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Somewhat off-topic, but this puzzles me to no end: How come Peter Thiel, an outspoken libertarian, becomes a government contractor, doing data collection and an
by agnosticmantis 3y ago
Somewhat off-topic, but this puzzles me to no end:
How come Peter Thiel, an outspoken libertarian, becomes a government contractor, doing data collection and analysis for spying and surveillance on the masses?
Like isn’t that what libertarians warn against all the time?
- gg-plz 3y ago[dead]
- amval 3y ago[flagged]
- edgyquant 3y agoI’m sure you’d agree that the libertarian side of all parties, including the left, would count as fascism then?
- amval 3y agoNo, that wouldn't make any sense. I would count them as anarchists.
- dotnet00 3y agoAnother manifestation of "everything I dislike is fascism"
- amval 3y agoThere are plenty of things I dislike that are not fascism: soup as a main course, jogging, different flavours of authoritarian regimes. Where I live no one pretends "libertarianism" is a real ideology. This has some upsides. For example, we can call a spade a spade. This doesn't, however, stop Peter Thiel's company from receiving enormous sums of money from the government to set up illegal, massive surveillance operations over its citizens. How should we call those who use their massive wealth to undermine democracy and relax legislation so they can do as they please, if not fascists? Is "libertarian" already clear enough of a term?
- George83728 3y agoLibertarians love government contracting. The less the government does themselves, and contract out to corporations instead, the happier libertarians are. Many libertarians even want to abolish the US Postal System so that even that work can be contracted out to corporations. These kind of libertarians are all about "economic liberty", e.g. unfettering and deregulating corporations. They care little for individual liberties; a surveillance police state administered by corporations is right up their alley. In their view, the problem with the Stasi is the Stasi wasn't a for-profit corporation, and was consequently inefficient at what they did.
- edgyquant 3y agolibertarianism is a spectrum that people from all sides of the political spectrum fall on. He’s a small L libertarian and leans that way on a ton of social issues but small l libertarian != big L Libertarian so most with that title are not ancaps