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"And all of this runs anathema to the usual sort of libertarian financial-might-makes-right of the tech world, unfortunately."?

Woah, hold on there. Did you really just imply that "financial-might-makes-right" is a Libertarian thing/concept? That is absolutely not true, and I challenge you to prove otherwise.

I'm honestly curious why you would even think that. If you do, then you've been drinking some seriously nasty statist koolaid, and we're here for you if you need some help getting over that addiction. With reasoned arguments, no less!



Libertarianism is the belief that the only valid rights are 1) private property, and 2) no initiated direct physical violence. The only time either of these rules can be violated is: the second one may be violated to punish those who violated rule 1 or 2 (notice: rule 1 can never be violated).

a pretty direct, if over-simplified, outcome: someone with a lot of financial might (say, an apple orchard), can deny another person with less financial might (say, nothing) access to food, leading to their death. as the second person was looking to violate rule number 1, and the first person didn't violate rule number 2, Libertarianism is totally fine with this chain of events.

Libertarianism, phrased a different way, says "the only time you can hurt someone is when they take your stuff. if you hurt someone by having stuff while they have nothing, that's totally fine." In other words, financial might makes right.


> Libertarianism is the belief that the only valid rights are 1) private property, and 2) no initiated direct physical violence.

That's simply not true. Libertarianism is a group of related ideologies that includes libertarian socialism - often called "left communism" (and derided as such in Lenin's "Left-Wing Communism - An infantile disorder").

What libertarian ideologies share, is liberty as a prime goal. But many libertarian ideologies see private property as antithetical to liberty, as it intrinsically restricts access to limited natural resources, even when sharing access to the same would cause minimal reduction in liberty for someone who might otherwise have exclusive access to said property.




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