5 ms·

Interesting reaction from Tom Watson MP, until last week the UK government minister for e-democracy and (more or less) the Internet: "That Sir, is a seismic re

by adw 17y ago

Interesting reaction from Tom Watson MP, until last week the UK government minister for e-democracy and (more or less) the Internet: "That Sir, is a seismic result, and a big warning to a very large number of vested interests." http://twitter.com/tom_watson/status/2068168426 http://twitter.com/tom_watson/status/2068168426 The Pirate Party and friends are, in many ways, the new face of the libertarian left in Europe.

jamesbritt 17y ago
"The Pirate Party and friends are, in many ways, the new face of the libertarian left in Europe." I'm curious: What distinguishes "libertarian left" from plain old libertarian?
- emmett 17y ago
  Focus, mainly. Libertarians have long been aligned with the right in America because they have emphasized the economic parts of their platform, at the expense of the social ones.
  - adw 17y ago
    I'm not sure it really translates - it's a post-socialist phenomenon, and socialism still seems like a swearword your side of the pond. Take issues like gun control, social welfare, environmentalism... the modern European hard left is, in general, strongly in favour of all of the above. Their platform's libertarian in that it's mostly against government intervention in personal lives, and therefore pro-marriage equality, drug decriminalisation, liberalisation of copyright, etc etc etc. You'll find a lot of anti-globalisation fellow travellers too. The influences are much more things like anarcho-syndicalism, Christiania (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freetown_Christiania http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freetown_Christiania), that kind of thing.
    - emmett 17y ago
      I think we're in total agreement. Libertarians share platforms with both the left and the right; we call them "left-libertarians" when they find themselves mostly voting in alignment with the left, and "right-libertarians" when they find themselves mostly voting in agreement with the right. European libertarians, coming from the background you describe, much more often find themselves on the left than the right.
- vidarh 17y ago
  Libertarian parties in Europe are largely seen as centre to centre-right, as they tend to focus a lot on "freedom to property" alongside other rights, whereas the European left overall see property rights as sometimes limiting rights and so not automatically (or ever, depending on how far to the left you go) desirable. But it's muddy - the UK Liberal Democratic Party, for example, was founded by a merger of the Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party (splinter from Labour). Europe does however have self-proclaimed liberal and libertarian spanning the spectrum from centre-left to far right, and a bunch of far left parties that strongly adhere to large parts of libertarian ideologies. In fact, personally during school I was campaigning for a Marxist party and during a school debate I almost reduced a "far right libertarian" to tears by agreeing with him at very inopportune (for him) moments. He was horrified at being associated with someone far left, and just plain didn't understand that the majority of our party platforms were aligned - it was almost only on the issue of protection of property rights to means of production that we disagreed, and the fact that I was for a far more drastic reduction of government power.
- cabalamat 17y ago
  I was talking to someone from the UK Libertarian Party -- http://www.lpuk.org/ http://www.lpuk.org/ -- the other day. He broadly agreed with me that the UKLP cared about the rich and didn't care about the poor. I regard myself as a left libertarian -- I think the government needs to get off people's backs, that people are usually better at making decisions for themselves than faceless bureaucracies are, that the people should control the government and not the other way round. I also think government should govern for the benefit of everyone, not just the rich, and that the government's attitude to the poor shouldn't be "tough shit".
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
cabalamat 17y ago
Tom Watson's right. If the MPAA/RIAA/IFPI continue to push for bad new laws, such as the ACTA treaty or 3-strikes, they will find Pirate Parties getting significant numbers of votes across Europe. And once that happens, mainstream parties will start copying PP policies in order to woo back the voters. In other words, the content corporations have probably lost the ability to take away our Internet from us, or impose any new restrictions on digital technology, throughout the EU. And there may be a rolling back of existing restrictions, such as the ban on circumventing DRM.
cturner 17y ago
The Pirate Party and friends are, in many ways, the new face of the libertarian left in Europe. Avoid 'left', 'right' - it lacks meaning but alienates people. I'm a hardline libertarian who would be characterised as 'right wing' by those who care for such terms, but identify with the pirate platform.
- cabalamat 17y ago
  I suspect the PP would neither classify themselves as "left" or "right".

by adw 17y ago

jamesbritt 17y ago

"The Pirate Party and friends are, in many ways, the new face of the libertarian left in Europe." I'm curious: What distinguishes "libertarian left" from plain old libertarian?

emmett 17y ago
Focus, mainly. Libertarians have long been aligned with the right in America because they have emphasized the economic parts of their platform, at the expense of the social ones.
- adw 17y ago
  I'm not sure it really translates - it's a post-socialist phenomenon, and socialism still seems like a swearword your side of the pond. Take issues like gun control, social welfare, environmentalism... the modern European hard left is, in general, strongly in favour of all of the above. Their platform's libertarian in that it's mostly against government intervention in personal lives, and therefore pro-marriage equality, drug decriminalisation, liberalisation of copyright, etc etc etc. You'll find a lot of anti-globalisation fellow travellers too. The influences are much more things like anarcho-syndicalism, Christiania (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freetown_Christiania http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freetown_Christiania), that kind of thing.
  - emmett 17y ago
    I think we're in total agreement. Libertarians share platforms with both the left and the right; we call them "left-libertarians" when they find themselves mostly voting in alignment with the left, and "right-libertarians" when they find themselves mostly voting in agreement with the right. European libertarians, coming from the background you describe, much more often find themselves on the left than the right.
vidarh 17y ago
Libertarian parties in Europe are largely seen as centre to centre-right, as they tend to focus a lot on "freedom to property" alongside other rights, whereas the European left overall see property rights as sometimes limiting rights and so not automatically (or ever, depending on how far to the left you go) desirable. But it's muddy - the UK Liberal Democratic Party, for example, was founded by a merger of the Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party (splinter from Labour). Europe does however have self-proclaimed liberal and libertarian spanning the spectrum from centre-left to far right, and a bunch of far left parties that strongly adhere to large parts of libertarian ideologies. In fact, personally during school I was campaigning for a Marxist party and during a school debate I almost reduced a "far right libertarian" to tears by agreeing with him at very inopportune (for him) moments. He was horrified at being associated with someone far left, and just plain didn't understand that the majority of our party platforms were aligned - it was almost only on the issue of protection of property rights to means of production that we disagreed, and the fact that I was for a far more drastic reduction of government power.
cabalamat 17y ago
I was talking to someone from the UK Libertarian Party -- http://www.lpuk.org/ http://www.lpuk.org/ -- the other day. He broadly agreed with me that the UKLP cared about the rich and didn't care about the poor. I regard myself as a left libertarian -- I think the government needs to get off people's backs, that people are usually better at making decisions for themselves than faceless bureaucracies are, that the people should control the government and not the other way round. I also think government should govern for the benefit of everyone, not just the rich, and that the government's attitude to the poor shouldn't be "tough shit".
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]

cabalamat 17y ago

Tom Watson's right. If the MPAA/RIAA/IFPI continue to push for bad new laws, such as the ACTA treaty or 3-strikes, they will find Pirate Parties getting significant numbers of votes across Europe. And once that happens, mainstream parties will start copying PP policies in order to woo back the voters. In other words, the content corporations have probably lost the ability to take away our Internet from us, or impose any new restrictions on digital technology, throughout the EU. And there may be a rolling back of existing restrictions, such as the ban on circumventing DRM.

cturner 17y ago

The Pirate Party and friends are, in many ways, the new face of the libertarian left in Europe. Avoid 'left', 'right' - it lacks meaning but alienates people. I'm a hardline libertarian who would be characterised as 'right wing' by those who care for such terms, but identify with the pirate platform.

cabalamat 17y ago
I suspect the PP would neither classify themselves as "left" or "right".