The Deadly Race Between Politics And Technology

Pylades · May 9, 2009

The Education of a Libertarian

I remain committed to the faith of my teenage years: to authentic human freedom as a precondition for the highest good. I stand against confiscatory taxes, totalitarian collectives, and the ideology of the inevitability of the death of every individual. For all these reasons, I still call myself “libertarian.”

But I must confess that over the last two decades, I have changed radically on the question of how to achieve these goals. Most importantly, I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible. By tracing out the development of my thinking, I hope to frame some of the challenges faced by all classical liberals today.

As a Stanford undergraduate studying philosophy in the late 1980s, I naturally was drawn to the give-and-take of debate and the desire to bring about freedom through political means. I started a student newspaper to challenge the prevailing campus orthodoxies; we scored some limited victories, most notably in undoing speech codes instituted by the university. But in a broader sense we did not achieve all that much for all the effort expended. Much of it felt like trench warfare on the Western Front in World War I; there was a lot of carnage, but we did not move the center of the debate. In hindsight, we were preaching mainly to the choir — even if this had the important side benefit of convincing the choir’s members to continue singing for the rest of their lives.

As a young lawyer and trader in Manhattan in the 1990s, I began to understand why so many become disillusioned after college. The world appears too big a place. Rather than fight the relentless indifference of the universe, many of my saner peers retreated to tending their small gardens. The higher one’s IQ, the more pessimistic one became about free-market politics — capitalism simply is not that popular with the crowd. Among the smartest conservatives, this pessimism often manifested in heroic drinking; the smartest libertarians, by contrast, had fewer hang-ups about positive law and escaped not only to alcohol but beyond it.

As one fast-forwards to 2009, the prospects for a libertarian politics appear grim indeed. Exhibit A is a financial crisis caused by too much debt and leverage, facilitated by a government that insured against all sorts of moral hazards — and we know that the response to this crisis involves way more debt and leverage, and way more government. Those who have argued for free markets have been screaming into a hurricane. The events of recent months shatter any remaining hopes of politically minded libertarians. For those of us who are libertarian in 2009, our education culminates with the knowledge that the broader education of the body politic has become a fool’s errand.

Indeed, even more pessimistically, the trend has been going the wrong way for a long time. To return to finance, the last economic depression in the United States that did not result in massive government intervention was the collapse of 1920–21. It was sharp but short, and entailed the sort of Schumpeterian “creative destruction” that could lead to a real boom. The decade that followed — the roaring 1920s — was so strong that historians have forgotten the depression that started it. The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics. Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of “capitalist democracy” into an oxymoron.

In the face of these realities, one would despair if one limited one’s horizon to the world of politics. I do not despair because I no longer believe that politics encompasses all possible futures of our world. In our time, the great task for libertarians is to find an escape from politics in all its forms — from the totalitarian and fundamentalist catastrophes to the unthinking demos that guides so-called “social democracy.”

The critical question then becomes one of means, of how to escape not via politics but beyond it. Because there are no truly free places left in our world, I suspect that the mode for escape must involve some sort of new and hitherto untried process that leads us to some undiscovered country; and for this reason I have focused my efforts on new technologies that may create a new space for freedom. Let me briefly speak to three such technological frontiers:

(1) Cyberspace. As an entrepreneur and investor, I have focused my efforts on the Internet. In the late 1990s, the founding vision of PayPal centered on the creation of a new world currency, free from all government control and dilution — the end of monetary sovereignty, as it were. In the 2000s, companies like Facebook create the space for new modes of dissent and new ways to form communities not bounded by historical nation-states. By starting a new Internet business, an entrepreneur may create a new world. The hope of the Internet is that these new worlds will impact and force change on the existing social and political order. The limitation of the Internet is that these new worlds are virtual and that any escape may be more imaginary than real. The open question, which will not be resolved for many years, centers on which of these accounts of the Internet proves true.

(2) Outer space. Because the vast reaches of outer space represent a limitless frontier, they also represent a limitless possibility for escape from world politics. But the final frontier still has a barrier to entry: Rocket technologies have seen only modest advances since the 1960s, so that outer space still remains almost impossibly far away. We must redouble the efforts to commercialize space, but we also must be realistic about the time horizons involved. The libertarian future of classic science fiction, à la Heinlein, will not happen before the second half of the 21st century.

(3) Seasteading. Between cyberspace and outer space lies the possibility of settling the oceans. To my mind, the questions about whether people will live there (answer: enough will) are secondary to the questions about whether seasteading technology is imminent. From my vantage point, the technology involved is more tentative than the Internet, but much more realistic than space travel. We may have reached the stage at which it is economically feasible, or where it soon will be feasible. It is a realistic risk, and for this reason I eagerly support this initiative.

The future of technology is not pre-determined, and we must resist the temptation of technological utopianism — the notion that technology has a momentum or will of its own, that it will guarantee a more free future, and therefore that we can ignore the terrible arc of the political in our world.

A better metaphor is that we are in a deadly race between politics and technology. The future will be much better or much worse, but the question of the future remains very open indeed. We do not know exactly how close this race is, but I suspect that it may be very close, even down to the wire. Unlike the world of politics, in the world of technology the choices of individuals may still be paramount. The fate of our world may depend on the effort of a single person who builds or propagates the machinery of freedom that makes the world safe for capitalism.

For this reason, all of us must wish Patri Friedman the very best in his extraordinary experiment.
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Very similar to what I believe many on here are thinking.

RickDeckard · May 9, 2009

What the article doesn't mention is that the statist intervention following each of the depressions/recessions was undertaken (rightly or wrongly) with the goal of preserving capitalism - capitalism being understood as a concept broader than laissez-faire capitalism.

Pylades · May 9, 2009

Seriously, one reply from henryhill, that's it?
HE'S SAYING WOMEN SHOULDN'T BE ALLOWED TO VOTE! (okay, actually he isn't saying that but that would be much more scandalous)

Facebook Backer Wishes Women Couldn't Vote

Peter Thiel, foremost among Silicon Valley's loopy libertarians and the first outside investor in Facebook, has written an essay declaring that the country went to hell as soon as women won the right to vote.

Thiel is the former CEO of PayPal who now runs the $2 billion hedge fund Clarium Capital and a venture-capital firm called the Founders Fund. His best-returning investment to date, though, has been Facebook. His $500,000 investment is now worth north of $100 million even by the most conservative valuations of the social network.

On the side, though, his pet passion is libertarianism and the fantasy that everything would be better in the world if government just quit nagging everybody. But, now he's given up hope on achieving his vision through political means because, as he writes in Cato Unbound, a website run by the Cato Institute, all those voting females have wrecked things:

The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics. Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women - two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians - have rendered the notion of "capitalist democracy" into an oxymoron.

So there you have it: The problem with women is that they don't vote like their menfolk tell them. We would have so much more freedom, Thiel suggests, if only we'd deprived women of it.

You may wonder: Is Thiel on drugs? The answer, according to Thiel, is yes:

As a young lawyer and trader in Manhattan in the 1990s, I began to understand why so many become disillusioned after college. The world appears too big a place. Rather than fight the relentless indifference of the universe, many of my saner peers retreated to tending their small gardens. The higher one's IQ, the more pessimistic one became about free-market politics - capitalism simply is not that popular with the crowd. Among the smartest conservatives, this pessimism often manifested in heroic drinking; the smartest libertarians, by contrast, had fewer hang-ups about positive law and escaped not only to alcohol but beyond it.

"Positive law" is Libertarian-speak for laws which proscribe certain activities, such as taking drugs. Translate Thiel's language, and you'll see that he's saying anyone in his generation who wasn't taking drugs was an idiot. Which squares with rumors we'd heard about Thiel during his PayPal days, especially while he was fitfully coming out as a gay man. With a life like that, we can understand Thiel's visceral dislike of the government. But what did women ever do to him?
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Captain X · May 10, 2009

[YT="Get back in the kitchen!"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeHUQAnzpF0[/YT]

Prufrock · May 10, 2009

Pylades said: ↑

Seriously, one reply from henryhill, that's it?
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Seriously, you provide a one-sentence comment along with your quotations saying merely "Me, too!" and you expect everyone else to spurt forth their own in-depth analysis?

Chris · May 10, 2009

"Disillusioned youth refuses to let go to ideals, blames people for having a different opinion."

What a story.

That's another problem I have with all these worldviews people keep spouting; nothing's ever going to work because the human race is a bastard-producing machine. Everyone wants what the other has, and most people can be put into desperate enough circumstances to crush your skull with a rock and take that shiny new coffee maker.

Entropy is the constant of the universe. Accept it, deal with it. Do what the rest of us do; buy a gun and watch strangers with a leery eye.

Pylades · May 10, 2009

Prufrock said: ↑

Pylades said: ↑

Seriously, one reply from henryhill, that's it?
Click to expand...

Seriously, you provide a one-sentence comment along with your quotations saying merely "Me, too!" and you expect everyone else to spurt forth their own in-depth analysis?
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You're supposed to either rep me or post a one-liner as well. I brougth a great article to your attention so enjoy.

NAHTMMM · May 10, 2009

A better metaphor is that we are in a deadly race between politics and technology.
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[action=NAHTMMM]comes to a halt, under the pretense of having a breather, and begins "accidentally" tripping most of the politicians and some of the technologies up[/action]

There. Howzat?

Clyde · May 10, 2009

Pylades said: ↑

Prufrock said: ↑

Pylades said: ↑

Seriously, one reply from henryhill, that's it?
Click to expand...

Seriously, you provide a one-sentence comment along with your quotations saying merely "Me, too!" and you expect everyone else to spurt forth their own in-depth analysis?
Click to expand...

You're supposed to either rep me or post a one-liner as well. I brougth a great article to your attention so enjoy.
Click to expand...

Okay fine.

So smart folk hate capitalism?

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The Deadly Race Between Politics And Technology

Pylades Louder & Prouder

RickDeckard Socialist

Pylades Louder & Prouder

Captain X Responsible cookie control

Prufrock Disturbing the Universe

Chris Cosmic Horror

Pylades Louder & Prouder

NAHTMMM Perpetually sondering

Clyde Orange

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The Deadly Race Between Politics And Technology

Pylades Louder & Prouder

RickDeckard Socialist

Pylades Louder & Prouder

Captain X Responsible cookie control

Prufrock Disturbing the Universe

Chris Cosmic Horror

Pylades Louder & Prouder

NAHTMMM Perpetually sondering

Clyde Orange

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