Redditor is mad that top post of /r/Libertarian was reposted in /r/cringe. Receives almost 600 net downvotes. (np.reddit.com)
SubredditDrama
441 ups - 141 downs = 300 votes
238 comments submitted at 13:21:45 on Nov 25, 2013 by sirboozebum
Redditor is mad that top post of /r/Libertarian was reposted in /r/cringe. Receives almost 600 net downvotes. (np.reddit.com)
SubredditDrama
441 ups - 141 downs = 300 votes
238 comments submitted at 13:21:45 on Nov 25, 2013 by sirboozebum
Is /r/cringe where you go to post routine political disagreements now?
A routine political disagreement is "I think we should have universal healthcare" versus "I believe we need a free market to drive down costs and keep choice in the hands of consumers."
What makes this cringe-worthy is the arrogance. The "OMG if only people knew as much as I do, they would agree with me." And, by corollary, "OMG, the only reason someone could disagree with me is not knowing enough."
Now, if you have an example of the same kind of theme from a liberal being downvoted on /r/cringe, you have an argument. If someone did "Learns economics, becomes liberal" using a picture of stereotypical libertarian on top, I'd imagine it'd be downvoted. Or if someone did "learns ethics, becomes liberal" going from conservative to liberal in the pictures, it'd be downvoted.
Holy shit, that's the cringiest thing about libertarians, they think they know everything, "Pff, dude, I have a BA in Economics, don't even try to argue with me.", and then will proceed to "enlighten" you with 20 videos of the Zeitgeist movement and some 10 interviews with Ron Paul. So up on their asses it's even funny. The same happens with liberals and conservatives, but to a lesser extent IMO.
Lol, "BA". More like "have been taking a High School economics class for a semester so far".
Perhaps not the Zeitgeist movement, seeing as it's pretty much communism
Zeitgeist is very anti-establishment. Points out the "stuff behind out rigged economical system" and this subject is very dear to libertarians (and anarcho-capitalists). What I said is not a hypothesis, some libertarians really act like that...
I would have a very hard time calling someone who supports the Zeitgeist movement a libertarian (in the right-wing sense we're talking about here). Peter Joseph is quite fervently anti-capitalist. I suppose you could take snippets that omit the socialist stuff
Well, they never presented "anti-capitalists" videos to me. Just anti-fed, anti-bank, anti-government videos of the Zeitgeist movement. They may not be Zeitgeist "supporters", but they sure as hell use a lot of its anti-establishment artillery!
> If someone did "Learns economics, becomes liberal" using a picture of stereotypical libertarian on top, I'd imagine it'd be downvoted.
That's my point. ia that meme images are not deep political messages or whatever; however, I just don't believe that equivalent memes from other ideologies would be upvoted. Routine political disagreements often take a puerile form, but I'm not too attached to that particular language.
>That's my point. ia that meme images are not deep political messages or whatever; however, I just don't believe that equivalent memes from other ideologies would be upvoted.
The entire Reddit history of the "college liberal" meme that's the subject of this post disproves this notion.
It was a dumbass meme that was posted not some attack on libertarianism. It just so happened to be posted in /r/libertarian.
>It was a dumbass meme that was posted not some attack on libertarianism.
Right I'm sure it has nothing to do with the overall political orientation of /r/cringepics and they routinely upvote dumb-yet-innocuous memes from progressives. Surely you can provide an example of two to corroborate this.
What political orientation? /r/cringepics is a fucking cesspool. It has no political leanings besides being bullies.
Bashing feminism
Making fun of someone who dislikes the military, a typically progressive view.
Making fun of stoners
Making fun of people who don't vaccinate their kids.
So yeah they'll upvote dumbass leftist stuff on /r/cringepics.
I seem to be the only person who thinks that the comments in those threads are completely justified. I guess I'm just a bully.
I agree that /r/cringepics is a cesspool to some extant, but not based on the specific threads you just linked, it doesn't really help that case imo.
If you really believe /r/cringepics is a cesspool based on those threads, then I bet you'll absolutely hate /r/tumblrinaction.
Those were probably the best threads in /r/cringepics! The ones I hate are when they bash on Autistic or Mentally disabled folk.
> The ones I hate are when they bash on Autistic or Mentally disabled folk.
Exactly, now those where the threads that lead me to believe that /r/cringepics was shit.
> Making fun of people who don't vaccinate their kids.
They deserve it.
To be fair, the anti-vaccination movement is fucking stupid.
I agree with what you said, but those are pretty bad examples, with the exception of the feminism one.
Disliking the military is fine, but it's a real job, and one that we need.
The stoner thing was dumb. Sure we should allow research of drugs despite their recreational use, but I kinda doubt that statement is true, and I really doubt the people sharing it really care that deeply about cancer research.
People who don't vaccinate their kids are hurting everyone. That's something I can get behind.
> overall political orientation of /r/cringepics
jesus christ y'all think that anyone that disagrees with you does so because they're some kind of statist monster bent on hiding the true light of libertarianism from the people
Yeah you got me.
Well there's routine political disagreements, then there's lolbertarians. I mean they had a serious discussion about whether slavery is ok, it's a joke of an ideology.
> I mean they had a serious discussion about whether slavery is ok, it's a joke of an ideology.
That was like one person who got downvoted like crazy though.
Woah woah woah. This guy has a circle jerk to start and your facts are getting in the way to that!
Yeah no, I've been in the arguments that /r/libertarian has had about the civil war and slavery in general. Sympathy for the "property owners" of slaves is a common thing in that cesspool of a subreddit.
Really? I haven't actually seen these arguments, but either something has been misconstrued or they don't represent true libertarian thought. Our entire founding principle is you can't force someone to do something against their will, so claiming that libertarians endorse slavery raises a serious red flag to me.
>they don't represent true libertarian thought.
That isn't a thing. In addition to "libertarian thought" being a oxymoron in the first place, there isn't any consensus on what it means and how that society would work inside or outside or r/libertarian.
? There absolutely is an accepted set of principles, which slavery is the antithesis of.
Yeah, slavery is pretty much in blatant violation of the non-aggression principle, something that the overwhelming majority of libertarians believe in.
There's a reason the OP of that other thread got downvoted hard.
I would love to see this thread, do you have it_?
Go away, libertarian.
Lol
The guy I tried to reply to deleted his comment about "true libertarianism" because of downvotes which seemed unwarranted, but I'll post my sentiments under yours instead.
"The libertarian sub is garbage though. They all tend to have much more extreme views which skirt alongside Anarchism, especially with anarcho-capitalism. I'm a libertarian, but my views are much closer in line with those of Gary Johnson. Scale back unnecessary military operations, embrace equality, and a few more. The economic situation of massive corporations and tax loopholes is very tricky and I am never going to say that I understand it so I tend to not worry about that as much.
I think there should be safety nets in place, but I am also aware that some people abuse that. It is an issue that I can't even fathom understanding all of it. In the same way that a Republican president won't change the country to a haven for the rich (like many on the left think), and that a Democrat won't make us a socialist nation (like many on the right think), I know that a Libertarian president won't turn ya into Somalia.
There are too many facets of government which need to be changed and would be impossible in 4 or 8 years. The Libertarian subreddit gets extreme, but so do the other subreddits for political opinions. I don't mind people bashing /r/libertarian, but when they bash the entire ideology I just figure them to be dead set in their views. Everyone needs to take a step back and remember that a candidate or ideology can only change the country so much before a new election. I'll vote libertarian again because I'm not ready for the left's economic plan, but I'll be damned if I vote for a president who wants sexual orientation segregation or anything of the sort. "
Nah it's still there, I just reworked it to put the last line as the first line since I'm guessing a lot of people hit downvote before they read the whole thing.
and in /r/politics you'll have serious discussions about whether killing CEOs is okay. That doesn't invalidate all of socialism or whatever
Well politics is a brogressive circlejerk, it doesn't advocate socialism (or know what socialism is, similar to you really).
> (or know what socialism is, similar to you really).
what a bitchy thing to say to someone!
Not really, if you think /r/politics represents socialism you're an idiot.
>I mean they had a serious discussion about whether slavery is ok, it's a joke of an ideology.
Wouldn't that indicate that slavery being okay isn't actually a part of the ideology? Or do you just enjoy characterizing views you disagree with through their most extreme elements? You don't think that game can be played with other ideologies?
The fact that an ideology can simultaneously fetishise and commodify the individual/self shows just how confused and twisted it really is. I'm not going to take anyone that calls for individual freedom in one breath and legalised indentured labour in the next very seriously, nor am I going to respect a political ideology that allows for an in-depth discussion on whether buying and selling human beings is acceptable. How is that a difficult concept for you people to grasp?
>nor am I going to respect a political ideology that allows for an in-depth discussion on whether buying and selling human beings is acceptable.
What, you'd only respect a political ideology that shouts down and silences this discussion? Maybe throws its participants in jail? How noble of you! You truly have the interests of the victims of stupid unrealistic policy discussions at heart.
You're just venting generic moral outrage. Anyone can do that. "I can't respect an ideology that allows for an in-depth discussion of whether abortion at nine months or even post-partum infanticide is acceptable." Try harder.
Spoken like a true libertarian, persecution complex and all. Since when does disregarding the opinion of white, high school-aged American basement dwellers equate to incarcerating political opponents?
It's also a bit rich that you suddenly find yourself crying about 'muh liberty' being taken away while you simultaneously defend your ideology's right to discuss the morality of slavery. You know, like the idea of somebody else owning you. Do you understand that?
>Since when does disregarding the opinion of white, high school-aged American basement dwellers equate to incarcerating political opponents?
Huh. So are you setting up a falsification criteria whereby you'll admit that you're wrong if someone who doesn't meet this criteria yet shares these opinions comes forward?
>It's also a bit rich that you suddenly find yourself crying about 'muh liberty' being taken away
Why would I cry about that, given that it's not happening? I'm just saying that it's pretty perverse to hold it against an ideology to allow a debate to even occur. Why are you "crying" about this? Does it impact your life in some adverse way? If not, why demand these arguments be silenced?
I just want to interject and point out that slavery still occurs in our world, so fuck your "it's just hypothetical" bullshit.
No one is being enslaved by Rothbardian anarchists.
So all real libertarians are Rothbardian anarchists now?
You're completely missing the point. It's not about physically allowing the debate to occur. I'm not criticising the mods of /r/libertarian for leaving the thread up. I'm talking about the fact that the ideology allows for it to be considered. The fact that there is a sizeable contingent of libertarians who think that the idea of 'self-ownership' (which is a ludicrous concept that commidifies one's existence) means that it's okay to purchase another human being shows some serious, demented flaws in the libertarian ideology. It's not /r/libertarian allowing the discussion that's fucked up, it's that the framework of libertarianism is such that you people find human slavery to be a morally grey area and then cry 'moral outrage' at anyone who tells you that it isn't. That's incredibly disturbing to me.
As for who you are individually, I don't really care. There are always anomalies, but the vast majority of libertarians are Americans from privileged demographics because those are the people who have never had to rely on the assistance of others by virtue of their own birth.
Save, of course, for assistance for mommy and daddy.
Libertarianism, like a few other political and other ideologies, is simply an exercise in how far a few simple premises can be taken before they begin to produce obviously false or detrimental outcomes. Those with a modicum of sense will stop at the point where they're justifying slavery and re-examine their premises, while there are others who will continue and damn the consequences. It happens with communism, it happens with religion, it happens with all sorts of ideologies.
>The fact that there is a sizeable contingent of libertarians who think that the idea of 'self-ownership' (which is a ludicrous concept that commidifies one's existence) means that it's okay to purchase another human being shows some serious, demented flaws in the libertarian ideology.
That's because you're just reframing all of these issues in a way that shows that you simply can't understand the source of disagreement. Self-ownership is just saying that no one else owns you, no one else has the right to tell you that in a lucid state of mind you can't sell yourself. It's a default, not some weird reflexive metaphysical stance (Objectivists may disagree) that for some reason you find ethically odious. It's supposed to imply a presumption of liberty. Remember, property as conventionally understood is a "bundle of rights", and "voluntary slavery" simply corresponds to the state where you've sold off all or most of these rights. If I frame things this way, does it sound "demented"? The counterargument is that arbitrarily telling sane adults what's good and bad for them is "demented."
>There are always anomalies, but the vast majority of libertarians are Americans from privileged demographics because those are the people who have never had to rely on the assistance of others by virtue of their own birth.
The vast majority of Americans are from privileged demographics because they're fucking Americans who can afford to be concerned with picayune squabbles over "privilege." Who cares. Being privileged doesn't make your views less valid, or less correct. If the privileged don't understand the underprivileged, then the underprivileged don't understand the privileged (as evidenced by you itt?) and everyone should just shut up. Thankfully, debates don't actually resolve this way.
Okay, well we've gone over this twice now but I guess I'll repeat it again:
if your ideology allows you to sell yourself that means you are commodifying the self.
This alone ought to show that libertarianism isn't about individual liberty but rather about property rights. It's not enough to simply be a human being in order to have liberty under libertarianism, you have to own yourself as well. Look at what you've said:
> It's supposed to imply a presumption of liberty.
Why does liberty necessitate a presumption? Shouldn't it be a universal truth? Making liberty a 'presumption' implies that, while it's the most probable state of one's self, it's not the only possible state. What are the other possible states? Indentured labour? Slavery? This is the problem with self ownership. It creates a response to a fabricated issue of liberty. I don't need to 'own' myself because I am myself and there ought to be no question regarding my agency.
> Being privileged doesn't make your views less valid, or less correct
Calling for the abolition of social security and the privitisation of social services from a position of relative privilege automatically makes your opinion worth less because it displays a self-serving attitude. Now I know that you people see some kind of inherent holiness in absolute, unabashed selfishness but I think it's a bit rich to attempt to impose a social structure on people from a position of naked self-interest and expect people to take you very seriously without utilising some serious spin and deceit.
Some debates don't need to happen. We don't need to debate that the sky is blue or grass is green. And we shouldn't need to debate things like evolution or the morality of slavery. There are right sides to those arguments and then their are ignorant people on the other side.
Then ignore the debates. This isn't an argument for why it's affront when other people don't.
> What, you'd only respect a political ideology that shouts down and silences this discussion?
Does that mean I respected /r/Anarcho_Capitalism for a while?
No dice dude. Libertarianism has always been a hilarious mockery
No, that's Liberalism
Ignore the haters. These statists just hate freedom.
MUH 'REEDOMS
ELS spam is just as bad as tarian spam.
Oh I'm more talking about the poorly though through contradictions. For example they want individual freedom but then don't want the government (a generally impartial body) to guarantee that individual freedom, they want people with the most money to do it in the form of private police forces.
Also there whole demonisation of taxes with zero realistic system to replace it (lol charity from the wealthy), complete hatred of regulations (who cares about safety and the environment) but also hatred of the current banking class (I'm sure they'd love having less regulations). It's like most of them have zero idea how the world currently works and that they have no idea that the vast majority of them (statistically most are going to be working or middle class) would do far worse under a libertarian system.
It doesn't help large portions of /r/libertarian seem to also be sexist racists....
You win the prize for most strawmen packed into a single paragraph itt. Congratulations.
Got any real arguments instead of quoting logical fallacies?
Do I really need to argue against libertarians having a "complete hatred of regulations"? That's the annoying thing about strawmen, you can take them literally and go nowhere because the opponent doesn't seriously intend to defend them, or you can ignore them and then the person will just continue to grandstand. It forces an extra stage in the discussion that shouldn't exist.
Don't libertarians hate government and therefore regulations?
I think it's more that no one really needs to discuss it. It's bad. The end. There is no maybe
edit: yeah you're all right. there's many times it's valid to discuss. But I mean its valid to discus why its wrong, but i really don't think many people need to question IS it wrong.
> no one really needs to discuss it
This is just about never true. If anything, many topics need to be discussed if only to annoy others or remind others why it is they oppose the things they do.
What harm can discussing it do, if it's so obviously wrong? It seems like discussion would only allow those involved to have a better grasp on why it's wrong.
To many of them, it isn't obviously wrong. The opposite, if anything.
This is what I got from that thread too. It seems like a quarter of them were 'on the fence' about slavery, a few went 'full Rothbard', and another quarter of them didn't think that they were debating a moral claim.
I missed the slavery wank, idk if anyone has a link, but I imagine it was one of those discussions about "voluntary slavery" that onlookers just flip out over for dumb reasons, right?
Someone argued that parents own their children, so a brother can inherit his sister from their parents and then sell her to someone else. That is the point at which I stopped reading.
The really funny part is that conversations like this are not uncommon on /r/libertarian.
I think being intellectually engaged is important, but I don't think we need to take every idea seriously, no matter how cruel, bizarre, or outrageous. If someone wants to have a discussion, I think there is an onus on them to show their ideas are worthwhile.
> but I don't think we need to take every idea seriously, no matter how cruel, bizarre, or outrageous.
You don't, but you still should have proof/disproof on hand.
Otherwise, anyone can dismiss any idea ever and cite this line. You still need some kind of rubric for idea-evaluation.
Anybody that doesn't understand why slavery is a bad thing worries me. That they'd need it spelled out for them why "owning people is wrong" outside of an ethics and philosophy classroom says very bad things about them.
> outside of an ethics and philosophy classroom
These things don't exist in a vacuum or cease to be important outside of their classrooms.
Again, you could replace this with any other stance on anything and justify the view that way: "Anybody that doesn't understand why flag-burning is a bad thing worries me." The idea that any view should be taken on faith or gut by default is dangerous for critical thinking.
Very true, but being conflicted over an expression of political dissent and being conflicted over the right to buy and sell people are, to me at least, completely different leagues.
You're right that there is no theorem that says 'slavery is bad.' But unless you're an Objectivist (lol), nobody thinks that you can derive moral truths from physical laws. Ethics is mostly working backwards. You choose some set of desired results and work backwards to a consistent set of principles that entails those results. Then, you extrapolate those principles to other results. As far as desired results go, 'slavery is bad' seems like a pretty good one to take for granted.
>but I don't think we need to take every idea seriously, no matter how cruel, bizarre, or outrageous.
You certainly don't. But when you open your mouth to voice an opinion about how you don't take an idea seriously, you invite pushback.
Here is a link. For the most part it was reasonable. Although the vote totals were obviously skewed by being linked to SRD and the like.
It was already downvoted when the bots got their snapshot.
Ahh, it appears you are correct.
Okay. That's a bit worse than I expected, in that there are people who I like to believe are trolling but probably are not. There's a reason why I'm a libertarian who avoids /r/libertarianism... but this kind of shit generates all kinds of low-hanging fruit from the broad generalizations that tend to ensue.
I'm familiar with most of the handles that made the worst comments; I agree that they are probably serious. While I absolutely despise libertarianism, I do feel that it isn't fair to say that certain crazies represent the whole ideology.
If libertarianism were excused the same way feminism is on this subreddit:
Guys, guys, guys. The people you see on the internet are the radical libertarians, they're not real libertarians. Even reason.com isn’t representative of libertarianism. Most libertarians are moderate. Most of the real libertarians are offline activists at universities and demonstrations. NALALT, and for that matter there are many libertarianisms, there are many flavors of libertarianism: left-libertarianism, libertarian Marxism, geolibertarianism, you name it. It’s not a monolithic thing you can just attack like everyone believes the same thing.
Everytime I post any drama linked to libertarians, there is an avalanche of libertarians complaining about it being posted.
THIS IS SO TRUE
Never before have I encountered a group of people so unable to handle criticism. It's why their drama is grade-A
With the inevitable butthurt posts on the SRD thread, Libertarian drama is twice the drama for the price of one post.
>Never before have I encountered a group of people so unable to handle criticism.
Try posting criticism of blacks here and see how it's handled.
You don't really think that's the same thing do you? Pretty sure 'being a human being with darker skin' isn't the same as a theory of governance.
I don't. But I'm just saying that one could easily get a stronger response.
Hell, criticize feminism here and see what happens.
And yet there is feminism drama posted routinely here.
Right, and then people circlejerk about how the anti-feminists are wrong. Break that jerk and the predictable happens. I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to dredge up examples from my comment history.
Just because you don't fit into a discussion doesn't mean it's a circlejerk.
I wouldn't assert otherwise.
TIL Being racist = Posting Libertarian drama.
TYL.
If your political philosophy had multiple users and multiple subreddits solely devoted to twisting your beliefs and insulting you personally, you might be a bit defensive too.
Many many people, myself included, find the most vocal of the "Libtards" to be very cringe inducing. So yah... why not?
There are 'liberals, and then there are 'libtards'.
There are 'conservatives', and then there are 'conservishits'.
There are 'libertarians', and then there are 'lolbertarians'.
There are 'Christians', and then there are 'Westboro Baptists'.
There are 'Muslims', and then there are 'Generals Allahu Akbar'.
There are 'Atheists', and then there is 'Atheism+'.
There are 'Feminists', and then there are 'Feminazis'.
There are 'MRAs', and then there is 'Manhood Academy'.
The list goes on, but you get the idea.
> There are 'Atheists', and then there is 'TheAmazingAtheist'.
FTFY.
>There are 'Atheists', and then there is 'TheAmazingBanana'.
FTFY. (For reference, NSFW.)
Ewwwwwwwwwww
wtf was this real!? There's no way
Personally I perfer the term rathiest, because /r/athiesm is the breeding ground for pretentious, angry atheists.
I should know, I was a rathiest once. I got better
I don't like Atheism+ or TheAmazingAtheist, but TheAmazingAtheist fits better with the theme because people like him are the stereotype that people point to when they want to hate on atheists.
Also, this entire thread is juicy. The linked drama was just a bunch of downvotes and calling a guy Eugene. The real drama is in the SRD comments.
>There are 'Atheists', and then there is 'NukeThePope'.
Yes, notice I did not say "Libertarains" It was a deliberate choice of terms. I realize not all of them are total wackjobs.
The irony to me is that you got the names mixed up.
Of course, because everyone uses the exact same termonlogy as you do, right?
Uh, according to the list above, yes. "Libtards" is generally used to describe liberals, not libertarians. Unless you for some reason meant to shit on liberals.
You know that's not what I meant.
Hence the definition of it being ironic.
The problem is that these statists don't recognize this as routine political disagreement... To them it probably looks like its just another moron who thinks they're right and everybody that disagrees with them are wrong. What can you expect from freedom haters?
0/10
>The problem is that these statists don't recognize this as routine political disagreement... To them it probably looks like its just another moron who thinks they're right and everybody that disagrees with them are wrong. What can you expect from freedom haters?
What does this mean? Who are you attacking?
The fucking statists... You know, people who hate freeedom.
>The fucking statists... You know, people who hate freeedom.
Who? You?
Me? I'm all about liberty and freedom.