It will not affect this blog, but I am trying to better organize my overall web site. One step is to try to create a biographical page. One relevant bit, from a section on the evolution of my political beliefs:
Trying to rid humanity of all traces of tribalism is as futile a hope for the libertarian as it is for the Communist. So I end up somewhere between libertarianism and conservatism. Like a conservative, I believe that existing social institutions should not be casually tossed aside. Like a libertarian, I would like to see the state be much less ambitious.
Tribalism trips up all of us. Our new President said at his inauguration, “When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice.” He proceeded to say “buy American, hire American,” which I think should be described as prejudice.
The tribalism of the left is equally insidious.
That’s an interesting voting record from earlier in your bio, but you may have typo-ed your Dukakis vote – he ran against Bush in ’88 not ’84.
Like a conservative, I believe that existing social institutions should not be casually tossed aside.
In reviewing American history, I see a lot of local tribalism that protected the existing social institutions. (Up until WW2 one could argue the US society was a local theology.) Without such local tribalism, the existing social institutions lost their impact on their community. After WW2, no longer could the church throw out a divorced woman and illegitimate child out of the community.
“When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice.”
The president is trying to form a tribe based on nationalism to fight against the identity based tribes the left is promoting and which normally take precedence. It’s the only force proven to work in the real world (it’s basically LKYs strategy that worked in Singapore).
The alternative to building a national tribe isn’t some utopian idea of polite cosmopolitanism, but identity politics driven up to an even greater extreme. Should Trump fail in his message of an American brotherhood what will replace it will be a heck of a lot more tribal one way or the other.
I would just consider it marketing, or should companies tell their customers not to discriminate and buy their competitors products? Market prejudice! End it now.
Actually, telling your customers to buy your products out of loyalty to you, to discriminate in your favor, is generally a poor marketing strategy. The best companies do, in fact, tell their customers to buy the best product, evaluated on the product’s merits, and try to convince the customer that the comany’s product is best.
Which existing social institutions should not be thrown aside?
Recently, I’ve been wondering about globalism and nationalism. Trump may be pushing a prejudicial nationalist view, or he may simply be putting America First. The latter may restore the sense of secure property rights to America to Americans. As we know, secure property rights is the prerequisite to investment and forgoing current consumption in hopes of a better future.
The German people sure don’t seem to have secure property rights in Germany. They sacrificed and now Merkel is bringing in millions to consume the surplus created.
That translates into America. Why take a pay cut now in hopes of keeping the company competitive when they’ll just shutdown and move offshore in 10 years. Why start a company through sacrificing now when the politicians will just seek to take your “excess” profits later to pay benefits for illegal immigrants?
“Antiliberal policy is a policy of capital consumption. It recommends that the present be more abundantly provided for at the expense of the future.”
–Mises, Ludwig von (1927). Liberalism (p. 9)
If you’re not a libertarian when you’re young, you have no heart. If you’re not an anarchist when you’re old, you have no brain.
Like a conservative, I believe that existing social institutions should not be casually tossed aside. Like a libertarian, I would like to see the state be much less ambitious.
The move from libertarian to anarchist is the recognition that the securing of individual rights is a cultural and institutional phenomenon that is not readily achieved by government action. I.e., libertarian anarchism both realizes that governments are neither effective nor to be trusted in achieving libertarian ends and realizes that government probably should not be used casually to toss aside long-standing social institutions.
libertarian anarchism … realizes that government probably should not be used casually to toss aside long-standing social institutions.
Incidentally, this results in the apparent contradiction that libertarian anarchists are not likely to actually get rid of government itself until it has been devolved to such a degree that it is clear that its removal is a further improvement. There is an awful lot of social capital at risk in moving from an existing ultra-minimal government to no government at all.