There are a lot of ways in which the government has too much power over our lives and that the President has too much power over government.

Capital and government have nearly made a complete merger though and just giving more power to capital will not make you more free.

Sounds like what we have now.

I'm AARP age now and I'm still an ancap. Have been since I was in my late 20's.

Zealous Georgist on my good days, practical leftist on my bad days and hopeless nihilist on my worst days. I see more worst days than good recently.

Georgism is compatible with AC if you assume that all land and raw materials are owned by everyone (both currently alive and still to be born) rather than by the first person who happens to randomly stumble across it, or more accurately the great great ... grandchildren of the person who killed and stole from the person who first stumbled across it.

It's OK but I still feel like anyone who is using internet message boards to craft a worldview probably needs a library card or something. There are definitely some smart posters here but let's not forget: 1) there's a huge, built-in provincialism here -- guessing it's mostly wealthier white dudes who largely had a middle-class or up western style education and 2) even if the top 5% of posters are pretty smart, the quantity of people really worth listening to is still less than like a dozen. There's not THAT many active posters here.

This sounds like the snooty 'read a book, get off my lawn' style but it's true. There's literally lifetimes worth of books on history, philosophy, and politics written by brilliant people or subject matter experts who dedicated a lifetime of study to the subject. Many of those works, especially books written in the last 100 years or so, usually have gone through some form of editing or peer review, even if it's informal.

Modern technology has allowed some of this to be distilled and summarized into podcasts or audiobooks, and even an hour on Google can provide a highly curated lists of books about these kinds of topics so you can even separate the wheat from the chaff there. All of those forms allow for far more depth than what a message board really allows. Tons of modern experts are accessible on twitter or email or whatever if you want interaction.

Minor anecdote: I got very interested in late Roman era depopulation/environmental determinism type arguments (e.g., basically the idea that the plague and ending of southern European/Mediterranean climatic optimums led to the degradation of the Roman Empire beginning in the 2nd century). You can email this guy -- a PhD with a speciality in late antiquity -- and he'll respond in like a day or less, and you can tell he's passionate about talking Rome and stuff.

2p2 is entertainment and should be treated as such. People who strive for 'actual progress' on the forum are almost surely doing it wrong. I don't doubt like genuine, meaningful discourse can happen but there's still a huge signal/noise ratio here.

There's really no reason people should be building their world views from forums or embracing something like anarchocapitalism or communism or liberalism because of what other posters on 2p2 are saying, other than laziness or being myopic. Those are understandable failures but let's admit they are failures. I get it if 2p2 is like an entry point to something better and deeper; but that's it's value, at most.

I just meant that the fact that ACism is basically dead now is a sign of progress within the forum.

I also think you're unfairly downplaying the quality of the discussion here (26k posts, hm). We've had long threads complaining about how miserable it is to try talking politics with relatives over the holidays and such. While that's a common trope in American political discourse at large, the implied theme of those threads always seems to be that, well, at least here I can speak my mind (even if I have to contend with ACtarding, Paulbots like Taso, and pvn posting the lolque pear as though that's contributing something, love ya boo). Sure, there's a homogeneity of perspective, but it's better than you're suggesting, I think.

I mean, sure, I have smart friends who are, like, professors and grad students and such with whom I enjoy discussing politics (side note: most of them are women). I have friends who are just regular ladies and gents with whom I enjoy discussing it too. I also read a lot of political theory, political history, and flat-out polemic, plus a ton of political coverage in newspapers and magazines. That stuff--plus my innate sense of "having good values"--ultimately has a bigger impact on my worldview, but I won't pretend that discussions here haven't influenced it as well.

Like, yeah, it's entertainment, but a pretty high-brow kind.

It could just be that ACism is just taking a timeout. If Dvaut is correct in his theory that Libertarianism waxes and wanes with the fortunes of the Republican Party, the Trump years could be a renaissance for people who want to privatize roads.

Another thing that may be a factor is the rise of the alt-right, which I'm guessing is snatching up a lot of the young aspie Internet dudebros who normally gravitate toward Libertarianism. If the alt-right is just a passing fad, the market is open for another Ron Paul figure.

I'm almost entirely certain 98% of ACists embrace ACism because of what some random idiots on a forum are saying.

Cool. I have been thinking about this kind of thing but hadn't heard the term. I'll put Progress and Poverty on my list.

Re Proudhon's "All property is theft" - I've been thinking about "some property is theft". Land for sure, but maybe not just land and not all property either.

Crocodile Dundee said something to the effect of "Owning land is like two fleas arguing over who owns the dog."

I think everyone in power wants to privatize roads to some degree. Here in California, land of no Republicans, a lot if not most of the new roads built in the last 20 years have had some kind of toll/fastrack.

Right, I get it. It is entertaining. I don't even deny you can learn some things here. I only mean to say -- and I think you ultimately agree -- that there are far better ways to learn about the world than relying on a message board to inform. I think it's akin to learning about history from The History Channel -- like yeah, maybe at 3am you'll catch that Modern Marvels episode about the Secrets of Oil and how olive oil cultivation the Persians and later the Greeks to dominate the near east with trade along with military might. And you're still, in the end, consuming a vastly inferior medium than even a mediocre book on the subject. And you're wading through hours and hours of American Pickers and Swamp People and UFO conspiracy theories and **** to get to the good stuff. The forums are sort of like that: yeah, you can learn things here, in a way that is ultimately mixed in with tons of nonsense and largely inferior to better ways to consume information.

There are some unfortunate downstream, almost embarassing consequences too -- remember that in the infamous How Libertarians Make Friends with Their Positions on the Civil War thread, it turned out like most of the resident ACist and libertarians had never even read Rothbard or knew much of what he wrote. That's one part astounding, one part wholly unsurprising, but lastly, one part galling: we're conversing with these people for *years* who have strident opinions about the world that aren't even bothering to pick up and read the guy whose thoughts, principles and philosophies more or less formed the core of what they claimed to believe.

You might say a lot about the evolution of people from whatever, something to ACism to something else and how it represents progress. I'd call it something else; when lots of people embrace positions they didn't even bother to learn the basics of, defend it vociferously before eventually pivoting away -- I'm not sure we want to call that progress. It's something alright, but it's a curious form of progress.

Note again I'm not really talking about you at all, if that matters. Just holistically the whole ACist phenomenon was striking but hardly represented some kind of beneficial evolution that speaks to the quality of the forum. Yet again I'd say it speaks directly to the heart of the people who post here (largely white, largely wealthy, likely toting around a decent to high level of education, pre-disposed to participation on internet forums and arguing). To lay my cards on the table, I'm closer to the Trolly position here: this strikes me a lot like the evolution of a typical Aspergers guy...highly detailed almost preternatural focus on a topic where they actually possess very little formal credentials or knowledge but aggressively argue for its correctness and stubbornly defend it. Possibly offensive, I know, but when you look around and see a bunch of nerdy dudes with 25k posts (myself included!) and they're mostly creatures of the internet and they clearly don't know THAT much, argue strongly, and rate themselves highly with little to no outside credentialing or respect, you're basically in canonical Aspergers territory.

I just learned about Georgism.

2p2 is not a substitute for research but it's good for some curation and is good at headline news. And if you get to know people there are professionals with a lot of experience in a wide variety of areas. Sure that's still just one or two voices in one field, but combined with access it's pretty handy.

Yeah it's pretty cool. It combines the benefits of an undistorted market (total ownership of the things you produce) with the obvious need for a robust welfare state (paid for by charging people and businesses for the things they use but didn't create and so don't own like land and raw materials). Also does this ring any bells?

Written in 1879, still applies today imo.

I think any supposition that you can establish a few basic principles and design a fair system is starting with failed premise. A slavish devotion to reason is not appropriate when fairness is based on irrational feelings and so are prosperity and happiness.

What is and is not ownable or rentable is something that you can start in abstraction. So, Land may not be ownable in theory, but perhaps in some cases it provides an overwhelming benefit at little cost. Or maybe not.

But some things are more purely emotional. People are never ownable. I'd say Chimps are never ownable. Dogs are sort of ownable, but the owners' rights are quite limited. Your toothbrush is definitely ownable.

Not allowing for a lot of fuzzy complexity is trying to put a square peg in a round hole as people are fuzzy and complex.

The problem is that government clearly has, in various forms, had success in removing the power that outside forces have over our lives.

And that it's clearly possible to focus on keeping the government's focus on those things. But ACists don't even want to acknowledge that, much less focus on it.

ACism appeals to a style of thinking that, for me at least, has become much less attractive as I have gotten older. The style basically works like this:

1) Start with highly debatable premises (e.g., the only real right is the property right).
2) Pile logic on top of the premises to reach a bunch of counterintuitive conclusions
3) Criticize opponents of your counterintuitive conclusions as illogical, unintelligent, or overly influenced by "feels"
4) Feel superior because you were the only person logical enough, smart enough, and mentally tough enough to accept the conclusions dictated by application of logic.
5) Slavishly defend the premises and refuse to concede that the absurdity of the ultimate conclusions might be indicative of flaws in the premises.

This style of thinking is appealing not just to closet cases who are obsessed with political theory. It's quite common to conspiracy theorists also. (The main difference is that conspiracy theorists have less respect for the application of logic to the dubious starting premise.)

I get it. It's inherently gratifying to one's ego to conclude that you are one of a select group of people who really understand what the right answer is. But you have to get over that ****.

Libertarianism as a style of thinking is quasi-mathematical in that it starts off with simple axioms and works by deduction and doesn't rely on messy empirical observations. I think that's a key part of why aspies and are drawn to it. It's conforting for those who see themselves as rigid logical Mr Spock types who aren't swayed by emotional arguments or feels.

Yea same.

The concept that private profits get socialised and social profits get privatised is not something I had ever seen articulated before.

Still an anarchocapitalist/free market anarchist/agorist/voluntaryist/whatever. Still around. Just got tired of having the same arguments over and over. Same thing happened to my hobby of arguing with creationists back in the day on talk.origins. Extremely similar mindsets, statists and creationists. Virtually identical arguments. Just like with that, it got old and boring.

An anology I use is that arguing with statists is like arguing over a pointilist painting. The statist is arguing over individual dots, of which there are 10s of thousands, each a long dragged out argument, and I'm simply not a good enough or patient enough communicator to get someone to back up and look at the whole picture (with a few rare exceptions, e.g. tomcollins). I just don't want to argue about the dots anymore. I see the picture. It's perfectly clear. That's good enough for me. I'd rather spend all that free time I used to waste posting here with my wife and kids, playing music, recording and mixing, etc. I developed an anxiety disorder a couple of years ago, and arguing on the internet is not conducive to stress reduction.

I wish peace and prosperity for all of you.

FWIW, I embraced ACism long before there were significant internet forums. Although I did first attempt to defend it back in the olden days on usenet in the mid to late 90s. During that time two of the authors who originally influenced me were also posting, David Friedman and George H. Smith.

I fully support most steps government makes to increase freedom.

Very happy to see you Borodog. Can you please let me know what you think about Trump's presidency?

In case he doesn't answer, I'm pretty sure he thinks Trump is a buffoon, but on the other hand #DingDongTheWitchIsDead. (I interact with him on other social media.)