Who would quit their day job after reading Kapital? Not even Marx and Engels did that to write and publish
everything they ever wrote.
Not to veer away from (my) sociopolitical angst but this had me
I didn't know.John Stossel was on this wave now.
https://twitter.com/adamjohnsonNYC/status/1138165329195163649
a little inside baseball, that figure being so specific because it was more or less revealed that one arm of the Foundation did not know the other arm was paying him that much, they thought it was more of a mutual advertising thing because his multi-million dollar Fox Contract would indicate there's no point in paying Stossel that much (also nobody actually watches most of the YouTube videos anyway unless some Democrat-friendly outlet/channel starts "debunking" them)
lets' just say that Nick Gillespe's reason.tv editorialship and Matt Welch's supposed oversight is being re-evaluated and there's a reason KMW is now editor-in-chief over all content and the divide between the magazine, the YouTube content ("reason.tv") and the Foundation's publications no longer exists as it did under those two
the Foundation will still publish separately because it does "studies" as a pseduothinktank but everyone is now listed under the same masthead and some people got voluntarily retired
I have no idea why reason.tv ever existed as a thing and they don't just say it's the fucking YouTube channel
It’s shame libertarian has been so tainted by right libertarians in America that the mere prospect of libertarianism is scoffed by many liberals and the far left when many libertarian principles - personal liberty, personhood, stuff like that - are perfectly compatible. For example, the freedom to choose in relation to abortion. This is a libertarian - and by extension liberal expression. Definitely what happens when libertarians are ran by loons who prize businesses over people. Looking at the left libertarianism as expressed in European channels makes a lot of the principles of libertarian thought readily appealing. I truly wonder if the left in America could gain more in-roads politically by repackaging libertarian philosophy towards its more European definition. I think the concept of libertarianism (as expressed in the European vein) is identifiably a part of American values.
there are historical reasons for this
Libertarianism in Europe and libertarianism in America were never the same movement except for how they split off of anarchism, European libertarianism hewed closer to anarchism as a movement because of its lack of historical ideological ties across the continent THEN it imported American libertarianism, American libertarianism was steeped in American historicalism, in other words, the American libertarians played off of the American founding doctrines/myths and like most American movements it NEVER imported European changes.
Essentially, "left-libertarianism" never happened in the U.S. and "right-libertarianism" never happened in Europe until the late 20th Century. Original "libertarians" in the United States would mostly not be recognizable* as "right-libertarians" but they are nonetheless highly recognizable American libertarians/anarchists/communists with a stress on the American.
I actually contest the divide more broadly, in fact, I consider the distinct stand you likely identify as "right-libertarianism" to be strongly influenced by Ayn Rand and Objectivism minus the cult part but definitely including the atheist part. This is related to the founding of The Party which was a HUGE thing specific to the American libertarian movement. Karl Hess was once the most famous distinctly American libertarian outside of Ayn Rand. The Party had no interest in him and vice versa no matter how many times everyone, especially Rothbard (the non-Rand father of modern American libertarianism), tried to merge them to work together. Hayek and von Mises were notably critical of conservatism and emphasized the European liberalism they associated with libertarianism, Hayek detested the Party and von Mises considered it a fools errand.
Rothbard, however, was not and his period as unelected head of The Party despite rejecting the Objectivists for the most part in the end resulted in the "conservatarian" alliance that ultimately focused on Pat Buchanan as the libertarian savior. (Much to Ron Paul's displeasure, this is why he left and went back to the Republicans. Yes, I know it makes no sense, but remember these are people and factors other than ideology are involved.) When this utterly failed (and Rothbard admitted it while Rockwell saw the failing as the movement not being racist enough to win over the majority of voters) it spread all over the movement while essentially rendering The Party as a lifeless shell that existed purely to be momentarily seized by whichever faction got enough people to the Convention at any one moment.
The still biggest divide in the movement is and will remain immigration. Pro-life libertarians have shown consistently they will vote for pro-choice libertarians, and vice versa. However anti-immigrant libertarians will not vote for pro-immigration libertarians, they will vote for anti-immigrant conservatives first, and vice versa.
Ironically, Karl Hess was finally won over into The Party by the Pat Buchanan is Awesome and Will Totally Win and Let Us Eliminate The State Plan.
What did die in the United States from the original American libertarians was arguably anarchism of a non-anarcho-capitalist ideal. Mutualism, going off and making your own communes with blackjack and hookers, etc. was utterly rejected for its inability to erode the increasing power of the American State (even though this was never the point) and they mostly just faded away as serious groups. As European libertarianism never actually led to anywhere except small irrelevant groups that can't even found fringe Parties, this never happened and they remained stronger strains of the overall movement. Also Objectivism and Rothbardism landed with heavy duds.
Modern American "left-libertarinism" is arguably nothing worth talking about because there's three strands of which only one looks anything like the European version, the irrelevant academic one that stays true to the originals and yells at people to read their Rose Wilder Lane, the "Libertarian Democrats" and "bleeding heart libertarians" who exist purely to justify reasons to join and vote straight-ticket always for the Democratic Party and support the New Deal/Great Society state while asking that they not war so much, and people who post on C4SS until they get in a dumb fight which apparently requires them to RENOUNCE ANARCHISM AS FLAWED.
This misnamed
Radicals for Capitalism actually spends a good chunk on the pre-Party libertarians who were not universally capitalists, it was Rand and the hard turn into The Party that led to the elevation of "capitalism" above anything else in the movement. One might lay that at Rand's feet too as she spent all her life saying she was not a libertarian as libertarians are losers who refuse to seize power and enact Objectivism by force. A bunch of people said "you know, that bitch is right, we need a Political Party!" And so they did and it was really funny for decades on end.
*except that loved creating their own currencies
spoiler (click to show/hide)
I love that libertarianism is marked as a spelling error by browsers while libertarian is not and by love I mean it drives me insane thinking I just spelled everything in the above paragraphs wrong.