| You spoke in extreme absolutes and called it "wisdom". You said: > any sufficiently powerful political organization will be corrupted and abused > There is no force worse than corrupted political power These are your words: ANY powerful political organization will become corrupted. Every single one, every single time, no matter what. Corrupted political power is THE WORST force in the universe. It is IMPOSSIBLE to IMAGINE a worse force than corrupted political power. Therefore it's worse than Boko Haram warbands roving around raping villages and forcing children to become their soldiers. That's awful, sure, but it's not as bad as BIG GOVERNMENT! This is a direct and obvious consequence of the words that you wrote; it is not a strawman. Unless you include Boko Haram as "corrupted political power", in which case everything that's bad is defined as corrupted political power and your actual statement is "bad things are bad". This is a favorite of libertarians. They'll say things like "Truly wise and smart and good-looking people all know that Thing X obviously always definitely happens as a result of Thing Y. Therefore I shouldn't have to pay taxes." Then they vaguely hand-wave at cherry-picked pseudo-evidence like "the last 20 years of military intervention", relying on the reader's brain to conjure up a couple of salient instances like Iraq and Afghanistan and ignoring everything else that's happened in the entire world and outside of their cherry-picked window (Kuwait would like a word about whether U.S. military intervention is always bad). > That's a very large strawman you just argued I'm arguing against generic libertarianism, because the hallmark of generic libertarianism is the extreme absolutist statements exactly like the ones you made. If you'd like me to argue against a more nuanced point, you should make that point instead. > All if not most of our regulatory bodies & bureaucracies are beholden to lobbyists and special interests This is such a lazy take. There is an enormous number of different government agencies in the U.S. and in the world, and they all have their own, different issues, to different degrees. The world is complicated. Advocating the dissolution of regulatory agencies because "I'm sure they're all corrupt; I mean, just look at 'em!" is lazy and reactionary. It's like saying "All politicians are liars". You're helping the agencies that are most corrupted by lumping them in with the ones that are actually doing a good job. Again: the dissolution of these agencies is the desired outcome of extreme corruption, not the solution to it. Stop being such a lazy thinker. The world is complicated. |
Please don't ad hominem and strawman instead of engaging my arguments.
> [...] relying on the reader's brain to conjure up a couple of salient instances like Iraq and Afghanistan and ignoring everything else that's happened in the entire world and outside of their cherry-picked window
Iraq and Afghanistan is just a couple of salient instances? It's literally the defining catastrophes of the 21st century, an extremely large, modern, reason for why trust in government has plummeted and there's this cynical sense of helplessness and failure with respect to practically every institution.
You're fighting some imaginary object of your contempt, the "generic libertarian". I'm arguing there's ubiquitous seemingly inevitable failures related to the unbounded scope and mission-creep of government, and you're calling that all idealistic nonsense. Well I have a right to pose my assessment of reality in an open forum of ideas, you can respond substantively but instead it seems you're tilting at windmills.