/lit/ - Literature

>>14685779
Libertarians want to eliminate conflict with the NAP. They believe deterrence is enough to do this, and that nobody can own another person.
Moldbug wants to reduce conflict by creating a formal system of ownership that is both de facto and de jure. The NAP doesn't exist. If you can't defend what you own you don't own it. The Libertarians think you do.
This fundamentally different and foundational analysis of power has significant effects on the political systems they are based on.

Consider this passage from the Formalist Manifesto (or better yet, read it you illiterate bastard):

>But if there is one thing all libertarians do believe, it’s that the Americans should get America back. In other words, libertarians (at least, real libertarians) believe the US is basically an illegitimate and usurping authority, that taxation is theft, that they are essentially being treated as fur-bearing animals by this weird, officious armed mafia, which has somehow convinced everyone else in the country to worship it like it was the Church of God or something, not just a bunch of guys with fancy badges and big guns.

>A good formalist will have none of this.

>Because to a formalist, the fact that the US can determine what happens on the North American continent between the 49th parallel and the Rio Grande, AK and HI, etc., means that it is the entity which owns that territory. And the fact that the US extracts regular payments from the aforementioned fur-bearing critters means no more than that it owns that right. The various maneuvers and pseudo-legalities by which it acquired these properties are all just history. What matters is that it has them now and it doesn’t want to give them over, any more than you want to give me your wallet.

>So if the responsibility to fork over some cut of your paycheck makes you a serf (a reasonable reuse of the word, surely, for our less agricultural age), that’s what Americans are—serfs.

>Corporate serfs, to be exact, because the US is nothing but a corporation. That is, it is a formal structure by which a group of individuals agree to act collectively to achieve some result.

>So what? So I’m a corporate serf. Is this so horrible? I seem to be pretty used to it. Two days out of the week I work for Lord Snooty-Snoot. Or Faceless Global Products. Or whoever. Does it matter who the check is written to?