Live from the Table: Nick Gillespie on Libertarianism

[@chrisocony]

Pinker is huge: The Better Angels of Our Nature and Enlightenment Now are life changing books. Or at least outlook altering books. Basically, no matter how bad it is, it used to be a hell of a lot worse. We are so damn lucky.

[@hpmoon]

1:45 when Noam marvels at Nick's comic chops highlights how comedy belongs in (and has a long history in) heavy debate on the issues of our time - which goes to the whole nature of this podcast (not just yuk yuk!). I do think Nick is the funniest humanoid in the think-piece/talkie space today, but the last frontier of comedy for him would be to show up somewhere in anything other than solid black: paisley, stripes, plaid, whatever. (Even here, he's going rogue: no leather jacket.)

[@danthemanshuman]

How do you do fellow kids?

[@Godocker]

Idk why you your boy had to strawman Dave Smith so much, Nick is smart enough to understand Dave's positions, this whole bit about Dave being sympathetic of Putin is kind of wild, you can understand why somebody might have done a military move and not agree with it. It should be basic analysis to understand why Putin invaded and be able to repeat his position, rather than just go he's crazy lol. I'd also like Nick to quote where exactly Dave has ever said that Ukraine shouldn't defend themselves.

[@cfcee]

Dave’s message truly never got through to them. They simply cannot understand that both Ukraine v Russia & Israel v Palestine aren’t like rooting for one of two teams in a Super Bowl.

[@robinricards4941]

Good thinking Noam … save your brain, it’s your heart that matters.. you don’t need to see more.. Good advice from the Bible “Guard your heart “

[@brek5]

I guess as a libertarian he chose to not say adjectival correctly. FFS.

[@mayonaden]

Noam, when are you going to admit you were wrong, and Finkelstein was right, on the question of Israel starving the Palestinians?

[@opctpos.]

Because they’re not starving.

[@mayonaden]

@@opctpos. Special rapporteurs, observers, human rights organisations and NGO's would disagree with you.

[@opctpos.]

@@mayonaden Oh the UN that sanctions Isreal more than all of the most despotic countries on the planet put together. Oh and you mean NGOs that are financed by biased multi billionaires. Stop with the naivety. There are pictures of Palestinians commemorating the death of the Iranian president recently. A lot of them had very impressive Middle Ages girths and portly frames. Couldn’t see a malnourished Palestinian among them.

[@Bazarov1]

@@opctpos. serious question: why do Zionist lie so brazenly? It’s not like we can’t look it up

[@judahjayson684]

​@@opctpos. "There not starving" Bro 😅 stop speaking from your ass.

[@robairjazz]

Don’t fire Dan.

[@315pasha]

Libertarianism is childish

[@spencerantoniomarlen-starr3069]

That was a very mature and adult argument. Very rigorous and systematic.

[@315pasha]

@@spencerantoniomarlen-starr3069 lol @ systematic. Please give me an example of a “systematic” argument in this context.

[@capitalist4life]

Nuh uhh !

[@spencerantoniomarlen-starr3069]

@315pasha libertarianism is a political ideology that usually follows certain tenets. A systematic analysis would be an analysis of those tenets in terms of whether if heeded, they would make things better or worse in your judgement after actually trying to understand them and why some people subscribe to them. Something like that.

[@315pasha]

@@spencerantoniomarlen-starr3069 lol you’re just describing an argument. Just say argument. You don’t need to add fluff words like systematic or rigorous to sound smart. Libertarians are childish first of all because they don’t agree what a real libertarian actually entails. People who call themselves libertarians vary tremendously with respect to ideology. Some want the government slightly smaller. Some just want to legalize marijuana. Some want literally no government at all. Also if you interrogate their ideas they are unworkable. Privatize the roads? No building codes? Privatize all social infrastructure? Keep the government out everything except defending property rights? Again, they don’t even agree on basic tenants. It’s cool when you are child to advocate for nonsense. But we all have to grow up. There is nothing magical about privatization. If you privatize public goods you introduce the profit motive into things where it doesn’t make sense. Privatizing the prison system has proven to be a disaster. Partial Medicare privatization has repeatedly failed because people understand how shitty their private health insurance has been. Also their general aversion to “regulation” is to broad and unspecific to even counter. Again I call it childish because their arguments tend to be childish. Cutting all taxes and stripping the social safety net and limited social services that we have is not smart. Not having building codes because they restrict freedom is not a good argument. Again these arguments are childish.