I got into voluntaryism through the path of being a fan of the high tech and “promise” of science fiction. Perhaps that is a freaky path. But the popularity of Ayn Rand and appeal to selfish innovators tells me there are a lot like me. The element of individualists who love the works of man, those who love the city, the technological marvels, the hustle and bustle - seems to be missing from social media at least.
Certainly innovators are busy working on the next marvel, but working 16 hours a day, or eight hours a day, even four, is not a requirement to be a heroic innovator.
I think many libertarians cannot grasp why Silicon Valley in California and Route 128 in Massachusetts are still high tech hubs. And Silicon Beach (Los Angeles and Orange County), despite the high taxes in those states. There is a lot of gnashing of teeth that entrepreneurs are supposed to run away from high taxes.
But people don’t understand other things make up for the taxes, such as access to the brilliant engineers from neighboring universities. Many engineers love the environment of diversity and tolerance and maybe a lot of amenities of the Boston area and the California tech hubs.
Ayn Rand (the personality) and her “Ayn Rand Institute” turned off many of the very same people who admire her books. So a lot of people had no home in Ayn Rand fan gatherings. Some innovators then looked at libertarians. The influx of religious evangelicals to the libertarian movement was not comforting. And some innovators were not really interested in pot, though favor its legality. Innovators just don’t want to be in the drug culture. Attending a few libertarian and Objectivist meetings, myself made me disillusioned about groups.
Social media anarchists post a lot of anti vaccine, anti pharmaceuticals ideas. I guess I personally am not “anti-vax” and I have to take medicine due to thyroid and heart genetic defects. I did my own research. Perhaps most people don’t expect to have a need for prescriptions because when you are young, some genetic defects will not be known until later in life when a symptom happens or a blood test finally measures a need for medicine.
It’s odd how parts of the libertarian movement became anti medicine, and that seems to go against the ideas of man as innovator hero. It’s actually anti technology and Ayn Rand would regard it leftist.
One young friend bought land in Wisconsin and foraged. He considered himself a paleo libertarian. I guess I upset him when I pointed out how he could need modern medicine. He has hashimoto’s disease. Eating a high vegetable diet and hunting for game is fine, but he still will need medicine. Then he was really insulted when I reminded him he depends on capitalism to be on social media. He announced he is leaving social media, shortly after I told him he is using high tech to access social media!
There are some people who say libertarians should leave the USA and move to “Anarcapulco.” An innovator would be asking “why?” When you are in the software business, for example, there is a lot of high tech infrastructure you need. You might need a good quality data center to situate your servers in a secure environment. If you are an innovator in medicine you want to be near your infrastructure too. As I see it, an innovator won’t innovate much if he moves because he could associate with libertarians.
Recently I’ve come across “collapsitarians.” They expect governments will attack their own people within a year or so. Some of them are “preppers” who moved to the woods. Yes away from the dreaded hubs of technological innovation that powers the social media they type their anti technology words on.
So what is the lesson in all this? The real individualists ironically may have never read Ayn Rand books but are great using Python and implementing cryptographic algorithms. They love the entrepreneurial networking in Boston or California and their tax accountants sweat out the tax laws for them. They don’t like exclusionary politics but like open borders and diversity. They don’t give much thought to politics because there is no time. They shine it on. Ironically the most heroic capitalists are not paleo libertarians and are not planning on collapse. There is a lot of work and contracts with customers to be signed.
I was moved to write this today because I had enough of the gloom and doom ideas and remembered my roots as a capitalist were basically because i am a technology geek and love the products of great innovators. The new voluntaryists seem to want to return to the Stone Age and one called me a statist for saying I love living in the city where I am inspired.
Freaking exactly!! Omg this is resonating so hard right now.
I may not be a tech person (working on it some), but I think you're spot on. People making progress don't have time to read or bitch on Facebook. There's progress to be made.
Love it. Steem on!
My boss is an example. He once identified himself as “liberal,” but he avoids politics. I knew him for nearly fifteen years but worked for him just five years. He has great business sense. He’s about ten years younger than me and was very fortunate in getting opportunities (his mom helped him). I used to not like that, but it does not matter anymore to me since I made enough of a pile of money in stocks. We are in the server software business. He’s been very nice to me that I regret any ill feeling I had of him in my past. He was a competitor because I was a contractor and he managed a group of competing contractors and we had the same client back in the early days. We are on cutting edge technology. I am not counting on collapse or negativity. My environment is all positive where I live and work.
I think the Ayn Rand era is long over. We need to embrace new stuff. Steemit and crypto are ways we can make ideas into reality. We don't need fiction, and we have better philosophers.
Maybe we focus on real economists and developers of free market principle. Rand was good for getting me angry enough to consider libertarianism. Now I'm hungry for more, and I'm finding that in Austrian economics.
I love the idea of “Primacy of existence.” A lot of Ayn Rand’s ideas were not hers, but thinkers such as Francis Bacon (“Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.”). I think the book “The Objectivist Philosophy of Ayn Rand,” in the first four chapters is most valuable and those are ideas from great thinkers preceding Ayn Rand. So to be anti Ayn Rand in everything is ridiculous. IMO. I’ve gone into exploring Austrian economics myself. It’s not easy. There is a whole lot of material and I will need to study it full time to become an expert. So instead I read small essays on certain aspects. I just finished reading Saifedean Ammous’ book on The Bitcoin Standard. He is an Austrian economist and seems to still think gold is valuable, but he is a bitcoin proponent. Another one is just an essay I read by Jorg Guido Hulsman, “Deflation and Liberty.”
Both sound wonderful :) I'm just listening to podcasts at work mostly. Eventually I'll get into actually reading books. A lot of them are available for free from the Mises Institute.
Actually you are equating Ayn Rand, the cult figure with objectivism, a philosophy that is either valid or not. If Objectivism is not valid, you are fine. But if it is a valid philosophy and you reject it you could be suffering in life. It’s like natural law: if you reject the fact there is a cliff in front of you the law won’t care if you walk off the cliff. It exists. Ayn Rand did not invent Objectivism. It’s been around for centuries and its metaphysics is Aristotelian.
Objectivism is indeed either valid or not. Its proponents are open to criticism, and abstract ideas not put into practice have no value on their own. What can we do now to transcend the status quo? That is the question.
Which is more appealing? Item 2 without “the USA is going to hell” is unappealing, wouldn’t you think? The only way to make it appealing is by preaching doom and thinking people will accept it. I heard doom for more than 40 years.