Teabagging John Locke, or: The Problem With Libertarianism
Not sure anybody here will remember me. I started posting daily thoughts around Election Day, shortly before events in my day-to-day life conspired to make things very busy for me. And I'm still busy. But I miss sharing my thoughts with TPM's community. So here goes -- don't know how often you'll see me 'round these parts, but here's hoping I find the time to pop in every once in a while. More importantly, I sincerely hope you enjoy what humble words I have to contribute. Of course, comments are highly encouraged!
As angry conservatives and libertarians giddily prepare for Tax/Teabag Day, I've inevitably been reading more and increasingly strident libertarian arguments against once and future bailouts and stimulus packages. (Predictably, if dismayingly, many left-wing populists have added their voices to the anti-bailout crowd.) Earlier today Megan McArdle, heretofore a relatively sane voice on the economic right, concluded a thoughtful post in favor of fed action with the following, grudging, admission:
Kevin Drum calls this 'the best argument I've ever read for not being a libertarian,' and while his comment has an air of pithy snark, I think it points to a fundamental flaw with libertarianism, at least in its more dogmatic form.
The Libertarian Prescription
But before we inquire why libertarians are misguided, let us first examine how: What is the mechanism of their warped policy prescriptions?
Hard-core libertarians, of course, believe that the market should be allowed to take its course. The more intellectually rigorous and self-honest among them -- which is to say those who voted for Bob Barr over Ron Paul -- have been (like McArdle) willing to admit the likely consequences of their recommended action: late-20s-style bank runs, widespread insolvency, a vastly deeper economic crisis, probably a systemic and long-lasting worldwide Great Depression. They believe that this would be preferable to extended government regulation of the economy, deepened public debt, inflation, and (broadly speaking) further encroachments upon liberty.
From the other side of the debate, I'm happy to to admit that these are important problems. That stimulative spending will in some ways be wasteful is true (although in my eyes the lesser of all evils); we should endeavor both to maximize the multiplier effect and invest in projects with substantial and long-lasting positive externalities. I recognize that expanded government spending, and waste, will likely persist for some time after stimulus ceases to be necessary; public oversight and a liberal openness to compromise will both be vital to stave off inflation, which, among other things, in the long term really does erode lifelong savings and makes seniors more dependent on government assistance than they'd otherwise be. As important as it is, I know that government regulation can often be pernicious, and market interventions can be distorting. Needless to say, we must remain ever vigilant against encroachments upon or most fundamental freedoms.
These are all important libertarian contributions to political discourse, and they deserve serious consideration.
Moreover, it appears that libertarians agree with honest liberals that there is in this world no easy or clean solution to the economic crisis. With no perfectly clear answers forthcoming, we must rely on our reason and our intuitive common sense as guides to action. But there is no better guide than an appreciation of history.*
A Brief History of Misery and Tyrrany
It's very difficult to argue, without distorting history, that the depth and breadth of the problems of government intervention in the American economy at a time of crisis, even extrapolated over the decades after the crisis, nearly matches, let alone exceeds, the depth and breadth of problems caused by non-intervention. To be sure, if we imagined that FDR's New Deal had not existed, and that the Second World War hadn't happened, it's reasonable to conclude that the Great Depression would have lasted longer -- and grown deeper -- than it in fact did. But we need not delve into counter-history. Simply comparing the misery caused by the actual Great Depression (which thoughtful libertarians admit would be roughly replicated, or exceeded, should the government today let banks fail and gouge the social safety net) with the misery caused by resultant government economic intervention in the years between, say, 1945 and 1983, I think there's little question that the Depression was, in aggregate, worse.
Moreover, if we look at the most illiberal governments of the modern era, almost all arose in reaction to some domestic crisis (or, in the case of Russia in 1917, the domestic effects of an international crisis). Extended periods of economic chaos will destabilize governments, and while there are some radical libertarians that welcome anarchy, anarchy unsustained by civil war has almost always led directly (and rather swiftly) to despotism.
On the other hand, FDR's new deal, while it brought about a generation of Big Government which, in some of its latter-day excesses, probably did unreasonably restrict economic liberty and contributed to stagflation, did not lead by steps to despotism or totalitarianism. The reality is that democratic traditions and a respect for rule of law run deep in America, which is by nature a relatively conservative nation (in the Burkean, not Republican, sense); political trends have a way of ebbing and flowing over long periods of time. Tyranny is to be guarded against, to be sure, but it is not to be predicted. History rarely proceeds along a slippery slope.
With all this in mind, it seems that under the best realistic circumstances the radical libertarian position would lead to much greater suffering in order to protect against the much lesser suffering that would be imposed by government intervention. In worse it could lead quickly and directly to precisely the kind of illiberalism it fears, in its most fantastic nightmares, may descend after several generations of unchecked and unquestioned government expansion.
'Realisitc', we shall see, is the key word in the foregoing paragraph.
The Liberal and the Libertarian
Libertarianism presents a (relatively) well-thought-out, consistent, and logical understanding of political economy, but this is not a virtue. Logic, divorced of common sense and historical understanding, is a poor guide to policy. (It was, ironically, an abhorrence of such 'rational' systems that undergird most of Fredrich Hayek's arguments for what we today call libertarianism.) As Bertrand Russell, speaking of John Locke, argues in his History of Western Philosophy:
Earlier in the same chapter Russell more explicitly praises Locke's inconsistency, which he sees as an expression of the philosopher's moderation:
This, then, is the problem of libertarianism. As a school of thought it provides important insights -- and a passionate understanding of its fundamental precepts can provide an important check against willy-nilly government expansion -- but if followed to its logical conclusions leads to warped understanding and warped policy prescriptions. And so the libertarian is forced either to be inconsistent with his principles, or else to assert the reality of the unreal and the goodness bad.
It's important to have a basic, and relatively consistent, worldview, which may or may not coincide with the popular definitions of a particular political ideology. (For a thoughtful person it probably won't.) But logical dogmatism is rightly abhored. Instead, one should express a nible willingness to accept the most reasonable wisdom of competing ideologies -- and, more importantly, to reject the more absurd conclusions of one's own.
*I should add, parenthetically, that a person's ethical convictions often play an important, and perhaps decisive, role in one's perception of reality. Probably that is as it should be. But it is rarely explicitly stated, and I think that most libertarians would either assert that their beliefs are purely pragmatic, based on an understanding of economic reality; or, if they are admitted to be founded on ethical notions, then it is an ethic they assert better reflects, in some objective and quantifiable way, the world as it is (or as human beings, if well-enough educated, would desire it to be) and is therefore demonstrably superior to other ethical systems. I am not, however, familiar with any systematic argument putting forth this notion, and it seems to me that most of libertarianism is founded upon a misguided conflation of material well-being with 'the Good' in a broader sense.
Thanks for reading. If you found this post valuable I'd hugely appreciate it if you'd click 'recommend'! I'd also love to hear your thoughts in the comments below -- see you there.
As angry conservatives and libertarians giddily prepare for Tax/Teabag Day, I've inevitably been reading more and increasingly strident libertarian arguments against once and future bailouts and stimulus packages. (Predictably, if dismayingly, many left-wing populists have added their voices to the anti-bailout crowd.) Earlier today Megan McArdle, heretofore a relatively sane voice on the economic right, concluded a thoughtful post in favor of fed action with the following, grudging, admission:
I think that the political process will hopelessly screw up the management of this crisis (something which libertarians are perfectly able to see when the government screwing things up is a left-wing populist one in Latin America). But maybe The People, God bless them, deserve to screw up their economy if they want. On principle, I am opposed to saving people from themselves. And anyway, maybe I'm wrong and the wisdom of crowds will prevail.
On the other hand, do they have a right to screw things up for everyone else? Should a populist 60% be allowed to plunge their neighbors deeper into crisis? In the case of America, to plunge the whole world deeper into crisis?
The uncomfortable conclusion I'm coming to is that yes, they should. Ben Bernanke should be hamstrung even though it's likely that this would make everyone worse off. And people who advocate for ending the independence of the central bank should be willing to accept all that this entails: inflationary monetary policy (the people love inflation!), bad and unpredictible banking policy, the collapse of the US economy. I just wish I didn't have to go along for the ride.
Kevin Drum calls this 'the best argument I've ever read for not being a libertarian,' and while his comment has an air of pithy snark, I think it points to a fundamental flaw with libertarianism, at least in its more dogmatic form.
The Libertarian Prescription
But before we inquire why libertarians are misguided, let us first examine how: What is the mechanism of their warped policy prescriptions?
Hard-core libertarians, of course, believe that the market should be allowed to take its course. The more intellectually rigorous and self-honest among them -- which is to say those who voted for Bob Barr over Ron Paul -- have been (like McArdle) willing to admit the likely consequences of their recommended action: late-20s-style bank runs, widespread insolvency, a vastly deeper economic crisis, probably a systemic and long-lasting worldwide Great Depression. They believe that this would be preferable to extended government regulation of the economy, deepened public debt, inflation, and (broadly speaking) further encroachments upon liberty.
From the other side of the debate, I'm happy to to admit that these are important problems. That stimulative spending will in some ways be wasteful is true (although in my eyes the lesser of all evils); we should endeavor both to maximize the multiplier effect and invest in projects with substantial and long-lasting positive externalities. I recognize that expanded government spending, and waste, will likely persist for some time after stimulus ceases to be necessary; public oversight and a liberal openness to compromise will both be vital to stave off inflation, which, among other things, in the long term really does erode lifelong savings and makes seniors more dependent on government assistance than they'd otherwise be. As important as it is, I know that government regulation can often be pernicious, and market interventions can be distorting. Needless to say, we must remain ever vigilant against encroachments upon or most fundamental freedoms.
These are all important libertarian contributions to political discourse, and they deserve serious consideration.
Moreover, it appears that libertarians agree with honest liberals that there is in this world no easy or clean solution to the economic crisis. With no perfectly clear answers forthcoming, we must rely on our reason and our intuitive common sense as guides to action. But there is no better guide than an appreciation of history.*
A Brief History of Misery and Tyrrany
It's very difficult to argue, without distorting history, that the depth and breadth of the problems of government intervention in the American economy at a time of crisis, even extrapolated over the decades after the crisis, nearly matches, let alone exceeds, the depth and breadth of problems caused by non-intervention. To be sure, if we imagined that FDR's New Deal had not existed, and that the Second World War hadn't happened, it's reasonable to conclude that the Great Depression would have lasted longer -- and grown deeper -- than it in fact did. But we need not delve into counter-history. Simply comparing the misery caused by the actual Great Depression (which thoughtful libertarians admit would be roughly replicated, or exceeded, should the government today let banks fail and gouge the social safety net) with the misery caused by resultant government economic intervention in the years between, say, 1945 and 1983, I think there's little question that the Depression was, in aggregate, worse.
Moreover, if we look at the most illiberal governments of the modern era, almost all arose in reaction to some domestic crisis (or, in the case of Russia in 1917, the domestic effects of an international crisis). Extended periods of economic chaos will destabilize governments, and while there are some radical libertarians that welcome anarchy, anarchy unsustained by civil war has almost always led directly (and rather swiftly) to despotism.
On the other hand, FDR's new deal, while it brought about a generation of Big Government which, in some of its latter-day excesses, probably did unreasonably restrict economic liberty and contributed to stagflation, did not lead by steps to despotism or totalitarianism. The reality is that democratic traditions and a respect for rule of law run deep in America, which is by nature a relatively conservative nation (in the Burkean, not Republican, sense); political trends have a way of ebbing and flowing over long periods of time. Tyranny is to be guarded against, to be sure, but it is not to be predicted. History rarely proceeds along a slippery slope.
With all this in mind, it seems that under the best realistic circumstances the radical libertarian position would lead to much greater suffering in order to protect against the much lesser suffering that would be imposed by government intervention. In worse it could lead quickly and directly to precisely the kind of illiberalism it fears, in its most fantastic nightmares, may descend after several generations of unchecked and unquestioned government expansion.
'Realisitc', we shall see, is the key word in the foregoing paragraph.
The Liberal and the Libertarian
Libertarianism presents a (relatively) well-thought-out, consistent, and logical understanding of political economy, but this is not a virtue. Logic, divorced of common sense and historical understanding, is a poor guide to policy. (It was, ironically, an abhorrence of such 'rational' systems that undergird most of Fredrich Hayek's arguments for what we today call libertarianism.) As Bertrand Russell, speaking of John Locke, argues in his History of Western Philosophy:
No one has yet succeeded in inventing a philosophy at once credible and self-consistent. Locke aimed at credibility, and achieved it at the cost of consistency. Most of the great philosophers have done the opposite. A philosophy which is not self-consistent cannot be wholly true, but a philosophy which is self-consistent can very well be wholly false.
Earlier in the same chapter Russell more explicitly praises Locke's inconsistency, which he sees as an expression of the philosopher's moderation:
[Locke] is always sensible, and always willing to sacrifice logic rather than become paradoxical. He enunciates general principles which, as the reader can hardly fail to perceive, are capable of leading to strange consequences; but whenever the strange consequences seem about to appear, Locke blandly refrains from drawing them. To a logician this is irritating; to a practical man, it is a proof of sound judgment.
This, then, is the problem of libertarianism. As a school of thought it provides important insights -- and a passionate understanding of its fundamental precepts can provide an important check against willy-nilly government expansion -- but if followed to its logical conclusions leads to warped understanding and warped policy prescriptions. And so the libertarian is forced either to be inconsistent with his principles, or else to assert the reality of the unreal and the goodness bad.
It's important to have a basic, and relatively consistent, worldview, which may or may not coincide with the popular definitions of a particular political ideology. (For a thoughtful person it probably won't.) But logical dogmatism is rightly abhored. Instead, one should express a nible willingness to accept the most reasonable wisdom of competing ideologies -- and, more importantly, to reject the more absurd conclusions of one's own.
*I should add, parenthetically, that a person's ethical convictions often play an important, and perhaps decisive, role in one's perception of reality. Probably that is as it should be. But it is rarely explicitly stated, and I think that most libertarians would either assert that their beliefs are purely pragmatic, based on an understanding of economic reality; or, if they are admitted to be founded on ethical notions, then it is an ethic they assert better reflects, in some objective and quantifiable way, the world as it is (or as human beings, if well-enough educated, would desire it to be) and is therefore demonstrably superior to other ethical systems. I am not, however, familiar with any systematic argument putting forth this notion, and it seems to me that most of libertarianism is founded upon a misguided conflation of material well-being with 'the Good' in a broader sense.
Thanks for reading. If you found this post valuable I'd hugely appreciate it if you'd click 'recommend'! I'd also love to hear your thoughts in the comments below -- see you there.
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Great example of an amateur honey/vinegar approach to discredit something, while pretending to be a thoughtful and reasoned essay.
1. Hard-core libertarians want to allow market to take its course: you misrepresent a tiny minor detail here. Libertarians are NOT proposing to roll back all the regulation we have accumulated, back to where it was 1920s, just so that that crisis can replay itself.
2. Your basic premise is that if the libertarian solution is followed, it will wreak havoc and create unimaginable suffering in the name of a principle or a conviction. But if you look at the history of the past economic crises in the US, you will find enough examples of the market correcting itself quickly and with far less pain than when the government officials meddled.
3. You rationalize your position based on a single post from Megan McArdle, as if it's the Voice of Libertarians of America itself. But of course you knew your conclusion all along, you just needed a "doubting" (or as you call it - "honest") libertarian (or maybe just conservative, who cares, right?) to validate it for you.
Of course, the worst part is your idiotic conclusion - that it's just a well-thought-out DOGMATIC THEORY that should NEVER be TRIED in the real world. You would rather take an encroachment on liberty, you're suggesting, then take a chance.
And (to paraphrase you) this, then, is a problem with this misguided fruit of your creative imagination. You just don't know what you're talking about and it shows.
April 14, 2009 6:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Holy crap ... you mean there actually is a bona fide proposed libertarian solution to the economic crisis on the table? Wouldn't that technically mean that the libertarians have their shit more together than the GOP?
I'm waaaaay curious to see details ... do you have a link?
April 14, 2009 8:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Could you name a single economic crisis in world history where government let the markets fix themselves? Thanks in advance.
April 14, 2009 9:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Depression of 1920-1921 was largely free of government intervention to correct it, and it corrected itself.
April 15, 2009 7:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
More aimless bile from TPM's premier troll...
April 14, 2009 9:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
.
Another load of horse crap . . .
. . . wrapped in a sesame seed hamburger bun smothered in special sauce.
~OGD~
April 14, 2009 10:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Okay, let's assume the market could do this, just for fun. [I can be generous in agreeing with your fantasy omniscient-market-world] Do you have any idea when the market WILL do this? I mean, by quickly, is 3 months fast? 6 months? What does quickly mean because this free market can take the initiative whenever they want and avoid further governmental management.
If the all-knowing and self-correcting market does not want government to interfere, they should take away the reason government feels obligated to be involved. The fact is, this market is completely and totally incapable of correcting itself. A few banks have returned the monies, but it was only because they were given the money in the first place that they recovered sufficiently to do so. Wake up.
April 15, 2009 11:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
And we have the ultimate evidence of the market's inability to 'self correct' in the bubble itself!
Why would there even be a bubble if the market 'corrects itself?'
Rather than ameliorating its tendencies, the market becomes a feedback loop of bubble making on the top end and hoarding on the botttom end.
The one consistent lesson of 'the market' is that it is inherently UNSTABLE.
April 15, 2009 3:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Okay, let's assume the market could do this, just for fun. [I can be generous in agreeing with your fantasy omniscient-market-world] Do you have any idea when the market WILL do this? I mean, by quickly, is 3 months fast? 6 months? What does quickly mean because this free market can take the initiative whenever they want and avoid further governmental management.
If the all-knowing and self-correcting market does not want government to interfere, they should take away the reason government feels obligated to be involved. The fact is, this market is completely and totally incapable of correcting itself. A few banks have returned the monies, but it was only because they were given the money in the first place that they recovered sufficiently to do so. Wake up.
April 15, 2009 11:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
oops. Stuttered there.
April 15, 2009 11:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
Okay, let's assume the market could do this, just for fun. [I can be generous in agreeing with your fantasy omniscient-market-world] Do you have any idea when the market WILL do this? I mean, by quickly, is 3 months fast? 6 months?
Quickly is probably 1-2 years. In any case, more quickly than it will be corrected with the government intervening. But the process will be painful. A "correction" will mean quite a bit of pain in the short term.
What does quickly mean because this free market can take the initiative whenever they want and avoid further governmental management.
The free market can "take the initiative?" You realize, don't you, that the free market correcting the problem means a lot of businesses go under, deflation, some severe problems for a year or two, and then recovery? The correction does not start with teh economy recovering, so your implication that the free market ought to "take the iniative" and solve the problem now or else it is worthless is rather a false dichotomy.
Moreover, the free market cannot take the initiative right now because we do not have a free market. What "free-marketers" are saying is that in the absence of government intervention, economic problems will tend to self-correct. Therefore, the existence of government intervention precludes the free market conditions from existing in order for the free market to solve the problem.
It seems to me that you are confusing the terms "free market" and "private sector."
What you are actually saying is that unless the private sector can create a recovery immediately, then obviously we need government intervention (which assumes of course that government intervention will actually speed up the process of recovery). If you are to believe in the free market, you say, then the private sector needs to take the initiative and solve this problem immediately with no pain.
In other words, you are setting up the contest between the "free market" and "intervention" (a) with a bad definition of "free market" and (b) with unrealistic requirements for the "free market" to win the contest (somehow I doubt that if the government intervenes and fails to create an immediate recovery that you will judge it as harshly).
April 15, 2009 7:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
The more intellectually rigorous and self-honest among them -- which is to say those who voted for Bob Barr over Ron Paul -- have been (like McArdle) willing to admit the likely consequences of their recommended action: late-20s-style bank runs, widespread insolvency, a vastly deeper economic crisis, probably a systemic and long-lasting worldwide Great Depression.
Poppycock. McArdle and Barr are nowhere near as intellectually rigorous and honest as Paul and his supporters.
Listen, neither Paul nor the Austrian schoolers in general deny that our preferred policies will lead to a lot of bank failure, the realization of a lot of insolvency, and a temporarily deepened recession. The issue is whether letting the recession run its course will bring us out of hte recession sooner than trying to fight it.
You are suggesting that all "honest" libertarians accept that Keynes was right but hate him anyway.
In point of fact, intervention by the Hoover administration, first by trying to reinflate the late 1920s bubble, and then by browbeating businesses into expanding and into maintaining wages when there was not the capital to do so, greatly exacerbated the Great Depression.
And in point of fact, the Paul-syle libertarians, much more so than the McArdle-style libertarians, were the ones to predict the current break-up. If McArdle and her ilk are so much more "honest," why were they insisting that inflated housing prices were not a disaster waiting to happen, while Peter Schiff was screaming about the problem from the rooftops? I'd show the Austrian-schoolers and their ideas a little more respect if I were you.
April 14, 2009 6:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
I would just like to say (although your post is thoughtful) that just because you can predict a crisis does not mean you know a way out of that crisis. Also, even if you have an ideal economic model or theory, that still doesn't mean you can find a way out of this crisis.
April 14, 2009 9:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
There's no shortage of leftists who predicted the crisis as well.
April 14, 2009 9:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
ROTFLMAO
"McArdle and Barr are nowhere near as intellectually rigorous and honest as Paul and his supporters."
Ron Paul and Paultards are rigorous and honest?
You mean Ron Paul, who was the 9th biggest house porker in the recent stimulus bill, that he voted against? (From Taxpayers for Common Sense) This is an old Paul con, that he's been successful playing for many years. He publicly rails against spending bills and votes against them, yet works like a busy beaver in the background assuring his district receives more than their fair-share of earmarks from him. Yeah, that's rigorous honesty alright.
Ron Paul, who for over 30 years now, has constantly preached the impending failure of the the US Dollar because of the non specie currency on Federal Reserve, and now stands up waving wildly saying, "see I told you so", while his supporters, imbecilicly believe him? If you have been preaching the soon to be coming financial meltdown for over thirty years, including announcing the 1998 worldwide financial crisis had befallen us, and that it would be exacerbated by the X2K bug, you are not a financial genius, but instead a broken clock.
April 14, 2009 10:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
I used to have more respect for Paul. I was intrigued by those curiously intersecting positions of both Libertarians and Progressives. You know, where the two seem to meet at opposite ends of the political spectrum. Anti-war, pro-Constitutional protections, particularly, the Bill of Rights, etc. Which suggests that our political spectrum is circular rather than linear, I suppose.
I lost much respect for Paul when I began noticing that he had difficulty answering the question of what he would do to address the Economic crisis. Paul seemed to always answer with a litany of what he WOULDN'T do. I watched him get pressed on that very point in a TV interview and he just wouldn't or couldn't offer any plan of action, only a plan of inaction.
April 15, 2009 7:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
As I read my own comment, it occurs to me that, maybe, that is a simply core principle of Libertarianism, governmental inaction. I confess to not having studied Libertarian philosophy.
It seems that G.W. Bush provides an interesting example of the worst of both Libertarian and Conservative approaches. Lie the nation in to an unprovoked foreign war. Ignore constitutional protections. Mismanage the federal budget. Inaction after Katrina. Inaction or weak action on enforcing laws and regulations with which Bush disagreed.
April 15, 2009 8:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
Welcome back. I suspect others will find your post and give you some support. I just wanted to tell you that everyone here doesn't feel it necessary to respond to a thoughtful post with cries of idiotic or poppycock, neither of which I find particularly convincing.
April 14, 2009 7:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
I appreciate this post as well. It is a shamr that the true believers are here to tear it down without offering a cogent rebuttal. The appeal to authority is an insufficient counter to your charge that Libertarianism sacrifices nuance in favor of a false consistency. A good measure of Libertarian philosophy in action is Somalia. Of course that nation has no choice in the matter owing to the power vacuum. Nevertheless, the tendency towards tribal power structures that are inherently reactionary is the Objective tendency.
April 14, 2009 9:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
And look how things turn out when the populace is armed and untethered by law? Piracy! Now who saw that coming?!?
April 15, 2009 11:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
Paging Cyants.
=D
April 14, 2009 7:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
It seems to me that Lockean liberalism was a useful democratic tool and central to the American creed. Certainly, then, the powerful had to seize that tool and pervert it until it became Objectivism. Now that that's failing them, they'll settle for good old fashioned government interventionism and a state supported aristocracy.
Which may mean Locke is ripe for a comeback.
April 14, 2009 7:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
If not Locke, then Rousseau, and may God have mercy on the elites if the latter experiences a resurgence.
April 14, 2009 9:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
I am amused by your shallow depiction of libertarianism, and it's obvious American-centrist point of view. You say; "Hard-core libertarians, of course, believe that the market should be allowed to take its course." Now who exactly are your referring to as "hard-core" libertarians? You are engaging in distortion through broad inapt generalisation, attempting to paint all who believe in libertarianism with your one-size fits all derogatory half-truth paintbrush. This exposes your own personal bias, which has made you blind to the reality of this financial trouble. It was NOT deregulation of the market which is to blame, but instead the legislated regulations allowing non-transparency, and insane derivatives, which if attempted by a business in a truly free market, would have resulted in their being hammered into bankruptcy. Free markets require transactional pellucidity.
Your Bob_Barr/Ron_Paul dichotomy is another gross distortion. As one who has self-identified as libertarian for many years, I consider both to be weaselers of liberty, and in truth, libertarians who strongly support one, probably also support the other.
Admittedly, my renunciation of both Barr and Paul got me tagged by the LP National as a member of the party's anarchist wing; which to their consternation, I also embraced. What American True Friend of Liberty does not feel the constant tug of the anarchist's dream. It is embedded at this Nation's very literary foundation:
One primary point you fail to realise about libertarianism, which granted, is resultant from the present perverse variant that pervades American-style libertarianism, with its Austrian cruel gruel, and CheezeWhiz© crackers, oozing their neo-confederate states' rights processed injustice, is that liberty is far more than bellying up to an all you can eat buffet of self-interest and personal greed.The Austrian Schooled Miseserly view is flawed with an irreconcilable contradiction at its core. Libertarianism holds at it most primal foundation, a belief that the initiation of force against another is always wrong, and force is only proper as self-defense. The Austrians believe that the state should be extremely anemic, especially with its power over its citizens, and that all property should be privately held. From this they often go on to posit a right to impair the Natural Human Right to Expatriation, because only the private landholders have the power to decide who freely traverses on their property. Yet consider the narrow reach of Natural Property rights:
Natural Property Rights extend out only as far as property is being utilised directly (occupied) by an individual, and do not confer a right of perpetuity to ownership. When the property is no longer directly occupied, the right to ownership ceases. All other form of private property are derived as gifts from a robust state. This includes all forms of absentee ownership, legacies, intellectual property, etc. Just how do these Austrian dreamers propose, in the absence of a robust state power, to maintain their ownership of unoccupied property, without the use of unjustifiable force, against those who assert their natural property rights through occupancy? The Austrians do not in fact, believe in personal liberty, but instead fantasise about their own high-born baronies in a neo-feudalistic world.My opposition to the current bail-outs is not that the government has not the right to intervene economically. If valid goals of The Nation are to establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, and promote the general Welfare, then intervention seems warranted presently. There can be no liberty in a society, whose members are able to walk blindly by a human who the vicissitudes of life has thrown face-down into the muddy flood waters. They need be given a leg-up and a fair stake in society.
The problem does not lie within the concept of the bail-out per se, but instead with its implementation. If the government needs to intervene for the sake of society into private business ventures, then it should be playing free-market hardball in the majors against these remarkably inept entities, which now threaten the public tranquility, who belong in the Single A league. Any corporations big enough that its failure is liable to have vast negative repercussions on the economy, who now need to come to the bail-out plate, should see high and tight fastballs right at their chins. They should first be forced to completely and transparently mark-down their bad assets as liabilities, take the market hit for it, and then the government should receive dollar for dollar sweat equity in return for use of the public treasury to save their incompetent asses. As soon as is reasonable, after the economy begins to turn around again, the government should begin to actively divest itself of these equities at public auction to the highest bidders, thereby assuring the people receive a proper return on their magnanimous investment.As the bail-out game is played now, it does represent a redistribution of wealth, but not in the manner that the right and faux libertarians are portraying it to be. The bail-out is serving to prop up the share prices of piss-poor corporations. TARP serves to inflate the true value of real estate. Who are the recipients of this governmental largesse at the people's expense?
The redistribution of wealth caused by the bail-out is upwards from the poorest to the wealthiest Americans. This isn't socialism, it's crony capitalism.Welcome to the libertarian left.
April 15, 2009 3:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
PCA, Fustel de Coulanges' "The Origin of Property in Land" [1904] is available for free online at Google Books. A great little book, in my estimation. Have you read it? I used it years ago to write a paper on "Indian Land Tenure" for a polysci course. I also addressed the question of what it means to "own" something in the paper. Of course the answer is nearly completely abstract, like the concept of mana. The one concrete sense is that you can call upon the powers of the state to control other's access to that which you own.
Given that, I don't think the Austrian dreamers could even own anything sans the power of the state, except in an abstract, almost spiritual, sense.
April 15, 2009 3:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
no haven't read it yet. thanks for the info though. it's probably something i'll enjoy.
April 15, 2009 8:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
"Moreover, it appears that libertarians agree with honest liberals that there is in this world no easy or clean solution to the economic crisis. With no perfectly clear answers forthcoming, we must rely on our reason and our intuitive common sense as guides to action."
As a libertarian for over 30 years, this is perfectly correct.
ABSENT THE PAST 30 YEARS of federal manipulation of the economy, I would favor letting the market take its course and weed out the inefficient and poorly performing competitors.
But given that the recent economic paradigm in any way resembles a truly 'free market' - and the amount of manipulation to the detriment of the lower and middle classes, I do NOT favor market rectification of the current situation, given the contribution TO the problem that the government has made.
Some combination of government stimulus and a rewriting of the rules governing certain financial instruments will be required to even begin to address the issues involved in this recession. As a libertarian, I understand that.
April 15, 2009 4:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
Most of what enable the John Galts to function is a stable government, that provides a legal framework to enforce contracts and a monetary system so we don't get paid in chickens. Plus a regulatory enviroment that requires doctors to actually be somewhat qualified. Libertarians seem to think all this stuff as well as roads and a whole host of other goods and services would magicaly appear with a government.
Almost by definition a libertarian is an idiot, the includes Megan McCardle and Ron Paul.
April 15, 2009 10:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
I have an idea for those who do not wish to pay taxes and/o have government on their backs.
Tell them fine. But they are not allowed to make use of anything that is payed for or maintained in any way by taxation or government agencies. Like:
Roads, airline travel, railroad, ships. (NTSB, Army Corps of Engineers, Coast guard).
Hospitals.
Police and Fire- Rescue
Any Parks and recreational facilities.
Public Schools and/or State Universities.
No fire arms. (Treasury Dept.)
No Voting.
Banks, thrifts and Credit Unions.
Restaurants.
No pharmaceuticals of any kind. (Food and Drug)
No radio, Internet, Phones or television.
In fact they would have to be deported and they would be required to pay for their own deportation.
C
April 15, 2009 1:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Excellent post. I appreciated your point (or Betrand Russell's) about logical dogmatism. That makes a lot of sense -- moderates and pragmatists don't get hung up about being "correct", just making things work. Usually the worst people in public policy arenas (and any others) are the fanatics and absolutists who refuse any compromise, if only with reality. The "pry it from my cold dead hands" types. Probably for this reason, many libertarians hide the most radical logical conclusions when they speak in public. (Listen to how stupid Ron Paul sounds proposing freelance citizens fighting pirates -- I bet the folks who liked his Iraq stance didn't know about his other views)
April 15, 2009 9:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes. From Neo-Nazis, to the KKK, to all Religious extremists, to the edge factions of all political parties, Left or Right or other, God save us from the purists.
April 16, 2009 9:24 AM | Reply | Permalink