Thursday, November 13, 2008

Is Barack Obama a Fascist Communist?

A few weeks ago, I listened with quiet bemusement to an interview with Patri Friedman. Friedman is the main proponent of "Seasteading":

"Seasteading means to create permanent dwellings on the ocean - homesteading the high seas. A seastead, like in the picture above, is a structure meant for permanent occupation on the ocean...

...the world needs a new frontier, a place where those who are dissatisfied with our current civilization can go to build a different (and hopefully better) one.

Currently, it is very difficult to experiment with alternative social systems on a small scale. Countries are so enormous that it is hard for an individual to make much difference. Seasteaders believe that government shouldn't be like the cellphone or operating system industries, with few choices and high customer-lock-in. Instead, they envision something more like web 2.0, where many small governments serve many niche markets, a dynamic system where small groups experiment, and everyone copies what works, discards what doesn't, and remixes the remainder to try again."

It's crazy. I mean, I'm a frequent skeptic of government, but have things really gotten so bad that we need to create new, floating societies? If we keep electing people like Congressman Paul Broun, I might just grab a life-preserver:
A Republican congressman from Georgia said Monday he fears that President-elect Obama will establish a Gestapo-like security force to impose a Marxist dictatorship.

"It may sound a bit crazy and off base, but the thing is, he's the one who proposed this national security force," Rep. Paul Broun said of Obama in an interview Monday with The Associated Press. "I'm just trying to bring attention to the fact that we may — may not, I hope not — but we may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or Marxism."

Read the whole article to see what Broun was talking about. I like his mixing of metaphors. Somehow Obama can be both a Marxist and a Fascist at the same time. He truly is a post-partisan president.

The Daily Show's John Oliver explains the many interesting parallels between Obama and Hitler:

2 comments:

Patri Friedman said...

Compared to other industries, government is huge, inefficient, and slow to change. There is very little competition and innovation. If it was a minor area of life, this might not matter, but its huge! Why are you skeptical of the idea of improving this area of life? Isn't it the *most* important are for progression?

If I thought things could be fixed on land, I would be proposing an easier solution. Sure, its a weird solution - but if the answer to such an old and huge problem was easy, we would have found it.

Tim Dzurilla said...

I think it's a fascinating project. I was interested by the Free State project that was mentioned as well during the program.

I'm trying to start a housing cooperative on campus as a small way of changing one small piece of my life and trying to regain some control that seems to be given away by previous generations.

We're all watching your initiative and hoping for your success.