individualism, properly understood

Erik Kain

Erik writes about video games at Forbes and politics at Mother Jones. He's the contributor of The League though he hasn't written much here lately. He can be found occasionally composing 140 character cultural analysis on Twitter.

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14 Responses

  1. Very interesting post ED! I think I share your belief that the FPR-type folks need to spend some time in the weeds of policy debate and reconcile that with their notion of ‘place’ and localism. While I think their goals are sound, the proposed methodology is a bit like trying to put the genie back in the bottle.Report

  2. Jaybird says:

    “At the heart of libertarian philosophy is at least some degree of faith in the individual to make the best, or at least the most rational or most predictable, decision.”

    It’s not that as much as the malice that the individual is capable of creating is nothing compared to the malice that a group of people with decentralized responsibility is capable of creating… be it corporation or government.Report

  3. mike farmer says:

    Very good. Thank you. This is my view of individuality — and it’s also my belief that the term individual rights is redundant — there are no rights other than rights which individuals possess.Report

  4. Cascadian says:

    Isn’t talking of sin in this context encouraging local behavior that doesn’t resort to the institutional variety? Is the only kind of protectionism institutional? If I put up billboards encouraging people to buy Cascadian, is that fundamentally different than having my neighborhood association, city, or State (Province) doing the same? Do you consider resource or environmental protection, restrictions on internal investment, to be protectionism?Report

    • E.D. Kain in reply to Cascadian says:

      I’m not sure I follow. I think protectionism, broadly defined, is an act of the government which raises tariffs or provides subsidies to specific industries or players within those industries in order to “protect” them from foreign competition. Environmental protections can certainly be abused, the regulations distorted, etc. but they are not the same thing.Report

  5. Cascadian says:

    I’m thinking of the problems of gradating society from the National to the family level in conjunction with the many different types of protectionism. Is investing in education a subsidy for the industries that eventually employ the students? Is the ban on exportation of water, or State water rights a form of protectionism? How about local investments in energy infrastructure. Can the benefits of that investment be kept for local populations? Down the road can that be cast as protectionism on the export side? Basically, I’d argue that protectionism can be more complex than a federal government imposing an import tax and that not all forms of protectionism are bad.Report