understand that this is done for the sake of brevity. This is a blog, not a book or a college disseration.
This sudden, new, requirement to differentiate between the shades of one side — while lumping “socialists” into a monolithic block — is a cheap and sleazy debating tactic you probably learned from Alinsky, too.
So to answer your original question: “What is ‘the Right,’ in your mind?”
I’ll steal one of your answers: “Doesn’t matter.” Hyperbole from the Right, regardless of how you define it, is still hyperbole.
I didn’t refer to “Leftists.” If you had asked a question about “Leftists,” I would have asked you to make the same differentiation, because it’s a meaningless term. A Neo-con would probably call me a “Leftist” if we were discussing things like the drug war, or abortion, or immigration, since I favor freedom of choice. No doubt many Democrats would call me a “Right-wing extremist” because I carry a gun at all times.
I, on the other hand, referred to a specific group, which has specific beliefs. All “Socialists,” shockingly enough, believe in “socialism.” I know it must be confusing to “lump” them all together in that way…
So, do please try again…
Good heavens! Is libertarianism REALLY this complicated??? Isn’t it basically just “people are free to do what they like so long as they don’t hurt anybody else”?
Yup. Some seem to have trouble with simple concepts. They need to invent complexities, because they just cannot imagine a world in which society is so simple that you can live your own life without a horde of bureaucrats to guide you along.
Mr. Volk,
To answer your original question
“I just keep wondering why leave-us-alonians aren’t very popular in the US or everywhere else…”
it may be because its proponents, or those claiming to be its proponents, are as crazy, hypocritical, and detached-from-reality — maybe even more so — than radical Leftists groups like Obamunists. The cognitive-dissonance and passive-aggressiveness displayed is simply too much to accept.
PS — I think most people know what I mean when I use the term “Leftists” and “Obamunists”, so I’m not doing to write a disseration here explaining the various differences within those groups.