I feel like freedom is skrewed

[LovePrevails]

I want to be wrong, but looking at the world right now I feel like we are fated to be batted between conservatives who hate our social freedom and claim to be for economic freedom but don't act like it, and liberals who think that capitalism is eeeeevil and used to stand for our social freedoms but are now part of the PC-thought-police until we have none of either left.

 

I was hopeful because at least people like Ron Paul were getting air time and started a massive change in peoples positions ; but now there is no one. In the UK our anti-establishment hero is Jeremy Corbyn, a dedicated socialist. In the US there is no one in the mainstream spreading ideas of liberty on the media that would actually get to people. Who is making the principled case for capitalism? who is debunking the "pragmatic" arguments of leftists with reason and evidence in the mainstream?

 

I am glad we have the internet and we certainly have more libertarians than ever before, but with no mainstream figureheads we have all of academia pumping out lefties who believe they have the intellectually superior view because their views have never been tested against intelligent free-marketeers only mainstream idiots.

 

Usually I was the one beating back tides of hopelessness and maybe this is just a blip but I would like to hear your views. Maybe you can restore my confidence in humanity.

[jpahmad]

I'm feeling similar.  I don't know what to do.  

[Kurtis]

I used to focus heavily on how screwed everything was and that was before I became aware of philosophy, self knowledge, FDR etc etc.

 

Now I know even more detail on just how badly things (people) are messed up and yet I have more optimism.  This is fueled by the improvements I've made on myself, which has helped foster positive change in my very small group of friends and partner.  My focus is now on my small group of friends and the potential children we will have in the coming years.  I've seen how me being that "beacon of light" has spurred positive change in those around me, and I think that will gain momentum in the next generation raised by my tiny tribe.

 

It's not much, especially when stacked against the traumatized hoards.  But it's all I currently have.  Another reason for optimism is the available tools that technology provides for learning and communication.  Despite the troubles I still think this is the most amazing time to be alive.

 

There will always be an unlimited supply of people who can provide cause for despair.  However, I think it is important to not let them cloud your vision because doing so will close you off from the ability to see the positive and potential in the few that have it.  And that is our work, to add to our small tribes one by one, spreading knowledge. Will it be enough and in time?  I don't know, but I don't see any other possible solutions at this point.

​

[Lars93]

Does this affect in any way the steps you take towards achieving liberty?

If yes, why so?

Everytime man made progress the circumstances were grim and all of their Society oppositional, what makes you think it is different this time?

There will certainly be great changes and opprtunity in the enar future and getting stuck now, with probably the greatest crossroads ahead, is something i couldn't forgive myself, even if I were to never have children.

[GailG]

If you live in the UK or USA, you have never tasted freedom a single day in your life.  You may think you have, but you have not.

 

There was a time when we were called free-slaves.  We were free to sell our labor in exchange for survival in a capitalist system.  That is the opposite of freedom.  At some point after Adam Smith (Wealth of Nations), the word slave was dropped from the word free-slave.

 

I am a Libertarian (rational anarchist) and I know that capitalism is, at its core, destructive.  (I don't believe in evil)  I've studied it in depth.  Capitalism is a wealth-transfer scheme.  Captialism rquires poverty to survive.  It also requires near-constant wars.  It is the most horrid system ever devised in all of recorded human history.

 

Compare that to the native Americans who actually were free, but in a brutal greed-based act of genocide, we destroyed most of that elegant culture in order to steal their resources in order to turn them into profits.  What do we have now?  We are in the midst of the 6th mass extinction of all life on earth.  Capitalism did that. 

 

The Iroquois had a constitutional republic.  They used democracy by consensus rather than domination (majority rules) politics.  They had no money, therefore they had no hunger, homelessness, crime, prisons, police, child abuse, domestic abuse, mental illness, poverty, or political parties that divide us as a people.  They were by all recorded accounts, much happier than the European counterparts who destroyed them.

 

They were far better educated and civil than we are.  Their culture centered itself in relationships--something that we have given up in exchange for money.  They saw us as slaves.  We are.  We are free-slaves.