Join The OTBL Anti-Democracy Movement

If someone accused you of being Anti-Democracy what would you think?
Would they be paying you a compliment. If you're an OTBL anti-Democracy
blogger, being called Anti-Democracy would be just that, a compliment.
Sound ridiculous?
Here's a OTBL quote. From the authors of "The Price of Sin"

"The idea of capitalism did not dawn with Adam Smith but millenniums before his Wealth of Nations. The true nature of the free markets may surprise you.

How our country has evolved from a republic to a democracy and how is it we have naively lost our fear of government? Is government a cost for our sins?

This book is a great primer in libertarian thought and the bases from which political discussion begins. "

To the OTBL crowd, Democracy is not a good thing, it's a collectivist thing.
OTBL bloggers often describe themselves as "classical liberals" or "neo liberals".

Here's a few reflections about what Neo Liberals believe.

Global Justice Center:

"First, neo-liberalism is profoundly anti-democratic. Not just undemocratic, but anti-democratic. By removing politics from the market, it denies the popuaces the possibility of any collective decision-making that might promote their common interests. But that is what democracy is all about. It is the possibility of collective decision making about collective action for the common good. The democratic use of the state makes government the instrument for such collective action. But neo-liberalism envisions no common good except for maintaining the conditions for markets and the common defense. Aside from that, there are only individual private goods. The only collective action neo-liberalism can envision is that of private corporate bodies and special interest groups. This amounts to a negation of the very idea of democracy."

"The core of neo-liberalism is its insistence on the separation of the political sphere from the economic sphere. An autonomous economic sphere is envisioned in which the market is supreme. As neo-liberals conceive of it, the market is made up of individual actors who freely engage in exchanges based on self-interest. Whether buyer or seller, each seeks to maximize their individual gain and enters into contractual agreements only if it is perceived to be to ones own advantage. The market is then the mechanism for summing up individual goods, producing the maximum good for the greatest number. This utilitarian calculus is performed through the invisible hand of the market a la Adam Smith. For neo-liberalism there is no common good, there is only the sum of individual goods."

"But in order for the market to work its magic it must be free of social, i.e. collective interference. A ‘free market’ is one that is free of governmental action, which is seen as distorting the market and its outcomes. In a strict neo-liberal view, the only actors allowed are individuals who are guided not by altruism, conscience or compassion, or even enlightened self-interest, but only by their own individual self-interest. Neo-liberalism accepts the adage that the best government is the one that governs least, a minimalist state. The only legitimate role for the state is to maintain or establish the conditions necessary for a market to operate."

NE0-LIBERALISM AND THE RESTORATION OF CLASS POWER
David Harvey

"In the neo-liberal view, mass democracy
is equated with “mob rule” and this typically produces all of the barriers to capital
accumulation that so threatened the power of the upper classes in the 1970s. The
preferred form of governance is that of the “public-private partnership” in which state
and key business interests collaborate closely together to coordinate their activities
around the aim of enhancing capital accumulation. The result is that the regulated get to
write the rules of regulation while “public” decision-making becomes ever more opaque.
The neo-liberal state emphasizes the importance of personal and individual
freedom, liberty and responsibility, particularly in the market place. Social success or
failure is therefore interpreted in terms of personal entrepreneurial virtues or failings
rather than attributable to any systemic properties (such as the class exclusions typical of
capitalism). Opposition within the rules of the neo-liberal state is typically confined to
questions of individual human rights and “rights discourses” of all kinds have, as a result,
blossomed since 1980 or so as a primary site of “radical” and oppositional politics. "