4 ms·

Reagan or not, what you can see clearly in the comments here and many other places is that what would be considered fairly extreme libertarian talking points ha

Reagan or not, what you can see clearly in the comments here and many other places is that what would be considered fairly extreme libertarian talking points have become common parlance these days. Taxation as "theft", the necessity of the threat of termination and other economic deprivation in order to coerce people to doing good work, the assumption that profit inevitably produces more efficiency, and that efficiency (as defined monetarily) is the ultimate goal. These are defensible positions based on various world views, but they should not be accepted automatically. But I see here and other places people speaking as if this is just "obvious fact." This was not the case in the past. Civic duty, the need for a functioning civil service, the notion of a commonwealth and/or social contract, etc are all foundational notions coming out of the enlightenment and were at least formerly mainstream. The Ayn Rand types have always been around. And they're welcome to their positions. I'm concerned about how we get here now that this is a default position for people to take in North American society. I certainly don't agree with it. And I suspect if you force the majority of "mainstream" people to go through the arguments piece by piece, they wouldn't either. I'd also argue that decades of corroding the public service's effectiveness through economic and ideological warfare has in fact made the public service look like exactly the thing its enemies claim it is. If you make the civil sector into a partisan battle, and play games with its funding, and spread cynicism about its motives... surprise you're going to get a partisan, inefficient, and cynical public service.

mopsi 2y ago
The Ayn Rand types deserve to be reminded that she spent her final years on welfare.
- bryanrasmussen 2y ago
  which just proves that we shouldn't have any welfare if it supported that hack! /s
- cmrdporcupine 2y ago
  I mean the easy libertarian response to this would be I imagine them saying "well, she was force to pay into it, she would have a right to partake of it" and they're not wrong. "Gotcha" hypocrisy arguments about personal behaviour I don't think are great taken from either left nor right.
  - surgical_fire 2y ago
    > I mean the easy libertarian response to this would be I imagine them saying "well, she was force to pay into it, she would have a right to partake of it" and they're not wrong. Which, perhaps ironically, shows that welfare works as intended, even for morons that want to see it dismantled.
- TimJRobinson 2y ago
  This is the same gotcha as "If you like government so much why don't YOU pay more taxes?" Nobody refuses free government help even if they hate the government, just as no one pays extra taxes even if they love the government. The point is always to distribute their belief more widely so that everyone has to live with it.
ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
> Civic duty I remember when this was considered essential to being an American Citizen. We had classes on this in K-12. Sometime in the last decade or so, it's become synonymous with "communist." Which is pretty rich, considering what's going on, these days. Both Abe Lincoln and Joe McCarthy are doing 3200 RPM, right now. That's pretty crazy.
- cmrdporcupine 2y ago
  It's funny to me to see this kind of thing labelled as "communist" considering that classical Marxist theory itself actually has a very cynical (and determinist) view of the state and does not in fact see the state as performing this "civic" role at all. Old school dogmatic Marxists see the state as nothing more than the coordinating arm of capitalism, or a "relief valve" for it, and Lenin spoke openly about its complete destruction in State And Revolution. It's as equally cynical about government as the libertarian position is. So, no, it's not "communist" to advocate a functioning civil sector.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
    I didn't say that. The current American populace seems to be saying that. I was raised in the Cold War "Red Menace" days, and Civic Duty was considered "Red-Blooded American." My father[0] was in the CIA. He was a Harvard LLB, and could have been quite wealthy, but chose what he considered his Civic Duty, as a career (which wasn't really rewarded well). I've never been particularly extreme, myself (very centrist -a vanishing species), but Civic Duty has always been important to me, and to my family, for generations. That no longer seems to be the case. [0] https://cmarshall.com/miscellaneous/MikeMarshall.htm https://cmarshall.com/miscellaneous/MikeMarshall.htm
    - cmrdporcupine 2y ago
      Yes, I was agreeing with you. I'm not the person who downvoted you.
      - 2y ago

mopsi 2y ago

The Ayn Rand types deserve to be reminded that she spent her final years on welfare.

bryanrasmussen 2y ago
which just proves that we shouldn't have any welfare if it supported that hack! /s
cmrdporcupine 2y ago
I mean the easy libertarian response to this would be I imagine them saying "well, she was force to pay into it, she would have a right to partake of it" and they're not wrong. "Gotcha" hypocrisy arguments about personal behaviour I don't think are great taken from either left nor right.
- surgical_fire 2y ago
  > I mean the easy libertarian response to this would be I imagine them saying "well, she was force to pay into it, she would have a right to partake of it" and they're not wrong. Which, perhaps ironically, shows that welfare works as intended, even for morons that want to see it dismantled.
TimJRobinson 2y ago
This is the same gotcha as "If you like government so much why don't YOU pay more taxes?" Nobody refuses free government help even if they hate the government, just as no one pays extra taxes even if they love the government. The point is always to distribute their belief more widely so that everyone has to live with it.

ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago

> Civic duty I remember when this was considered essential to being an American Citizen. We had classes on this in K-12. Sometime in the last decade or so, it's become synonymous with "communist." Which is pretty rich, considering what's going on, these days. Both Abe Lincoln and Joe McCarthy are doing 3200 RPM, right now. That's pretty crazy.

cmrdporcupine 2y ago
It's funny to me to see this kind of thing labelled as "communist" considering that classical Marxist theory itself actually has a very cynical (and determinist) view of the state and does not in fact see the state as performing this "civic" role at all. Old school dogmatic Marxists see the state as nothing more than the coordinating arm of capitalism, or a "relief valve" for it, and Lenin spoke openly about its complete destruction in State And Revolution. It's as equally cynical about government as the libertarian position is. So, no, it's not "communist" to advocate a functioning civil sector.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
  I didn't say that. The current American populace seems to be saying that. I was raised in the Cold War "Red Menace" days, and Civic Duty was considered "Red-Blooded American." My father[0] was in the CIA. He was a Harvard LLB, and could have been quite wealthy, but chose what he considered his Civic Duty, as a career (which wasn't really rewarded well). I've never been particularly extreme, myself (very centrist -a vanishing species), but Civic Duty has always been important to me, and to my family, for generations. That no longer seems to be the case. [0] https://cmarshall.com/miscellaneous/MikeMarshall.htm https://cmarshall.com/miscellaneous/MikeMarshall.htm
  - cmrdporcupine 2y ago
    Yes, I was agreeing with you. I'm not the person who downvoted you.
    - 2y ago