I'm in touch with a writer doing a commissioned piece for a major publication on the Paleo-Libertarian Connection. Many of us have talked about it over the years: how come Paleo is so attractive to libertarians of various stripes (minarchist to anarchist), as a group...to the general frustration and dismay of all the Paleo socialists?
I'll be linking up with him—probably in-person—soon, and he's also in contact with a few others—but that's as much as I'll say. I thought it might be cool to put the issue/question open for intelligent commentary: positive, negative or neutral.
Who knows, if it's good, you might end up being quoted in a major publication.
Here's my own stream of consciousness, in the moment.
- Paleo and libertarianism have a symbiotic relationship. A far higher percentage of libertarians than the general population reject various forms of "conventional wisdom," from government to social structures to religion to all forms of centralized, hierarchical dominance and authority. They abhor "safety nets." Likewise, Paleo not only rejects conventional wisdom in the context of diet & health, but recognizes that various hierarchical institutions are the culprit of generally poor public health and debilitation.
- They expand and enhance each other in terms of a wider scope integration of everything relevant. Paleo dietary and health guidelines originate in a white-dominant, northern European, Ice-Age kinda thing. Originally, it was all about meat & fish & vegetables. Libertarianism has similar roots in the white-Euro Enlightenment. Originally, it was about tossing off the chains imposed by European states. Now, with the cross-pollination going on, we begin to recognize that a Paleo diet can be many, many things—even lots of fruit and lots of starch—and we recognize that a free society could organize itself in many different ways too, owing to culture and historical traditions.
- Paleo is a recognition of our roots in terms of physical evolution/migration. Libertarianism is a recognition of our roots in terms of intellectual and societal evolution. What ties them together is a sense of scale. Paleo doesn't scale as a specific set of prescriptions for everyone. Neither does any social organization we've seen scale to a specific set of prescriptive social norms, rules, laws, hierarchical authority. We evolved to account for the values and actions of 30-60 other people.
I think the latter of #2 is the harder nut to crack. Paleos seem to be coming around to the idea that a Paleo diet is not definable in the general, for every individual. It's real food always, but what mix is optimal is both individual, and also which part of the out-of-Aftica, right turn, left turn, then north or south part of the global migration you come from.
Libertarians have a long way to go in realizing that the "principles" they believe to be a-priori, based upon "human nature," may not be so obvious they don't even need to get up off the couch, as they thought. For example, all societies don't respond the same to classic gameplay theory such as The Prisoner's Dilemma, as was assumed because they only ever tested white Euros or those who grew up in our culture. In fact, Americans are outliers. See this: We Aren’t the World. It's about some guys who did just that. They went to less industrial societies to see how the taken-for-granted gametheory would play out.
Alright, your turn. What can you add, subtract, or dispute in comments or, what are your thoughts in general?
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A majority of libertarians do not recognize the particularities of their version of liberty and freedom, and the cultural context that its embedded in. The most prone to this are the faux ‘libertarians’ of the Glenn Beck variety who want to bomb people into stone age because of their ‘dictators’ and because ‘everyone wants freedom’ which is a laugh riot if you’ve ever lived in more than 2 countries outside the Western hemisphere.
In general, and in contrast to the majority of Western society, libertarians do not regard official government pronouncements to be unassailable statements of fact passed down from on high. Most citizens of Western nations find it to be irresponsible, if not downright stupid, to ignore official government dietary advice because the advice is supported by Science (big S). Libertarians inherently lack this fetish about what Government and Science say is true, and therefore have no hangups about using science (little S) to form their own beliefs through personal experience.
I think we are the people who like to learn.
Now, public school has done a very good job of making people hate learning, but everybody wants to know something. The stupid pimply teenager probably would like to know how to get rid of his acne.
There is the top down approach- go to the doctor and get accutane.
There is our approach- learn about diet, apply what we’ve learned, and greatly reduce acne without endangering our livers from accutane poisoning.
So, if we can get more people learning, we can get more people interested in liberty, because the liberty is a necessary precondition to applying what we’ve learned.
You can find good examples in the permaculture world. Those guys tend to come out of the left, but they like to innovate, and the government can’t keep up with them. They end up having all sorts of trouble, even with so-called green laws. They want to do something like recycle grey water, or install a rocket mass heater, but the average bureaucrat doesn’t know any of this stuff. It is also very helpful that Obama appointed a Monsanto hack as an agriculture head- as effective as Bush was for curing me of my republicanism.
I also think, once you get off wheat and soy especially, you can’t help but be less of a sheep.
The same degree of skepticism for authority and self-education are needed for libertarianism and Paleo.
I know over a hundred libertarians, zero of which want to “bomb people into the stone age.” The majority are in the “war can be defensive only” camp, with the extremes ranging from pure pacifism to “I’m OK with war in order to prevent tremendous human rights violations.” I think you might be confusing neoconservatives with libertarians.
Yea, Steve, me too. There are a lot of ConservativeChristianRebublicans out there who like to wear libertarian clothing.
It’s very similar to here in the LC and Paleosphere where people love the ideas, but just can’t get off their version of the God Squad.
Once you get into the nitty gritty of SAD and Govt health programs and begin to realize what applies to one area of Govt applies to all areas, you cannot help but become libertarian. The deeper you dig the worse govt looks and the less you want them to do anything period. If you are libertarian to begin with paleo and SAD confirm your views and if your not it most certainly converts you. I always leaned libertarian but since discovering Paleo I am completely sold on the idea of extremely limited govt.
The paleo diet is attractive to libertarian-ish folk because it finally gives people who would already be inclined to be moralizing food snobs an opportunity to be so without compromising their politics or hanging out with asshole pinko vegans and vegetarians, who are just awful, awful people. At the same time, it creates a “state of nature” argument that libertarian-ish folk, who are already sympathetic to that kind of argument, can latch onto as a way of strengthening their moral/political argument for their food choices. It’s also sort of hipster-trendy, which gives libertarians, typically an out-group, a chance to feel as though their choices are affirmed by the greater part of society. “Gluten free” is sort of the new version of “peanut free”.
It may be more social. Art De Vany was the first time I came in contact with paleo. He was an economist and most people interested economics at least of the classical variety lean towards less government or libertarianish. Factor in what you said about distrusting institutions and you have a fertile ground for these ideas to take root among libertarians.
I’ll the people here including our host. How did you find out about paleo eating?
I knew about LC. Art (libertarianish himself), made it evolutionary and all fell into place. As a libertarian of over 20 years, I took it from there in my writing.
In “The 10,000 Year Explosion,” the author explains that grains gave us civilization, which gave us cities and states, which gave us authority and government. At that point, docility and deference to authority became survival advantages.
So eat your grains and do what your government masters tell you to do. They know best.
Amazingly, I know people who fully understand how and why the USDA @#$%ed up the dietary recommendations, yet still want a government-run healthcare system.
Steve
Agreed thats why I referenced Glenn Beck the ‘faux-libertarian.’ Also any libertarian who likes Ron Paul “except his foreign policy.” BTW war in order to prevent human rights violations is favored by the liberal internationalists.
Hmm. Started Shangri-La diet- Seth Roberts. Was reading Patri Friedman, Nassim Taleb. Someone referenced an article about Art De Vany. Of course, I’m reading LewRockwell and Mises.org, but their references to the paleo diet started showing up after. Google Reader once had a functioning recommendation system and I started reading paleo blogs. I do remember one of Jimmy Moore’s interviews with Art De Vany had a strong influence on me.
Clearly, I have been influenced by economists. I am so glad I am not eating what Krugman is eating.
Libertarian (anarcho-capitalist) vegan here.
If you do indeed write an article for a major publication, please at least support your premise. Show a statistic that libertarians are more likely than liberals, socialists, and conservatives to be paleo, even when correcting for obesity, gender, time spent online, or whatever characteristics are prevalent amongs paleo-ers, and that the same doesn’t hold for veganism etc.
For all I know the Libertarian-Paleo connection, if there is one, is pure chance. A big time Paleo proponent, Mark Sisson, writes regularly on the biggest libertarian website, lewrockwell.com. Now I don’t know if Sisson is a libertarian, I don’t know if he pays Lew to publish there, and I don’t know but I’ve heard that Lew is either vegetarian or vegan, but there’s a lot of room for chance here. If Sisson had been a liberal (assuming here that he’s libertarian, I don’t know), maybe he would be a long time huffingtonpost.com writer and acquired a lot of liberal followers. But with the regular and high profile exposure on lewrockwell.com it’s no wonder Paleo acquired some followers, amongst them was Tom Woods who is also very popular.
If there is indeed a connection then before delving into ideology and psychology one should first eliminate the effects of marketing spend and demographics and always keep in mind that some things are the result of chance.
Scott
You,re not following. I am implying no causal link. There are no stats and I’d bet my bottom dollar that there are far more commie Paleos.
That’s not the issue. The issue is that many libertarians seen to embrace paleo pretty easily. To some degree the other way around but less I assume.
Lew lost his 60-80 pounds or whatever on paleo, LC I would presume. You’ll note that his McDougal posts precede his paleo posts.
Thank Karen De Coster.
“If there is indeed a connection then before delving into ideology and psychology one should first eliminate the effects of marketing spend and demographics and always keep in mind that some things are the result of chance.”
Hmm, that’s a lot of things to put into one basket. And, what is chance, really? At what specific point does one draw the line between nature and purposeful action, and is there a real distinction because we’re part of nature ourselves.
For some reason I was reminded of being in the former Soviet Union, 1990, Sevastopol, on the Black Sea. It was spring, getting warm. Every afternoon, like clockwork, trucks would come out in unison, spread out to intervals along all the main streets of the city. They had their trucks full of ice cream bars. And everyone lined up as children.
Chance?
I think the focus on eating animal parts and self experimentation, appeals to the self reliant libertarian type. vs the many liberals who lean towards vegan-ism based on the idea of sustainability. Being generalities, there are probably many paleo liberals and libertarian vegans.
I could see many paleos self identify as libertarian, or libertarian leaning. But i doubt a significant portion of the total population of self identified libertarians are paleo. I also think the label of libertarian is tricky. Many self identified libertarians never heard of the non aggression principle, and are probably not purists in any way, they just want to smoke some dope, get a hooker and be left alone. They don’t fit into either political party, so libertarian becomes a little bit of catch all for the politically disgruntled.
Ron Paul wasn’t just pulling support from the right
link to redstate.com
Interesting. I have been Libertarian for a long long time now. I have only recently, bout 2-3 years ago discovered the Paleo life style thing. I admit it was easier for me to question the Dept. of Ag. recommendations because I have been questioning the nature of Gov’t. for a long time. I did follow those recommended diet pyramids, etc. Stupid me. The Paleo diet made enough sense to me for me to try it, once I did I became a convert. I found out about the Paleo life style via Lew Rockwell to Mark Sisson and MDA. From there I also learned about CrossFit. My total health changed, life long allergies, gone, life long food cravings, gone, plus other health benefits. Though weight has never been a problem for me, I dropped 15lbs. This encouraged to question all other gov’t. programs etc. I digress. The part of me that questions authority is the same part that is Libertarian and Paleo. The nice thing about Paleo is, I can try it, and I am still modifying my diet, learning as I go. I can’t try the Libertarian political structure, though I would like to, some day. Any way the Libertarian and Paleo life style, for me just mesh. I think it also comes from growing up in the 50′s and experiencing the 60′s and serving in the military at that time, that has allowed me to question accepted values. Just another aside, read “We Aren’t The World”, I am still digesting the ramifications of that article. I think it will change how I see many things, but it will take me time to adjust.
Right on, Rich.
Very good outline.
To my mind, the common thread is skepticism. there are a lot of religious libertarians, but I think that atheists are disproportionally represented.
I’m not exactly impartial, but i think that libertarians are also more likely to question even their own ideas than any of the other political groups. Libertarians are more capable of analyzing data dispassionately for whatever reason.
I do think part of it is because there’s a myth floating around that libertarians have some valid claim to human nature. As I wrote a while back, Michael Shermer makes this claim, which I dispute.
There also seems to be a curious connection between Ayn Rand and the libertarians (paleo or otherwise). This isn’t initially surprising where paleo is concerned, as Rand claimed to base her philosophy on human nature in a crude survival of the fittest sense. This too is strange since she apparently rejected Darwinian evolution. In any case, I said that the libertarian-Rand connection is curious because Rand herself rejects the notion:
“All kinds of people today call themselves “libertarians,” especially something calling itself the New Right, which consists of hippies who are anarchists instead of leftist collectivists; but anarchists are collectivists. Capitalism is the one system that requires absolute objective law, yet libertarians combine capitalism and anarchism. That’s worse than anything the New Left has proposed. It’s a mockery of philosophy and ideology. They sling slogans and try to ride on two bandwagons.”
The thing I think is cool about libertarians embracing paleo is that a fair number of the truly skeptical jump all the way down the rabbit hole, and experience a paradigm shift when they discover that hunter-gatherers aren’t/weren’t market fundamentalists, but anarchists. Some even end up rejecting the cosmology of agricultural civilization.
I just don’t think parallels can be made between political movements and diets. Yes diets can become political movements (ie veganism), and be eaten by a particular type of person, but the problem is once that happens the true intent of the diet starts to become twisted by the political viewpoints. I’m sure at the beginning, and with lesser knowledge than we have today, vegans went that way to avoid the highly processed foods, but now that is probably the last reason they convert.
I have seen people say that they are paleo so they believe in the right to arms, or free economy. What has this got to do with paleo? You could equally argue that a hunter gather community was very social and shared, and these individualistic responses would not have been tolerated. Pulling together as a community, as opposed to seeing yourself as an individual with your own set of rights, is why humans, and other pack animals, can do well in environments where alone they would be dead very fast. Pack animals have social adherence programmed into their brains!!! In modern day this is seen again with welfare states typically the countries that are doing the best economically.
I’m not going to go into this any further because I know people will disagree, and that is ok because I merely bring this up to point out that paleo is such a general term that anyone can fit there political ideologies within it by bringing up unique examples. I could argue I would be a perfect ant by looking at their behavioural ecology and drawing parallels. The last thing we want is to turn this into a political agenda, because it alienates people who don’t agree with it, and when people think paleo they won’t think evolutioanry eating, healthy foods, but think hippy lesbians who don’t shave their armpits throwing blood on people (i.e vegan movement).
The last thing I would add is this may be a self fulfilling prophecy. If everyone who is slightly gullible and heavily into the paleo lifestyle reads how libertarianism is a paleo viewpoint they will likely change their own and then spout off how they are libertarianism further strengthening the link. This isn’t good not to mention it’s not even true!!! Libertariianism is libertarianism …quite different than a paleo diet that emphasises eating foods we are evolved to eat. Lets not make this anything its not to suit our own agendas.
I don’t think that work that way. I’m reading paleo blogs since 2010 and seen all the libertarian rantin’ and still don’t like it enterely. But, it made look anarchism (kropotkin, malatesta, that anarchism) in a different way in economics.
Still, i think that libertarianism don’t say much about bosses. And bosses are the authority that people in general deals the most, by far, in work. And i reject Ayn Rand ideas. This rejection is more philosophical and its cultist nature. And part of the idea of property.
So, calling economical hierachy freedom, Rand, property. Socialist/anarchist, after all; even when not demonizing the markets, petite bourgeoisies, and money, like other fellas.
I don’t think this as agenda. And I like this posts. They make me think. Also, i can’t stand the classical leftist much time.
I discovered Paleo via Mark Sisson. Quite simply, what he was suggesting made a ton of sense. I adopted the paleo template, effortlessly lost 30lbs, realized I wasn’t starving my body if I skipped a meal or meals, but would actually thrive in a lot of instances. That really showed me how completely wrong authoritative ideas can be, and to be honest not much effort (in this case) really had to go into debunking that misinformation/advice. Once again, connecting the dots from the nutritional standpoint to exercise to Big Pharma, really started to show plainly how corrupt and misinformed, intentionally or not, those in the supposed can be and this spilled into all aspects of life. So really I think adopting this lifestyle changed my ideology about many things. Figure out for yourself what works, question motives, sources, information, etc. Sometimes work and somethings don’t–you’re the only one who can measure what is correct for yourself. I don’t know what camp I would consider myself politically, but I feel like I’ve been evolving into more of a free thinker because of transitioning out of the mainstream influence. Oh, and I must say this blog has given me a FAR greater look at different arguments and ideologies than I’ve been exposed to before. Part of the beauty of the internet that the world becomes much smaller than the ones we live in our everyday life.
*supposed know can be
Andrew:
Thanks for jumping in. Kinda surprised you didn’t drop a comment on the Demystifying Money post a few days ago. At any rate, went back and read your post again since it’s been a while. BTW, you might want to check your comment plugin. All that are showing up are the two FB comments.
Yep, I still agree, mostly, with a quibble here and there (mostly having to do with land property).
First, let’s keep the context intact here. I’m not arguing paleo is libertarian, libertarian is paleo, or anything of the sort. Rather, without hard data it is at least pretty obvious that libertarians find an affinity with a paleo-like diet in proportions greater than libertarians exist in the general political sphere. Why?
I think if I had to pin it down in a brief phrase, it would be this: both paleos and libertarians value a sense of liberation from “expert and authority” driven status quo. In the case of paleos, you get to disregard expert official dietary advice and find your own dietary niche amongst real foods. For libertarians, you get to disregard _in principle_ the vast majority of what dems and republicans proscribe and prescribe and you only tow the line because violence is being threatened against you if you don’t.
But otherwise, yea, ‘libertarian” is really a bad description in many ways you point out and “Libertarian,” as in political party, is a plain contradiction in terms. It ought to be the “limited government, less government, constitutional, only-the-violence-and-force-I-like” party, or something like that.
Libertarians and libertarians alike would do well to read and consider Lysander Spooner’s critique of the US Constitution:
link to fourmilab.ch
…I’ve often thought and said that if in a flash, every bit of government paper, records, data could be wiped out, that the one archive and database worth keeping would be county records, particular property deeds.
In your piece you concede the legitimacy of private property in the context of HGs and their tools of survival. Well, a spear was their tool of survival while a mode of transportation, shelter, my Mac and perhaps even a business is mine. It’s a matter of scale.
But it can still be contextual. For instance, there is a vast difference between an individual or group looking across the horizon, proclaiming that everything the eye can see is theirs, and someone saying “these few acres is mine/ours because I/we have put our lives into it and it is a means of our survival.
I don’t see some form of customary, traditional or otherwise organization, recognition of “private” property as incompatible with anarchism in general.
BTW, I know nothing about it, but would be interested in references as to the wars and disputes between the feds and various American Indian tribes over land and territory claims. The Indians were HG to large extent and at least the CW holds that they claimed property and territory as hunting/fishing territories. And, didn’t they war with each other over such?
I think going Paleo requires the ability to be skeptical of authority, especially scientific authority. Not an easy thing. This, to me, is the heart of the Libertarian->Paleo trend. My family and coworkers trust not just the government but conventional wisdom; if a talking head on TV or about.com says so, they just trust that must be where the science is. They don’t differentiate between science and Science.
Once you’ve given up trusting government economics, mistrusting the Food Pyramid/etc is an easy step.
Yeah, I didn’t really have any expectation of contributing to the magazine article this post was intended to assist. Mainly, I find most libertarian claims to human nature problematic, and ultimately detrimental to attempts to figure out how to reconcile human nature with the historical facts we, as individuals, have been born into. So I just tend to push back against the libertarian-paleo claims whenever I see them.
Since your series on anarchy, I think most of our disagreements on this stuff are at the margins.
On the “private property” question, we do have some significant space separating our ideas.
“…I’ve often thought and said that if in a flash, every bit of government paper, records, data could be wiped out, that the one archive and database worth keeping would be county records, particular property deeds.
In your piece you concede the legitimacy of private property in the context of HGs and their tools of survival. Well, a spear was their tool of survival while a mode of transportation, shelter, my Mac and perhaps even a business is mine. It’s a matter of scale.”
Of course, most people whose names are on those records are probably more likely to agree than those whose names aren’t. I suspect we’re in different categories there, and are similarly biased in opposite directions. Even with that as a starting point, I’m curious to see how far apart we really are before making assumptions.
Perhaps this is a good place to start: What do you consider necessary to hold title? Is your thinking closer to a Rothbardian homesteading principle, wherein occupancy is necessary, or legal title per se, in which one may acquire “rights” to property on the other side of the planet irrespective of utility?
So I’m not baiting, I’m sympathetic to the Rothbardian perspective, which relies on the Lockean natural rights argument in which there is something to be respected when one’s labor is mixed with something freely given by nature (dirt, wood, etc.). That isn’t to say that I fully agree with that argument, but I like it, and am sympathetic to it. At the same time, I’m skeptical of purely legal property title for multiple angles. I can say that my biggest concern is multi-generaltional accumulation of land. Disdain for nepotism seems to be a human universal, and being born into a world in which all land is owned makes one a de facto slave regardless of any “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” niceties.
Hey Andrew:
It’s my practice to never try to engage in “utopian” prescriptions or proscriptions in regard to anarchy. This is why I never engage with ancaps over things like defense agencies, etc.
I figure that just as cultures and customs and traditions are wildly different worldwide, so would governance where retaliatory force is not in the hands of a monopoly. I assume the same for property rights and holdings. I like a couple or so theories of what consitutes valid land holding:
1. that you’ve developed it, improved it.
2. that you can defend it.
3. it pertains to a family or small social group
4. etc.
I don’t really worry about the possibility of being born into a world where ever inch of land is owned. It’s the situation we’ve already had for a log time. What’s not owned by individuals or corps (a whole other can of worms and I think we’re largely eye to eye on that—big difference between a corporation and a business) is owned/claimed by some government.
In an anarchy, I suspect there would be far greater opportunities to buy and hold their own little slice of heaven. But perhaps you mean it as a function of population. Hard to imagine having that much population (I believe it will peak at some point, far from massive crowding). But anyway, think of a condo complex where you are basically in association with all the other owners as pertains to the land, but it’s your individual unit that you own. I lived in such a place, a 63 unit loft complex and I was impressed over the six years how we as an association managed the whole deal. Ownership really has some characteristically human advantages for keeping shit consolidated and operating in good order.
Cheers. Always a pleasure to have you pop in.
1. Statism is based on irrational thinking and bizarre, magical ideas; libertarianism is the default. Unstable blood sugar and nutrient imbalances cause mental problems. Therefore, if you remove the blood sugar instability and nutrient imbalances, by being paleo, it becomes more likely that you will be libertarian.
2. Paleo is attractive to the kind of mind that libertarianism is attractive to, not because of the superficial “anti-authority” bit, but because paleo, alone among diet plans (because it isn’t one) doesn’t have rules. Sure, a lot of people try to stick rules on it, or to capture the idea in rules, but they’re wrong. Paleo is not about following rules, it’s about learning to hear your body and genes, and then doing what they want – which is what you ultimately want. Paleo really just says to eat what you want. It’s a spontaneous order.