The corporate libertarian movement is why no one will save Alberta
I swore I'd release my mind from fussing over politics, but a new blatant truth is sitting in front of us and the established political commentariat seems to be too jammed up their own asses to notice it.
I'm not a poli-sci grad or an economist, which makes spelling these things out all the more irritating. I'll try to be brief. I have funner things to do.
First let's go back to Carney's speech at the 2026 World Economic Forum, which I (correctly) framed as a sales pitch to the corporate globalist class. I wrote three parts to my position on this, publishing the first only minutes after listening to and interpreting Carney's speech, then Part II a couple weeks later highlighting his alignments with Trump, and finally Part III detailing his economic strategy for Canada (a dangerous Structural Adjustment Program that goes against every concept of public good). That people are still lauding his speech as a rallying cry for Liberal values has become a migraine trigger for me.
We're now seeing evidence across every corner of Canada that our federal and provincial governments are on a "privatization rampage". We know Carney is a globalist and is leading the charge on rallying "middle powers" to uphold the principles of globalism. Meanwhile globalism is iterating into a more potent version of what's been practiced up till now (because as Carney noted, the old order wasn't working), which will "supercharge" its exploitative systems of privatization and extraction. How fun for us.
While this happens we're watching Alberta separatists inexplicably gain ground despite their vast unpopularity, and as Premier Smith repeatedly flouts the courts along with every democratic legal process, many hapless citizens are sending SOS signals to the federal government, trusting that our dear "Liberal" leader will swoop in to stop the madness.
He won't. The will and financial backing propelling the separation movement(s) forward have eclipsed the meagre, too-little-too-late efforts of resistance groups. Let's remember this movement got its foothold in Alberta in 2022, and has been dismissed as unserious by critically complacent pundits since. The strategy of the provincial NDP Leader of the Opposition, Naheed Nenshi, has stupidly banked on "more PR", which includes infantilizing Smith (itself an immature, mud-slinging tactic), stubbornly pointing to weedy scandals, and wielding condescension as his weapon of choice while pandering to fossil fuel corporations – efforts embarrassing in their arrogance, tone deafness, and toothless futility.
So as I was following the threads I've written on previously and catching up on signals in the discourse – which is a process where I read a thing and go "huh", then form questions about it, search the context of those questions, find new nuggets of information, go "huh" again and continue searching until clarity starts to form – in this case I was following the trail of who funds global separatist movements, which revealed there are several such movements happening across the world (what a coincidence), which led me to a bit of reading on the Koch Brothers's financing of the Canadian Right and by extension, both the Koch and Atlas Networks and their global influence (they essentially dictate the economic winds of the West).
This finally led me to the term global libertarianism, which is somewhat interchangeable with libertarian internationalism and which I'm exploring as corporate libertarianism, which seems best suited to the reality we're dealing with.
I've talked about the technofascist and accelerationist movements on this blog already. AI is now the capitalist class's primary tool for accelerated extraction, but while the ends of the movements align with corporate, plutocratic systems (those ends being a utopia of capital with no more of us dirty plebs to take care of), not every corporate capitalist is necessarily an accelerationist. There's a lot of nuance here that would take more time than I have to discuss. But the tech movement, in whatever form, aligns pretty cleanly with corporate capitalism, and AI is the accelerant capitalists are using to catapult themselves into an economic reality where our needs are no longer theirs to care about.
I know I speak in generalist terms on this blog, because guess what it's not my job to examine every nuance of these movements, and sadly the people whose jobs it is are seemingly incapacitated by their egos and the sweet smell of funder assholes. I steal time to write these pieces. When I write my hope is that I'm presenting trailheads for the curious to explore further. Critical thought means not waiting for people to tell you the way things are, it means exercising your mind and building your own capacity for understanding truth. It doesn't mean "I read a thing that seemed compelling but wasn't water-tight therefore it isn't important". If that's your mode, RIP your curiosity and cognitive agency.
Anyway back to corporate libertarianism. This 2025 interview with Willard Thorp Professor of Sociology and American Studies, Shamus Khan, discusses the professor's examination of America's elite class and the growing libertarian movements among them, especially in the US and Europe (Carney is firmly established within those circles, btw). In the interview, Khan speaks of the nuance and alignments between Western conservative elites and libertarian elites. Some quotes from the interview that stood out are:
"There has been a large-scale movement of libertarians to undermine the idea of the value of state power and state capacity. A libertarian’s premise is that it's better not to have regulations and to let markets run unconstrained. This has turned into somewhat of a global movement."
"There are certain unities, for instance, the tech bro culture and libertarianism, that really align well with one another, as tech culture tends to evade regulation. Libertarianism becomes a helpful political philosophy because it says that regulation is morally bad and therefore should be avoided, as it leads to worse outcomes."
From this point we can add the context of Peter Thiel's favourite libertarian manifesto The Sovereign Individual, in which authors Davidson and Rees-Mogg explore, "the greatest economic and political transition in centuries—the shift from an industrial to an information-based society. This transition, which they have termed "the fourth stage of human society," will liberate individuals as never before, irrevocably altering the power of government". The book talks about "megapolitics" and the inherent correctness of the billionaire class, who Thiel and others like him consider the "cognitively elite". The Guardian called the book "a strikingly utopian and irreducibly exclusionary sort of vision". The authors state:
"The clash between the new and the old will shape the early years of the new millennium. We expect it to be a time of great danger and great reward, and a time of much diminished civility in some realms and unprecedented scope in others. Increasingly autonomous individuals and bankrupt, desperate governments will confront one another across a new divide."
"Increasingly autonomous individuals" means elite libertarians. Libertarianism through the lens of elites is one where their only intolerable restraint is sharing a world with billions of perceived inferiors, and the states that support them. It's why eugenics and white supremacy are at the root of every Western right-of-centre policy. If they must share their world, they only want to share it with the "superior" parts of humanity. It's pure poison put into global policy.
It's also worth noting the billionaire class has been oozing manifestos over the past five years, a short list includes Marc Andreessen's The Techno-Optimist Manifesto, Mark Cuban's How to Win at the Sport of Business, Yuri Milner's Eureka Manifesto, Alex Karp's The Technological Republic and his follow up 22-point summary posted on X and Palantir's website – I don't have time to list and analyze all the manifestos of self-aggrandizing men of power, but they've got lots to say about how the world ought to function, and none of their utopias include us.
This steady output of manifestos and political screeds (even Carney published one, ironically titled Value(s)) from impossibly wealthy men has absolutely had an influence on the corporate and billionaire class, who endlessly fantasize about a world where the bothersome lower classes are no longer a concern, where "survival of the fittest" is celebrated and regarded as the natural order of things (and here I will again point out that the malignancy of the male ego has centred dominance and competition as the natural order, which is a myth and a lie of the patriarchy. Symbiosis and reciprocity are the true natural order).
And when you think about it, globalism and libertarianism are pretty obvious allies, they just operate on different scales – one of the individual, the other of corporations. Both advocate for non-interventionist governments, free movement of goods, services and people across borders, and both emphasize economic and individual liberty. And in a world where corporations are legally considered "people", corporate libertarianism seems an obvious progression of capitalism.
So to sum up, the system I think Carney and his globalist partners are trying to build is one of corporate libertarianism, where corporations are unimpeded by laws and regulations, while governments operate simply as arbiters of resources.
And within this framing, it doesn't matter if Alberta separates because the same players will still be at the table regardless. Yes, smaller industries will find the instability untenable and will move away, and investors devoted to Liberal values above capital will leave (show me one though, I doubt they exist) which will have negative impact on the middle-economies, but corporate libertarians aren't concerned with middle-industry. All that matters to them right now is AI – that magical tool of extraction, surveillance and control – and the energy to fuel it. Today over 70% of Canada's oil sands shareholders are foreign entities. For the elite classes, Alberta separating simply presents new opportunities for investment. Carney, Smith, Moe and Ford have found common ground in the game of corporate libertarianism.
And looky here, from Living Economies Forum president David Korten's website:
The Corporate Libertarian Alliance
Three major constituencies have joined in a powerful political alliance to advance the ideological agenda of corporate libertarianism with a dogmatic fervor normally associated with religious crusades.
Neoliberal Economists. Neoliberal economists embrace two first principles as fundamental articles of faith. One is that individuals are motivated solely by self-interest. The other is that individual choice based on the unrestrained pursuit of self-interest leads to socially optimal outcomes. [See The Betrayal of Adam Smith.] Neoliberal economists provide corporate libertarianism with a patina of intellectual legitimacy.
Property Rights Advocates. Ardent property rights advocates, sometimes called “market liberals,” commonly present themselves as libertarians dedicated to the defense of individual rights and freedoms. While true libertarians seek to defend individual freedom against intrusion from coercive institutions of any kind, market liberals are mostly concerned with protecting the rights from property from public accountability. Those without property have no rights that the market liberal is bound to respect. Market liberals give corporate libertarianism its cast of moral legitimacy.
Corporations and Members of the Corporate Class. Corporations and members of the corporate class–such as corporate managers, lawyers, consultants, public-relations specialists, financial brokers, and wealthy investors–comprise the third pillar of the corporate libertarian alliance. Some are drawn to corporate libertarianism purely by financial self-interest or because they are paid to do so, others by moral conviction. Although few members of the corporate class have a serious interest in the fine points of academic theories or moral philosophy, they find a natural common cause with those who provide an intellectual and ethical case for freeing corporations from the restraining hand of government and absolving them of moral responsibility for the social and environmental consequences of their actions. Furthermore, they have the financial resources at their disposal to handsomely reward those who legitimate their power.
This combination of economic theory, moral philosophy, and elite political interest makes for a powerful alliance. Yet in many ways it has served even its own members poorly, as its corrupting influence has not been limited to the broader society. It has led neoliberal economists to seriously debase the integrity and social utility of economics by reducing it to a system of ideological indoctrination that violates its own theoretical foundations and is deeply at odds with reality. It has similarly engaged libertarians in a cause that violates their own commitment to individual freedom, as corporations infringe on the property rights of real people and use their growing power to suppress the individual freedoms of all but society’s wealthiest members. The enormous political success of the alliance in shielding corporations from public accountability has created a monster that even the members of the corporate class no longer control and is creating a world that they would scarcely wish to bequeath to their children.
Read that again and understand that Mark Carney is a corporate libertarian incarnate. His Davos speech spelled it out clearly. His geniality isn't meant for us, it's meant for his own class. His pragmatism, his steadfastness, his paternal candour – none of that is for us. He's performing for his people, promising their bright futures. Us plebs are expected to bootstrap and rise above with no supports or hand outs, while they feed on us through rising taxation and interest rates, siphoning away what meagre capital we have as the power of their consolidated influence and wealth imposes pressure cooker conditions on middle-to-lower economies.
In their reality, one when everyone gets a manifesto, a trust fund, a profitable portfolio, and a guarded parcel of thousands of acres, nothing can stop them. It's on us to prove them wrong.
