posted ago by defiant_liberty ago by defiant_liberty +2 / -0

The reason why I wanted to talk about this, is because recently there seems to be this emerging narrative that libertarianism is all about greed and hedonism, and will never give us the depth that needed feeling of belonging, that culture, that history, heritage, and community will. From this I hear statements like, "the culture has put a lot into you to build you up to who you are, if you want to partake of the benefits of the culture, like retirement help, you need to cultivate your duty to the culture as well and give into the culture that gives to you". That's bullshit, why not just say, "social security" is a Ponzi scheme, and kill it. Ironically, things like this will kill culture, and just turn it into a club to beat people with. Also, things like the central bank flooding the system with printed up debt and corporations jumping in bed with the government are completely in opposition to libertarian philosophy, and happened precisely because people rejected libertarian ideas.

When Ludwig Von Mises wrote his famous book "Human Action", it didn't talk about how or why humans purposefully act, it just presupposed that they did (even if it was imperfect), and made logical conclusions from there the proved that the optimum outcome always comes from optimum freedom and more specifically free market capitalism. However, for a lot of religious people, there already is a very natural explanation as to why people act. God has a certain nature, and one of the ways that that nature shows up in humanity is in the form of free will. From there, human action, and all the freedom and liberty that it implies is a foregone conclusion.

In sum, libertarian philosophy isn't just about a bunch of "greedy" assholes doing what they want, but is a sacred manifestation of God's nature showing up in human organization and social structure. It's the definition of moral depth and the foundation of all true community.