this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2025
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Jimmy Wales: Libertarian that ended up creating perhaps the most successful collectivist project of all time.
Reading his Wiki page, he does sound rather reasonable. Support for Occupy Wallstreet, running as a UK Labour candidate, openly calling not to elect Trump and also calling the US Libertarian Party "lunatics".
British libertarians get a pass on account of living in a monarchy but if you want to know why Labour's shitting the bed, well, they let a right wing libertarian run as Labour.
this is a perfect example of why we should always allow an escape space for everyone. Sometimes that person in the space you are polar opposed too will create something that defies even their own rules
Lemmy itself is a good example of this. Most of the userbase heavily disagrees with the main developers' political opinions, yet the software works well for everyone.
In what way does Wikipedia defy Jimmy Wales own rules?
I consider myself libertarian and absolutely love Wikipedia! In fact, if I didn't have to work, I'd work on FOSS full time.
Libertarians have no issues with collectivism, they only have issues with forced collectivism. Libertarians love private unions, co-ops, non-profits, etc.
That's how most libertarians I've talked to think. There are some people who call themselves libertarians who actually just want the government out of the way so mega corps can control everything, but i don't think Jimmy Wales is one of them.
Did those "libertarians" vote for Trump last election? What's their take on Jan 6? I have a sneaking suspicion they're conservatives who like weed, not libertarians.
You're right that libertarians don't want government involved in as many parts of daily life as possible. That's where the support comes from for things like drug legalization/decriminalization, gay marriage, gun rights, etc. Wikipedia is part of that, it was created and is maintained independently, and whether it's funded by donations, ads, or subscriptions is irrelevant. As long as government isn't involved, libertarians are happy.
Here's a quote I love from Penn Jillette (from memory, may have mistakes):
He goes on say he supports libraries and would fund one if someone came around asking for donations.
That's pretty much exactly what Wikipedia is, it's a privately created, publicly available library that runs on donations, which is a libertarian wet dream. If everything good could be funded that way (charities for a social safety net, police for law enforcement, military for national defense, etc), that would be a libertarian utopia. Since that's not feasible, libertarians want as many functions as possible to exist outside of government and carefully audit the rest.
I personally believe a social safety net cannot be independent, so I support something like UBI to replace our coercive and often subjective welfare programs and ensure everyone is above the poverty line. I also believe small companies should have legal protections (e.g. limited liability structures we have today), and large companies shouldn't (they can buy insurance if they want), so a lawsuit or bankruptcy could go after shareholder and executive team assets.
Many libertarians disagree with me on specifics (a libertarian's most bitter rival is another libertarian), but we agree on the foundational idea that less is more when it comes to government.
That's sounds pretty close to where I'm at now. Ideally I want a libertarian society, but I don't believe it will work in practice in a lot of areas (like health care or completely unregulated capitalism). On those issues I'm more aligned with the Green Party.
I'm not sure what the "best" solutions are, but I know wealth and power are way to consolidated now and we need to decentralize.
Perhaps, and ideally we can iterate on ideas to see what works and what doesn't. I don't like any big policy change, regardless of how it aligns with my priorities, I instead want a gradual change so it's less disruptive to the market and we get cleaner feedback.
There's an element of vibe contrarianism in any pronounced political ideology. Meaning that libertarians often hate what they perceive as anti-libertarian, communists often hate what they perceive as anti-communist, and so on.
In that regard yes, there are plenty of libertarians who just want to kill anything with leftist vibes with fire.
But the world of ideas is far richer than the existing conventions and established ideologies, and every person has their own trajectory in that.
I agree. This is what I've observed: Pride and moral superiority are the primary sources of political extremism. Any attempt to reason in that emotional state is going to be filled with a ton of confirmation bias. Mix in some greed and it gets even worse.
These people have a tendency to strongly identify with their particular brand of ideology and consider any challenge a threat. They label people that disagree as evil or stupid which makes them feel even more certain in their moral superiority. They close their minds to any dissenting opinions and hide in their echo chambers continuing the vicious cycle because being right feels good and being wrong feels bad.
Some humility and genuine curiosity are ways to reverse the cycle.
There are a lot of people on Wikipedia(s). There's bound to be some that defy its creator.