Adventure Capitalism

A history of “Libertarian Exit” movements.

The 17th century philosopher John Locke is a key grifter thinkfluencer, and his “labor theory of property” is key to understanding the libertarian mind-palace.

https://locusmag.com/2019/03/cory-doctorow-terra-nullius/

Locke says that property arises when the empty, unimproved natural places are mixed with human labor. You own your body, so you own its labor and the fruits of its labor. No one owns an empty place, so when you influse your body’s labor into a place, it becomes yours.

There’s only one teensy problem with this: there are no empty places. Locke’s empty places always — always — turn out to be either a commons, or a place that colonized people are slaughtered for.

In other words, “a place no one is using” can be “a place everyone is using” (a commons) or “a place brown people are using” (a colony — often also a place held as a commons). The labor theory of property always involves some mix of genocide and enclosure.

The Libertarian mind-palace is a place where there is no coercion, only agreements entered into by free people acting according to their own lights.

Now, maximizing peoples’ ability to act according to their wishes is a laudable goal.