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Comment by seibelj | Hacker News Reader

The Road to Serfdom should be required reading for anyone who considers themselves a thinking person. I am a libertarian but have read a lot of philosophy from the major thinkers who encompass all points on the political spectrum. If you consider yourself educated and convicted in your beliefs, you should especially focus on those who disagree with you to ensure you truly believe in your principles.

The Austrian School of economics has a niche diehard following but I'm not sure how seriously they can be taken for several reasons. However, I am a fan of their opinions on "hard money", and do not like governments printing endless "fiat" currency, which is also why I have devoted several years of my life to cryptocurrency.

Don't dismiss Hayek out-of-hand. Give him a fair shake, even if you are on the left.

Edit: amused by the downvoted from lurkers. People don’t like to read about views that disagree with their own, in these monoculture times.

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Don’t worry about the imaginary internet points, I’ll back your motion that “The Road to Serfdom” should be required reading for anyone who considers themselves a thinking person.

Couldn't agree more, as someone very much on the left. I read The Road to Serfdom and along with Smith and Basquiat it made me a libertarian early on. Later I turned and I'm now very much on the left but still respect Hayek's ideas and arguments.

You may want to look into Kropotkin (Conquest of the bread, Mutual Aid) or maybe Max Stirner (The Ego and Its Own).

Libertarianism has left and right variants: the right retains private property, and the associated government functions, while the left is also known as anarcho-communism.

We really need special economic zones for experimenting with alternative economic and social systems. Unfortunately, the tradition has been to have a single system for an entire country, and if not all people want it, too bad.

So a little SEZ if you want to experience what it was like to live under the Divine Right of Kings and its associated aristocracy and serfdom[1][2], a little SEZ if you want to experience Christian theocracy[3][4], a little SEZ if you want to experience a degenerate lawless unproductive commune without domestic agriculture[5], and a little SEZ if you want to live free[6]?

States don’t exist in a vacuum. We’re constantly experimenting as it is, if you want to call politics experimenting, and every new law or ordinance passed, every new executive order issued, every new opinion written by the courts and every new verdict reached by a Jury changes the “system” a little. You could call it the ultimate experiment in reflective social programming if you want to get nerdy about it, but I wouldn’t use such terms myself.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Arabia

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_City

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_States

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Autonomous_Zone

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_State_Project

Pretty much. Some of these would probably turn out to be more popular than others. It would be contradictory for libertarians to try to impose their systems on others against their will. But given the unpopularity of libertarian parties in elections, libertarianism is unlikely to be implemented, even on an experimental basis. What finished off the 1930s anarchists in Spain? It's not a very well-run economic experiment when it's shut down by Marxists and Fascists. A bit more tolerance would be helpful.

I paid minimal attention to the Libertarian Party nomination debates, but from what I heard when Justin Amash briefly considered running for President as a Libertarian, the debates within the Party were centered around running to win versus just trying to influence the direction of the Overton window. I suspect Amash chose not to proceed because he realized that the Libertarian Party while not without worth, does not have the killer instinct to actually win elections and that will forever hamper their effectiveness. Amash wanted to win.

I have strong libertarian sympathies, but the reason I’m not a full throated libertarian is that it isn’t an ideology that effectively seeks to acquire power, and without being able to win elections, they can never pave the way for the society they seek, nor would it be able to withstand aggressive neighbors or slight changes in values across the community. A libertarian state is transient at best.

I also don’t want to prop up SEZs that would massively violate peoples’ natural rights for the sake of experimentation. Freedom is without Kings or Serfs or Slaves.

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