2. There's a longstanding fantasy on the American right of opting out of society -- going Galt, the Benedict Option, seasteading -- it's worth tracing the origins.
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13. Hess had always had a lawless streak. In early 1960s he & a friend tried to convince the gangster Frank Costello to use mafia goons to beat up Soviet couriers giving money to USA communist party.
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14. But by late 1960s Hess had moved to radical left and was refusing to pay taxes to protest Vietnam war. He & his wife moved to woods & supported themselves by bartering.
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15. One time Goldwater ran into Hess protesting the war. Why don't you come around anymore, Goldwater asked. You office might not like that, Hess said. "Piss on them," Goldwater responded. "You're my friend."
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16. Anyways, Hess in 1970s got heavily involved in appropriate technology movement, running a solar-powered farm.
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17. Libertarian Zionism ("the idea that the only way to find freedom in this unfree world was to hide from or physically escape the eyes of the state" is still around in seasteading (and, in a way, Bitcoin).
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18. Milton Friedman's recently married grandson is really into seasteading:https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/10/fashion/weddings/a-commitment-for-more-than-one-lifetime.html …
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19. Wrapping up,
@brianmdoherty's Radicals For Capitalism, where I took much of this from, is a hugely entertaining book:https://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/titles/brian-doherty/radicals-for-capitalism/9780786731886/ …Show this thread
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Interesting to note that Rothbard was also a prominent figure in the New Left at the time before going far right. Writing a piece entitled All Power to the Soviets.https://invisiblemolotov.wordpress.com/2008/06/05/ma1-all-power-to-the-soviets/ …
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