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Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 380.
Tom Jump, of the TJump Youtube channel, had me on to discuss anarcho-capitalism and related issues. I was not familiar with him or what position he would be coming from; turns out he’s a self-professed “centrist liberal” but was very intelligent, and surprisingly civil despite espousing some views completely contrary to libertarianism and my own beliefs.
https://youtu.be/wRAJJC3TleI
Tjump was groping for the phrase “benevolent dictator.” That sounds like it would be the best system, if we could only find a trustworthy person to fill the role of BD. First of all, we can’t find any such person, because power corrupts. Second, it would fail even if an incorruptible angelic person could take charge, because they would still face the calculation problem. A BD is not an ideal that we can easily approximate using mere mortals, or even AIs (google “AI alignment problem”).
When he argued that people need a state for defense, he seemed to think he was making an argument from logical necessity. His argument is actually contingent, but he is not interested in questioning his fundamental assumptions. There is nothing he can do with compulsion that someone else couldn’t do with persuasion. So why insist on compulsion? Because persuasion is inconvenient?
TJump you say?
…I ain’t the worst that you’ve seen. Oh, can’t you see what I mean? might as well TJump…
…
Sorry, had to do it.
On a long enough timeline, every song from the ’80s becomes a bad argument.
This was painful. You were way too polite with him. He is the embodiment of evil. How are people supposed to take you seriously when you’re so polite to evil. He told you many times, directly to your face, that he wanted to violently enslave you. He acknowledged that it was immoral, and wanted to do it anyways.
Why was he against Hitler? Hitler was using precisely the same kind of shitty “reasoning” that he was using – Hitler was trying to maximize the prosperity and wellbeing of his people, of the majority of Germans – Jews be damned. If a few Jews had to suffer to maximize the happiness of the majority, what’s his problem?
(The way he casually asserted that conscripted armies would be more effective than voluntary troops was insane.)
Similarly, would he have opposed slavery? There were plenty of reasonable sounding arguments to enslave Africans. African slaves, materially speaking, were far better off in the Americas. But even if they weren’t, their enslavement helped maximize the prosperity of white Americans, so what would be his problem with that? We werent killing or starving the slaves, we gave them more than they ever could have had in Africa – just not their freedom – that “irrelevant little thing” – according to that disgusting evil piece of shit psycho.
And, his example of being a panda-like slave – being given an apartment and “everything we need”, but not owning anything – what the fuck does that even mean. Can I paint my apartment walls a different color? Will creative unique architecture exist? If our Borg-AI overlord does in fact let us do all these things that we want, then it’s effectively the same as ownership; if it doesn’t, then it’s hell.