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But note that some people desire attributes of society that they consider to qualify as "open society" that many other people who also claim to want an "open society" oppose. For instance, one might beliege that an open society would not have hate speech laws or copyright laws, and that anyone who supports such laws has "beliefs incompatible with an open society."


In particular on HN there are plenty of a very extreme breed of libertarians who believe 'open society' means no regulation or taxes as well. It's a generic weasel word that means "stuff I like and not stuff I don't like".


If you mean it as a sort of "derogatory" description of what non-libertarians think of actual Libertarian beliefs, then that makes sense.

However, in actuality, libertarianism and anarcho-capitalism is very clear about what its core foundations are. And you'll only find the left-libertarians that are very wishy-washy about their beliefs such that each one has their own definition of "stuff I like, and not stuff I don't like".


I didn't mean to be derogatory at all -- I just mean phrases like 'open society' are used in discussion and argument by a large variety of people with a large variety of beliefs, and it always essentially means 'an implementation of my particular belief system'. Libertarianism provided an excellent example because of how prevalent it is on HN -- so prevalent in fact that I had a real life Libertarian pop out to defend it!




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