> I think I see the appeal of burning it all down and living in a cabin in the woods.

AFAIK, you're not allowed to live in a cabin in the woods in Europe.

Except in Finland :)

Unfortunately summer cottage can't be your primary residence in Finland either

The same reason there's only more regulations being piled on top of previous ones. Sadly only wars and similar catastrophes work as reset buttons for these things historically. A peace as long as the current one is somewhat of an untested ground

The libertarians that want to live in the woods have a point.

The problem is the libertarians that want to burn it all down and build a corpo-state.

It’s important to defend libertarian values even when things are good. Small violations of civil rights have a tendency to stick around and snowball into something worse.

The katamari will grow until morale improves.

I agree with your overall sentiment, except:

"Like, in Europe we already live in a completely safe society in historical and geographic terms"

Russia. Putin.

I heard a funny joke once.

"How do you get a European to give you his wallet? Tell him that you're going to protect the wallet from Russia"

What a surprise a 2 hour old throwaway post parroting barely coherent Russian propaganda.

This "joke" is neither funny nor original as it comes up on social media everytime someone mentions Russia as a threat to Europe.

Oh, look at that. A fresh account just to make this comment. What a coincidence.

I'm talking about our society internally, not potential external attacks on it. It's reasonably high trust and crime is rare outside a few outlier cities. We could not be further from warranting these sort of fascist style crackdowns. Ironically yes we could be spending funding used for domestic surveillance and bureaucracy on buying more Himars.

The chances of Russia invading a NATO country are essentially zero simply because it would, almost certainly, lead to nuclear war. The idea that nukes wouldn't come out is contradicted both by decades of wargaming. In fact this is exactly what led to the end of the Cold War.

At one time the US thought we could end the Cold War by waving a bigger stick. But Proud Prophet [1] was an extremely elaborate war game played out in the 80s that demonstrated that literally every single aggressive strategy, regardless of how innocuous, invariably spiraled rapidly towards nuclear war and the depopulation of the Northern Hemisphere.

This led the US to sharply scale back rhetoric against the USSR, drop ideas of successfully fighting a nuclear war, and a sharp shift towards de-escalation and away from strong-arming. 7 years later the first McDonalds would open in the USSR. The next year, the USSR would collapse.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proud_Prophet

This has nothing to do with anything. Nobody said anything about nuclear war or formal invasion.

Let's review.

Russia shot down a civilian airliner, killing all 298 people onboard, mostly Dutch nationals.

Russia performed a radioactive poisoning attack on British territory, contaminating British civilian areas and

Russia also used a deadly nerve agent twice within a few months on British territory, including poisoning two non-Russian British nationals, killing one and injuring the other.

And they actively fund far right and white supremacist organizations in western European countries and blatantly interfere in local politics, and also run active bot farms for the purpose of undermining social solidarity and democratic governance.

Those are just a few things we know about.

The threat from Russia is not external or invasive. It is internal and ongoing.

The fact that they haven't nuked and won't nuke the entire western hemisphere is a bit of a strange bar to set.

His comment said that "in Europe we already live in a completely safe society in historical and geographic terms." And in the past Europe dealt with never-ending wars which culminated in a war that left tens of millions dead. And even after that war, there was the never-ending threat of nuclear annihilation that was 100% justified as both sides lined up their nukes at one another and very nearly fired them. Nothing in your list is anywhere near the same scale. The only thing that would suffice is a fear that Russia invades a NATO country and effectively triggers WW3.

none of the countries that Putin could and would invade, e.g. Finland, the Baltics, Poland, have nukes.

It would depend on the UK, France, and the US to back them with nuclear weapons. Would the UK electorate be willing to trade their existence -- potential nuclear holocaust -- for Latvia?

And the US is under Putin's puppet, so they're not launching nukes.

Would Britain and France go to war over an invasion of Poland? They did once, and didn't have a great time...

I think there are three big factors that make involvement almost guaranteed. The first is that in modern times political leaders prefer to believe what they want to believe, instead of what is genuinely most probable. They won't see it as trading their existence for anything. They'll convince themselves that they'll decisively win, or that Russia won't retaliate, or won't be able to retaliate.

The second is that the leaders of these countries are very unpopular. Starmer has an approval rating of 22% which is somehow twice as high as that of Macron who has reached a simply impressive 11% approval rating. Politicians love nothing more than war when they're unpopular, because it gives the electorate something to focus on outside of their own internal problems -- Diversionary War Theory. Also I certainly disagree regarding our insecure 'peace president' who has an affinity for bombs and a trend towards megalomania.

And finally there is the wargaming results. Some of the actions that led to nuclear holocaust were relatively innocuous, including performative nuclear strikes intended to 'send a message' rather than actually cause much real damage. It doesn't even sound like a bad idea, at first. Make it clear that you're serious and this is the path we're going down.

But it fails to consider the most probable response. You want to send me a message? Okay, here's your answer. How do you like my message? And of course you can't let such a provocation then go unmet. It's easy to see how what sounds like a reasonable idea is in reality a very bad one, but modern political leaders in the West make endless poor decisions with predictably poor results. You've gotta be something special to have an approval rating of 11%. Were such things measured in the past, even Caligula would probably be looking down at you!

> in Europe we already live in a completely safe society in historical and geographic terms, what more do you fucking want?

For people not to get killed, abused, and exploited? You don't sound like a "libertarian" you sound like an anarchist.

You know who has a large part of the population under global 24/7 surveillance right now? Google, Facebook, Microsoft.

try it, like these people https://www.youtube.com/shorts/7iJDMU43iUk

"... the appeal of burning it all down and living in a cabin in the woods."

I hope that's not what you think libertarianism is about. I'm sure there are libertarians who DO feel that way, but it's not a core tenet to personally isolate and live off the land.

Libertarianism sees not left vs right, but instead the people against the government. Libertarians focus on personal liberty and solving problems together, voluntarily, as individuals cooperating. A libertarian would say, for example, that if I think a bridge should be built, then I should either build it myself or convince other people to help me out voluntarily - but not use government to force people to help (via taxes, etc).

Libertarians are against force/coercion, and see government as the ultimate expression of force.

There are some loony libertarians, as there are of any political party, but most of us have pretty ordinary and mainstream beliefs and priorities.

Libertarians reject governmental force but provide no barriers to corporate force. There are innumerable documented examples of corporate force having greater control over the population than a government. These examples are not just historical but also include the time we are currently living in.

I don't think this is true of libertarianism. Libertarians reject use of force, except to prevent other use of force. I.e. I can use force to stop someone else from using force on me (or others).

Corporations are not exempt from this. A libertarian would support using force to stop a corporation from using force to coerce people to do something.

But Libertarians reject a premise that a corporation is required to serve you. You can opt-out and the corporation should leave you alone. But you are not entitled to service or employment from that corporation. Your rights cannot depend on the performance of another. I have a right to produce or purchase my own food, but I do not have an right/entitlement to food that I have not purchased or produced.

I still don't see how Libertarians can solve the current problems we have with corporate abuse of force. For example, if a company is a major employer in town and pollutes both the ground and the water, how is an individual going to push back against the company's power? How is an individual going to apply force to a corporation to get them to stop and/or clean up the pollution?

How can an individual or even a group of individuals stop a corporation from underpaying its workers so that they need to use some public assistance, food, or medical care?

There are many similar examples, but they all boil down to the asymmetry of power. An organization capable of employing many lawyers, or even a single good one, can grind you down until you have nothing left. I still see libertarians as having no answer.

I think the only way to fight back against corporate abuse is to build a stronger center of power. Something like a union, a citizenry willing to take collective action, or even a Government that is not beholden to corporate interests.

In your example most (not all) libertarians would agree that you need some regulation of those corporations to prevent or minimize external costs, or in some other way factor them in. But the regulations should be as local as possible, and directed only toward the stated objective, with a little other government control as possible. E.g. you can tax my carbon emissions, but you can't regulate my vehicle or fuel consumption.

For example, regarding pollution, prohibiting any discharge of the offending pollutants, or measuring and taxing them in some way - but with no requirements about HOW a corporation should meet these regulations or otherwise run their business.

Unions are fine, and people should obviously be free to join them if they want. But there should not be any laws that require or favor unions, and government employees should not be allowed to unionize.

A government beholden to corporate interests doesn't matter much if the government doesn't have much power. But with power comes interests and influence, always.