zlacker

>>Ozarki+(OP)
I had no idea this was a campaign promise. Why? I don’t understand.

>>maplan+Q
I am active in libertarian circles and Ulbricht was a cause celebre. The 2024 election was a game of inches, and many libertarians I know voted Trump purely on this issue. It is possible this was a key way Trump eked out a victory.

>>monero+f3
Libertarians are very hard to take seriously because of shit like this. Nothing about Donald Trump is Libertarian.

>>dralle+C7
Very little about the Libertarian party is libertarian. Yet another party carrying water for authoritarianism, with the difference being that the implementation is through corporations.

>>mindsl+Bd
Libertarians are a self selecting bunch. Very few were raised into this philosophy. You can appreciate that my self identification as a libertarian is a careful, reasoned decision and not one that was flippantly made. It is the philosophy that is the most accurate and truthful to me.

>>monero+Ze
Read my comment again. I self-identify as a libertarian as I see individual freedom as paramount. But I kept going with the analysis to realize that the Libertarian Party does very little to represent that ideal.

>>mindsl+jf
My apologies, I thought you were accusing libertarians of authoritarianism (the irony!).

I find the Mises Caucus at least useful in pushing to do more than simply be an affinity group for people pretending to play politics. I find partying with LP officials to be very hilarious, what a group of odd balls. But the party itself has no hope of electoral victory, which is why everyone should vote Republican in the current iteration of two-party politics from the libertarian lens.

>>monero+ui
My point is that even if there were an electoral victory, the Libertarian Party would not bring individual freedom. They are operating from an assertion that starting with a list of moral axioms, every implication will be morally right by construction. By itself this is terribly mistaken (see Godel), but it goes askew even sooner when a few poor axioms are allowed to remain through "pragmatism", regulatory capture, etc.

As for the current political environment, I'd say that bureaucratic authoritarianism is at least the devil we know and can be routed around by individuals, whereas autocratic authoritarianism is at best a wildcard that stands to destroy a good chunk of the laws that have actually been restraining naked power.