http://mises.org/daily/110

This article got linked by Balloon Juice and mises.org lets users tag content, so lulz resulted.
I think my favorite is "Libertarianism discredits itself again based on its obvious inhumanity," though "initially thought was satire" is pretty good too.

Also, fun fact, Michael Levin is yet another Mises.org SUPER GENIUS who is unfairly smeared as being a "racist" by the liberal PC thought police just because he believes black people are genetically inferior to whites.

fly,

Where'd you get that he thinks blacks are genetically inferior to whites?

He wrote a book entitled "Why Race Matters."
Here's a (glowing, natch) Mises review:
http://mises.org/misesreview_detail.aspx?control=117 Fun fact about him number #2:
He's Jewish and was selling his book through various white supremacist publications(his core market) and was a regular speaker at American Renaissance's conventions, until he figured out that the white supremacists weren't very fond of his people, either. LOL.

This is not a defense of Levin (I'm not familiar with his work at all), but:

1. Libertarians don't typically go on about the "liberal PC thought police", the conservatives do that.

2. This Levin character is hardly a revered "Mises.org SUPER GENIUS", he has exactly one article on the website (the one you linked to), and it's over a decade old.

1. It's a reference to the various ways "libertarian" posters in this forum bend over backwards to explain away the racism of Rothbard, Rockwell, etc. to defend their favorite Alabama-based blog/think tank. Generally speaking, the go to defense is "that's not racist, what's wrong with saying that people should be afraid of getting carjacked?" and variants.

2. Glowing review on his book linked, he's clearly welcome at Mises.org functions.

fly,

Well looks like from that book review that Levin wrote some incorrect stuff that he is either incorrect about or just another racist trying to hide behind faulty science. I'd be interested to see if he has anything to say on that subject today.

Does this guy tour often with Mises? Looks like he's only got one article on the site as mosdef pointed out.

But we should just quit here. I don't really wanna try and defend mises authors when they are incorrect about race. Because it's silly debate about something that only exists because we really try hard to make it exist.

lol at the "Arbeit Macht Frei" tag at the bottom of the review. Nice.

Fly,

So your claim is that believing that there are genetic factors that influence market productivity automatically makes one a racist?

strawman.jpg

Even though it causes me physical pain to agree with Fly.

Full disclosure: I still hate mises.org and lewrockwell.com. Would love to never see another link to writings on those sites as an introduction to libertarianism.

What do you hate about it?

Aside from formatting and layout issues (less bad on mises.org), I think a large percentage of the writing is polemical. It takes for granted that its readership agrees with the fundamental premises that underlie its political philosophy, rather than carefully explaining them (caveat here for Mises hosting Human Action, which I appreciate) from the ground up. I think the libertarian political movement is at place where acceptance of the most basic ideas is a long way off (cf. "what about the roads?"), and writing pieces for an audience mostly of people like you and Borodog (who probably have enough intellectual investment in understanding the position anyway that you would seek out literature) is largely unproductive in terms of shifting the social understanding of libertarianism (we're not rabid right-wingers who want to sell your baby to Coca-Cola), and gaining traction toward bringing about a truly voluntary society. Yelling at people about how they're evil for supporting the Fed or whatever is not going to help, and that's how a lot of it comes off to me.

Only if you consider the obese to be a "race".

How is asking a question for clarification a strawman? I'm trying to figure out what he's saying, because it sounds like he thinks I'm a racist. And perhaps by whatever his definition is, I am.

Mises.org does explain libertarianism from the ground up. You want this done in every Daily Article they post or something? Otherwise, what exactly are you saying? LRC is the most read libertarian web site in the world. It is written by libertarians for libertarians. So yeah, writers on LRC typically forego a lot of philosophical hand holding.

This is not an accurate portrayal of Mises.org . Yes, it's probably not so easy for a layman to get into Mises.org, considering how massive it is, but a lot of things they do are really tailored to a new audience.

Take a look at these for example:

Applying Economics to American History (Economics for High School Students)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-LJ3wZjD4I

Meltdown
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=541bajR4k8g

If you have the patience to read Human Action or wade deep into the site, sure, though I'd quibble with whether it's a complete explanation of all perspectives within libertarianism. I don't think this applies to most readers.

Kinda, yeah. I think basic acceptance is more important than detailed treatment. I also think the tone needs work.

And so what would be the point of linking non-libertarians to it as an explanation of libertarian views? It's not written for them.

Borodog- Obviously genetics matter in productivity, so I don't believe you are a racist for holding that view. I don't want to be accused of dodging the question, but I don't think continuing this tangent is helpful. Levin is a racist, and the Mises Senior Fellow who reviewed his book is also a racist.

DrModern- You're going to need to provide more context, let me try:

Cato, for example, avoids nearly all of the tone/assuming conclusions/polemic problems that plague Mises' blog postings. They also do a better job of gatekeepering the racist/neo-Confederate/black helicopters crowd, and maintain more strict academic standards(these are related, obviously).


This means that an open minded person who is interested in learning more is far more likely to be swayed by tooling around Cato reading random articles of interest than by clicking on Mises' articles because Cato doesn't scatter "Child Slavery: Unfairly Maligned" and "Lincoln: History's Greatest Monster" articles in between its scholarly critiques of the drug war and protectionism.

Oh, yeah, Cato also has scholarly critiques of the drug war and protectionism instead of rambling manifestos by bumpkins. That's another thing Mises could work on.

Yeah, I still agree with Fly.

Sigh me too. The fact that libertarianism has either been hijacked by or appealed to racists throughout history has always bugged me.

The creationist BS you see on LewRockwell is also a MAJOR off-put.

The front page of the site currently has this gem - The Exclusive Kingdom of God

This is on the front page of one of the most popular libertarian websites in the world. It's really not helping dispel the stereotype of many libertarians as ignorant, introspected hillbillies who just want to keep their guns and pay less tax.

What do you mean, 'also'? There is no racist stuff on LRC.

Throughout history? What exactly are you talking about?

On what.