The useful idiocy of "New Millennial Libertarianism"

Andrew Sullivan had a thread over the weekend, "Letters from Millenial voters", (see here, here, and here for examples), and the one thing that's been coming through in all of these is an annoying self-congratulatory "We've seen through all of the lies of both parties. A pox on both your parties. We are more libertarian than ever. We want to let gays marry. We want to end the war on drugs. We also don't want to be paying for stuff we can't afford."

This new libertarianism will last just long enough for those people to realize what my generation realized too late, what the generation before me realized too late, and what the generation before that realized too late: that the ongoing industrialization and automation of our civilization means more and more people will be out on the streets, unable to find work. The cyberization of even intellectual work now means the menial but discerning work of law clerks can now be outsourced to search engines, and China's burgeoning economy is about to get a very nasty shock as half a million fine-work assembly line workers are about to find themselves replaced with automated assembly machines that never complain, never strike, and never commit an embarassing suicide.

At which point they will realize that "the new libertarianism" was conveniently ignored by the people in power because it allowed what it has always allowed: the consolidation of wealth, the construction of power systems designed to permanentize that consolidation. The pretty debates between the "dark satanic mill" libertarians and the "bleeding heart" libertarians will be irrelevant. The world will revolve around power: the strong will do what they can, and the weak will endure what they must.

And so it goes.