I discovered Stefan from members of the forum posting links to his youtube videos. I have probably only watched maybe 5% of Stefan's videos and have very much enjoyed them. He certainly has a gift for presenting ideas.
I did a quick search of the site and his name pops up in blogs, but that's about all that came up. Has he ever written in any capacity for Mises or had any of his videos shown here? Does he ever speak at Mises functons?
Frankly, not.
He's not affiliated with Mises.org . He has talked about how he has learned many things from Mises.org and their (media) library during the time before he starting podcasting (which he started around the winter of 2005).
He does have a number of articles up on lewrockwell.com , but at one point his archives link was deleted (probably due to his outspoken atheism). You can still find them through the search box there.
"his archives link was deleted (probably due to his outspoken atheism)."
Walter Block is an atheist, but his column archive was not deleted.
I would assume Molyneux' archives were deleted because of his wacky psychological theories, de facto anti-family stance and his tendency to troll other libertarian websites. He was also highly critical of Ron Paul, which seems mysteriously upsetting to a group of supposed anarchists.
Nielsio:He does have a number of articles up on lewrockwell.com , but at one point his archives link was deleted (probably due to his outspoken atheism). You can still find them through the search box there.
Reckless speculation.
Gero,
But I don't think Block has tried submitting atheist columns. In fact, after googling for 10 seconds, Block states in a LRC article that he is "a friend and supporter of religion".
Edmund,
Molyneux is not anti-family. He has a family of his own. He is anti-abuse and anti-hanging out with abusers.
liberty student,
What is so reckless about my speculation?
Molyneux is not anti-family. He has a family of his own. He is anti-abuse and anti-hanging out with abusers
De jure, sure. De facto, he engages in reckless speculation and accusation mongering that tends to demonize parents for failing to be Stefan Molyneux. Molyneux plays very fast and loose with his psychological and social theories, and is pretty irresponsible in his assessments of other peoples' situations. Not to flagellate the guy, but I think a combination of formal philosophical ignorance, a self-promoting environment that hounds people who deeply critical of his views (even if they agree with his conclusions) and a general overestimation of his own importance have seriously obstructed his own, and his followers', actual advancement in an understanding of social theory.
Aren't half the Mises staff members atheist? Rothbard, Mises and the like?
Freedom has always been the only route to progress.
Yeah, though there is a conservative and pro-religious bent to most of Lew Rockwell's organizations. Not explicitly religious, of course, but they tend to want to court the religious right. Personally, I find this attracts a lot of dregs and crazies, but it's not my money.
Molyneux isn't super academic. He uses words like "retarded" all the time, often to describe religious people. I like molyneux, but he isn't a good poster boy :)
No, thank God.
Clayton -
There is a mysterious cultish element to his FreeDomain followers that I've noticed. I'm not indicting you, I'm just sayin'. I did see one of his articles on Dispute Resolution hosted on LRC.
Molyneux is not affiliated with the Mises Institute, he and some of his followers are kinda nutty/wacky, and he's blatantly wrong about some issues. I remember watching a video of his where he tried to explain the Austrian theory of the business cycle but got it COMPLETELY wrong, by which I mean Paul Krugman probably has a better understanding of ABCT than Molyneux. I would advise that you stay away from him.
Political Atheists Blog
I would advise that you stay away from him.
I think one should take him with a big grain of salt and definitely not as a primary source on liberal anarchic theory. However, IMO he is much more realistic about Ron Paul and minarchist fantasies than many people I see on LRC and Mises; and he's quite right that if some sort of liberal society emerges it's not going to be a bloodless democratic coupe.
I have to admit, I did enjoy this much like I enjoyed Alex Jones' Engame. In fact, I think you could combine the two with a dystopian plot and make one kick-ass Matrix-esque movie.
But yeah, from what I've observed, Molyneux seems to attract emotionally maladjusted adolescent males with poor relations with their parents (especially their fathers). Just sayin'.
You ought to differentiate between people who support RP because they think he can heal the word and people who support him because he gets the message out and leads people towards a view that frankly renders him useless.
Molyneux seems to attract emotionally maladjusted adolescent males with poor relations with their parents
Like most libertarians?
Like I might differentiate between cancer and AIDs. Both are counter-productive and objectively anti-libertarian.
How so?
Voting doesn't work; Politics do not produce freedom; political activism legitimizes political institutions; pseudo-liberal politicians and parties legitimize the political order; pseudo-liberal politicians attract crazies and people who don't understand liberalism into co-opting the movement; Ron Paul isn't liberal at all, he's a Taft Republican who defends local tyranny and the foul document that gave legitimacy to the North American Empire.
To get a bit Randian, there can be no compromise between good and evil. What Ron Paul does, day in and day out, is essentially legalized extortion and compulsion. Whatever his personal qualities his choices in life, political beliefs and actual behavior are repulsive.
I detect some anger and fast bullets to politely discredit the guy. He has gone further than Rothbard, where he left it, and where many Christians don-t want to go, which is basically to the logical consequence that family is not voluntary but a biological. Kids do not choose their parents and therefore the relation is not voluntary but based on need. You can paint with as many colors as you like, but the fact remains, it-s pure logic. It-s not an attack on anything, just stating a fact. When kids grow there comes a time when they are not in need and can take care of themselves. Therefore the bond based on necessity disappear, for the relation to continue, another bond has to be there, the moral one, the one constructed on earning the kid trust. Hiding that fact is cheating, is a laziness on the parents or religious conservatives who believe they will have the kids forever because the commandments says respect your parents. That-s why Molyneux is dangerous, it shows a weakness in the life projects of many, it shows them they have to work hard and be responsible of their failures. That is, real libertarianism.
A Facebook note with a collection of articles critical of Paul, to which you can add all the general critiques of political activism, voting and minarchism.
I won't disagree with you when it comes to the viability of politics, but you still haven't addressed why the fact that he gets the word out to a large audience is a bad thing.
Molyneux's psychological theories (which aren't his anyway) aren't half as whacky as some of the crap on LRC lately...
Most people fail to appreciate that their view of what food should cost is seriously warped by agribusiness. They don't realize that these multinational corporations, that care nothing about health, have perverted the entire system to provide "food" very cheaply through factory-farming methods. As a result many now believe real food should be inexpensive.
As a result many now believe real food should be inexpensive.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig5/mercola77.1.html
What is this eco-fascistic, acapitalist nonsense? You want to kill people?
I stand to be disillusioned if I'm wrong, but I'm inclined to think Ron Paul, or his campaign, may have had something to do with LRC removing Molyneux's stuff. It's not that I have any proof, it's just that all politicians stink. Even Saint Paul.
He doesn't 'get the word out'. He diverts resources from real libertarian projects to his inane authoritarian schemes and political jockeying, he produces a perverted pseudoliberalism which 1) produces a false view of liberalism and 2) attracts people who are anti-liberal to the libertarian movement. And I think that it goes without saying that if the biggest spokesperson for your liberal movement is a career politician then maybe you need to seriously rethink your strategy and what sort of people you want to be appealing to.
Define real libertarian projects and anti-liberal within the context of his supporters.
Define real libertarian projects
The promotion of consistent liberalism, which is to say anarchism, true laissez-faire, free trade, anti-war, free immigration. Single issue or taken as a group these are all truly libertarian.
and anti-liberal within the context of his supporters.
The White Nationalist, the Border Fence nuts, the anti-abortionists, the Religious Right, the Constitutionalists, the reformers, the flat taxers and single taxers, the Federalists and localists. Which, in my experience, make up at least 50% of Ron Paul's supporters. And, in a technical sense, the minarchists are also anti-liberal.
He was also highly critical of Ron Paul, which seems mysteriously upsetting to a group of supposed anarchists.
This might give you an idea of why he isn't pleased with Ron Paul.
http://rayharvey.org/index.php/2010/09/the-apotheosis-of-ron-paul/
Molyneux' articles are all still there.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/molyneux1.html
If there were deleted, LR would have taken them down completely.
Can you give me a link to his "Anti-Family" Stance?
Molyneux's psychological theories (which aren't his anyway) aren't half as whacky as some of the crap on LRC lately... Most people fail to appreciate that their view of what food should cost is seriously warped by agribusiness. They don't realize that these multinational corporations, that care nothing about health, have perverted the entire system to provide "food" very cheaply through factory-farming methods. As a result many now believe real food should be inexpensive. http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig5/mercola77.1.html What is this eco-fascistic, acapitalist nonsense? You want to kill people?
LRC caters to the anti-intellectual and anti-rationalist sort, particularly localists and religious people. Article quality is extremely variable, and I certainly agree that we should point out the crazy at LRC.
I stand to be disillusioned if I'm wrong, but I'm inclined to think Ron Paul, or his campaign, may have had something to do with LRC removing Molyneux's stuff.
I would say this is pretty likely. McElroy basically found herself out of sorts with them for the same reason.
that's one of the articles I put in my collection of articles against the Pauline Heresy.
In practice, he tends to make a lot of unsupportable generalizations and dubious accusations against specific peoples' families. I am certainly no defender of parental tyranny (I think children should be able to secede from their families), but Molyneux puts quite a lot of weight on the shoulders of parental organizations. I agree with Caplan that people have far less influence on their children than they imagine; it's peer groups and biology that incline them to statism and moralistic interventionism; not disrespectful dads.
Interesting comment
He has gone further than Rothbard, where he left it, and where many Christians don-t want to go, which is basically to the logical consequence that family is not voluntary but a biological. Kids do not choose their parents and therefore the relation is not voluntary but based on need.
Have you read Kid Lib by Rothbard?
The focus on property rights also provides us with the solution to the thorny problem of when the child can own and regulate himself. The answer is: when he leaves his parents’ household. When he gets out of his parents’ property, he then removes himself from his parents’ property jurisdiction. But this means that the child must always have, regardless of age, the absolute freedom to run away, to get out from under. It is grotesque to think that the parents can actually own the child’s body as well as physical property; it is advocating slavery and denying the fundamental right of selfownership to permit such ownership of others, regardless of age. Therefore, the child must always be free to run away; he then becomes a self-owner whenever he chooses to exercise his right to run-away freedom. This means that the fundamental tyranny of the parent over the child is not imposing curfews or getting him to eat spinach or preventing cohabitation in the back room; the fundamental tyranny is the current legal power of the parent to seize a child who has run away and drag him back home by force. The parent should, of course, have the right to try to persuade or cajole the kid to return, but he should never have the right to force him to do so, for that is kidnapping and a high crime that violates every person’s absolute right to his body. Asserting every child’s right to run-away freedom does not imply, of course, that the libertarian advocates running away; that is purely a question of the individual situation of the parent and child. But we must recognize that inherent in even the best of parent–child relations is an essential “class struggle,” a struggle rooted in the necessary existential fact that the kid is born into an environment created not by himself but by his parents. And even in the best of circumstances, tastes, values, interests, attitudes will differ from every individual to another, and therefore from every parent to every child. In the natural course of events, then, most children will, upon growing up, seek to create their own environment by leaving the parental nest. That is the way of nature, from the animal kingdom to man.
The focus on property rights also provides us with the solution to the thorny problem of when the child can own and regulate himself. The answer is: when he leaves his parents’ household. When he gets out of his parents’ property, he then removes himself from his parents’ property jurisdiction. But this means that the child must always have, regardless of age, the absolute freedom to run away, to get out from under. It is grotesque to think that the parents can actually own the child’s body as well as physical property; it is advocating slavery and denying the fundamental right of selfownership to permit such ownership of others, regardless of age. Therefore, the child must always be free to run away; he then becomes a self-owner whenever he chooses to exercise his right to run-away freedom.
This means that the fundamental tyranny of the parent over the child is not imposing curfews or getting him to eat spinach or preventing cohabitation in the back room; the fundamental tyranny is the current legal power of the parent to seize a child who has run away and drag him back home by force. The parent should, of course, have the right to try to persuade or cajole the kid to return, but he should never have the right to force him to do so, for that is kidnapping and a high crime that violates every person’s absolute right to his body.
Asserting every child’s right to run-away freedom does not imply, of course, that the libertarian advocates running away; that is purely a question of the individual situation of the parent and child. But we must recognize that inherent in even the best of parent–child relations is an essential “class struggle,” a struggle rooted in the necessary existential fact that the kid is born into an environment created not by himself but by his parents. And even in the best of circumstances, tastes, values, interests, attitudes will differ from every individual to another, and therefore from every parent to every child. In the natural course of events, then, most children will, upon growing up, seek to create their own environment by leaving the parental nest. That is the way of nature, from the animal kingdom to man.
http://mises.org/books/egalitarianism.pdf
We have and it is terribly wrong.
Are children too stupid to make their own decisions? Like blacks?
Edmund Carlyle: Are children too stupid to make their own decisions?
Are children too stupid to make their own decisions?
Sometimes, yeah.
Edmund Carlyle: Like blacks?
Like blacks?
No, that wouldn't be a good analogy.
If I wrote it more than a few weeks ago, I probably hate it by now.
Edmund Carlyle: What Ron Paul does, day in and day out, is essentially legalized extortion and compulsion. Whatever his personal qualities his choices in life, political beliefs and actual behavior are repulsive.
What Ron Paul does, day in and day out, is essentially legalized extortion and compulsion. Whatever his personal qualities his choices in life, political beliefs and actual behavior are repulsive.
If he were to have never been there, would things be better or worse?
Why?
The the idea of "childhood" is a fairly recent one.
Marriage often came far ealier even 50 or 100 years ago, women were married and raising families at 16 and 18, "Men" were working for a living at a very early age.
our system as we currently have it where someone spends up to 25 years within a structured education system before being allowed to "enter the workforce" is really a way of keeping people off the job market.
What we end up with is a lot of over-educated and indebted people.
Edmund Carlyle: Are children too stupid to make their own decisions? Sometimes, yeah.
Most people are too stupid to form reasonable metaphysical and sociological views. Bad ideas like this are far more dangerous than juvenile rebellion. Further, it is never justified to attack or impose on someone to prevent them from making stupid decisions.
Edmund Carlyle: Like blacks? No, that wouldn't be a good analogy.
Why not? It is, in essence, just you arbitrarily elevating your value judgments and opinions of other peoples' wisdom to a violation of liberal principles. It's no different than racist or religious oppression.
Liberalism would be better and the State would have less pseudoliberal sycophants.
Edmund Carlyle: Further, it is never justified to attack or impose on someone to prevent them from making stupid decisions.
Further, it is never justified to attack or impose on someone to prevent them from making stupid decisions.
What if you were to have a very young kid who one day were to try to walk into oncoming traffic, you were to pull him back, but then he were to try again? Would you feel justified imposing your will on him?