The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

[dead]

[flagged]

Libertarianism sounded great. Its all about freedom, and the right to do with yourself what you want. And who doesnt want that?

But they also wanted that freedom for their property and money.

And if youre willing to skirt or plainly violate the laws, you can make bank. And then as a company, you can basically bribe politicians and do all these horrible things.

The end result of libertarianism is simple: He who has the gold makes the rule.

Dont like your pay? Fuck you. Quit.

Dont like the conditions? Fuck you. Die.

Dont like political manipulation? Too fucking bad. You have no choice.

Dont like policies at mega-internet corp (meta, alphabet, microsoft)? Too bad, we'll erase you.

Libertarianism creates semi-autonomous enclaves of technofeudalism. And their power is enforced by non-internet mundane government laws, like the DMCA.

You violate a company, and they delete you. You violate government law, and they arrest or kill you. Of course its in line of duty, or defense of officer - all the eupamisms.

But long story short, I do not trust libertarians in any way. They do indeed want freedom to control everyone else.

The problem with [conservative] libertarians is that they are half anarchists.

They support "radical individualism" (anarchy) and "free market absolutism" (hierarchy). This is a blatant contradiction no matter how you talk your way out of it.

If you are participating in a free market, then you are subject to corporations. The conclusion of libertarian ideals is that one must both allow corporations to rule over them, and never allow anyone to rule over the corporations.

This is where most people, including the author, present liberalism as the solution. Free market + democratic regulation is a great way to manage an economy; but is it really a good way to manage the rest of society?

The article brings up copyright without exploring the idea at all. I think this is the greatest mistake of all. Copyright is what forces every facet of society to participate in a capitalist market.

Without copyright, what would change? First of all, we wouldn't have tech billionaires. Wouldn't that be nice? Next, we wouldn't be structuring all human interactions with corporate ad platforms. There seems to be a lot of unexplored opportunity there. Even more exciting, moderators would suddenly have all the power that they need to manage the responsibility they are given. No more begging to reddit admins! No more fighting automated censorship! Doesn't that sound good?

It boggles my mind how people from nearly every political perspective have accepted copyright as the one perfect inarguable virtue. Even the cyberlibertarians op argues with are only willing to concede copyright with the promise of a magical free market replacement! Now's as good a time as ever to think about it.

On the other side, the way people act towards websites and companies has validate most of Ayn Rand's books.

If you are one of the many people railing against YouTube or Facebook I encourage you to leave the platform and go build your own site. It's frankly a miracle that these sites can turn the worthless noise of a crowd into profit, and all this complaining amounts to some private service not being good enough for your taste.

Libertarianism is still the correct philosophy for tech. Be the prime mover, don't be the entitled dude asking to be catered to among a billion other entitled dudes. That is the only losing game, and that is why it feels like the product is getting worse. It's because you aren't the target audience anymore. So weep your tears of betrayal, once; then go and build.

We have the "hindsight" of every country that regulated, they have no relevant technological industry to speak of. Why point to one of the few countries that made it and say "hmm the bonzai tree could look a bit better if we chopped the trunk before it grew" However you dress it up it's always just the government pointing a gun at the head of a builder of a prime mover and saying don't move. That will never result in progress. Sometimes the prime mover wins all the chips due to unfair tax policy (what we saw from 2000-2018/2026), just another government failure in a long list of government failures.

What? No mention of Web3?

Hacks like Curtis Yarvin proclaim that code wranglers have solved all the problems and should be running the show because they made money flipping shiny shit to gullible buyers.

Where is Web3 in solving all our problems? What does technofeudalism get the people?