Michael Brooks

“The central contradiction in Peterson’s message is that he both uncritically celebrates capitalist “free markets” and sounds the alarm at the destructive toll those markets inevitably take on relationships and communities. Our message, however, must reject Peterson’s traditionalist and pseudo-libertarian worldview in favor of a vision in which everyone has the economic freedom—as in, freedom from economics—to pursue their own preferred vision of the good life. Want to have a traditional family and take your seven kids to a traditional church? Go for it. Want to live in a tri-sexual compound and practice Wiccanism? Do that. Where Peterson wants to “enforce” monogamy, socialists like me want to give everyone the freedom to make more meaningful choices in their lives by creating a world in which financial stress doesn’t make it difficult to maintain relationships, people who want to start families can, and we aren’t all too overworked, overstressed, and socially atomized to go out and meet people in the first place (or too afraid of indigency that we stay in toxic relationships).”
― Michael Brooks