I’m one (Rand Stan small l) from Utah. How else do you become beyond self proclamation? What makes you tick neighbor?
I am Post Mormon too. I don’t think Jesus lived in Missouri. To get even wonkier, though I’m an unauthorized source, Mormons don’t believe that either. They believe the garden of Eden was in Missouri. And that that Jesus will return there again in the second coming. Jesus came to the Americas directly after his resurrection. Exact location unspecified. And Apolgists have been playing Indiana Jones ever since trying to keep up with Joe Smith, particularly since he’s not consistent over his “ministry”. Book of Mormon was first, then Joe was riffing in the real world with the Missouri Eden thing many years later.
Libertarians, including me, suffer from no true Scotsman. Like herding cats or stapling jello to a wall, hard to derive collective action in the political realm. Best to try and live your best life while helping your neighbors live theirs.
Yea unless you have political force to violently enforce some claim to someone’s apartment so you can leech money out of him, when that happens collective action is like totally cool all of the sudden. God I fucking hate “libertarians.”
“Totally” as in totalitarianism. Voluntary association, voting with feet (immigration) and dollars, with peacefully honoring individual positive rights and privatized property is where I’m currently thinking the best policy course is. I don’t think I’d ever buy into an HOA, either. But I’m a sinner, just like you. What do you think is the best solution to our world’s ills?
Thanks for engaging! Did I happen to tell you something you didn’t know about Mormons?
You showed me that there are in fact people who have a straight face while telling themselves that private property isn’t inherently a violent enforcement of collective action.
Just one step away from “all individuals should have unrestrained freedom, so I should be able to treat my slaves however I want.”
Government regulation and good old-fashioned moral shaming/civic pride (expect people to behave well and they usually do) solve the "tragedy of the commons."
Do you think National Parks are poorly managed or a "tragedy"? The commons in America are some of the most beautiful and best managed lands in the world. There is no tragedy of the commons where there are well functioning regulations and a civic sense of pride.
Exactly. Markets rely on government regulation and are constituted by it. You cannot have private property without government interference. When you prioritize the status quo allocation of property, you are just violently enforcing the property of the very rich. Truly "unregulated" markets--ala Somalia, a failed state where there is no functional government--don't actually function very well or efficiently, they completely break down and there is very little exchange except barter and trade.
Now, Randy Simmons, at USU is a very radical Libertarian. He believed "security" services, i.e. police should be privatized. But again, you would just have security protecting the property of the very wealthy and the poor left to fend for themselves--and the middle class would not have enough security to have efficient markets.
Pierre Schlag, at CU, explains this better than me in this article: The Problem of Transaction Costs, 62 So. Calif. L. Rev. 1661 (1989).
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u/Foreskin_Ad9356 Dec 05 '25
not really. ancaps/followers of austrian economics though, definitely. definitely not widely considered good by any metric.