Libertarians will tell you this is not an anarcho-capitalist example because it obviously failed, but look up Kowloon Walled city for a good example of how an anarcho-capitalist society looks like.

[–] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

To what degree is that like my mom saying "look at Venezuela for a good example of socialism"?

I agree that libertarianism is often short sighted, but I'm under the impression that your average libertarian believes that there should be a government with just enough power and responsibility to ensure that the citizens don't infringe on each other's "liberties". I don't think that's at all guaranteed in an anarcho-capitalist society, but I could be wrong.

I don't agree with libertarianism because it doesn't attempt to solve the tragedy of the commons whatsoever. Which is why I believe the fediverse can only be maintained through a culture of cooperation of its users.

[–] buckykat@lemmy.fmhy.ml 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The tragedy of the commons is a capitalist myth

[–] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How so? I think of it as an anti-capitalist thought problem in the first place.

[–] buckykat@lemmy.fmhy.ml 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's not how either commons or people work, it's the fantasy of one eugenicist freak

[–] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So uh, did you read this article? It most certainly does not claim "It’s not how either commons or people work". Quite the opposite.

he got the history of the commons wrong. As Susan Cox pointed out, early pastures were well regulated by local institutions.

It's a thought problem, not a literal pasture anywhere.

Of course, humans can deplete finite resources. This often happens when we lack appropriate institutions to manage them. But let’s not credit Hardin for that common insight.

In other words, "he's not wrong, he's just a racist". I didn't know about the guy before this article. Ironically, they have accomplished exactly the accreditation they were trying to discourage.

These corporations’ efforts to successfully thwart climate action are the real tragedy.

That is already how I understood the thought problem's relevance to climate change prior to reading this article.

let’s stop the mindless invocation of Hardin. Let’s stop saying that we are all to blame because we all overuse shared resources.

Double strawman. 1) No one invokes "Hardin", that's why they had to tell us who he was. And 2) The tragedy of the commons doesn't make any claims about who is to blame for hogging the hypothetical "commons". The tragedy of the commons is just a situation. It could apply to any finite resource; ex. if someone is selfishly hogging the wifi bandwidth, everyone's netflix experience sucks. It's not relevant whether 20 people are hogging it, or just one or two people.

The article seems like a non-sequitur, and a waste of time. It means well, but I wish they wouldn't preserve this racists legacy in this way. Feels like taking it's taking the discussion 2 steps backward to take 1 step forward.

[–] buckykat@lemmy.fmhy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

He is wrong, because he's a racist. The commons the "tragedy of the commons" is about were an actual real social system which did not work the way he supposes. Capitalism inclosed and ruined them, just like it's inclosing and ruining the planet. The idea that this is just a natural result of a shared resource existing is entirely ass backwards, and comes from this guy's racism and capitalist ideology.

[–] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It seems like Hardin didn't even originate the thought problem. The article conveniently leaves out that Hardin simply wrote an article about, and created terminology to refer to William Forster Lloyd's thought problem from over 100 years earlier. Instead they opt to give the racist credit. Why?

[–] buckykat@lemmy.fmhy.ml 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Again, the commons is not an imaginary thought experiment, but a real thing that existed, and the so called tragedy is just flat out bad history.

William Forster Lloyd was an early 19th century British economist, I can fucking guarantee he was racist too.

[–] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

it is in fact an economic and sociologic thought problem. There is so much overwhelming evidence to show that this is the case, that the burden of proof is on you to explain it all away.
yes, you're right, humans have always been racist and still are today. That doesn't mean we should erase any and all knowledge racist people have ever generated. That would amount to literally everything.

[–] gary_host_laptop@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well, one argument that could be used is that for example Venezuela is not the Marxist variant of socialism, but it is their own thing called Bolivarian Socialism based on ideas of La Patria Grande and Simón Bolivar, a good comparison is that of Gadaffi's Arab Socialism, which picks up ideas of Marxism (Bolivarian Socialism does this too, of course), Islam and Pan-Africanism/Pan-Arabism. So in that case it doesn't strickly follow the rules of what some people would call orthodox scientific Marxism, since both incorporate ideas that might not be 100% coherent with dialectical materialist analysis of certain issues. Besides, both Venezuela and Libya suffered from great US meddling (both countries suffered coup d'Etats, Venezuela suffered two if I recall correctly, and embargoes), and specifically for Venezuela the embargo was pretty harsh since their economy depended a lot on crude oil export, which they could not carry out as they should. Still, if you look at the numbers, Venezuela has greatly improved in the last couple years even though it still has insane amounts of inflation, it went from 438.12 on 2017 to 65,374.08 and in October of last year it was of 1,588.0, so as you can see going from 65,000 to 1,500 is a huge success, even if it's still extremely high in comparison with other countries.

Regarding Kowloon, I'm sure you can find some excuse, but to put it simply, it was a place of a really small area (2.6 ha (6.4 acres)) but with a really high density (50,000 people and 1,923,000/km2) but at the end of the day was a perfect place for such experiment since you don't have the complicated macroeconomics of not even a small country. The place was ignored by the English government (it was during the Hong Kong colonial time) but at the same time prohibited the Chinese government of the mainland from taking it to its own due to its closed proximity with Hong Kong, and furthermore it was not some place that was, for example, a CIA funded place to destabilise a region. In simple words it was ignored by pretty much any type of governmental entity and left to be as it could. You could argue, though, that the place started as a poor place, without access to basic needs, but if anything after its anarcho-capitalist existence it should have improved, not get worse. Construction was done without any type of care for regulations, medical care was done by whomever who had access to some tools, and life was even worse than stuff like Latinamerican Villas or Favelas, since even stuff like sunlight was not accessible for people living in the lower strata, since due to its small area housing needed to be built vertically. I'm sure people will find excuses, but to me it's a perfect example, funnily enough I've met some an-caps who wholeheartedly saw that place a desirable thing. There is a book by a photographer that has some of the best photos of that place at the time called City of Darkness, I think it was available at LibGen, and also the place was shown in the film Bloodsport featuring Jean-Claude Van Damme.

[–] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 year ago

That's a lot of really interesting info, but I don't think it addressed my question. My question was, does an "an-cap" society really align with libertarianism, because from what I know of libertarianism, it doesn't. Libertarians aren't anarchists, they believe in a minimal govt that prevents people from infringing on each other's freedoms.

Your points about lack of construction or medical regulation are good, though. I don't think a libertarian would endorse those types of regulations, but innocent people will die in completely avoidable ways without them.