{A comment by TED enthusiast David Hamilton, July 2012, used by permission }
When Libertarians and Hippies realize they are the exact same group, who want the exact same thing, the world will change for the better.
I am talking of course, about a voluntary society. A naive, but beautiful concept that almost every intellectual on earth has tried to encourage us to imagine.
Hippies, are, generally, naive, and stupid enough to believe, “That’s what democracy is”… Libertarians are often cynical, and emotionless enough to suggest, “That is what democracy could never be”.
Why is this so important? I don’t think there is anyone in America who truly believe the republican, or democratic parties can actually solve any of our problems… I think half of us, are secretly hippies, who hate libertarians, so we vote democrat. The other half, are secretly libertarians, and they hate hippies, so they vote republican.
I know this is a broad over generalization, and there are still quite a few hard line party hacks out there… but, mostly, I think those are just the people on TV. I think our politicians, are republicans and democrats, but our people are pretty sick of both of them… They just hate hippies, or libertarians.
What do hippies want? A voluntary society, where we all chip in to help the less fortunate, and encourage the growth of non profits, and for profit corporations at the local level. One in which we don’t use force to punish non violent crimes. One in which we don’t torture. One in which we don’t declare war without reason. One in which police don’t beat people for exercising freedom of speech… or religion.
Isn’t this what libertarians want? The only real difference, is that they want it to all be non profit, and for profit corporations, no tax by force, no actual government. This infuriates hippies because they love space… That’s it, hippies love NASA, and to be fair public education, for creating NASA engineers. When you remind them it’s taxed for at the point of a gun however, they start to favor non profit NASA.
We all want our government, to be our countries largest not for profit corporation. We can get there if we stop hating each other.