minimum wage laws = racist, hurt poor people + (unpaid internships = lib hypocrisy)

hitting children = counter-productive

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2477252&forum_id=2#24936260)

i basically think he makes some valuable points but is a bit too naively anti-state in that Murray Rothbard-fan kinda way.

also he advises people to cut off relationships with their parents when something way way short of that (like actually setting boundaries with pushy/controlling parents and enforcing them) would be way better for most people.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2477252&forum_id=2#24936287)

i may lean towards you on the cutting off parents thing. all parents make mistakes. some people are weak though, and their parents are too old to change. i might recommend moving away and being your own person for 5 years or so with minimal parental contact. then you can go back and form a new relationship with your parents once you've developed yourself adequately.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2477252&forum_id=2#24936345)

I certainly don't think we need the SEC or FDA btw.

I think you can theoretically have a society without a government but the way there is not by smashing the state or hoping for the collapse of the existing state (which would probably just lead to total fascism anyways), but by gradual reform, supplanting institutions with market-based alternatives, and small-scale experimentation that moves the ball forward. That's a lot of hard work that involves figuring out how to better persuade people, coming up with innovative business models, and figuring out niches where small scale implementation involving application of the ideas of liberty is possible; this is opposed to the approach of many folks which is basically sitting on their hands waiting for the revolution and libertopia.

I think lots of dumb libertarians are stuck in this mentality of "we either have to smash the state or hope it gets so bad that there's a rebellion" though. I think that kind of mentality is idiotic and counterproductive to real, legitimate efforts for reform. Even if you're sympathetic to anarcho-capitalism, you need to work on figuring out how to get people on board for partial social security privatization before you can, say, privatize the fucking military.

BTW a good early anarchist thinker is William Godwin. I'd recommend finding a copy of Enquiry Concerning Political Justice online if you're interested in reading about a less revolutionary sort of approach to anarchism.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2477252&forum_id=2#24936397)

I'm in favor of developing cryptocurrencies and even stuff like seasteading (though I think the applicability will be way more limited than some advocates -- might be useful for, say, medical tourism or web servers, but will not lead to Snow Crash-style phyles) but I think that needs to be part of an integrated strategy of also trying to persuade people and work within the system. If people are sufficiently hostile to a new development then shit will get shut down and driven underground, and you'll have bitcoin as an "underground drug currency" and seasteads getting boarded by Marines on trumped-up charges. You simply can't ignore trying to persuade people in your society.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2477252&forum_id=2#24936616)

http://mises.ca/posts/blog/in-defense-of-liberty-extremism/

it sets up a false dichotomy between having strong convictions and being willing to take gradual steps forward. it's true in practice that lots of people interested in gradual steps have mushy ideals, and lots of people with strong convictions are uninterested in gradual steps. but that's cuz both groups of people are wrong in some respects.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2477252&forum_id=2#24936632)

He says that voting gives sanction to evil. But democratic systems allow peaceful change when compared to other forms of government, *assuming* you can persuade enough people to adopt your ideas. Progress in democracy is not automatic, of course -- nothing is. But this feature of democracy is good. Democracy is *good*. But here Stefan is bashing this good thing, which allows for gradual, peaceful, non-violent change. That's fucked and goes against what you say regarding his approach.

He characterizes voting as a pitiful plea of a slave. But that's ridiculous. The American conception of voting is that the people are sovereign and the government gets its ability to do stuff based on the sanction of the sovereign at the polls. This is such a powerful idea, btw, that even most dictatorial foreign governments feel the need to hold faux-elections -- they're unable to nakedly claim, as was once common, divine right or might makes right or any of that stuff.

This is just based off the first couple of minutes of the video by the way...

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2477252&forum_id=2#24936981)