I saw this some time ago, and ever since I wanted to refute it, but haven't until now summoned the energy to do battle with Chomsky's gattling gun delivery of lies and fallacies.
Firstly note the deadpan world-weary tone. This allows him to brusquely discard certain points that otherwise would confound him. Also note how he talks about America, and stresses how different America is to the rest of the world. In the same way with discussing Adam Smith, who he mis-represents outrageously, Chomsky is relying on the ignorance of his audience. The suggestion that libertarianism in America means the complete opposite to libertarianism in the rest of the world is nonsense. It is a way of thinking that draws on certain traditions and the work of various thinkers, and in different places it may have different emphases, but it unites on the core principles, one of which is, and has always been, a belief in free trade and laissez faire.
His discussion of the 'tyranny' of corporate America is so over-the-top, he is lucky to be speaking to an audience of sycophants, because any sceptic would have trouble stiffling laughter. As is often the case, there is an ounce of truth in his pound of lies, but let us ponder what he is suggesting. I work for a living. I do not have freedom of speech at work, insofar as I am not free to insult my boss. But what are the consequences in this 'tyranny'? What can my boss do to me? Why, only dissolve the contract between us, and fire my arse. I then walk away, a free man, to seek other employment. Contrast this with what a tyrannical government can and does do to those that offend its delicate sensibilities. However bad Microsoft is, there aren't prisons filled with ex-workers who called Bill Gates a geeky twat. No one is tortured. No one is strung up. Chomsky belittles the meaning of 'tyranny'. Sure, we can go looking for examples of Pinkerton shooting up strikers, but the question with such matters is for the courts of the land, and no company is, in principle, above the Law. Tyrannical governments put themselves routinely above the law. Tyrants often claim to be the law.
Moving on to Chomsky's ridiculous views on the division of labour, which he claims to have picked up from 'the real Adam Smith'. What anyone who's read the book knows, is that Smith contradicted himself pretty severely on this subject, but never did he put forward the undiluted Marxoid views of the Chom. Whereas Smith extolled the division of labour as the very substance of society and its advance, in a later part of the book, he criticised it for weakening the martial character of the nation. But Chomsky wants to dismiss the main argument and focus only on the later comment, which he seasons liberally with Marxist utopianism. Without division of labour, we'd all be living in mud huts. Those that call for the end to division of labour are utopian millenarians who seek the destruction of the world, such as Karl Marx. The closest to the true marxism was practiced by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, who achieved, in Marxian terms, a 33% success rate, in other words they killed one third of the population if Cambodia. No doubt Chomsky would approve.
What does liberty mean to Chomsky? From what he says, it must be the Hegelian liberty: that being, the abandonment of individualism into an amorphous blob called Man. Freedom from the alienation of not being merged with the Godhead, or whatever mumbo-jumbo that dissembling charlatan came up with. Best summarised by Orwell: (Hegelian/Marxist/Chomskist) freedom is slavery.
That's all I'm saying for now, but readers; expect an edit.
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