Benjamin Cain
1 min readFeb 21, 2021

It is indeed in our long-term self-interest to have clean water and air. But the libertarian emphasis on individual liberty promotes egoism, not altruism or rational enlightenment. As it's been practiced, libertarianism is more like a quasi-philosophical rationalization of selfishness and of the right to dismiss the inherent value of everything other than oneself, including the value of the planet; libertarianism hasn't been an expression of the kind of neutral rationality that would entail environmentalism.

You say it's "unfortunate" that libertarian ideals "have been hijacked by the one percent" who want a highly unequal society. Yet this seems not an accident but a predictable impact of the libertarian's enshrining of individual liberties.

What you get from that individualism is the free market as well as the consumer mindset and distrust in government regulation. Together, they entail the rise of monopolies and of the one percent that naturally become corrupted as a result of their unchecked power, so they capture what's left of the government to consolidate their dominance.

You seem to take comfort in the mere logical consistency of libertarianism and long-term collective planning. Whether or not they are consistent, we shouldn't overlook the likely effects of an ideology since we're not strictly logical creatures. Our philosophy or religion is a mythos that expresses and defends our ethos, our actual collective character and way of life, and that culture is largely nonrational. So logical consistency is insufficient.

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Benjamin Cain

Ph.D. in philosophy / Knowledge condemns. Art redeems. / https://ko-fi.com/benjamincain / benjamincain8@gmailDOTcom