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For Alejandro Chafuen, the gathering this spring at the Brick Hotel in Buenos Aires was as much a homecoming as it was a victory lap. Chafuen, a lanky Argentine-American, had spent his adult life working to undermine left-wing social movements and governments in South and Central America, and boost a business-friendly version of libertarianism instead.
It was a lonely battle for decades, but not lately. Chafuen was among friends at the 2017 Latin America Liberty Forum. The international meeting of libertarian activists was sponsored by the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, a leadership-training nonprofit now known simply as the Atlas Network, which Chafuen has led since 1991. At the Brick Hotel, Chafuen was reveling in recent victories; his years of work were starting to pay off, thanks to political and economic circumstances — but also because of the network of activists Chafuen has been working for so long to cultivate.
Over the past 10 years, leftist governments have used "money to buy votes, to redistribute," said Chafuen, seated comfortably in the lobby. But the recent drop in commodity prices, coupled with corruption scandals, has given an opportunity for Atlas Network groups to spring into action. "When there is an opening, you have a crisis, and there is some demand for change, you have people who are trained to push for certain policies," Chafuen noted, paraphrasing the late Milton Friedman. "And in our case, we tend to favor to private solutions to public problems."
Chafuen pointed to numerous Atlas-affiliated leaders now in the spotlight: ministers in the new conservative government in Argentina, senators in Bolivia, and the leaders of the Free Brazil Movement that took down Dilma Rousseff's presidency, where Chafuen's network sprang to life before his very eyes.
"In Brazil, I have been in the street demonstrations, and I'm like, 'Hey, this guy I met when he was 17, 18 — he is up there on the bus leading this. This is crazy!'" Chafuen said, excitedly. Those in Atlas's orbit were no less excited to run into Chafuen in Buenos Aires. Activists from various countries stopped Chafuen intermittently to sing his praises as he walked through the hotel. For many, Chafuen, from his perch at Atlas, has served as a mentor, fiscal sponsor, and guiding beacon for a new political paradigm in their country.
A rightward shift is afoot in Latin American politics. Triumphant socialist governments had once swept the region for much of the 21st century – from Argentina's Cristina Fernández de Kirchner to land reform populist Manuel Zelaya in Honduras – championing new programs for the poor, nationalizing businesses, and challenging U.S. dominance in hemispheric affairs.
This shift might appear as part of a larger regional rebalancing, merely economic circumstances taking hold. And yet the Atlas Network seems ever-present, a common thread nudging political developments along.
The story of the Atlas Network and its profound impact on ideology and political power has never been fully told. But business filings and records from three continents, along with interviews with libertarian leaders across the hemisphere, reveal the scope of its influential history. The libertarian network, which has reshaped political power in country after country, has also operated as a quiet extension of U.S. foreign policy, with Atlas-associated think tanks receiving quiet funding from the State Department and the National Endowment for Democracy, a critical arm of American soft power.
The network is expansive, currently boasting loose partnerships with 450 think tanks around the world. Atlas says it dispensed over $5 million to its partners in 2016 alone.
Over the years, Atlas and its affiliated charitable foundations have provided hundreds of grants to conservative and free-market think tanks in Latin America, including the libertarian network that supported the Free Brazil Movement and organizations behind a libertarian push in Argentina, including Fundación Pensar, the Atlas think tank that merged with the political party formed by Mauricio Macri, a businessman who now leads the country. The leaders of the Free Brazil Movement and the founder of Fundación Eléutera in Honduras, an influential post-coup neoliberal think tank, have received financial support from Atlas, and are among the next generation of political operatives that have gone through Atlas's training seminars.
The Atlas Network spans dozens of other think tanks across the region, including prominent groups supporting right-wing forces behind the unfolding anti-government movement in Venezuela and the campaign of Sebastián Piñera, the right-of-center candidate leading the polls for this year's presidential election in Chile.
Nowhere has the Atlas method been better encapsulated than in a newly formed network of Brazilian free-market think tanks. Recently formed institutes worked together to foment anger at socialist policies, with some cultivating academic centers, while others work to train activists and maintain a constant war in the Brazilian media against leftist ideas.
The effort to focus anger solely at the left paid dividends last year for the Brazilian right. The millennial activists of the Free Brazil Movement, many of them trained in political organizing in the U.S., led a mass movement to channel public anger over a vast corruption scandal against Dilma, the left-of-center president popularly known by her first name. The scandal, nicknamed Operação Lava Jato, or Operation Car Wash, is a still-unfolding tale of bribery involving leading politicians from all of Brazil's major political parties, including the right-wing and center-right parties. But the social media-savvy Free Brazil Movement, known by its Portuguese initials, MBL, managed to direct the bulk of outrage squarely at Dilma, demanding her ousting and an end to the welfare-centric policies of her Workers' Party.
The uprising, which has drawn comparisons to the tea party movement, especially considering the quiet support from local industrial conglomerates and a new conspiracy-minded network of far-right media voices, ended 13 years of rule by the Workers' Party by removing Dilma from office through impeachment in 2016.
The landscape that MBL sprang from is a new development in Brazil. There were perhaps three active libertarian think tanks 10 years ago, said Helio Beltrão, a former hedge fund executive who now leads Instituto Mises, a nonprofit named after the libertarian philosopher, Ludwig von Mises. Now, he said, with the support of Atlas, there are close to 30 such institutes active in Brazil, all working collaboratively, along with groups, such as Students for Liberty and MBL.
"It's like a soccer team. Defense is the academia. The forward guys are the politicians. We've scored a few goals," he said, referring to Dilma's impeachment. The midfield, he said, are the "cultural guys" that shape public opinion.
Beltrão explained that the think tank network is hoping to privatize the national post office in Brazil, calling it "low-hanging fruit" that could lead to a larger wave of free-market reforms. Many of the conservative parties in Brazil embraced libertarian campaigners when they showed they could mobilize hundreds of thousands of people to protest against Dilma, but haven't yet adopted the fundamentals of supply-side theory.
"Brazil has 17,000 unions paid by public money, one day of salary per year goes to unions, completely controlled by the left," said Schüler. The only way to reverse the socialist trend has been to out-maneuver them. "With technology, people could by themselves participate, organize at low cost — WhatsApp, Facebook, YouTube, using networks, a kind of public manifestation," he continued, explaining the way libertarian organizers mobilized a protest movement against left-leaning politicians.
Organizers against Dilma had created a daily barrage of YouTube videos mocking the Worker's Party government, along with an interactive scoreboard to encourage citizens to lobby their legislators to support impeachment.
Schüler noted that the Free Brazil Movement and his own think tank receive financial support from local industrial trade groups, but the movement had succeeded in part because it is not identified with the incumbent political parties, most of which the general public views with suspicion. He argued that the only way to radically reshape society and reverse popular sentiment in support of the welfare state was to wage a permanent cultural war to confront left intellectuals and the media.
One of the founders of Schüler's Instituto Millenium think tank, Brazilian blogger Rodrigo Constantino, has polarized Brazilian politics with hyperpartisan rhetoric. Constantino, who has been called the "Breitbart of Brazil" for his conspiratorial views and acidic right-wing commentary, chairs yet another Atlas think tank, Instituto Liberal. He sees the Brazilian left's every move as a veiled attempt at subverting democracy, from the use of the color red in the country's World Cup logo to the Bolsa Família cash assistance program to poor families.
The Breitbartization of public discourse is but one of the many ways the Atlas network has subtly influenced political debate.
"It's a very paternalistic state. It's crazy. It's a lot of state control, and that's the long-term challenge," said Schüler, adding that despite recent victories, libertarians had a long way to go in Brazil. He hoped to copy the model of Margaret Thatcher, who relied on a network of libertarian think tanks to push unpopular reforms. "This pension system is absurd. I would privatize all education," Schüler, rattling off a litany of changes he would make to society, from defunding labor unions to repealing the law that makes voting compulsory.
Yet the only way to make all that possible, he added, would be to build a network of politically active nonprofits all waging separate battles to push the same libertarian goals. The existing model — the constellation of right-wing think tanks in Washington, D.C., supported by powerful endowments — is the only path forward for Brazil, Schüler said.
Atlas, for its part, is busy doing just that. It gives grants for new think tanks, provides courses on political management and public relations, sponsors networking events around the world, and, in recent years, has devoted special resources to prodding libertarians to influence public opinion through social media and online videos.
An annual competition encourages Atlas's network to produce viral YouTube videos promoting laissez-faire ideas and ridiculing proponents of the welfare state. James O'Keefe, the provocateur famous for needling Democrats with his undercover videos, has appeared before Atlas to explain his methods. Producers from a Wisconsin group that worked to create online videos to discredit teacher protests against Gov. Scott Walker's law busting public sector unions have also provided instructions for Atlas's training sessions.
As early as 1998, Cedice Libertad, Atlas's flagship think tank in Caracas, Venezuela's capital, received regular financial support from the Center for International Private Enterprise. In one grant letter, NED funds marked for Cedice are listed to help advocate "a change in government." The director of Cedice was among the signatories of the controversy "Carmona Decree" supporting the short-lived military coup against Chávez in 2002.
A 2006 cable laid out a strategy from U.S. Ambassador William Brownfield for funding politically active nonprofits in Venezuela: "1) Strengthening democratic institutions, 2) penetrating Chávez's political base, 3) dividing Chavismo, 4) protecting vital U.S. business, and 5) isolating Chávez internationally."
In Venezula's current crisis, Cedice has promoted the recent spate of protests against President Nicholás Maduro, Chávez's embattled successor. Cedice is closely affiliated with opposition figure María Corina Machado, one of the leaders of the massive anti-government street demonstrations in recent months. Machado has publicly recognized Atlas for its work. In a videotape message delivered to the group in 2014, she said, "Thank you to the Atlas Network, to all freedom fighters."
Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado has recognized Atlas for its work: "Thank you to the Atlas Network, to all freedom fighters," she said in 2014.
At the Atlas Network's Latin American Liberty Forum in Buenos Aires, young leaders buzzed back and forth, sharing ideas on how to defeat socialism at every level, from pitched battles on college campuses to mobilizing an entire country to embrace impeachment.
Think tank "entrepreneurs" from Peru, the Dominican Republic, and Honduras competed in a format along the lines of "Shark Tank," an America reality show where start-up businesses pitch to a panel of wealthy, ruthless investors. Instead of seeking investments from a panel of venture capitalists, however, the think tank leaders pitched policy marketing ideas for a contest that awarded $5,000. In another session, strategies were debated for attracting industry support to back economic reforms. In another room, political operatives debated arguments "lovers of liberty" can use to respond to the global rise of populism to "redirect the sense of injustice many feel" toward free-market goals.
One young leader from CADAL, a think tank in Buenos Aires, presented on an idea to rank each Argentine province using what he called an "economic liberty index," which would use the level of taxation and regulation as the main criteria to generate buzz for free-market reforms. The idea is consciously modeled on similar strategies from the U.S., including the Heritage Foundation's "Index of Economic Freedom," which measures countries based on criteria that includes tax policies and regulatory barriers to business formation.
Think tanks are traditionally associated with independent institutes formed to develop unconventional solutions. But the Atlas model focuses less on developing genuinely new policy proposals, and more on establishing political organizations that carry the credibility of academic institutions, making them an effective organ for winning hearts and minds.
Free-market ideas — such as slashing taxes on the wealthy; whittling down the public sector and placing it under the control of private operators; and liberalized trade rules and restrictions on labor unions — have always struggled with a perception problem. Proponents of this vision have found that voters tend to view such ideas as a vehicle for serving society's upper crust. Rebranding economic libertarianism as a public interest ideology has required elaborate strategies for mass persuasion.
But the Atlas model now spreading rapidly through Latin America is based on a method perfected by decades of struggle in the U.S. and the U.K., as libertarians worked to stem the tide of the surging post-war welfare state.
Antony Fisher, a British entrepreneur and the founder of the Atlas Network, pioneered the sale of libertarian economics to the broader public. The tack was simple: Fisher made it his mission to, in the words of an associate, "litter the world with free-market think tanks."
The basis for Fisher's ideals came from Friedrich Hayek, a forbearer of modern thought on limited government. In 1946, after reading the Reader's Digest version of Hayek's seminal book, "The Road to Serfdom," Fisher sought a meeting with the Austrian economist in London. As recounted by his close colleague John Blundell, Fisher suggested Hayek enter politics. But Hayek demurred, replying that a bottom-up focus on shifting the public discourse could better shape society.
Meanwhile, in the U.S., another free-market ideologue, Leonard Read, was entertaining similar notions after leading the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Los Angeles branch into bruising battles with organized labor. To counter the growth of the welfare state, a more elaborate response would be necessary to shape popular debates around the direction of society, without the visible link to corporate interests.
Fisher was propelled forward by a fateful visit to Read's newly formed nonprofit, the Foundation for Economic Education, in New York, which was founded to help sponsor and promote the ideas of free-market intellectuals. There, libertarian economist F.A. Harper, at the time working at FEE, advised Fisher on methods for creating his own nonprofit in the U.K.
During the trip, Fisher also traveled with Harper to Cornell University to observe the latest animal industry breakthrough of battery cages, marveling at the sight of 15,000 chickens housed in a single building. Fisher was inspired to bring the innovation home with him. His factory, Buxted Chickens, grew rapidly and made Fisher a substantial fortune in the process. Some of those profits went into the other goal fostered during his New York trip: In 1955, Fisher founded the Institute of Economic Affairs.
IEA helped popularize the once-obscure set of economists loosely affiliated with Hayek's ideas. The institute was a place to showcase opposition to British society's growing welfare state, connecting journalists to free-market academics and disseminating critiques on a regular basis through opinion columns, radio interviews, and conferences.
Businesses provided the bulk of funding to IEA, as leading British industrial and banking giants — from Barclays to BP — pitched in with annual contributions. According to "Making Thatcher's Britain," by historians Ben Jackson and Robert Saunders, one shipping magnate remarked that, since universities were providing ammunition for the unions, the IEA was an important source of bullets for business.
As the economic slowdown and rising inflation of the 1970s shook the foundations of British society, Tory politicians gravitated more and more to the IEA to provide an alternative vision — and IEA obliged with accessible issue briefs and talking points politicians could use to bring free-market concepts to the public. The Atlas Network proudly proclaims that the IEA "laid the intellectual groundwork for what later became the Thatcher Revolution of the 1980s." IEA staff provided speechwriting for Margaret Thatcher; supplemented her campaign with policy papers on topics as varied as labor unions and price controls; and provided a response to her critics in the mass media. In a letter to Fisher after her 1979 victory, Thatcher wrote that the IEA created "the climate of opinion which made our victory possible."
"There's no doubt there's been enormous progress in Britain, the Institute of Economic Affairs, which Antony Fisher set up, made an enormous difference," Milton Friedman once said. "It made possible Margaret Thatcher. It made possible not her election as prime minister but the policies that she was able to follow. And the same thing in this country, the developing thought along these lines made possible Ronald Reagan and the policies he was able to follow."
IEA had come full circle. Hayek set up an invitation-only group of free-market economists called the Mont Pelerin Society. One of its members, Ed Feulner, helped found the conservative Washington think tank the Heritage Foundation, drawing on IEA's work for inspiration. Another Mont Pelerin member, Ed Crane, founded the Cato Institute, the most prominent libertarian think tank in the U.S.
In 1981, Fisher, who had settled in San Francisco, set out to develop the Atlas Economic Research Foundation at the urging of Hayek. Fisher had used his success with IEA to court corporate donors to help establish a string of smaller, sometimes regional think tanks in New York, Canada, California, and Texas, among other places. With Atlas, though, the scale for Fisher's free-market think tank project would now be global: a nonprofit dedicated to continuing his work of establishing libertarian beachheads in every country of the world. "The more institutes established throughout the world," Fisher declared, "the more opportunity to tackle diverse problems begging for resolution."
Fisher began to fundraise, pitching corporate donors with the help of letters from Hayek, Thatcher, and Friedman, including an urgent call for donors to help reproduce the success of IEA through Atlas. Hayek wrote that the IEA model "ought to be used to create similar institutes all over the world." He added, "It would be money well spent if large sums could be made available for such a concerted effort."
The proposal was sent to a list of high-level executives and soon, money began pouring in from corporate coffers and Republican mega-donors, including Richard Mellon Scaife. Companies, such as Pfizer, Procter & Gamble, and Shell, all gave to Atlas. But their influence would need to remain cloaked for the project to work, Fisher contended. "To influence public opinion, it is necessary to avoid any suggestion of vested interest or intent to indoctrinate," Fisher noted in a proposal outlining the purpose of Atlas. Fisher added that IEA's success hinged on the perception that it was academic and impartial.
Atlas grew rapidly. By 1985, the network featured 27 institutions in 17 countries, including nonprofits in Italy, Mexico, Australia, and Peru.
And the timing could not have been better: Atlas's international expansion came just as the Reagan administration was doubling down on an aggressive foreign policy, hoping to beat back leftist governments abroad.
While in public, Atlas declared that it received no government funding (Fisher belittled foreign aid as just another "bribe" used to distort market forces), records show the network quietly worked to channel government money to its growing list of international partners.
In one 1982 letter from the International Communication Agency, a small federal agency devoted to promote U.S. interests overseas, a bureaucrat at the Office of Private Sector Programs wrote to Fisher, in response to an inquiry about acquiring federal grants. The bureaucrat said he was barred from giving "directly to foreign organizations," but could cosponsor "conferences or exchanges with organizations" hosted by groups like Atlas. He encouraged Fisher to send over a proposal. The letter, sent one year after Atlas's founding, was the first indication that the network would become a covert partner to U.S. foreign policy interests.
Memos and other records from Fisher show that, by 1986, Atlas had helped schedule meetings with business executives to direct U.S. funds to its network of think tanks. In one instance, an official from the U.S. Agency for International Development, the principal foreign aid arm of the federal government, recommended that the head of Coca-Cola's subsidiary in Panama work with Atlas to set up an IEA-style affiliate think tank there. Atlas' partners also drew funding from the coffers of the National Endowment for Democracy, a government-charted nonprofit, founded in 1983, that is funded largely by the State Department and USAID to build U.S.-friendly political institutions in the developing world.
With corporate and U.S. government funding pouring in, Atlas took another fortuitous turn in 1985 with the arrival of Alejandro Chafuen. Linda Whetstone, Fisher's daughter, remembered in a tribute that, in 1985, a young Chafuen, then living in Oakland, showed up to Atlas's San Francisco office "and was willing to work for nothing."
The Buenos Aires-born Chafuen hailed from what he described as "an anti-Peronist family." They were wealthy and, though raised in an era of incredible turmoil in Argentina, Chafuen lived a life of relative privilege. He spent his teenage years playing tennis, dreaming of becoming a professional athlete.
Chafuen credits his youthful ideological path to his appetite for devouring libertarian texts, from Ayn Rand to booklets published by FEE, the Leonard Read group that had originally inspired Fisher. After studying at Grove City College, a deeply conservative Christian liberal arts school in Pennsylvania, where he served as the president of the student libertarian club, Chafuen returned to his home country. The military had stepped in, claiming a threat from communist revolutionaries. Thousands of students and activists would be tortured and killed in the crackdown on left-wing dissent following the coup d'etat.
Chafuen remembers the time in a mostly positive light, later writing that the military had acted out of necessity to prevent a communist "takeover of the country." While pursuing a teaching career, Chafuen encountered "totalitarians of every style" within academic life. After the military coup, he wrote that he noticed that his professors became "gentler," despite their differences with him.
In other Latin American countries, too, libertarianism was finding a receptive audience among military governments. In Chile, after the military swept out the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende, Mont Pelerin Society economists quickly flocked to the country, setting the stage for widespread libertarian reforms, including the privatization of industry and the country's pension system. Throughout the region, under the watch of right-wing military leaders that had seized power, libertarian economic policies began to take root.
For his part, Chafuen's ideological zeal was on display as early as 1979, when he published an essay for FEE titled "War Without End." He described the horrors of leftist terror, "like the Charles Manson family, or in regimental strength, like the guerilla troops in the Middle East, Africa, and South America." There was a need, he wrote, for the "forces of individual freedom and private property" to fight back.
His enthusiasm garnered attention. In 1980, at age 26, Chafuen was invited to become the youngest member of the Mont Pelerin Society. He traveled to Stanford, an opportunity that put him in direct contact with Read, Hayek, and other leading libertarians. Within five years, Chafuen had married an American and was living in Oakland. He began reaching out to Mont Pelerin members in the Bay Area, including Fisher.
Throughout the region, under the watch of right-wing military leaders that had seized power, libertarian economic policies began to take root.
According to Atlas's board meeting notes, Fisher told his colleagues he had made a $500 ex gratia Christmas payment that year to Chafuen, and hoped to hire the young economist full-time to develop Atlas think tanks in Latin America. The following year, Chafuen organized the first Atlas summit of Latin American think tanks in Jamaica.
Chafuen understood the Atlas model well and worked diligently to expand the network, helping to launch think tanks in Africa and Europe, though focusing his efforts in Latin America. Describing how to attract donors, Chafuen once noted in a lecture that donors cannot appear to pay for public surveys because the polls would lose credibility. "Pfizer Inc. would not sponsor surveys on health issues nor would Exxon pay for surveys on environmental issues," Chafuen noted. Libertarian think tanks, such as the ones in Atlas's network, however, could not only present the same survey with more credibility, but do so in a way that garnered coverage in the local media.
"Journalists are very much attracted by whatever is new and easy to report," Chafuen said. The press is less interested in quoting libertarian philosophers, he contended, but when a think tank produced a survey people would listen. "And donors also see this," he added.
In 1991, three years after Fisher died, Chafuen took the helm of Atlas and would have the opportunity to speak to donors with authority about Atlas's work. He quickly began to rack up corporate sponsors to push company-specific goals through the network. Philip Morris contributed regular grants to Atlas, including a $50,000 contribution to the group in 1994, which was disclosed years later through litigation. Records show that the tobacco giant viewed Atlas as an ally for working on international litigation issues.
Journalists in Chile, however, found out that Atlas-backed think tanks had worked to quietly lobby against smoking regulations without disclosing their funding from tobacco companies, a strategy similar think tanks repeated across the globe.
Chafuen's fundraising prowess extended to the growing number of wealthy conservative foundations that were beginning to flourish. He was a founding member of Donors Trust, a secretive donor-advised fund that has doled out over $400 million to libertarian nonprofits, including members of the Atlas Network. He also serves as a trustee to the Chase Foundation of Virginia, which was founded by a Mont Pelerin Society member and similarly sends cash to Atlas think tanks.
Another wellspring of money came from the American government. Initially, the National Endowment for Democracy encountered difficulty setting up U.S.-friendly political nonprofits. Gerardo Bongiovanni, the president of Fundación Libertad, an Atlas think tank in Rosario, Argentina, noted during a lecture with Chafuen that the early seed money from NED's grant partner, the Center for International Private Enterprise, totaled $1 million between 1985 and 1987. The think tanks that received those initial grants quickly folded, Bongiovanni said, citing lack of management training.
Atlas, however, managed to turn U.S. taxpayer money coming through the NED and Center for International Private Enterprise into an important source of funding for its growing network. The funding vehicles provided money to help boost Atlas think tanks in Eastern Europe, following the fall of the Soviet Union, and, later, to promote U.S. interests in the Middle East. Among the recipients of the Center for International Private Enterprise's cash is Cedice Libertad, the group thanked by Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado.
At the Brick Hotel in Buenos Aires, Chafuen reflected on the last three decades. Fisher "would be overall pleased, and he would not believe how much our network grew," Chafuen said, noting that perhaps the Atlas founder would not have expected the level of direct political engagement the group is involved in.
Perhaps Chafuen's most prized figure in the administration, however, is Judy Shelton, an economist and senior fellow at the Atlas Network. After Trump's victory, Shelton was made the chair of the NED. She previously served as an adviser to the Trump campaign and transition effort. Chafuen beamed when he talked about it. "There you have the Atlas people being the chair of the National Endowment for Democracy," he said.
Before ending the interview, Chafuen intimated that there was more to come: more think tanks, more efforts to overturn leftist governments, and more Atlas devotees and alumni elevated to the highest levels of government the world over. "The work is ongoing," he said.
Later, Chafuen appeared at the gala for the Latin America Liberty Forum. Along with a panel of Atlas experts, he discussed the need to ramp up libertarian opposition movements in Ecuador and Venezuela.
Listen to reporter Lee Fang discuss his investigation of the Atlas Network on our podcast Intercepted:
Danielle Mackey contributed research to this story.
This may be the most significant piece of journalism of this decade because it shows the method behind the madness. It exposes the mechanisms by which any democracy can be turned against itself, as Che Guevara and Fidel Castro warned. In the last decade, Confessions of an Economic Hitman showed strangulation by debt and The Shock Doctrine gave a name to crisis opportunism. Now Lee Fang has "belled the cat" of pseudo-populist movements, reducing their ability to sneak up on us.
Yet I wonder if Fang has fallen for another trick of theirs, which is naming something the opposite of what it is. To capitalists, libertarian mean the freedom of money to do what it wants, where it wants. But to farmers and communities, libertarian means the freedom to safeguard their economies. Trade liberalization allows money to wrest property, infrastructure, and government away from countries. Countries that resist economic control are labeled "protectionist" justifying "defense" forces sent in to occupy their lands.
If the word libertarian has been co-opted to mean the freedom of money, what do we call the freedom of communities? We could call it anarchy, but that's been twisted to mean chaos and individualism. We could call it sovereignty, but we'd have to learn how to spell it. I'm not ready to give up words that should belong to the people and accept their terms for the debate.
Congratulations on this VERY important investigative report
An amazing report. Thank you….
However, we should add an important caveat.
From the moment that Marx uttered …"workers of the world unite — you have nothing to lose but your chains", and of course starting a 100 years ago, when Russia had its revolution, the West never 'slept, for a minute'. Billions, if not trillions have been spent in the West in de-stabilizating, destroying, assassinating every leftist movement, that arose in the world.
I remember, as a child and living in E. Europe, with my father listening to the propaganda broadcasts from the BBC, Voice of America, Radio Free Europe…etc.. The underlying theme of all these broadcasts (which were just a tiny portion of the vast de-stabilization and de-moralization against the Communist world that was going on), was the one overriding THEME, non-stop. That was that the West represented Freedom and Democracy!!!, while those of us living there, were oppressed and suppressed.
Only after living in the West, did I discover the vast LIE that the indoctrination in the West that goes on — of its public.
Try voting for a Communist candidate (which if the system were free, you could do). Your choice in the land of FREEDOM and Democracy is a choice between either a Republican or a Democratic ( both Capitalist) candidate only. Yet, no one questions this huge deception, so indoctrinated the public is, here. No one, living in a Communist country would have ever believed that they lived in country with political choice. Yet, everyone in the West, does. The deception is astonishing. This is where the ultimate Orwelian State exists
Thus, the fact that various (huge numbers) organizations in the West exist to make sure that a Leftist government never comes to be, or —if by chance it manages to come to exist — it is immediately de-stabilized by every dirty method, is not a surprise to anyone who understands the hollow declarations in the West of Freedom and Democracy.
The West is a more controlled and totalitarian system than any other, ever conceived. Here, it is achieved by an insidious indoctrination that makes sure that all information by the Media, the Judiciary, the Police and the Military sing the same tune; that of living in a Society, where political choice, really exists.
In reality, the Deep State makes sure that the real dream df a real democratic, free society, never comes to possible existence. Anywhere.
O Fernando Schuler é mais um daqueles hipócritas que estudou de graça numa universidade pública federal e agora vem dizer que temos que privatizar a educação… é uma pena que o Brasil esteja indo para esse caminho.
Fernando Schuler is another hypocrite who studied for free in a public, federal university and now says we have to privatise all education. It's a shame Brazil is heading that way.
Can you please just stop calling them "Liberterians"? Their ideology has nothing to do with liberty, it's "Property-Facists". The idea that there is no call for any public policy except radical enforcement of property rights leads to dramatic concentration of power in the hand of property holders, directly contradicting their beloved Milton Friedmann's "The greatest threat to the freedom of man is the concentration of power" – The statement is true, and it is a valid critizism of Stalinim, but it is ALSO true for economic power and is a valid critizism of Monopoly Capitalism.
What an awesome work of journalism. Congratulations!
I call them, "Fink Tanks".
Mr. Fang,
Thanks for a well-researched article. I'm a devotee of The Intercept from before it was born, and a huge fan of some the precursor writings by some of your colleagues at the Guardian.
I also took that survey you all put out, and you're on my list for contributions at the end of the year.
Having said that….the idea that there are (including Atlas) think tank organizations that are pushing their agenda, at home or abroad, has some interest……but the conspiratorial tone here does nothing to add value.
Although I think your implication that they are somehow aligned with the military is a clear stretch, with no real evidence put forward in the article.
Even the characterization of "right-wing libertarian" (by you and your editor) is truly a misnomer, and an offensive one to anyone who identifies with the small-l variety. Wanting lower taxes for all is not "right wing". Wanting increased liberties–especially in countries where they are under attack– is not "right wing." Wanting all people to be free and prosper is not "right wing".
So…long article, so-so interest, and you missed the much bigger story–the REAL outcome of REAL Libertarians was the PML in Costa Rica, with members of that party elected to the national legislature. Perhaps they were aided by Atlas? Unfortunately, that high profile party's wins were not mentioned.
In closing, please keep at it. The Intercept is new, perhaps you are as well. But you and your editor fell short of this supporter's expectations, by far.
With best wishes,
Here's all you need to know about modern 'libertarians'.
1) they worship a guy called ludvig von mises
2) mises wrote this
"It cannot be denied that Fascism and similar movements aiming at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved European civilization. The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history."
they also worship a third rate writer called ayn rand who was an apologist of the US military and US corporations. So yet another fascist, go figure.
Can a Libertarian, theoretically, support Corporations, which are Government Partnerships?
I love it when people say "all you need to know about" some complex and nuanced subject is one out of context quote. This quote was taken from Mises' 1927 book Liberalism. However, Mises' actual conclusion was:
"But though its policy has brought salvation for the moment, it is not of the kind which could promise continued success. Fascism was an emergency makeshift. To view it as something more would be a fatal error."
Later in that same book, Mises wrote that Fascists and Communists use the same "unscrupulous methods…. Still others, in full knowledge of the evil that Fascist economic policy brings with it, view Fascism, in comparison with Bolshevism and Sovietism, as at least the lesser evil. For the majority of its public and secret supporters and admirers, however, its appeal consists precisely in the violence of its methods."
The ideology that Mises espoused was as far from Fascism as it is possible to be. This is a Jewish man who lost everything when he had to flee to the United States from the fascist Nazis in the 1940s. He lost his property, wealth and tons of unpublished material. He came to the United States in his 60s, penniless and without speaking English.
The notion that the man was a fascist is absurd beyond belief. He condemned both Fascism and Communism. In 1927 he merely thought that the evil of one ideology might temporarily halt the advance of another evil ideology as a counter-balancing force.
Libertarians don't "worship" anybody, certainly not Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand did not consider herself a libertarian and her reputation among contemporary libertarians has been grossly overstated. I do think she was a warmonger and largely an apologist for corporate misdeeds including environmental damage. For these reasons, among others, she cannot be a good libertarian.
please spare me your 'libertarian' propaganda and dishonesty. The fact is mises was an eager supporterr of fascism. I think I already quoted his own pathetic and fascist words? Of course, like all 'libertarians' mises sides with the fascists, profusely thanks them and then try to distance himself from his saviours because of "public relations" "issues". Mises also supported military slavery, also known as 'conscription'.
Fact is you 'libertarians' are nothing but corporate apologists so it's quite natural for you to side with corporatists and their state. . And thanks for admiting that rand was a 'libertarian'. Again, you have to pretend that rand wasn't a 'good' one, so that you can both profit from fascism and from 'libertarian' propaganda/rhetoric.
What you are missing dear jakobo is that I've been studying 'libertarian' history from the time slave owners jefferson and washington founded the US slave country while babbling about your 'libertarian' principles. And before.
In other words, I'm quite familiar with fake libertarians like you.
And a couple more facts. In the first world war, mises fought on the side of the austrians and germans, which of course was the same side that would be known as "nazis" 15 years later or so. And then mises changed sides and became a criminal partner of the…american fascists, the same psychos who've been raping the world since 1776 in the name of 'freedom'.
So yeah, you fake libertarians are the worst enemies freedom can have.
some fascist bot posing as libertarian said
" Yes,Libertarian organizations solicit money from big corporate donors; "
those are not libertarian organizations. They are right wingers and beggars.
"Atlas" as in Ayn Rand "Atlas Shrugged"? this is the Shock Doctrine being played out in front of our eyes. really scary stuff. I draw your attention to the Kochs' influence on Walker's and Ryan's Wisconsin.
Hello from the "guy" in the middle. Our founder, Antony Fisher, was a devout Christian Scientist, he started the day reading the Bible, and did not like Ayn Rand at all. So much, that he did not realized that "Atlas" would create confusion. I, on the other hand, was a member of that quasi-cult . . but had left when I joined Atlas in 1985 . . .
This information has to be known in Latin America. Please translate this piece to spanish so it can be read all across the continent.
In Latin America, where, many times, being in government means, license to steal, no matter the dominant class ideology, libertarian-ism is an emerging and rapidly growing ideological response, even if in the USA, offers a freedom that ends benefiting the rich and screwing the poor.
Forget US-Style Libertarianism. It doesn't work, never has and never will. Try good old Catalonian Anarcho-Syndicalism instead.
There is so much disinformation and confusion about libertarianism, along with hyper-partisan attitudes that are willfully blind to the true nature of libertarians. I'm really not even sure where to start, except to say that we aren't what you think we are. Yes,Libertarian organizations solicit money from big corporate donors; name one cause- any cause from curing cancer, to animal welfare, to ending illiteracy- that doesn't do the same. Fundraising is the foundation for bringing about change for every imaginable issue. Funny how the article only came up with one example, NED, of libertarian organizations seeking government grants- that is, your tax dollars- for which is libertarians are appropriately suited to achieve the intended goal (of fostering opinion and policy that is friendly to America). There are probably others not mentioned, but are libertarians abusing access to government grants, or exploiting them beyond their intent? Simple answer is no, because they can fund their work privately with out tax dollars and because they do not want to be beholden to the government- or corporate power- by relying on one or two entities for funding.
We believe in acting in our own self interest, but not in a zero-sum game with the intent to harm others. Instead, we recognize and are honest about the fact that people always have some form of self interest in everything they do. Ask yourself, do you stand outside in the rain or cold for an extra moment to hold the door open for someone else because you are truly concerned with that person's pain in having to open the door for themselves, or because you do not want to be perceived as rude? Do you donate to charity because that charity needs the money, or because it makes you feel good to help a cause? Self interest is not as inherently evil as it is often presented. And certainly self interest can manifest as greed, which is why we favor free markets over government control.
Truly free markets are not friendly to greedy corporatists because they do not allow corporatists to use government powers stifle competition. Big business has the means to lobby for rules that the business can afford to abide by, but make it difficult or impossible for a competitor to enter the market. Easiest example would be the taxi unions fight against ride-sharing (cartel is a more appropriate term than union, but it's also more imflammatory and I hope more readers will hear me out and consider these ideas with less prejudice). The taxi unions have made deals with various levels of government, where they pay a ton of money to the government for taxi medallions; the number of medallions are limited, regardless of demand. The medallions are also conditional, meaning in order to purchase or maintain a medallion, taxi drivers must agree to charge customers a certain rate, have extremely high insurance coverage, vehicles must meet certain standards that have no actual safety value or even an improvement on customer experience. Ride-sharing apps do not limit the number of drivers in any given area and allows the market to operate naturally; they set parameters for vehicles driver's may use when operating for their business that satisfy the safety and quality demands of customers (which they can alter to meet changes in customer preferences without going through an expensive lobbying effort) Instead of taxi unions fighting to roll back all of their expensive regulations and innovating to compete with ride-sharing companies, they want to outlaw the competition. They don't come right out and admit that they wish they had thought of an app like Uber or Lyft, they prefer a message that makes people sympathize with taxi drivers losing money, or utterly fearful of the "dangers" of unregulated ride-sharing.
Now, it also not lost on all libertarians that some times there are bad actors, who intentionally or unintentionally cause harm to others. However, we realize that making regulations does not prevent a harmful action to the same degree that a victim having legal recourse does. If a company pollutes your water and you become sick you may not necessarily be able to sue that company because the company may not have actually exceeded the limit of what was deemed "safe" by the state- a determination made with significant input from that same company, basically writing their own rules. Without the ability to write the rules in their own favor, chemical companies are less likely to take the chance of making people sick when they can be sued or litigated out of business. This also incentivizes businesses to structure themselves so that there are no golden parachutes for the c-suite/executives who make decisions that lead to the business' demise.
I could go on and on, but I don't want to bore or annoy people. I enjoy The Intercept, and there is a wide variety of issues covered here that are big libertarian issues- free speech, ending the drug war, ending police brutality, removing barriers that trap people in poverty and dependent on government, protecting our privacy from government eyes, bringing an end to violent wars and human misery and oppression. We want less government intrusion and control not out of an animosity to democracy, but because every attempt the government makes to "fix" a problem, is not only often caused by a prior government intervention, but even with the best of intentions, the problem is made worse (or creates new problems) which inevitably call for more intervention.
Truly free markets are not friendly to greedy corporatists because they do not allow corporatists to use government powers stifle competition.
That's good, but true socialism™ is better because it does that while magnificently providing for everyone. And true communism® is even better because it does that while magnificently providing for everyone as it engenders opportunity, harmony, and equality.
It's easy to make assertions, and Libertarians make some that sound good. But without actual real-life examples to study, claims of beneficent libertarian "truly free markets" are no more valid than the most fanciful claims about true socialism™ and true communism®.
And while perhaps not as wonderful as true socialism™, there are examples of socialism that work well for the people; see Social Democracy for Dummies. What Is It the Scandinavians Have That We Don't? Are there any real-life examples of libertarianism that work better?
Arguments against taxi "cartels" and environmental regulations are not arguments for libertarianism because an argument against something doesn't make its opposite better. If environmental regulations are bad, is there some place where environmental quality has fared better without them? It would be nice to see an example of libertarianism that works as claimed rather than implicitly asking us to just imagine one.
"Are there any real-life examples of libertarianism that work better?"
Yes, Switzerland.
"Yes,Libertarian organizations solicit money from big corporate donors; name one cause- any cause from curing cancer, to animal welfare, to ending illiteracy- that doesn't do the same."
Erin, that's all well and good, but please realize that some of these corporate donors to things such as cancer also profit very handsomely from the perpetuation and "treatment" of cancer (I have cancer). It is an incestuous cycle that profits the few at the very real and painful expense of many others. And cancer is but one example.
My take-away from this article is that the vast majority of people around the world are pawns of the very wealthy few. Through the myriad organizations and think-tanks, the rich and powerful spin their webs of disinformation and propaganda which help to confuse and propel people to unwittingly act against their own good. If the intention of those in control were honest and wholesome, would they really need to do go to all the trouble and expense? I don't think so.
Well said TedM. I am very disturbed right now as to what is unfolding across South America.
I know about the Dictators who were put in place and propped up by the USA during the 1970's and 80's.
If it smells like a fish, then it probably it is.
Chafuen is a conservative. Not a libertarian. Big difference.
There are a couple of additional points I'd like to make on this topic.
In the first place, stop using the term "Neo-Liberal" to describe libertarianism. It is nothing but a smear term that is used against any ideology the Left disapproves of. If you are going to engage members of a different political ideology, it is common courtesy to refer to them by the name they have chosen for themselves. If I am speaking to Bernie Sanders supporters, I feel comfortable calling them "socialists" because they self-identify as such, and there is a historical, recognized definition for the term. Similarly, Neo-conservatives adopted the label for themselves so it is not a smear term to call them that.
By contrast, no libertarian has ever self-identified as a neo-liberal. There is no widely recognized historical definition of the term either.
If you listen to the Left, supposedly Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are neo-liberals. But they insist that Ludwig von Mises and Frederick Hayek are also neo-liberals. I guess Obama found inspiration for the Affordable Care Act by reading Mises' economic treatise Human Action?
What the term means really is "not-Leftist". Sort of how people throw around the term "fascist" as a pejorative against people they don't like. At least there is an agreed upon historical definition of fascism.
Barack and Hillary are Centrist Democrats. Mises and Hayek are libertarians. A alternative label would simply be "liberal". Mises thought of himself as a liberal in the tradition of the classical liberals of the 19th century.
Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are FAR closer ideologically than either is to Ludwig von Mises.
Secondly, it seems astonishing to me that Leftists who write about libertarianism seem convinced that there has been a substantial libertarian victory in recent decades in terms of Federal policy. As much as I'd like this to be true, nearly the opposite has been the case.
Libertarianism is much more popular today among American citizens and around the world, but they've had little impact on US government policy. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were not libertarians, especially if you focus on their actual policies and overlook some of the surface-level "free market" sounding rhetoric.
Ivan Eland is a libertarian writer who wrote a popular book called "Recarving Rushmore" that tried to rank all the US presidents according to their adherence to libertarian principles. Ronald Reagan ranked 34th. The most libertarian modern president according to Eland was Jimmy Carter, and I wholeheartedly concur.
There have been assessments by libertarian scholars that suggest that Republican administrations have been less libertarian than Democratic administrations over the last fifty or sixty years, though both have been pretty bad.
Pertaining to this article, Lee Fang seems to attribute much more success (and potential future success) to South American libertarian movements than I think is warranted. The governments of South American countries have been overwhelmingly socialistic over the past several decades and they are likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. To the extent that libertarian ideas get a hearing and are considered as positive reforms for failed socialist States in Venezuela and elsewhere I applaud the development.
However, it is up to the citizens of each country to make up their own minds how they want to organize their societies. We shouldn't be trying to force our political ideology onto other countries. If and when Venezuelan citizens request libertarian and Austrian literature or advice on which reforms they ought to implement, we should provide them with such advice on implementing market-based reforms. But only when such advice is requested.
The very notion that a libertarian think-tank could be, or even perceived to be, an arm of US government foreign policy, should be horrifying to a real libertarian. Libertarians believe in self-determination and non-intervention as bedrock foundational principles.
This comment is right
The term 'neoliberal', at least in proper usage, refers to 'new' economic liberalism (not to be confused with modern ideas of political liberalism, which may or may not embrace it). The great depression and other factors seriously discredited classical economic liberalism, and let to greater state intervention in capitalist economies during the decades after WW2. Neoliberalism is simply the return of economic liberalism (thus new liberalism), which has been aggressively embraced by capital interests which object to state intervention in their profit-making. That otherwise very diverse figures all embrace neoliberal economics is hardly surprising, given that it's been completely dominant for some time now.
Neoliberal economics can easily find common ground with libertarianism based on a shared disdain for state power and state intervention, which makes it easy for the libertarian label to be co-opted to promote neoliberal economic policies.
Wall Street bankers and big business would be horrified at the prospect of abolishing the Federal Reserve and returning to the Gold Standard.
I get that the term is usually a synonym for "corporatist". But the economic ideology that modern Democratic and Republican politicians promote is diametrically opposed to what classical liberal and especially Austrian economists of a century ago would advocate for.
As an example, libertarian economists wanted to allow all the banks to fail following the crash of 2008, yet all the so-called "neo-liberal" economists wanted to bail them out and prop them up.
The economic views of modern politicians that you label "neo-liberals" are dramatically different, almost diametrically opposed, to the economic views of classical liberal and Austrian economists of the 19th and early 20th century. Only someone who knows nothing about libertarian and liberal economics could think otherwise.
My recommendation is that you drop the label entirely. It is an imprecise term at best, and a lazy smear word at worst.
If you want to denounce Corporate toadies who kowtow to banking and business interests at every turn, I'm right there with you condemning such creatures. Just call them Corporatists. This is actually an area where the term "fascist" might be appropriate. A soft fascism (minus the overt military rule) usually meant the merger of State and Corporate power, privatized profits and socialized losses.
I'm opposed to that, as are all libertarians.
It seems a little odd to claim that a political world so utterly enamored with 'free-market' worship has nothing in common with 'true' economic liberalism, even if it's ever-more infected with 'corporatism'. I'm sympathetic, to a point, with the ideas of liberal economics; yet at the same time it's always seemed to me that a hardcore classical liberal / libertarian has the same relationship with 'corporatists' as a hardcore anarchist has with gangsters and warlords: they utterly despise them, while promoting policies that ultimately empower them.
Friedman's and Hayek's terrible economic ideas are the reason we as a country (US) and planet are where we are today. Massive inequality, pollution everywhere, drug use increasing, suicide increasing, actual jobs decreasing, corporate monopolies increasing. Why should we all be forced to live under this economic and political dictatorship that the Neo-liberals and Libertarians have forced down our throats? And yes this is a dictatorship. If all countries are going to be forced to adopt these policies, which is what is happening all over the world via various mechanisms (wars, coups, limited education that only teach these theories, a media that only focus on these theories) then it is an economic and political dictatorship.
They keep promising a utopia but all I've seen since Thatcher and Reagan are ever increasing devastation and destruction. Will this utopia come about after most of the population is dead and the rest are enslaved by the corporate system?
There's performance inequality and that's what everyone neglects. If you don't have an adequate education, your potential earnings dip severely. Limousine liberals claim they fight for public education but they turn around and send their kids to the best private schools money can buy. What about the poor the kids ? They should have access to charter schools at the government's expense which has been proven to shrink the education gap between blacks and whites.
As for the rest of the problems you address, I don't how you can attribute increased suicide and drug use to the current economic system. The decrease in jobs is inevitable simply because advanced technology is rendering jobs oboslete. I think corporate monopolies and corporate welfare are definitely issues that need to be addressed but the only cure to those problems is shrinking the power of big government. They give the money to those monopolizing and bail them out when they fail.
Through so called "soft power," the US government continues to assert control over its backyard: Latin America. Atlas Networks executes the US government wishes.
Amazingly well researched and dot-connecting article!
I've read it several times now and passed it and its major points on to readers of my web page.
I thought I was pretty much on top of the news in this area, but this really opened my eyes.
Thanks and Bravo!!
Up until 2003, Brazil had lived under 502 years with the right wing in power. Then we had 13 years of a center-left party in power. In those 13 years, we were out of the UN hunger map and became the world's sixth largest economy. If anyone, during the 20th century, had said these two things would ever be true about Brazil, that person would have been deemed a lunatic. And I'm afraid that, from now on, anyone who claims such things were true one day will receive the same kind of reaction. We are already going back to the UN Hunger Map. The USA are once again regaining control over Latin America. The CIA is all over Dilma's impeachment. They want our water and our rainforests. There are American troops right this second in Amazon. There is a CIA informer sitting in the president's chair. We are doomed and the USA is to blame.
"Up until 2003, Brazil had lived under 502 years with the right wing in power. Then we had 13 years of a center-left party in power. In those 13 years, we were out of the UN hunger map and became the world's sixth largest economy. "
That is a good way to put things in perspective. Perhaps independent media can gain the trust of the population and serve as a reliable source of information.
Hello there.
Well wow, @lhfang.
What a network.
Being myself of little ability academically I've struggled over the past recent 4 years or there a bout's. To encapsulate to memory and so , say, a cognitively usable design, all the stuff I've been reading of and observing via media etc. But I've noticed patterns and nodes of activity which never-the-less draw me to continue on to look and try to define the politicorporate entities and activity I do notice. Into a working knowledge for myself.
This piece has seemingly now … well, I'm OK to say it's helped a great deal.
First impression is to return to the Thatcher/Regan era as being seminal for expansion of these ideas and so forth out to various instances and places as reported here.
The notion I'll end with to my horror, is the disregard of freedoms to allow societies to evolve in less pressured by coerced ways. The "Libitarian" ethos seems quite radically imbued to bring even violent overthrow and at the least aggressive ruination of any ideology stemming from or existing on the more left of politics and ideas.
I'm appalled.
The Brazilian example of deposition of Dilma is such an overt display of recent and planned forethought to eject the legitimate figure. Has been a display, quite simply, of yet acting before a population and ramming the action of underhanded and illegal manipulation of even laws, right into that populations face.
I'll end and ask, who are the facilitators of the "Libertarian" type outfits? For despite cash input by such as e.g. now the Heritage Foundation or absolutely whomever as actual corporate entities to even the US State Dept. There still requires at street and so individual levels. Those actors who will uphold the will and wished for policies and designed behaviours of the Libertarian groups (where ever they are based to be). Who will carry the flag for political manifestation of the idea and so on an so forth.
Is there a perversion of free will and individual perception of it? Are the general populations and so groupings and individualso of them. So infiltrated as to be manipulated or coerced so definitely we see what we currently observe now in south America if not elsewhere in many ways. And does the law itself, act in response to and with regard to the "libertarian" right wing in a neutral fashion to preserve the forms of legitimatised government. Or is it too a machine or mechanism of use for even aggressive or to violent suppression of the left or free thinking people?
I have evidence (via media sources free to read), that my ideas are now (together with this and one or two other State's side sources too) becoming shown as tenable really.
Thanks for this article. I'll pour over it and see where it leads out.
Though, again, I am no academic or info. processing master brain. But I have seen as I read, some causes for the reasons of observations I do make, with worry.
G'day now.
Such important reporting, thank you.
Last time the libertarians got rolling, we got the Chicago Boys and mass murder. They never really left of course, and are trying to work their totalitarian capitalism death magic again. Goddamn.
And who can forget how identity politics morphed into the ADL sponsored Jewctopus that gave anti-AIPAC Jews a bad rap?
And then, this morphed into ADLification of police , as they sponsored private parties in Tel Aviv, which morphed into the Department of Homeland Security demonizing and pursuing harassment campaigns against Libertarians?
Get the commies outta here, I want America back.
and of course, no matter the subject…we have got to infuse the Jew. Main reason, despite the excellent reporting, I will not offer financial aid to The Intercept. Glad no one else responded to your crap. You could file this report under many categories, i.e.: finance, class warfare, social systems, politics, etc..,, but it took your mind to add a religious one. I wonder if the churches, mosques, and their extensions have made contributions to Liberterian think tanks? Or is it just AIPAC?
Religious? Or secular? Culture or religion? Those cunts have blurred the lines so deeply with their spying and slander campaigns and infiltration of schools and policing and propaganda that one cannot tell which is which anymore-religious or secular? Culture or religion?
Or just more ADL hate?
This whole country reeks of ADL vomit (sorry Pierre-what do they have on YOU anyways?)
The concepts of power and ideology are very much at work in Fang's excellent article. These concepts are guided through a set of practices and the usage of terms, such as "freedom, democracy, liberty" etc. It is through the usage of power and ideology that capitalism and the empire survive and more misery would continue to flourish in Latin America and elsewhere in the world. Those individuals in Latin America engaged in the implementation of industrialized nations agenda, namely the USA, via Atlas Networks are "white," educated, and generally come from the elite. I put white in parenthesis because they are mestizo, that is the mixture of European, African, and Indian. Please do not share this information with the. In the meantime, social and political crisis would continue to plague Latin America, where most nations lack a strong civil society, such as Honduras, and the state would continue to kill with impunity.
Let's not call these people 'libertarians', let's call them 'dark agers', because that is the sort of society they are trying to create, one where there is no restraint on the ability of the powerful to close off opportunity for the masses. You don't need a law to prevent someone from hiking into the woods to start farming in competition to the farms that have to pay you a portion of their products if they have no money to buy an axe, and nobody to sell their stuff to, or get a loan from, but you.
"Let's not call these people 'libertarians', let's call them 'dark agers'"
Yes, that is very accurate. Plus it made smile, thanks for that.
Just the opposite. Libertarians aim to restrain the powerful by restraining government. How is giving government more power suppose to make it less corrupt?
To state the obvious, state power is the means by which democracy operates. This is worth considering at length before advocating for the dismantling of the means of democracy, especially if the objective is to restrain the powerful.
Libertarians do not want to restrain the powerful or the government. Wherever they gain influence governments become stronger, more violent and less responsive to their citizens.
Everything associated with strangling government is at odds with 1)dealing with a popluation of 7.5 billion, and 2)dealing with climate.
Just one example, developing useful meds and antibiotics (like the NIH), versus exotic meds for profit and/or producing mass quantities of old antibiotics for cows, chickens, and profit. And perish the thought you'll need mass quantities of inexpensive up to date useful meds. It takes organization. Big problems need big solutions. Moreover the economics in place across the planet are not simple. You can't just sweep in and demand farmers in India use GMO rice or cotton…cause they aren't hardy enough during tough climate changes. It's already a juggernaut, but the world economic system can't be taken to the garage for a one night refreshing of flowers like some float. It has to be changed while it's moving, unfortunately. We sure nuff made it, and we know. "Theory" will only screw it up worse. Sure, you could toss disarticulated production aside, but Libertarians don't wanna do that. The complexity of what we have now is not appreciated by Libertarians.The only thing any learned person can theorize about are "stabilizers" and greener directions.
Back in 1996 Thomas Palley was prophetic. Some of these predictions have happened. Some have been ameliorated by QE (which'll exact its cost one of these days). As much as I admire a number of economists in the "now," there's nothing around like this that I've seen. For all the delusion of the 90s, glad I bumped into this article that came out then. That was when you got your money's worth from a magazine.
Thomas Palley–> "JUST as household borrowing can sustain the economy, so, too, can borrowing by the federal government. During the 1980s the federal government ran up huge deficits that were financed by borrowing to fund government spending and employment, both of which contributed significantly to demand. A large component of this spending was the defense buildup — a classic example of military Keynesianism (by no means the best sort of Keynesianism!) at work. The impact of this spending was augmented by large tax cuts for the wealthiest households in the country. A better policy would have been to give the tax cuts to ordinary households, which spend a greater share of their income. Issues of equity aside, we would have achieved the same level of demand with smaller deficits.
"This period of maintaining demand through federal deficit spending is ending, and the household sector and the government sector may thus be forced into cutting spending at the same time. The pressure to cut government spending is largely political, AND DERIVES FROM A MISUNDERSTANDING OF THE ECONOMICS OF GOVERNMENT DEFICITS. Though deficits can be extreme and dangerous, at less than three percent of U.S. national income our deficit is neither. Just as individual households borrow to finance homes and cars, we should expect government to borrow to finance highways, sewers, schools, airports, public buildings, and the like (the good sort of Keynesianism).
"Moreover, the government plays a critical role in providing the financial sector with safe liquid assets to hold as part of its portfolios. In a growing economy with a growing financial system, we should expect government to borrow — both to fund its expenditures and to lubricate the financial system.
"What the level of the deficit should be is impossible to say. Though it was certainly too high during the Reagan era, we have now moved to the opposite extreme of deficit phobia. This phobia is being opportunistically exploited in order to refashion government so as to lessen the protections it gives to ordinary workers. This shift in policy is making workers more vulnerable to the discipline of the market — sharpening competition among workers for scarce jobs — and increasing the power of business over labor. This is the result of such developments as the declining value of the minimum wage, the declining value of Aid to Families with Dependent Children payments, and suggestions for limiting need-based claims on welfare. THE REHTORIC ACCOMPANYING THIS RETRENCHMENT IS THAT OF ENDING 'DEPENDENCY,' YET TO END DEPENDENCY IN ANY REAL WAY DEMANDS THE CREATION OF 'OPPORTUNITY.' This requires running the economy at high levels of employment, ensuring that jobs carry a living wage, funding education and job training, and increasing the earned-income tax credit to strengthen the incentive to work. This is not the direction of policy now. IF ONE WERE TO DESIGN A SYSTEM NOT TO END DEPENDENCY BUT TO INCREASE ECONOMIC INSECURITY THE BETTER TO RAISE PROFITS FOR EMPLOYERS, ONE WOULD DESIGN TODAY'S ECONOMY.
"The proposed balanced-budget amendment, requiring zero deficits, threatens to lock the federal government into dangerously destabilizing financial practices. In recessions, when tax revenues fall with falling economic activity, the government would have to either cut spending or increase income taxes to balance its budget. Either course would reduce total spending and aggravate the recession.
"With or without a balanced-budget amendment, we appear to be following a political trajectory (sanctioned by Republicans and Democrats alike) intended to diminish greatly the economic role of government. This diminution threatens the economic stabilizers of the Golden Age, which ensure that the government automatically supports demand when the economy begins to trail off into recession. These stabilizers work through the progressive income tax and the national system of income supports. The current Republican policy proposals threaten in varying degrees to end the federal government's capacity to act as an automatic stabilizer by subcontracting its functions to the states, by reducing income-tax progressivity, and by having government 'wither on the vine.'
"Attempts to reform welfare by subcontracting the functions of the federal government to state governments threaten this important component of the system of automatic stabilizers. Whereas the federal government funded welfare programs on the basis of defined standards that were independent of the number of claimants, the proposed new arrangements will simply involve block grants to the states, which would not be required to respond to cyclical fluctuations in need. Under block grants the federal government would no longer automatically pump more welfare spending into the economy during recessions, which is when need goes up and demand must be stabilized." [emphasis mine]
"The Forces Making for an Economic Collapse: Why a depression could happen"
Thomas I. Palley, Atlantic Monthly, July 1996 Issue
Tommy – by weakening government, do you not also increase the influence of the rich and powerful?
"in Argentina, a real-estate baron swept to the presidency and Kirchner was indicted for corruption"
Except that macri is not a real estate baron. The macri family is a family of parasites who got rich by stealing money from taxpayers, 'working' as government contractors.
Describing the current shitbag president of argentina as a "real estate baron" shows that the author of the article didn't bother spending 3 minutes checking basic facts.
A couple more facts : prior to being 'president' macri was the major of buenos aires, and accomplice of the kichner government. Furthermore, the corruption charges against kichner won't be ever 'proven' because it makes no sense for macri to attack his accomplices. He knows pretty well that he's as corrupt as kichner and all the rest of politicians.
Can we say CIA economic hitman?
Remember Barack & Michelle tangoing in Buenos Aires to celebrate Macri's as the new NeoLiberal President in the hemisphere?…or all we need to know about who Obama was & what he really stood for.
So, these libertarian academics beg for taxpayer money to fund their non-profit think tanks. Surely, if their ideas were any good, they would make a profit with them.
Such parasites would perish quickly in their laissez-faire utopia's.
"Such parasites would perish quickly in their laissez-faire utopia's."
True they would perish therefore not really their utopia, only lies, smoke and mirrors, which explains why they are not in fact libertarians.
You quickly grasped one of the contradictions that I pointed out (in such an amusing manner). The other one is about profit.
"So, these libertarian academics beg for taxpayer money to fund their non-profit think tanks."
Good one too, though much less obscure, specially if one ignores the libertarian connection (or lack thereof), which is so easy to do.
That's the thing, there's so little knowledge of libertarianism in this article and posts, I don't know where your irony begins or ends. Delightful actually.
What most Libertarians don't understand is that the second you managed to get the government out of your face you would immediately have private power and their private armies in your face.
I have to say that I agree with small portions of the libertarian comments regarding illegitimate power exercised by supposedly left governments. This reminds me of a comment that a traditional Native friend made about 30 years ago: "We don't like the left or the right. They both try to take our land, they just have different reasons for doing so." Same with their attitudes toward the natural environment, though the left is generally not quite as bad.
OP, nice start, but there is more to research.
Libertarians are developed via the http://www.libertarianinternational.org with deep roots in Ibero-latin-celtic culture. It might be more appropriate to say the centrist libertarian Latins influenced the US libertarians. Atlas' creator was part of a group to being down or reform totalitarian right and left regimes and spread democracy chaired by the Libertarian International head, Michael Gilson De Lemos.
These people have been at work for a long time. One of his predecessors, also called Michael Gilson De Lemos, founded the Brazilian republic and ended slavery there.
Considering the state that decades of Hayekian ideology have left society and capitalism in in the developed world, it's little surprise that those promoting it have to focus their marketing around supposed ideals of 'freedom'. It's rather like the economic version of a prospective warlord selling people on the merits of anarchy.
To quote Streeck: "…systemic disintegration and social entropy can be presented as historical progress towards individual liberty and a free society. This is the core of neoliberal libertarianism, which expects nothing more of a society than that it allows its members to maximize their utility in the market, thereby making political democracy and collective goods redundant."
However people may define libertarianism (of which there are inevitably many forms), this particular strain – so aggressively promoted by capital interests – is very well documented. And the post-capitalist and post-democratic decay into which it appears to be leading the world is becoming very well documented as well.
the author knows fuck about latin american and knows fuck about libertarianis either. The criminal assholes he's talking about are right wing fascists, not libertarians, and their policies are quite similar to the polices of left wing fascists.
In the case of argentina for instance, the new "right wing" government hasn't reduced the power of the state at all although reducins state power is what libertarians are supposed to. The current "right wing" government is simply tightening the police state that the previous lefty government built.
You know, just like right wing trump is simply the continuantion of lefty progressives like clinton and obomba.
"[L]eft wing fascists"? "[L]efty progressives like clinton and obomba"? Those comments and name-calling show that you have no idea what you're talking about, in addition to being racist. Fascists and leftists are almost polar opposites, and neither Clinton nor Obama are even slightly left (they are center-right neoliberals).
Political daltonism, the shortest path (and the preferred option of lazy people) to understand how the world works.
Is anyone already working on translating this to Portuguese for The Intercept Brasil? If not, I volunteer. The Brazilian people have a right to know all this.
Wow. I always thought libertarians were bad, but this shows that they're also dangerous. Their ideology of "me first and screw the rest of the universe" is the most unevolved and immature thinking and attitude that there is.
This childish comment and The Intercept's embarrassing love affair with socialism are indicative of 1) the public's ignorance regarding libertarianism, 2) the public's ignorance regarding socialism's worldwide, blatant record of failure, and/or 3) the public's fear of not being coddled by government.
Libertarians want you to do whatever the hell you want to do, as long as you don't steal or harm others or their property. How "dangerous." "Me first and screw the rest of the universe" couldn't be a less accurate description, and you probably think, "I care about [insert issue that tugs on your heart] so much that I want to force everyone to care with (or for) me." That's as dangerous (pessimistic, lazy, and pretentious) as it gets.
"[C]hildish comment"? Guess what bub: it's based on what I've heard libertarians say at seminars and discussion groups. "Me first and screw the rest of the universe" is EXACTLY the libertarian ethos.
As to caring about others, your comment is exactly what Profmarcus referred to below regarding libertarians not giving a damn about anyone but themselves. Your maturity level is equivalent to that of a poorly raised six-year-old.
I previously found myself, as a result of working on criminal justice reform, involved with the organs of libertarianism and was even invited to multiple libertarian seminars and there's like a 10% at best section of folks who self-identify as libertarians who care more about traditional leftist social issues like criminal justice reform, anti-imperialism, etc. But Jeff is right, the overwhelming majority are white grievance, tax hating, socially conservative religious types. The idea libertarians want to leave you alone to do what you want holds insofar that if you do what they don't find appropriate (say, are gay, are a person of color, sleep around or engage in sexual promiscuity, use drugs, read Marx) then you should be thrown from a helicopter and physically removed from society. At these seminars I've never seen more well to do white people celebrate sweatshops so much as if to act like they're doing third-world workers a massive favor by letting them toil in the horrid conditions they deal with under the ridiculous guise, that, hey, it could be worse so lets not try and end sweatshops at all. Libertarians have a mental defect where they treat they're moral and political opponents with zero charitable interpretation and assume purely evil and corrupt motives. Just a dose of their own medicine in return, the kind of medicine Casey blinds himself to as a slave to "economics".
If libertarians believe in the non-aggression principle, then the most important issue for them should be opposing war and empire. The next most important issue should be opposing the State throwing people in cages unjustly (i.e. criminal justice reform) and police brutality.
If a libertarian says they want to initiate force against you for engaging in peaceful activity they disapprove of, then they cannot call themselves a libertarian.
Now, libertarians can be social conservatives in their private lives. Or they could be social liberals, as I am. What should unite both of them is their commitment to refrain from using coercion to force their social values on anyone else.
I don't know which libertarian seminars you attended, but just consider the candidacy of Ron Paul in 2008 and 2012. All the organizations that are aligned with Ron Paul put anti-imperialism and anti-war at the forefront of their libertarian advocacy. It hardly needs to be mentioned to those who've been paying attention that libertarian groups have been at the forefront of the fight for drug legalization.
This statement struck me as somewhat humorous: "Libertarians have a mental defect where they treat they're moral and political opponents with zero charitable interpretation and assume purely evil and corrupt motives."
I'm sure some libertarians act like this. I sure try not to do this. What I find humorous is that this is precisely the way many (most?) Leftists treat libertarians. I can't count how many times I've been told that I "want people to die" even though I explicitly tell people that I believe that my ideas will cause less people to die and more human flourishing than their ideas.
This notion of assuming purely evil motives without evidence is a common tactic the Left uses against any of their opponents (not just libertarians). It's a bad practice for anybody.
I have a right to your property, because you stole it with coercive government power. I never consented to your having it.
It's more like "Me only, you go hurry up and die."
It's autism.
Great contribution in destroying, once and for all, the true meaning of the word libertarian and therefore libertarianism itself. Both left and right use the libertarian label so deeply wrong that as a consequence true libertarians are pushed out of the dialogue completely.
The Intercept practices serious journalism and I expect better, none of the "American libertarians " mentioned in this article are libertarians. Lee Fang and the editors at The Intercept must to do some serious research before using the word ever again and this article should be corrected.
Apparently in the mind of this author, libertarian = corporatist. At least 75% of the time when he used the word "libertarian" he meant something else. See Jacob's comment below for a more in-depth explanation.
Not sure I see a negative aspect to the details of this article. A movement that focuses on free trade and individual liberty is gaining momentum in countries that have been resource rich, yet oppressive and politically corrupt for generations? It's a powerful message, hope it continues catch on.
stop watching CNN!
Right on!
In everything I read about libertarianism, neoliberalism, Mises, Hayek, Friedman, et al, there is a notable absence of any mention of compassion for fellow human beings. The rhetoric fairly drips with social Darwinism and seems to be all about the flawed notion that individuals can and must stand alone and completely discounts the fundamental interconnectedness that science has repeatedly demonstrated is the nature of the universe. That dark view is at the root of many if not most of the problems that currently plague our society and our planet.
"notion that individuals can and must stand alone"
Wrong, you left out whether it's voluntary or not. Coercion is the flaw in your position.
This was not actually the position of libertarian intellectuals such as Mises, Rothbard, etc. They argued that a free economy is a system promoting social cooperation that benefits the rich/strong and the poor/weak. You may not agree with their reasoning or arguments for this position, but it's mischaracterizing their positions to say that they favored the strong/rich at the expense of the weak/poor. They explicitly rejected the idea of "social Darwinism". See this article for examples: https://mises.org/library/social-darwinism-and-free-market
Hope that help you:
"A society that does not recognize that each individual has values of his own which he is entitled to follow can have no respect for the dignity of the individual and cannot really know freedom." – F.A. Hayek
"Political freedom means the absence of coercion of a man by his fellow men. The fundamental threat to freedom is power to coerce, be it in the hands of a monarch, a dictator, an oligarchy, or a momentary majority. The preservation of freedom requires the elimination of such concentration of power to the fullest possible extent and the dispersal and distribution of whatever power cannot be eliminated — a system of checks and balances." – Milton Friedman
"How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it." – Adam Smith
"Value is not intrinsic, it is not in things. It is within us; it is the way in which man reacts to the conditions of his environment. Neither is value in words and doctrines, it is reflected in human conduct. It is not what a man or groups of men say about value that counts, but how they act." – Mises
Perharps one of the reasons you aren't able to found some passionate quotes in their works stay in the fact that much of libertarians are economists talking about things like scarcity, alocation, etecetera
"Political freedom means the absence of coercion of a man by his fellow men. The fundamental threat to freedom is power to coerce, be it in the hands of a monarch, a dictator, an oligarchy, or a momentary majority. The preservation of freedom requires the elimination of such concentration of power to the fullest possible extent and the dispersal and distribution of whatever power cannot be eliminated — a system of checks and balances."
– Milton Friedman
Milt didn't really mean that.
Then you need to read more. Libertarianism is almost the polar opposite of what you've gleaned from your cursory reading on the subject.
Far from believing in atomized individuals who can and should be isolated from others, we rather believe in social cooperation, community, and collective action of many stripes to solve our common problems.
What we oppose is aggression. See, in normal parlance, aggression (that is initiatory violence against peaceful people) means something like the opposite of social cooperation and civil society. When we organize society through the State, we must by definition use coercive violence to compel others to yield to our social program whether they consent to it or not.
People should be free to organize in communities both large and small, and submit to any authority or social system they choose, provided it is voluntary.
Leftists ought to be free to band together in communities and institute a community healthcare system (not unlike a small-scale single payer system). All a libertarian asks of you is that you refrain from using aggression against doctors, insurance companies, patients and anyone else who don't want to participate in such a system.
The State is a fundamentally anti-social institution that trains us to be more disconnected, fearful and suspicious of each other than we otherwise would be. It pits different factions against each other in a low grade civil war as we fight to wrest away control of the State apparatus to use to benefit ourselves at the expense of our neighbors.
Libertarianism consists of the right to self-ownership, the corollary right to private property and the non-aggression principle.
There are plenty of different strains of libertarianism. Do you mean anarcho-capitalism?
Whenever a particular sort of libertarian is challenged, they jump to No True Libertarianism and respond that they're being mischaracterized.
Nearly all strains of libertarianism are utterly immoral. The NAP is a rhetorical cover to whitewash their complete lack of empathy for other humans. It's also a farce assuming they do allow for at least private law enforcement. And assuming they'd like LEOs to forcibly restrain someone from a non-aggressive action if said person hasn't entered into a contract that says they're willing to be subject to such force. But that's enough from me. Arguing with libertarians is boring and completely futile. Just a bunch of dodging and goal-post shifting and cries of "but that's not what libertarian means!" A pox on you all.
"Do you mean anarcho-capitalism?"
No, he means libertarianism, you just don't know what that is.
In a world run by the "non-aggression" principle you describe, a person trespassing on someone's property to feed a starving child is in the wrong, (transgressing property rights for the purpose of helping a third party), and the parent who doesn't feed the child is in the right (somebody cannot be forced to provide aide or spend resources they do not wish to).
Count me out.
Your hypothetical is simply a variation on the "lifeboat situation" argument, where extreme or unusual situations are posited in order to supposedly invalidate a political principle.
Libertarianism is not, and never claims to be, a complete system of ethics. Rather, it is concerned with what rights are, and what the law should be.
Therefore, according to libertarian legal theory a property owner may indeed have the legal right to refuse to feed a hungry person but he may still have a moral obligation to do so. This moral obligation is not legally binding, but it is enforced through social pressure.
If we have a principle that states that "theft is wrong", but we can imagine hypothetical extreme and unusual situations where nearly every person would steal in order to survive, this doesn't invalidate the moral principle.
Let Murray Rothbard address this objection:
"In the first place, a lifeboat situation is hardly a valid test of a theory of rights, or of any moral theory whatsoever. Problems of a moral theory in such an extreme situation do not invalidate a theory for normal situations. In any sphere of moral theory, we are trying to frame an ethic for man, based on his nature and the nature of the world — and this precisely means for normal nature, for the way life usually is, and not for rare and abnormal situations. It is a wise maxim of the law, for precisely this reason, that "hard cases make bad law." We are trying to frame an ethic for the way men generally live in the world; we are not, after all, interested in framing an ethic that focuses on situations that are rare, extreme, and not generally encountered."
The entire article is worth reading:
The idea that the parent of a starving child would be denied food from a property owner who has the means to offer it, AND that no other decent person would step forward to help out is unlikely in the extreme.
I have no respect for libertarians or for their attitudes or ideologies, but I'll give this one shot on the assumption that you're honest and capable of objective and critical thought.
Governments do not "use coercive violence to compel others to yield to [their] social program." They use coercion in order to force people who benefit from social programs and public infrastructure to pay their fair share for them. Please explain how to prevent people from freeloading without government coercion. In other words, why should the more moral and evolved people be stuck paying for roads, power plants, power lines, public schools, etc., while those with libertarian attitudes leech off the rest of us? If you want to live like that, you should create your own communities that are completely self-sufficient, which BTW would be completely without modern technology including roads and motor vehicles (which I do support, much better for the Earth!).
You also fail to account for the illegitimate violence committed on society by moneyed interests like health insurance companies unfairly manipulating the political system to maintain their wealth and power, and which provide ZERO benefit yet reap massive profits. One of the two main benefits of a single-payer health system is that the government gets to dictate prices in order to keep the costs affordable. Your comment that those of us who want a single-payer system can just establish our own totally ignores this fact.
Finally, your comment that "[t]he State is a fundamentally anti-social institution that trains us to be more disconnected" is nonsensical. The whole idea of organizing ourselves with a government is to work together and not allow individuals to override the interests of society as a whole. Nonsensical ideas like this seem to be at the heart of libertarianism, which is why I have no respect for it or its advocates.
I'll answer your objections out of order. This line jumped out at me: "You also fail to account for the illegitimate violence committed on society by moneyed interests like health insurance companies unfairly manipulating the political system to maintain their wealth and power, and which provide ZERO benefit yet reap massive profits"
No I don't fail to account for this. In fact, one of the primary reasons I oppose centralized State power is that I consider successful political lobbying by corporate interests to the detriment of the public to be inevitable under such a system. I want all businesses to be made subject to the disciplines imposed by the market that allows free entry for competitors, regulated through contract, property rights and laws against fraud.
There are two ways a businessman can become wealthy. They can choose to be a market entrepreneur, forced to satisfy customers with a product they voluntarily purchase, or they can choose to be a political entrepreneur, lobbying politicians and looting the taxpayer without having to rely on voluntarily patronizing customers.
Libertarians want only the former option to be available to the businessman.
It is a myth that libertarians are de-facto "pro-business". Corporate attitudes are overwhelmingly anti-libertarian since Billionaires would rather be political entrepreneurs manipulating the legal system and bribing politicians than face the regulations imposed by a market economy governed by libertarian law.
Your statement that "they use coercion in order to force people who benefit from social programs and public infrastructure to pay their fair share for them" is problematic. I do NOT benefit from most of what the US government spends money on.
I didn't benefit much from the Iraq War, did you? Did I have the option to refrain from sending in my money to fund that particular policy? Could I deduct it? Of course not.
Consider a person who has an ideological opposition to government schools. Maybe they home school their kids or send them to private schools. Are they given the option to deduct the portion of their taxes that go to finance public schools? Nope.
Maybe half of the country is opposed to so-called "Obamacare", and would rather opt out and have the government permit private alternatives and a functioning market in the delivery of healthcare. Any option allowed to opt out of the individual mandate? Not a chance.
This is what I mean when I said that an expansive central State forces at least half the country to submit to policies they find abhorrent, either through compulsory taxation, or the crowding out of private competitors to State monopolized services.
There is a principle that libertarians believe in that is called Subsidiarity. This means that political authority for every perceived necessary policy should be at the most local level that it can possibly be. Maybe we need the Federal government to provide national defense (NOT empire and aggressive war, mind you) and a Supreme court to adjudicate conflict that cannot be resolved at lower, local courts. But do they need to be involved in the construction of roads or in education? Certainly not. We'd like more social services be provided at the family level, the neighborhood level and the city level, and less at the State level and far less at the Federal level.
The humorous thing is that the infrastructure that we all have to use, and benefit from, is all paid for and constructed at the local level. This is hardly an argument that bolsters the case for a large centralized State.
First and foremost, the biggest problem with libertarians is that they obsess on materialism (money) and individualism, both of which need to be transcended in order to evolve mentally and spiritually. Even Republicans have major positions on social issues, but other than civil liberties, where we agree but for which libertarians are minor issues compared to economics, they have no positions except those on economics. Economics should be a bottom priority, not a top one. Humans don't excel or even succeed by making a lot of money; they do so by expanding their consciousness and doing good for others, including non-humans.
Next, you didn't answer my question: Without a government to coerce everyone to pay for the benefits they receive from the government, like those I listed below, how do you prevent people from freeloading?
Laissez-faire capitalism greatly benefits those who already have a lot of money. A strict meritocracy with a strong dose of socialism for basic needs and communism so the government owns industries that would be natural monopolies would be OK. But some things like health care are not about money, and markets should not be involved in them. It is a particularly American mental disease that makes every issue about money.
We all benefit from roads, electricity, and other infrastructure. You wouldn't even have the internet that we're communicating over if not for the feds, or the interstate highways that you travel on, or the cheap gasoline (most of the world pays $6-7/gallon) provided by U.S. oil wars (to be clear, I don't own a car and I'm totally and unequivocally opposed to industrial war). Your benefit from the oil wars is cheap oil.
As to choices where our money is spent, I totally agree. We should be able to choose what if any percentage of major government programs our income taxes pay for by listing those percentages in boxes in our tax returns. If you want to live in this society you still have to pay the taxes, but you can allocate where yours go. So, for example, if you allocate 0% toward the military, none of your income tax would go there. I've been advocating this for decades, and it would be a major step toward democratizing this society, but fighting those with power and money is never easy.
While we don't agree on much, at least your response was rational. But the main difference between us beside our priorities is our attitudes and feelings toward life. You feel like an individual, I feel like we're all just part of a much greater whole. I don't see any common ground here.
Well said.
I've been reading The Intercept for a while, mainly because I've been a long-time fan of Glenn Greenwald. I can get worked up when I see articles like this because it is so rare that left-leaning authors are accurate when discussing libertarianism. I enjoy debating this topic because I feel passionately about it, and I appreciate that you seem like a fair-minded dude who's open to considering new ideas.
You may not care to continue this discussion here (which is totally fine), but I'll respond to your comment for the benefit of others.
Libertarianism is not an all-encompassing philosophy of life. It is a narrow philosophy concerning the fundamental question of what rights are, and when (if ever) aggression is permissible. It has nothing to say about spirituality, about the meaning of life, or how one should lead their life (apart from refraining from using aggression against others).
The fact that libertarianism is narrow in it's scope does not mean that libertarians don't hold many other ancillary views on social issues, on religion and philosophy more broadly. It simply means that we consider it a prerequisite for the peaceful discussion of these other views the establishment of basic human rights and non-aggression (i.e. peace).
It is a bit crass to hear people bemoan the so-called "materialist" obsession they perceive in others, while the entire standard of living they enjoy is predicated on decades of capital accumulation and economic development.
The most materially obsessed people are those suffering in extreme poverty. The ability to be anti-materialist and pursue higher spiritual ends or even engage in charity is a luxury afforded those who've already attained a relatively high living standard.
Yes, economics and materialism are not the only things that matter, but libertarians never said otherwise. This is a libelous charicature of libertarians concocted by folks who've never studied the philosophy.
The most important issue for libertarians is the issue of war and peace. Libertarians are staunchly anti-war. Ending US imperialism, foreign meddling, and aggressive wars is the highest priority for a libertarian. I think we'd probably agree on this point. After all, what moral issue could compare in importance to mass murder?
The free-rider problem is a real economic phenomenon that can affect a small portion of the economy. Without a coercive State, communities would probably work out contracts that stipulate that each member of the community would pay a monthly fee for common services like police protection. You cannot eliminate the free rider problem entirely, but it can be minimized. Social pressure and ostracization of free riders who benefit from services that they refuse to pay for can create further incentives for people to chip in.
As to the idea that people should be allowed to choose what government services they pay for, and which they do not, the State would never allow that. The Ruling Class is banking on the idea that they can use taxpayer money to enrich themselves.
And besides, how is this any different from a market economy? The idea that everyone should be able to pay for only the services they receive and benefit from is precisely the system that libertarians propose.
One of the biggest problems with progressives in my mind is that the State, fundamentally due to it's nature and incentive structure, does not and cannot work the way they think it can. For a variety of reasons, both economic and sociological, States inevitably amount to a protection racket by which the Ruling Class exploit the rest of society.
I have to address the following blatantly false statement:
"The most materially obsessed people are those suffering in extreme poverty. The ability to be anti-materialist and pursue higher spiritual ends or even engage in charity is a luxury afforded those who've already attained a relatively high living standard."
The most materialistic people are Americans, period, and with the exception of those at the very bottom in this country, Americans are rich compared to most of the world. Wanting food and shelter does not make one materialistic.
As to having to be rich in order to be anti-materialist or pursue spiritual goals, again your statement is ridiculous and not based on reality. My friends and I are not materialistic and we're mostly working class or lower. (Actually, the most materialistic friends I have are the ones who make a lot of money.) Monks and yogis are dirt poor, but they strive to expand their consciousness, not to gain material wealth. You have a very bourgeois and false notion of people whose lives are focused on spiritual goals. I realize that there are limousine liberal-types who do this — movies and TV shows make fun of them, and I've seen them too — but they're not the ones I'm talking about and they're not real anyway, they're phony.
I shouldn't have used the word "most". My point was that desiring an increasing standard of living for the world does not mean that we only care about materialism. For many people, the appeal of a higher standard of living is precisely that they are freed from the constraints of having to worry about their base material needs.
Suppose in fifty years increased economic development and productivity means that a man could make as much money (inflation adjusted) in 30 hours a week that he now makes working 48 hours.
Would this make him more materialistic? Perhaps. He could still work 48 hours and buy many more toys than he could if he lived in a previous age. But he could also opt to work less and use the resulting extra leisure time to pursue non-materialistic goals. He could travel more, read more, and spend time with friends and family. He could give much more to charity.
Having a lot of money means that you don't have to think much about money and this is very liberating.
To reiterate, you don't have to be a materialist to support policies that increase the wealth of society.
A lot can be learned about Libertarianism from observing Libertarians.
I guess you mean well but none of these people you quote are in fact libertarians.
This last reply was meant for Ivanildo Santos Terceiro towards the top of this thread. My bad.
The people you say you have read are not libertarians! Libertarianism is not neoliberalism! If you ever want to read anything by an actual libertarian I would recommend Harry Brown. Also, we should be careful not to utilize Spiritual Bypassing when trying to discuss issues.
Whether its radical left wing nut job, and Nazi profiteer George Soros, or right-wing kooks, like the Koch head brothers, whose father profited handsomely from Stalinist Russia, who work to install governments of the left or right wing variety, the beneficiaries are always the billionaires.
Mr. Fang's description of the Free Brazil movement and the ouster of Dilma is very much at odds with the detailed accounts written by Glenn Greenwald. Greenwald documented an entrenched oligarchy supported by major media outlets ousting a democratically elected president and replacing her with far more corrupt hacks.
Given Greenwald's credentials and expertise on Brazil, I'm inclined to give a lot more weight to his version of events.
Mr. S, as always in these cases and in history, the brazilian coup is much more complex than Mr. Greenwald and Mr. Fang can put out in an article. Both have reason here and Mr. Fang`s points about the MBL are correct. The oligarchy in Brazil would never be able to work out the coup without the strength of the MBL movement (also financed by pre-coup opposition political parties) at influencing public opinion. Nowadays it is well known that MBL is one of the agencies that publishes most of Brazilian fake news and still attracts a legion of supporters.
Sigh. Now a parade of bozos will show up to argue about who is a "true" libertarian and what are "true" libertarian principles.
Rand Paul proposes a straight 20% sales tax across the board. So a rich guy can pay the taxes on his food from pocket change while the losers (the vast majority) created by captalist systems which run by capitalist rules struggle to pay for the food itself.
An aside…Wannabe yank Brian Mulroney, while Prime Minister of Canada, tried to tax food under the then-new Goods & Services Tax (GST). The Canadian people had a quiet chat with him(I believe the words "lynch" and "tied to a tree" were used).
Unlike the USA, we're not pussy enough to accept sales tax on basic foodstuffs.
I don't know if you read my comment below — I said indeed there is a problem defining "true" libertarianism, because the real politics lie in what rights you uphold, not your willingness to uphold "rights" in an undefined way.
There are many US states that do not place sales tax on foodstuffs — however, this does not prevent workers from being charged FICA tax on the income to buy them (and their employers also, in a way that is simply passed on as a part of the labor cost) while interest income and very high income is immune to it. Supposedly that is because FICA pays for future Social Security, but the government borrows a huge chunk of the money for general costs so they can give the rich tax rebates, then hints in increasingly uncertain terms it will never pay it back.
I have speculated that a basic minimum income can be deduced from the rent that could be charged if all assets never created by man were fairly shared, then rented to those who currently have them. But a first attempt at this ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Humanities/2017_June_16#Calculating_the_appropriate_tax_level_directly_from_the_value_of_natural_resources ) seems pretty confused — for one thing, the official statistics are that Americans only own $45,000 in property per capita, which, frankly, seems so contrary to the reality of property values (even if they are rented or mortgaged they should still count!) that I can't accept it as valid data. I think that the proper minimum income *can* be deduced, however, by some honest person who is good enough at economics.
Rand Paul is a Republican.
He's also a self-described Libertarian.
Politicians call themselves lots of things we don't buy into or should not buy into all day long, Rand Paul is in fact a Republican.
Actually, a real flat tax on income — no BS loopholes for rich assholes — with a nice floor of $40,000/year would be far preferable to the totally corrupt current system. That way, you only pay the tax on what you earn yearly above $40,000, so you can use the first $40K for necessities.
As to sales taxes, we don't pay sales tax on food or medicine in California, as it should be. But I'm all for taxing anything aside from necessities, starting with a nice big tax on gasoline. Human overconsumption and overpopulation are destroying our planet, and taxing needless and/or destructive crap is one way to lower needless consumption.
CONNECT THE DOTS. James McGill Buchanan… Kochs… Dilma… What the shit.
..that have went…
That's where I stopped.
Zelaya was led from the presidential palace in his pajamas…
People still wear pajamas?
I agree with others that the nature of "libertarianism" is the key issue here.
Traditionally, libertarian was a polite word for anarchist; a philosophy centered on the rights of the individual.
The fundamental problem with anarchism/libertarianism is that although it is a different way of looking at the world, it is not actually a detailed enumeration of the rights of man — and anything that can be written as a law can be written as a right. So the libertarians, for example, can choose between supporting the right of the poor not to be taxed and the right of the rich not to be taxed (guess which they picked … because who pays the bills?) More fundamentally, you can get to people talking about your right to live in a drug-free society, your right not to be bullied online, your right to a secure identity or whatever they want. In other words, anarchism or libertarianism fails to actually contain the core ideas that one would have hoped it contained, and is an empty vessel waiting to be refilled, at least on a temporary basis, with whatever the master ordered.
As such, many different brands are possible. A modern "anarchist" group might focus on:
* Sending amateur SWAT teams to attack laboratory buildings where animals are used
* Smashing businesses for visibility
* Stopping speakers with undesirable ideas
A modern "libertarian" group might focus on:
* Establishing state monopolies for vital services like broadband access, highways, and water.
* Freeing the operators from any limits on the fees and regulations they can oppose
* Eliminating taxes on the wealthy
The sort of thing you probably had in mind when you first looked into libertarianism might have been more like:
* Having the right to start your own business for free without submitting a plan to anyone for approval
* Ending the War on Drugs
* Having the right to buy pharmaceuticals without prescription and without FDA licensing, exclusivity or other obstacles
Now obviously, these are all very different movements. Anarchism and libertarianism are not politics, they are just wrappers. And we need to go back to the central questions, namely, what are the essential human rights, and what are just laws? We can wrap the former in anarchism and the latter in authoritarianism but they had better agree on the outcome.
That's not at all what anarchy or anarchism is. Anarchy is an unachievable yet desirable Utopian state of society where people have taken total responsibility for their actions so that government is no longer needed. Libertarianism, in stark contrast, is advocacy of removal of government regulations on the alleged ground that motivated individual actions will produce better results and that government regulations stifle individual motives and creativity (based on listening to libertarians speak).
I consider myself part anarchist, among my many parts, but I am definitely not a libertarian, though I AM a civil libertarian (vice should be legal, etc.).
We have a few great civil liberties written into the constitution – liberties that are indeed true and worth protecting by all means. Nonetheless, civil libertarianism eventually runs into political decision making like everything else. For example, do you uphold the mother's civil liberty not to be banned from ending a pregnancy or the fetus's civil liberty not to be cut up and sucked out through a hose? Then you have to go back, draw up a theory, what is consciousness, when should life be protected and so on. And saying "oh, I'm all for liberty" isn't *really* an answer. It only works when you've defined the specific liberty.
You and Glenn Greenwald need to get together in a ring, with gloves protective gear.
So basically… Capitalism?
Interventionist capitalism, actually. Enormous difference!
" . . . the history of failure of socialist governments in Latin America . . ." ????? The history of Latin America is NOT about socialist governments failing; rather it is a history of dominated by U.S. interference, through both military intervention (including death squads, which were U.S. proxies) and economic/financial imperialism. Greg Grandin, America's Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism provides an excellent starting point to understanding while Latin America has been struggling for decades with abject poverty, collapsing economies, crushing debt, staggering income inequality, lawlessness, etc.
The only socialist country which clearly has been able to assert its independence and survive has been Cuba, which not only offers its people free healthcare and education, but also has the lowest infant mortality rate among all countries include in the Americas (even ahead of the U.S.). What has failed repeated in Latin America has been the U.S.-backed governments, which only serve U.S. imperialist interests, at the expense of the local populations. Read Grandin's book . . . not by an investigative reporter, but by an established academic historian. Libertarianism isn't part of the solution.
As a libertarian, my antennas were raised as soon as I saw the headline of this piece. It's been rare in my experience that left-leaning journalists correctly describe libertarian ideology, and unfortunately this article follows that trend.
Ludwig von Mises, Frederick Hayek, Milton Friedman, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, the Koch brothers, James O'Keef, Andrew Breitbart, and Mike Pence do NOT share the same ideology, though Lee Fang makes it seem as though they did. Mises and Hayek are the only two on that list that qualify as libertarians, with Mises being better than Hayek on that score. However, Murray Rothbard is a better, more consistent libertarian than either of them.
Friedman, Reagan and Thatcher were right-wing supply side economists and war-mongers, decidedly anti-libertarian.
The first people to coin the phrase "Kochtopus" were libertarians who were concerned about the growing influence of big money over the libertarian movement. The Kochs deserve plenty of criticism, and much of it comes (as it has for decades) from other libertarians. However, it is a gross canard to suggest that big money in the aggregate support libertarian reforms. As far as oligarchs go, the Koch brothers are bit players.
The preponderance of corporate and banking interests support State regulation of the economy, taxpayer-funded subsidies and government-granted monopoly privileges. Against the likes of George Soros, Sheldon Adelson, the Israel Lobby, Goldman Sachs, Pharmaceutical companies and the rest of the US ruling class, the Koch brothers hardly merit an asterisk.
The Atlas Network is a mixed bag in my view. However, putting aside the potential for ulterior motives and/or undue corporate influence, given the history of failure of socialist governments in Latin America and the very recent confluence of headline-grabbing corruption and scandal, wouldn't a necessary corrective be a move towards liberalizing markets and strengthening private property rights in any event?
I've heard from several libertarian groups in Venezuela that are not associated with the Atlas Network. These people just believe that the theories of Mises and Rothbard explain why their economy collapsed and provide a better path toward rebuilding their society. The tone of this article seem to suggest that people like this are simply pawns of rich US oligarchs.
Actually, there are many people who simply read the theories of the Austrian School of economics, such as the theory of the business cycle, or read the political theory of Murray Rothbard, and came to the inescapable conclusion that socialism cannot work and will inevitably lead, in the short run or the long run, to societal collapse.
Thank you for writing this. I had the same reaction. Those damn Libertarians would work with right-wing military dictatorships. Definition something Murray Rothbard preached right?
Only someone who has done zero reading could group this all together under the banner of "libertarian".
Given the history of failure of capitalist governments around the world and the very recent confluence of headline-grabbing corruption and scandal, wouldn't a necessary corrective be a move towards reigning in "free" markets and strengthening social safety nets in any event?
Should many not come to the inescapable conclusion that capitalism cannot work and will inevitably lead, in the short run or the long run, to inequality, societal collapse, ecological collapse?
Exactly. The "liberal" policies so hated by Libertarians were the only bulwark against the monopolizing power of capitalism after the 1929 collapse. The "horrible" trade unions fought tooth and nail for workers' rights against the monstrosities of capitalism before that. I wonder how many of these think-tank libertarians hang out in Somalia, the libertarian heaven? And why does Libertarianism in America so often align itself with right-wing policies against abortion and in favor of white supremacy? Look at Ron Paul's publications from the 1980's to see proof of that.
The 1929 stock market crash was a result of a decade of credit expansion created by the Federal Reserve that caused an artificial economic boom (the "roaring" twenties), that necessitated a painful correction. Instead of allowing the liquidation of debt and a restructuring of the economy as we did a decade earlier during the Depression of 1920-21, the Hoover Administration and later the Roosevelt Administration delayed the correction and deepened the Depression due to misguided State interventions.
If there is one book I'd recommend you read, it's a book called "The Triumph of Conservatism" by Gabriel Kolko. Kolko was a New Left historian who came to prominence in the 1960s. He's not a libertarian, but he came to similar conclusions about the Progressive Era and was cited numerous times by Murray Rothbard.
The Progressive Era was almost the exact opposite of what people have been taught. The new regulations and government interventions in the economy were cheered on and lobbied for by Big Business and banks as a way of cartelizing and monopolizing by capturing the government. Their aim was to cripple their competitors and protect themselves from market forces that would inevitable whittle away their wealth and market share.
Libertarians are not against Unions. We are against aggression, as I've said numerous times. Voluntary unions are fine.
Most libertarians are actually pro-choice, but there is not a libertarian position on the topic. Similar to the issue of immigration, libertarians are sharply divided. Ron Paul is pro-life, but Murray Rothbard was pro-choice. Myself I fall on the side of pro-choice, though I acknowledge the complexity of the topic.
Libertarians have never supported white supremacy. That is a complete fabrication, invented whole clothe by dishonest leftists.
The objectionable passages in the Ron Paul newsletters (and I agree they were wrong) amounted to a handful of snippets from a handful of articles during a couple of years in the early 1990s from a publication that ran for well over a decade. Freelance ghost-writers were responsible for the objectionable quotations.
Libertarianism is a much more popular school of thought today than it was in decades past. As a very fringe ideology, libertarians had to strategically align with either left-wing or right-wing groups at various times if they hoped to have any impact on politics.
During the 1960s and early 70s, for example, Murray Rothbard aligned with the hippies and far-left against the Cold Warrior Right of William F. Buckley.
During the early 1990s, Rothbard thought it wise to strategically align temporarily with elements of the Right.
I believe that whoever authored those incendiary passages in those newsletters made the dubious and short-sighted decision to virtue signal to the far-right using un-libertarian language in order to foster an alliance.
The problem with making strategic alignments with either Left or Right is that you risk taking on the baggage that either of these groups bring.
You have to define your terms. Many things that are commonly referred to as "capitalist" in contemporary society are things that libertarians oppose. Libertarians support a particular sort of capitalism called laissez-faire free market capitalism. This is in contrast to crony capitalism whereby businesses lobby the government for subsidies, favorable regulations, monopoly privilege and so forth.
Just think of the libertarian conception of free markets as synonymous with the non-aggression principle. This view simply means that people ought to be able to engage in any voluntary transaction on the market or use their own property to produce any good or service without needing bureaucratic approval, provided their actions don't cause harm to any individuals or their property.
That last part is the key to libertarian law. For example, if you read Rothbard on the issue of pollution, you'd learn that the strict property rights principles he espoused would be much tougher in limiting businesses that emit harmful emissions or dump toxins into oceans and rivers than is the State.
I made my comment in the context of Latin American politics. There aren't any Swedens or Denmarks in South America. The States that are failing, such as Venezuela, were throwbacks to actual socialism. These aren't mixed economy, "regulated" free markets with a social safety net.
As much as I dislike the Koch brothers and don't trust the Atlas Network, it seems hard to fathom how anyone could oppose reforms away from actual command-and-control socialism toward freer markets.
I get that a Leftist would not want to see actual Rothbardian Anarchism flourish, but consider what people are going through in Venezuela. People are digging through garbage, fighting with wild animals for scraps of food so they don't die of starvation.
If any society needs market prices, and an infusion of capital investment and entrepreneurship, it's them.
Any "free market" for public goods and survival needs is immoral. The amount of intervention by the government in order to limit the inevitable abuse, exploitation, greed makes it far more logical to simply fold the production and provision of such goods into the government where it can be collectively controlled, the benefits and the costs collectively shared.
One of the problems with Venezuela is that Maduro is a poor leader, not worse than those who currently wish to replace him, but poor nonetheless. He should have gone much farther in redistributing the stolen, hoarded wealth and using it to benefit the masses.
It is quite unfortunate that many are struggling, starving, when the richest country on earth, which produces more than enough food to aid them, is a short trip away yet does nothing. Instead it does the opposite, has done so for decades all over the continent, causing immense suffering.
Based on your comments you seem to have allowed poor implementations to cloud your view of governments and certain ideologies. These are simply tools, like any tool it can be misused, used for harm or for benefit, can be more or less useful depending on the situation.
The vastly different tribes (my word, not yours) that you advocate for elsewhere may have worked well when we were less numerous, less capable, more dispersed. But do not work today.
It is for this reason that we need collectively governed "command-and-control" (as you call them) structures. Perhaps portions of your libertarian tool, which you claim is far more benign than the one advocated by the more prominent libertarians of today, can be integrated into the new governing tool we must craft. But far more portions will need to be crafted from collectivist rather than individualist ideologies.
We must use our collective will to force the redistribution of hoarded, stolen wealth and resources; to force the protection of our non-human brothers and sisters. We exist on a finite planet, we are not the only inhabitants and we are not the only generations.
Such actions will certainly be decried as fascism, authoritarianism, and worse. But those currently in power will destroy everything before they willingly give up such power and control. It is for this reason that they must be destroyed before we can begin to build a better future. Like any virus, if not completely eradicated the threat will continue to lurk, waiting for conditions to allow it to spread anew.
And do not be mistaken, it is not the powerless adherents of these toxic ideologies which must be eradicated, but those privileged powerful few who use the powerless as pawns and shields, always eager to use them to sacrifice for the cause, to use them to distract and divide.
"He should have gone much farther in redistributing the stolen, hoarded wealth and using it to benefit the masses."
How? Be specific please. He already controls oil, communications, banking, farms, and energy. Moreover, he has been printing money to buy goods and services as you wish all countries should do. So please enlighten us and tell us how far Maduro should go because obviously his policies are not working.
Default on all debt owed to parasites.
Seize the hoarded wealth of the privileged few. Do some still dwell in slums while others live extremely well? Then he has certainly not gone far enough.
He should have transitioned off of oil.
He should have made the country more self-sufficient and sustainable.
Maduro attempted to placate those privileged few, to walk a path closer to the center, that was his mistake.
Dude, again BE SPECIFIC or maybe you cannot be specific because you are ignorant of basic economics and international business.
"Default on all debt owed to parasites."
As soon as he defaults those "parasites" in China, US, Latin America…will have the legal right to seize Venezuela's assets overseas. How a default would make it better in that case?
"Seize the hoarded wealth of the privileged few. "
He already seized oil, communications, energy, farms, banking. He already controls the food industry, seized super markets… and the construction industry. They chased foreign investors away years ago by seizing their property. Again, BE SPECIFIC. What else should he do to "seize the hoarded wealth of the few"?
"He should have transitioned off of oil.
He should have made the country more self-sufficient and sustainable."
How? BE SPECIFIC. Again, he already controls the key industries in Venezuela and already chased foreign investors away. Be specific and tells us how he should have made Venezuela "self sufficient and sustainable".
He also prints money to buy goods and services. You have been claiming over and over that is a good policy and others who challenge it are just propagandists. Be specific and tell us why that policy is not working in Venezuela.
Ah but then we wouldn't have provided you a chance to feel righteous and superior. How could we deprive you of that?
The largest impediment to success in Venezuela is the ideology promoted around the world by the United States and others. Which idolizes competition and exploitation. How could Maduro insulate himself and his country from that? It is likely not within his power to do so, but perhaps he needed to try.
The solutions for Venezuela are not the same solutions necessary for the United States (or similar countries) as they are in dramatically different positions. One solution they do share is the destruction of the United States elites and their oppressive ideology.
What Maduro has already done would be far more effective and beneficial, though still not enough, once this toxic influence is removed.
Your precious international business and economics are simply the belief systems of the death cult you seem so intent on supporting.
What can Maduro really do that does not amount to a suicidal charge for his country at the masses common enemy? Likely nothing. But that does not automatically make it the incorrect response.
The empire must be destroyed or the best we can suggest will be band-aids on shotgun wounds.
But you can go on, content in your evaluation of my ignorance, it makes no difference to me or our cause. You seem mistaken that I wish to have some kind of conversation or debate with you, when I seek nothing of the sort. You are simply being used, a tool, just like the culture you support uses you and then throws you away.
That is a long and useless speech.
You claim Maduro is "a poor leader" who should do more "to seize the hoarded wealth of the few" right? Are those your statements? The question is simple: what more Maduro should do? He already controls oil, construction, energy, communications, farms, food (including supermarkets), banking. His party already seized foreign investors assets and chased them away years ago.
Again, be specific and tell us what more he should do?
You have been promoting the idea that printing money to buy good and services is an efficient solution. Maduro has been doing it and it is not working ( like the Chinese did it centuries ago and it failed, the Germans did it and it failed, the Zimbabwean did it and it failed).
Why the idea that you claim is the most efficient is not working in Venezuela?
Feel free to admit that you are incapable of supporting your own position with empirical evidence. The nonsense you keep writing only worsens your so called argument.
"Given the history of failure of capitalist governments around the world "
Example, please. Be specific, please.
"Should many not come to the inescapable conclusion that capitalism cannot work and will inevitably lead, in the short run or the long run, to inequality, societal collapse, ecological collapse?"
No, because in the last 70 years countries that adopted capitalism have greatly reduced poverty, improved their healthcare, education and standard of living. Was it wrong for China, Japan, South Korea, India…to adopt capitalism?
"Was it wrong for China, Japan, South Korea, India…to adopt capitalism?"
Absolutely, without a doubt.
You spout the myth of lifting individuals out of poverty but it is incorrect, at best it was all in China. Yet what did it cost these individuals? Simply their clean air and water, their natural resources, their ecosystems. You know, just the things required for life, the things which make one truly rich and not impoverished.
Was it wrong for these countries to adopt unsustainable, toxic consumerism?
Absolutely, without a doubt.
Modern Capitalism has failed in every country it has been implemented. Just because such states continue to exiist does not indicate its success. It has hastened our ecological overshoot, any small benefits are bought with the suffering of the future generations, the suffering of our non-human kin, and the suffering of those existing today who are deemed expendable, not important.
Capitalism as practiced is a wonderful tool if one would like to concentrate power, wealth, control in the hands of a privileged few. Any small benefits it trickles down to the masses are simply padding for their chains, an attempt to keep the masses docile.
"You spout the myth of lifting individuals out of poverty but it is incorrect, at best it was all in China. "
Can you show us data that prove that South Koreans, Indians, Vietnamese… are poorer AFTER their governments established capitalist policies?
"Simply their clean air and water, their natural resources,…."
This is a political point. Capitalism has already provided the solutions to the environment problems. Ask the American, Chinese, and Europeans companies that are making billions producing and selling clean energy and environmentally friendly goods. If POLITICIANS refuse to pass laws to move towards clean energy then it is a POLITICAL problem.
"Any small benefits it trickles down to the masses are simply padding for their chains, an attempt to keep the masses docile."
Hence why you gonna give us data showing that Indians, South Koreans, Vietnamese and others got poorer thanks to capitalism.
They are poorer because in return for ecosystems they received meaningless paper and useless trinkets.
There is no clean energy on the scale the dominant ideologies wish to use it on. Replacing what we have with "greener" options, while still continuing the endless growth and consumption does not solve any real problem.
You are infatuated with materialist wealth it would seem since you cannot see how clearly such ideologies impoverish ourselves and our fellow inhabitants of our finite planet.
Infinite growth on a finite planet is unsustainable and immoral. You are paying for things, for your comfort, with that which you have no right to give.
"They are poorer because in return for ecosystems they received meaningless paper and useless trinkets."
On planet Earth, education, healthcare, food, better standard of living are not "meaningless paper and useless trinkets". Nevertherless, it might be possible that in your universe it is still a failure when billions of Chinese, Indians do not have to worry about famine anymore.
"There is no clean energy on the scale the dominant ideologies wish to use it on."
Political statement. It has nothing to do with capitalism.
You are confusing politics and economics. This is to help you:
Generald Dynamics cannot sell its tanks to the public. Why? Because politicians say no.
General Motors can sell polluted cars to the public. Why? Because politicians say yes.
"You are infatuated with materialist wealth it would seem since you cannot see how clearly such ideologies impoverish ourselves and our fellow inhabitants of our finite planet."
Hugo Chavez and Maduro said the same thing. Venezuela is poorer now than it was before their policies.
"One of the problems with Venezuela is that Maduro is a poor leader, not worse than those who currently wish to replace him, but poor nonetheless. He should have gone much farther in redistributing the stolen, hoarded wealth and using it to benefit the masses."
It's amazing how often socialists use this as an excuse for why their system failed. When will you realize that it's inevitable that the wrong person will get ahold of the power once it's amassed in a centralized place like that? That's just human nature. To endorse socialism requires you to be willfully ignorant of basic attributes of humanity.
That is not even an excuse. That is a pathetic statement that reflects an incomprehensible ignorance of basic economics, and human psychology. It also exposes the willingness of certain individuals to recluse themselves in their own universe. Maduro's party already took control of most of Venezuela's industries. Moreover, he has been printing money to buy goods and services. That was exactly what that commenter said was a good idea that even the US should follow. Now the same commenter is calling Maduro "a poor leader" after Venezuela passed the policies that he himself keeps promoting.
Your problem is in how you view human nature. Though it is not your fault, we are after all the product of a culture which for milennia has oppressed, conquered, enslaved, destroyed every culture which does not think the way it does, which does not see the world in the same way as it does.
So what such evolution has produced is a small group willing to continue their path of destruction, exploitation, ecocide and the masses — those of whom survived — docile, confused, ignorant, victims of propaganda.
While most of the masses, for various reasons, would disagree with our means, the ends we seek would be welcomed should we succeed in producing them.
The reason, despite all these milennia of trying, that such a toxic culture has been unable to completely snuff us out is because we represent a far older, a far more sustainable human nature. A nature which while imperfect provided for us for much longer and much better than your toxic "civilizations".
We will only be destroyed by the complete destruction of our species, which the dominant death cult seems to see as an acceptable solution.
You're welcome to join us, those currently in power do not care about you and your family. You are a tool, a pawn, expendable, nothing more.
You're right. I guess that if I view human nature realistically instead of through a lens of fantasy that is a problem for accepting socialism. I mean it's clearly a coincidence that every time power is centralized too much it ends up falling into corrupt hands and being catastrophic for everyone. Socialism is just dealing with a string of bad luck. The odds will turn. Keep rolling those dice and eventually things will work out. We're due.
Right. Latin America (or the world) is filled with active citizens who casually browse the annals of social theorists and economic philosophers to come to conclusions on their own that line up with those of the anarchist billionaire think tanks and interests.
"He sees the Brazilian left's every move as a veiled attempt at subverting democracy.."
From what I know of these guys, their MO is almost always the same. I bet he describes perfectly normal political activities with ridiculous rhetoric like "operatives" or "establishing beachheads" because he doesn't actually have any proof to back up the conspiracy he wants to weave.
What a crazy thing to do.
As an Argentinean, I can tell you that Cristina Kirchner's candidate lost the last elections because of the incredible and rampant corruption of her government. I consider myself a leftist, and some of her and her husband's social and re distributive initiatives were positive (as usual, not really their initiatives but from some other senators, but regardless, at least they implemented them), but they did this just to build power after wining an election with very little margins, and once they had it they simply maintained a new status quo, cooked the country's statistics, corruption became widespread at surreal levels (with members of the government having been filmed with literal bags of dirty money), anyone who criticized the government was an "imperialist", or had a "dark past" during the last military dictatorship or whatever, and when you examine the cold numbers poverty levels didn't really improve significantly during Kirchner's government. Nobody really wants to go back to what the neoliberal 90's meant for Argentina (ironically, the Kirchners were key participants of those 90's, supporting each and every neoliberal policy back then), but if the alternative is one of this "populist" governments then it's not really Atlas or the Right's fault that there's a wind change in Latin America
stop watching CNN!
Are these the live and let live libertarians or are these groups fronts for the same old right wing oligarch death squads repackaged for another round of mass murder?
Not to mention the six U.S. Military bases in Columbia, one in Paraguay, Sao Palo, Brazil, and a new base in Peru
Where is the Sao Paulo base? Some of my "fellow americans" stalk me here from time to time. I wonder if it is one of the Stasi's Zersetzung bases.
… along with the US Consulate, or course… and soldiers on leave from the M.E., and the numerous full time CIA goons living in Brazil.