@Rome vs Judea You are a certified lunatic.
Regardless, for the benefit of other readers...
Secular rationalism is inadequate to discern moral or even factual truth - & behind that, there is only power & self-interest.
Outright false. Secular rationalism has been instrumental in building systems of science, law, and ethics that serve billions of people today. Your nihilistic dismissal of reason reduces all discourse to power struggles.
This ironically undermines your entire rant as mere self-interest in action. By your own logic, why should you be taken seriously?
Good & Evil are entirely subjective to the individual and circumstances around them.
Congratulations. If this is true, then your criticism is equally meaningless.
If all morality is just subjective fluff, why should anyone care about your opinion? You have successfully undercut your own argument.
Principles don't restrain power, other people with more power do.
Guess what, principles do restrain power when codified into law or social norms, backed by mutual agreements, and enforced by collective action. Your claim that power is all-encompassing ignores the historical reality of principled resistance to tyranny.
Coercion is not exclusive to the state. On one level or another it exists in every interaction & relationship.
Acknowledging coercion is not an argument against libertarianism. Libertarianism seeks to minimize it wherever possible.
This is all just straw man bullshit.
Pointing out the consequences of rejecting principles like non-aggression is not a strawman, it's addressing the logical endpoint of your worldview.
Dismissing things without argument also makes you a certified nigger.
You choose the utopian dream vision. Cool dude, that's perfectly fine. Just know it's nothing more than another cult of religious faggots
Once again, libertarianism is not utopian. Libertarianism is a pragmatic philosophy. It is a framework for improving human interactions and conflict avoidance/resolution based on reason and voluntary cooperation. You are conflating aspiration with fantasy.
You talk about autonomy, responsibility, agency, etc. because you think you deserve
Yes.
Guess what, people who value these principles tend to believe that they are worth pursuing, for themselves and others.
Do you think people don't deserve rights?
If so, your entire rant is self-defeating. Why even debate if these things don't matter?
The fact you dress these desires up as universal human truths is a coping mechanism
The projection goes hard.
The only coping mechanism I can see here is your fatalistic worldview which justifies doing absolutely nothing meaningful to improve society because "power always wins".
Libertarianism actually proposes a way to confront power with principles.
you attack the entity with power, the state, using an entirely fabricated morality as your justification.
Libertarians want to abolish the state because it violates the ground rules of libertarianism. There exists no state which has not been a detriment to individual freedoms. This is not "fabricated morality", it is a response to observable values and inefficiencies of centralized authority.
Do you prefer blind submission?
Seriously, your drivel is nothing but nihilistic cynicism, pretending to be insight. You are denying the possibility of principle, dismissing rational discourse, and not offering any constructive alternative. Plus, if you genuinely believe all morality and reason are illusions, then what you are making is literally nothing but noise.
And said ethical theory is not useful in the slightest because of the ramifications it has on human society and social organization. No more than Marxism makes for anything but an academic tool to analyze things with when you want to be sure you've covered every angle of it.
Nothing but an assertion dismissing libertarian ethics without engaging with its merits. Unlike Marxism, libertarian ethics are grounded in natural law and property rights, which are universally applicable to resolving conflicts over scarce resources. Marxism relies on arbitrary and contradictory notions of collective ownership and class struggle, resulting in systemic coercion and economic collapse.
The utility of libertarian ethics is evident in its consistent application to real world disputes, regardless of whether a completely libertarian society has been fully realized.
I consider democracy, and communism failed theories pushed by utopians because that's precisely what they are.
Your conclusion is correct, but your methodology is false. Libertarianism does not promise a utopia. The goal isn't to achieve perfection (although it is theoretically possible), but to minimize coercion and maximize voluntary cooperation.
Here's the thing, unlike democracy or communism (a distinction without a difference, really) libertarianism does not require central planning or majoritarianism, both of which inevitably lead to power consolidation and abuse.
There was approximately one anarcho-capitalist society in all of history, the medieval Icelandic Commonwealth. It was a dirty poor country of illiterates and corruption where people lived in mud huts, most of the priests and even a few of the bishops were basically Rekieta-tier nepotistic alcoholics with multiple wives. It was a violent shithole, the chiefs ran a protection racket where you HAD TO follow at least one of them, otherwise it was legal for someone to kill you and take your shit because you didn't sign a contract. And yes, the chief could fuck your wife if he wanted, but usually didn't unless you were a thrall (slave) since he knew cucking people would just make them sign a contract with another chief. The economy was poorly developed. No towns or guilds like in Norway because of how the chiefs handled foreign trade. It eventually collapsed because the richest chiefs bought up all the chiefly titles and started getting the King of Norway involved in their affairs, leading to the King of Norway buying up all the titles before abolishing the system.
No, no, that's false.
The Icelandic Commonwealth was far from an anarcho-capitalist society.
Iceland's national assembly was a centralized legislative body. There was no fully decentralized, contractual order where legal systems would evolve through competing arbitration providers. The chieftaincy system was a quasi-monopoly on legal and defensive services. Not aligning with a chief would get you declared an outlaw, effectively forfeiting their rights and property. These chieftaincy titles were also hereditary and could be sold, and this created a form of proto-feudalism where wealthier chiefs consolidated power by buying multiple chieftaincies. Arbitration and legal processes were not open to free market competition in the libertarian sense. Chieftains controlled access to arbitration and individuals had to rely on their chief's network for legal representation, this is literally an oligarchy. Plus, chiefs restricted foreign trade to maintain control over resources and wealth, stifling economic development and competition, preventing Iceland from developing the towns, guilds, and trade networks that you would see in a more free-market society.
Also, Iceland's eventual adoption of Christianity was a decision made at the national assembly and enforced across society. While paganism could be practiced in private, the state's endorsement of Christianity included mandatory tithes, infringing on religious freedom and imposing coercion.
The eventual submission to the Norwegian crown wouldn't have happened if the defense mechanisms and trade arrangements were genuinely decentralized, which would have mitigated such a risk.
I'll just say that the imperfections of proto-feudalist medieval Iceland don't disprove libertarianism any more than historical injustices under democracy disprove the value of self-governance.
Greenland thus had a state and was a theocratic peasant republic with few murders or crime and even had a town as big as any in Iceland. They peacefully submitted to the King of Norway without any dumb violence and backstabbing. People didn't lock their doors and forgot how to fight against anything smarter than a polar bear to the point they later got genocided when the Eskimos showed up, but hey, until then it was going pretty well. Sounds like Greenland was a nicer place to live than the actual anarcho-capitalist society.
Well, this relative "peacefulness" came at the cost of individual liberty, autonomy, and economic stagnation. The price they paid for such a pacified, theocratic society was an inability to external threats (as you admit with the Eskimo genocide example). The inherent weakness of such a system is plain to see there. Centralized, rigid societies collapse under pressure because they lack the flexibility of decentralized systems.
THAT is a concrete example of why libertarianism fails in practice and would fail just as hard today. Because today they aren't wealthy farmers who get to be chiefs, they're corporations.
Do you know what a corporation is?
It is a thing that thrives today precisely because of the state. In case you didn't know, corporate charters, limited liability, subsidies, and regulatory captures are all cases of government-granted privilege.
Without the state enabling these advantages, and with free competition, no entity - corporation or otherwise - can amass coercive power unchecked.
The alleged failure of libertarianism that you describe is, upon a closer examination, actually a failure of statism creeping into ostensibly decentralized societies. The lesson is not that libertarianism fails, but that people must defend themselves against the encroachment of centralized power at all levels.
I refer back to my assessment on Libertarianism from a year ago, which has only continued to be proven correct since:
Literally smug posturing without substance.
A joke ideology that requires more idealism for it to work than communism.
Completely ridiculous. Communism outright denies basic economic realities like scarcity and subjective value. If you want to talk about "idealism", communism demands that human nature magically transforms to erase self-interest, while libertarianism operates on the consistent premise that individuals do act in their own self-interest.
It’s failures have been laid bare in front of us these last several years
What failures? Does anyone here live in a libertarian society or anything even remotely resembling one? You are literally blaming libertarianism for problems caused by crony socialism. Corporations don't grow to the size of countries because of free markets, they grow that way because of regulatory capture, subsidies, fiat money inflation, and government-granted privileges like intellectual property. Libertarians are the ones who point out that these aberrations and interventions are the root cause of the so-called "hellscape"
major corporations with market caps the size of European nations didn’t usher in libertopia
Libertarians want to abolish the state and the corporate monopolies it created. Again, these corporations aren't thriving because of voluntary market interactions, but because governments protect them through barriers to entry, regulations that crush smaller competitors, and outright bailouts.
You are confusing interventionism (the system we have) with libertarianism. You're being either ignorant or dishonest here.
doubling down on failed policies
What policies are you referring to? You live in a world of massive state intervention, central banking, and regulatory overreach. The libertarian policy would be to abolish central banks, end corporate welfare, and remove barriers to voluntary trade. I don't recall these things being implemented.
If you are calling the interventionist "mixed economy", "state capitalism" system a failure, I agree with you. But that is a failure of statism, not libertarianism.
No True Libertarian droning
This isn't a fallacy, this is about intellectual honesty.
If you are blaming libertarianism for problems that arise from state coercion, then you are attacking a strawman.
Libertarian principles are clear: minimize coercion, respect property rights, and allow free markets to operate. If you can't critique these ideas on their merit, you're basically already conceded the argument.
This isn't Reddit, smugly dismissing something doesn't make you clever. Just like the average predditor, it makes you a caricature of someone who is unwilling to engage seriously. Instead of hurling vague insults, try addressing the core principles of libertarianism and explaining why coercion, centralization, and government-granted privileges would produce better outcomes than freedom and voluntary cooperation.
... hang on, you updated your post
lolbertarianism is pretty much dead.
If it was dead, it's amusing that you spend so much time ranting against it. Ideas don't die because you wish them to. Guess what, logic, individual rights, and voluntary exchange are timeless concepts, and because libertarianism is rooted in them, its principles will continue to resonate with people. On the other hand, statism is a real zombie ideology, lurching from crisis to crisis, failing repeatedly while people like you insist we double down on it.
Musk, multinational corporations with trillions in market caps acting like they are unaccountable
Do they live in free markets or in the distorted system of interventionism? Was it libertarian principles that created these giants or was it government subsidies, regulatory capture, and patent protections? Without a state propping up such companies, would any company reach this level of unaccountable dominance? Again attacking libertarianism for problems caused by statism.
legalizing drugs leading to lower quality of life
I don't think the evidence supports your claim. Countries and states such as Portugal that legalized or decriminalized drugs have seen reductions in drug-related deaths, crime, and societal harm. Libertarianism isn't about tax revenue from drugs. The war on drugs has been immoral and ineffective, destroying lives, militarizing police, and creating black markets. Prohibition failed with alcohol and it's failing with drugs. In the name of "accountability", you are clinging to policies that harm members of society.
No True Libertarian-style “we just didn’t try it my way!” which puts them in the exact same boat as commies hoping their version of Stalinism
Stalinism murdered millions and its core ideology was built on coercion and total state control. If you think that libertarianism, advocating voluntary cooperation and non-aggression, is not the polar opposite of that, then I don't know what to tell you. Either you're deliberately conflating the two or you don't understand the basic tenets of either system.
Unfortunately for you, libertarianism isn't going anywhere because it's based on universal ethics and the natural desire for freedom. On the other hand, being built on coercion and centralization, statism belongs in the trash pile of history. If you don't recognize the massive debt, endless wars, and erosion of freedoms as proof of the failures of statism, then I don't know what to tell you.
Once again, libertarianism is not some utopian dream. It is a pragmatic approach to establishing rules of society in a way that minimizes violence and maximizes individual agency. If you want to reject that in favor of a system where force and coercion against peaceful people reign supreme, at least own your authoritarianism instead of hiding behind smug cynicism.
