I just read, over the course of several days, 's [“Non-Libertarian FAQ”](slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/22/) (years ago I had only skimmed it).

It is a brilliant text, as usual, and it reminded me why although I read and flirt at times with different ideologies I remain mostly a — why I don't call myself a or an ; but rather someone with libertarian sympathies, or perhaps a (classic) .

It reminded me why absolute or as ideologies and moral systems, in particular, may feel rational, coherent, complete and desirable… without being any of those things.

Which does _not_ imply, of course, that some specific governments nowadays would not do better by moving closer to the libertarian pole!

@tripu That FAQ looks very interesting, I will read it in full with an open mind.

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@fidel

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Very interested in your thoughts.

@tripu I'm still reading through it, already planning a longer-form blog post with some counterarguments, but for now I will leave here this anecdotal evidence that made me chuckle and facepalm today: twitter.com/balajis/status/148

@fidel

That seems embarrassing, and I've been hearing about the sclerosis of for a while, too.

But I feel that proving a non-libertarian wrong in the abstract is indeed very difficult: is not arguing that governments and public agencies are always everywhere better than the private sector at everything they set to do — he's showing that they are not always_worse_. This is intuitively obvious; ie none of the two extremes (absolute statism or ) is desirable.

If you're a moderate, a centrist, or even a , this comes as no surprise — no matter how many outrageous pieces of evidence you can collect to illustrate that “the other side” is sometimes inefficient, expensive, or even harmful…

@fidel But I'm very interested in that post in the making! :)

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