Libertarianism is officially dead [View all]

[DemocracyMouse]

The events of this past week, indeed of Trump's entire self-serving, hyper-capitalist modality, have done us at least one favor: Ayn Rand's libertarian creed is now exposed for what it is – lawless, self-serving chaos.

We have had several centuries of historical experiments and the outcome could not be more clear: good government and robust economy and meaningful participation in both is a BALANCING act. These in pure form do not work:

monarchy
capitalism
libertarianism
socialism
communism
anarchy

If we define democracy as a civic infrastructure informing a civic economy it escapes the list above and we can position it as an emerging alternative leading towards a solution.

When protesters shout "this is what democracy looks like!" they (we) are effectively acknowledging that there are no clean, simple solutions. Complex and messy civic involvement is really quite natural. The new thinking in biology supports the notion that a complex balancing of the individual with the collective, freedom with responsibility, has always lead to the most satisfactory state of health (homeostasis). The new paradigm I'm fond of expresses this balancing act thus:

A civil, democratically informed, infrastructure gives rise to a civil, small business economy (with plenty of room for a not-for-profit sector). The soundbite version:

DEMOCRACY =
CIVIL INFRASTRUCTURE x FREE ENTERPRISE

(Feel free to provide balance to my language in the great North African tradition of uncompleted sentences in group decision-making).