Politically Correct Nourishment - Too Much and Too Little Economics

While the paleo-diet definitely does me good, neither do I avoid junk food (I love it, but do not eat it excessively) nor do I choose and judge diets that work for me on ideological grounds - see more at the bottom of the post.

Increasingly, I begin to feel that large numbers of libertarians are in some vital respects no different from followers of other political movements: they have a strong desire to be part of a group that takes care of their need to be morally anchored in rigid ground and part of a superior social whole. Therefore they are prone to develop their own standards of political correctness, that is: they let themselves be led by cues and symbols, fetishes and taboos.

Thomas Sowell offers an excellent analysis of what I would call the totalitarian attitude, and what he calls "The Quest for Cosmic Justice" and "The Vision of the Anointed" - brilliantly dissecting the mainstream leftist pattern of convictions.

Interestingly, I find some of his criticism can be applied to libertarians, in as much as they have become "symbol-oriented" or "auto politically correct" (my terms, should posterity care) as opposed to being critically rational.

Uneconomic and economistic at the same time

Too Little Economics

For instance: The libertarian criticism of the state, in so far as it is (crypto-)anarchist in orientation, i.e. (unconsciously) taking a world without the state for its ideal, is renouncing basic economic wisdom ("there are no solutions, there are only trade-offs"), and like left thinking, ignores the realism of the incremental (the perfectibility of the state) in favour of the illusion of the categorical (the absolutely evil character of the state).

Too Much Economics

At the same time, politically correct libertarianism is in other respects economistic, i.e. it perpetuates the attitude described by Tom Bethell in his The Noblest Triumph thus:

"Starting with Adam Smith, all the leading economists came from just those countries where the essential legal preconditions for real economic advance did exist. So they took them for granted" (p.26)

And impalpably developed assumptions about an ideal world, a free world in which the market can regulate all human affairs, making fuzzy extra-economic struggles, negotiations and imperfect coercive, yet violence-reducing, welfare-enhancing arrangements look unnecesary.

The Freeman: Why do you think so many libertarians seem to be attracted to a paleo lifestyle?

 

Durant: First of all, the established food movement—organic, plant-based—has been heavily influenced by liberal progressives, with that ideology being most pronounced among vegans and vegetarians. But there are many people who want to be healthy yet find progressive ideology off-putting. So there’s demand for an alternative approach and identity.

The source.