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Penn Jillette is No Longer A Libertarian (lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/politicalmemes@lemmy.world
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Seriously abridged version of this alongside the clown makeup removal meme In 2008, Jillette stated that there is not enough information to make an informed decision on global warming, that his gut told him it was not real, but his mind said that he cannot prove it.[48] As of 2014, he has changed his position and now believes that climate change is occurring.[49] He stated in 2008 that he "always" votes Libertarian,[47] and endorsed Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson for president in 2012[50][51][52] and 2016.[53] However, he participated in vote swapping in 2016 by voting for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the swing state of Nevada, in exchange for "10 or 11" of his friends promising to vote for Johnson in blue states like California and New York.[54] In 2020, Jillette distanced himself from aspects of libertarianism, particularly surrounding COVID-19. In an interview with Big Think, he stated, "[A] lot of the illusions that I held dear, rugged individualism, individual freedoms, are coming back to bite us in the ass." He went on to elaborate, "[I]t seems like getting rid of the gatekeepers gave us Trump as president, and in the same breath, in the same wind, gave us not wearing masks, and maybe gave us a huge unpleasant amount of overt racism."[55]
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[–] 4 points 2 years ago (4 children)

These thought experiments are fun and truthful and all but I really dont see much value in this speculation tbh. In my 40something years in different cultures I've became a staunch believer in Golden Mean of politics. Use the right tool for the right job. Times are good - work on more fteedoms, times are harder - maybe it's time to tighten up the belts.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    But what if the hard times are caused by rich people abusing the commons? Should we just keep tightening our belts while the rich take more and more?

    I agree in general, like if there's a drought expect less food. But most of our scarcity is artificial. I believe there are solutions to the challenge of surviving.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    No the golden mean also applies to your example too. If rich get too toxic it's time to bring out guillotines

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    Oh interesting, that's not what it sounded like. Is that your personal view, or a tenet of the Golden Mean? Is there a particular thinker that you cleave to more than the others?

    The Wikipedia page is pretty nebulous on this, other than allowing for a limited aristocracy (and monarchy?? Lol no thanks on that).

    I'm not sure how you'd decide exactly how limited this aristocracy is without importing from other philosophies and value systems.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    Golden Mean is a philosophy of Aristotel who said that all things have a golden mean (or balance) where existence is optimal.

    Basically avoiding any sort of extremism will always be the most efficient path because of uncertainty and imperfection of our existence.

    He mostly applied it to virtues of living like justice or wisdom. Sure you can close yourself off and study non-stop or fight all of the injustice in the world without sleep but this is not sustainble and diminishing returns reaches a point where the energy input is no longer returning positive results or even decreasing the overall output.

    Imo this applies to basically everything including politics. Because political systems are so complex (and people are so complex) it's imposible to control the systwm without leaving space for imperfection. So you can be a socialist but you still need to respect some individual freedoms, you can be a libertarian but you still have to admit that some things need to be forbidden for smooth sailing basically.

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