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For whatever it's worth, I think there's a difference between mentioning libertarianism in a negative light and holding it responsible for society's ills. I thi
by Bartweiss 8y ago
For whatever it's worth, I think there's a difference between mentioning libertarianism in a negative light and holding it responsible for society's ills. I think libertarianism is worth debating, and the political Libertarianism practiced in America is often ridiculous and utterly biased against individuals. But I don't think that being refused access to a service if you reject risky and unethical advertising practices is a consequence of misinterpreted libertarian theory.
The highest-profile appeals to corporate interests are made by politicians who don't claim libertarian ideal. The ability to cut consumers off from non-essential, non-monopoly services for terms violations is standard throughout countries without any libertarian tradition, so the exotic element in the US is the legal protection for spyware creators and malware distributors, neither of which stem from libertarian theory. The spyware aspect is about the lack of a direct constitutional privacy protection, and the conservative/literalist readings which have steadily eroded the penumbra reasoning. The malware aspect is the result of repeated failures to hold companies responsible for allowing data breaches or serving exploits, which owes more to special interests pandering and gross technical ignorance among legislators than to even a pretense of libertarianism.
You're right to say that cutting off service access is legal, and you're right to say that the most influential form of libertarianism in the US is twisted and often counterproductive. But I suspect I'm not alone in finding the attribution of any business-related badness to libertarianism tiring and a bad basis for a productive conversation.
- munk-a 8y agoI agree, yes. Maybe it's a sort of corporate motive that takes hold in each of our countries and in the US it's become infective within the libretarian section. I could just as easily see a twisting of a socialist angled view being twisted in the same way, "Our advertising supports our service in a necessary manner and it'd be unconscionable to deprive any resident the access to our service." As an aside, isn't it amusing that getting an American education one of the skills that seems to be valued above others is the ability to twist words to whatever B.S. you need them to mean at the time, it's like everyone in the US is an expert marketer and political fixer/spin-man.
- Bartweiss 8y agoI think you're dead-on about that corporate motive. The US is incredibly thin on socialism, even nominal socialism, and we already see traces of this when public-interest arguments become convenient. The Net Neutrality fight is a hideously good example; once ISPs decided their monopolies were too blatant to use free market rationales, they went out and astroturfed a narrative where cheap and fair internet was an attack on minorities and the poor. And yes, I can't deny that US libertarianism (the party and a lot of the individual voices) is weirdly pervaded by a willingness to abandon libertarian principles in deference to corporations. It wasn't that long ago that you could find conservatives complaining about excessive "civil libertarianism" in calls for social progress. Today, it's horribly easy to find people arguing that Wells Fargo should be allowed to stretch their forced arbitration clause to cover outright fraud, because apparently the bank's rights are the only ones which we need to protect.