There’s been a flurry of blog articles recently over how the Federation of Planets is really an inept, but evil, band of quasi-military (but horribly undisciplined) goons, protecting an autocratic quasi-communistic homoginized state.
For examples, see Perry de Havilland, Natalie Solent, Perry again, and Moira Breen.
Kind of weird stuff, but interesting (not unlike much libertarian commentary). But, then, I’ve never been a huge fan of the Star Trek franchise. Well, not for a few decades, at least.
23 view(s)
While I’m not willing to defend the logic, ethics or plausibility of the Star Trek universe, I do have to wonder about Libertarian SF. Outside of L. Neil Smith I can’t think of any. And as for Smith, well, one of the big break points in the ‘Propertarian time-line’ was when Thomas Jefferson freed all his slaves and then went around the country talking every one else into doing the same. Riiiight. And he travelled on Flying Pig Airlines to do it.
Offhand, I can’t think of any plausible SF cultures that a Libertarian wouldn’t find distateful.
Can you?
Actually, off-hand, the best example of a “libertarian sf author” would be Heinlein. Hmmm. Actually reading Farnham’s Freehold at work right now, as an example.
But then there’s Starship Troopers and a lot of others. Authoritarian. And, hm, Farnham’s Freehold isn’t so much Libertarian as … Survivalist. It’s a post-nuclear-holocaust thing. Hard to be a statist of any kind under those conditions.
Glory Road — working autarchy.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress — ~Libertarian loonies becoming statists by hook or by crook.
Stranger in a Strange Land — lots of communal stuff in there.
Heinlein wasn’t a doctrinaire guy.
True. Arguably, though, Starship Troopers, is less authoritarian than it seems; outside the military, life seems pretty open and unrestricted, save for the restriction on who can vote, which seems to bother very few. You could probably make the same sort of quibbles about the others. I’d only label RAH as libertarian because he’s an individualist, and against anything that weakens, coddles, or interferes with the individual, except for natural selection. That’s close to libertarian in many ways.
As I remember it, Heinlein said somewhere or other that if your government has no power it cannot serve you, but that, given power, it will tend to use it to pick your pockets and oppress you. Government is a necessary evil. Without one powerful enough to serve you, you end up under the thumb of some other peoples’ government (or gang, or corporate thugs) that does have such power. Under their thumb or six feet under.
I pretty much have to agree.
My main objection to Libertarianism, aside from the fact that I don’t live in a fortress with enough people to man the machine gun turrets 24-7, is that they want a power vacuum and think that nobody will rush to fill it. I think that all of human history say otherwise. Even half way to Libertarianism and you get the laissez-faire America of a century ago, corrupt as hell and with an army used as the private thugs of well-heeled corporations.
Agreed. There are aspects of Libertarianism that I think are good — or at least useful, as a check on society. But I think a wholly libertarian environment borders on a Hobbesian anarchy (to sound pretentious about it).
Libertarianism would work under the same conditions that would make Communism or Fascism work: a few changes in human nature. We can make any system work, for a while, with good people running it. We can screw up any system. And whatever system you’re using, once it’s in place for a while, the power-hungry bastards will claw their way to the top. The closest thing to a Libertarian society that lasted for a while that I can think of is old Iceland of the sagas. Lots of blood-feuds, dry-gulching and burning people alive in their houses. But no damned gummint tellin’ folks what to do, by Thorr! Just Skarp-Hedin getting away with murder because he’s the baddest mofo around.