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Meet The Chinese Philosopher Who Explained Spontaneous Order 2,000 Years Before Adam Smith
Many tend to think of concepts such as limited government and spontaneous order as “Western” ideas, but this is hardly the case.
@ilr But Zhuangzi's flavor of taoism is indeed a surprisingly individualist thinking especially for his time, and contains a lot of fascinating thought that can be interpreted in a more modern and libertarian meaning. I personnaly like the story of the empty boat: some dude's on a boat, another one is going to collide with his, if there's someone in it he will shout and get mad and maybe fight him, but if the boat is empty he will just push it aside. Sail in life like if you were an empty boat
@ilr thanks for talking about Zhuangzi, which is a very important and underrated thinker. I would like to mitigate the claim that Taoism is some kind of proto libertarianism though, reality is more complicated than that. In short, there's no concept of "individual rights" in Taoism, not as we understand it at least, and Laozi actually makes the ideological fondation for the totalitarian Legalist school, that itself influenced imperial ideology.