Now: why would libertarianism be a form of feudalism, of all things? Here I would like to offer an argument of my own, which I came up with reading Jan Narveson’s The Libertarian Idea, a couple years back, which dovetails with Freeman’s argument. He discusses Narveson quite a bit along the way and has thereby gotten me off my butt, to write out these old thoughts. (Pardon me if someone else has already made this argument, or nearly. It seems like the sort of thing that someone has probably already tried on for size. I am not a literature hound on this stuff.) Libertarians – propertarians, anyway – rather notoriously maintain that you really ought to be able to sell yourself into slavery, if you want to. After all, you’re your property. You should be able to dispose of yourself as you see fit. (Some libertarians don’t go so far but many do. Nozick, for example. I think it’s pretty hard to resist this conclusion, in princpled fashion, once you’ve bought the strong self-ownership principle.)

Now: suppose we drop, experimentally, just the libertarian ‘self-ownership’ assumption, while keeping the ownership model. Imagine a society in which everyone belongs to their parents, at birth. (Or, if their parents belong to someone, to their parents’ owners.) The libertarian logic of this is clear enough, I trust. (I don’t say all libertarians should be bound by logic to embrace this vision of utopia on the spot, but they ought to recognize libertarianism, minus assumed self-ownership, as a form of the philosophy they advocate, albeit an extreme form.) You didn’t make yourself. You are not the sweat of your brow. Someone else made you. And people are the sort of things that can be owned. So you are a made-by-someone-else thing. And made to be owned. Why shouldn’t you be born owned by whoever went to the trouble (two someones?)

It would be kind of fun to sketch a hyper-propertarian society, organized along these lines. It’s not obvious how such a society would work. Obviously it could work (or fail to) in a lot of different ways. It wouldn’t have to turn out radically differently than what we’ve got now. Most parents love their children, so they would free them – officially at birth, or when they turned 18 or whatever. But it could turn out quite differently, if different social patterns developed. You could have your free children and also your slave children, and you might regard them very differently. This utopia doesn’t seem likely to shape up as a more free society than the one we’ve got, by any ordinary stretch of our ordinary notions of freedom. It wouldn’t be terribly surprising if it turned out radically … feudal. Libertarianism, in this extreme form, could turn out to be the road to serfdom. But beyond that, it would be quite feudal in the sense that Freeman actually has in mind, which is not the serf-sense. He means that political power is privately held. And a bit more. I’ll just quote Freeman:

Under feudalism, the elements of political authority are powers that are held personally by individuals, not by enduring political institutions. These powers are held as a matter of private contractual right. Individuals gradually acquire the power to make, apply, and enforce rules by forging a series of private contracts with particular individuals or families. Oaths of fealty or service are sworn in exchange for similar or compensating benefits. Those who exercise political power wield it on behalf of others pursuant to their private contractual relation and only so long as their contract is in force. Since different services are provided to people, there is no notion of a uniform public law that is to be impartially applied to all individuals. (148)

In other words:

Libertarianism resembles feudalism in that it establishes political power in a web of bilateral individual contracts. Consequently, it has no conception of legitimate public political authority nor any place for political society, a “body politic” that political authority represents in a fiduciary capacity. (149)

you've heard of "quiet quitting," now I'd like to introduce you to the next level, The French Work Ethic:

• Do exactly what you're paid for and nothing more
• Absolutely refuse to be available to contact when you're off the clock
• Never prioritize work over your own health, wellbeing, or family because that would be insane, it's just a job.
• Have a little glass of wine
• Take as long as you feel like for lunch
• Deeply understand that work doesn't matter
• Make sure your boss your boss knows they're always your second priority ❤️

• When in doubt, go on strike

misterenjlolras

vous avez entendu parler de la "démission silencieuse," maintenant j'aimerais vous présenter le niveau suivant, L'Éthique De Travail Française :

• Faites exactement ce pour quoi vous êtes payez et rien de plus
• Refusez absolument d'être disponible quand vous êtes hors service
• Ne priorisez jamais le travail par rapport à votre santé, bien être, ou famille parce que ça serai dingue, c'est juste un job.
• Buvez un petit verre de vin
• Prenez autant de temps que vous en avez envie pour le déjeuner
• Comprenez profondément que le travail n'a pas d'importance
• Assurez vous que votre patron·ne votre patron·ne sache qu'iel est toujours votre seconde priorité ❤️

entropiquementfavorable

• Dans le doute, mettez vous en grève

Alexander Labas - Metro (1935)

“When we say cliché, stereotype, trite pseudoelegant phrase, and so on, we imply, among other things, that when used for the first time in literature the phrase was original and had a vivid meaning. In fact, it became hackneyed because its meaning was at first vivid and neat, and attractive, and so the phrase was used over and over again until it became a stereotype, a cliché. We can thus define clichés as bits of dead prose and of rotting poetry.”

— Vladimir Nabokov drops this brilliant bit of insight roughly half way through his lecture on James Joyce’s Ulysses, the last of his in Lectures on Literature.

Woman Reading by Karl Alexander Wilke, 1912

love by elizabeth barrett browning

obviously haaretz is haaretz and has a vested interest in maintaining the state of israel but it's still so fucking insane that half the headlines they publish if you tried to put out those stories in an american newspaper it would 1) immediately get killed by an editor 2) get you fired or 3) if somehow against all odds actually published would get you arrested and deported

you literally could not print this in an american publication. you say this on an american college campus and get hunted every single day for two years. to be fair they HAVE been sanctioned and cut off by the israeli government but like that does not change the fact that the new york times simply would not print these stories

defiance, personified

Thierry Mugler, S/S 1998.