As I have succeeded in alienating and annoying several of my friends, family members, and distant acquaintances with my political facebooking hobby I have decided to spin things off into their own entity, namely this blog and the corresponding facebook page to keep my personal musings and political musings a bit more segregated.
I personally describe myself as a "libertarian socialist". It's hard for a lot of people to reconcile those two concepts because, especially in America, the libertarian party is inextricably linked with the republican party thanks to the efforts of "main stream libertarians" like Ron and Rand Paul.
Personally I don't consider Rand to be a very good libertarian. I have seen the following circulating as a meme for the last couple of days: "Libertarian, n: A person who believes that oppression is best handled by the private sector." That sums up my issues with Rand Paul and his ilk quite succinctly.
Left libertarianism is an attempt to reconcile self ownership and non-aggression with an egalitarian view of the planet's natural resources. Indeed, when private ownership of the resources and means of production that keep a society running become directly harmful to the majority of the members of that society then the private claim becomes illegitimate and a form of aggression in itself.
I know that all sounds like scary, pinko, communist rhetoric, but it really isn't. Looking at America today you see the results of run away capitalism and just what happens when most of the resources end up in the hands of a very few. When capitalism works it's great, but as a capitalist economy matures into a corporate economy, and the corruption incentivizing nature of capitalism infiltrates a representative government, the system breaks down, at least for the regular person.
During my grandparent's time (during the height of collective bargaining) you could expect your boss to live on the same street as you. His house might be bigger, his car might be newer, but in the end his kids went to the same school, he dined at the same restaurant, and he worried about the same things you did. In the intervening 40 years the entire system has been rewritten.
As more and more of the profits of increased american productivity have bypassed the middle class and been rerouted to the top we don't live in the same world as the owners and CEOs we used to share a neighborhood with. They're lives don't resemble ours, our children don't mingle, and we don't worry about the same things anymore. The average American CEO makes $11.4 million a year. In other words they make in a day what the average worker makes in a year. Their time is worth 365 times what yours is. How can we expect them to care about what we care about?
That's why I can't call myself just a libertarian. That sort of disparity is just fine with the guys like Rand Paul, because in his mind that CEO earned it and if you work hard you could too. Unfortunately that just isn't true anymore. Sure, if you invent the next iPhone you could be a billionaire when you retire, but if your plan is to go to college and get a BA then work your way up the ladder the old fashioned way you'll soon find out that they are adding more ladder faster than you can climb.
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