I see Jason has already gotten to this over at Cato but I want to chime in. I heard this report on “libertarian summer camp” while driving this morning. NPR Correspondent Robert Smith visits a gathering of libertarians at the Porcupine Freedom Festival and finds a lot of people paying for things in gold and silver. Indeed, the report focuses pretty heavily on the gold and silver folks, and the guy selling bacon and eggs without any government license – but!
[A]s George is making the omelets I spot something. His eggs come in big racks approved by the USDA. And the propane he’s using to cook the omelet — didn’t someone have to pay gas taxes on that?
First off, c’mon George! Even I can get eggs not licensed by the government and I’m not at the Porcupine Freedom Festival. Just join an egg co-op or buy some from your neighbors. Okay, admittedly I live in a sort of quirky town where a lot of people join egg co-ops or raise their own chickens. But the larger point is, yes it’s not easy to get away from the state, but no that’s not an argument against libertarianism (so far as I know, the eggs from the egg co-ops and local chicken hippies are delicious and safe!)
Here’s Jason:
What happens to be the case in our world is not necessarily the case in all possible worlds, and what we have now is very likely not the case in the best of all possible worlds. But for some reason mainstream journalists seem to conclude that it is, at least when faced with libertarian alternatives. “Why can’t you live by your principles in this unlibertarian world?” too often collapses into “No one could ever live by your principles in any possible world.”
This seems a hasty conclusion to me, to say the least, and one for which it’s strange to see libertarians singled out. No one asks the advocates of single-payer health care to do without private health care until their preferred system is enacted. No one asks the opponents of free immigration to abstain from all products and services ever touched by undocumented workers (though I admit, it would be a hoot if they tried).
Maybe it’s the influence of Atlas Shrugged, which does seem to argue for this type of ideological purity. But Atlas Shrugged was a fiction of a very particular type — idealized, deliberately made stark and simple, even — gasp! — unrealistic, the better to set out some hard-to-grasp principles. On a societal level those principles may very well be correct, or something a lot like them, even if I can’t live by them all alone while everyone else does not.
Still — not too bad, NPR. Not too bad at all.
I was a little more miffed at the piece than Jason (oddly enough). I thought the conclusion that “In a free market there are no guarantees” was glib, and I thought that the focus on the gold-standard types and the bacon (Ron Swanson anyone?) was a bit silly. But it wasn’t hostile, and it was mostly sort of fun-loving if a bit confused (though not as confused as Ben and Jerry’s!).
Still, I wish Smith had spent more time talking to the guy at the Thai-food tent who didn’t accept precious minerals, but only cold hard cash, and less time pointing out the FDA-approved eggs and the people buying them with silver and gold.
~
As an addendum, I like what Jason writes up above about not opting out of the system as it exists. This is also important when talking about higher education. You can be philosophically opposed to a system of credentialization and the inevitable labor cartelization it creates and still admit that higher education has value and that it’s silly to either A) opt out of college or B) attempt to defund college so that only the wealthy elites can attend. In a more perfect world, credentials would factor in much less (if at all) to our economic well-being – but not in this world.
The part of the show that got me was that the reporter was saying something to the effect of “he’s not licensed, so we have to trust that he’s washed his hands. We don’t have the government to tell us that he’s washed his hands.”
As if a piece of paper nailed to a nearby tree with a government seal dated February 18th, 2011 would make us feel better about the state of George’s hands. Argh.Report
Right? Cause I’m always so confident at Burger King that they’ve washed their hands because the government said so. Sheesh.Report
Well, since they’ve started putting up Dept. of Health letter grades here in NYC, it seems like the B and C restaurants have been closing down and re-opening a little cleaner. So it ain’t nothing.Report
But but they banned salt! Mike Bloomberg is fascist! 🙂Report
The NPR piece and the response feel more like debating the merits of a klingon language camp. I can get eggs untouched by the tyranny of the USDA also but that doesn’t make me john galt. On one hand many libertarians seem to relish making absolute statements and being profoundly judgmental about others, then get in a snit when others point out obvious hypocrisies or inconsistencies. On the other hand this camp thing is no different concept in from the communities and traditions all sorts of people practice between themselves. It could be a ren fest or civil war reenactors.Report
For my part, I have no problem with hypocrisy (and even am in favor of it when it is funny).
My problem is when you send cops to my house and kill my dogs because of hypocrisy. Or other things that you, personally, disapprove of.Report
Unlimited quantities of hypocrisy are still legal. Well until we liberals outlaw it. Better stock up now.Report
Being John Galt is, in actual fact, impossible. That’s not necessarily because libertarian ideals are unworkable or can never be approached. It’s because John Galt’s author was writing an allegory — a fable, almost.
Is there truth in the story of the Ant and the Grasshopper? Yes, without a doubt. Can you be the Ant all the time? No. But that’s not an indictment of hard work, either.Report
It’s because John Galt’s author was writing
crude propaganda that doesn’t stand up to a moment’s scrutiny.
See, I fixed that for you.Report
Ah, the joys of summertime at Camp Huckaloogie. Somewhere out at the end of a gravel road in the piney woods, featuring dodgy bathrooms and the dank microbiological stew of tinea cruris and adolescent secretions on the shower floor, lumpy mattresses and the idealism of youth. Hark, I smell the citronella candles and hear the guitars a-strummin’ e’en now.
Kum ba ya, my Lord.
Every mania needs an outlet. It’s entirely right and fitting we should see Libertarian experiments of this sort at a summer camp. Such experiments have about as much congruence with reality as a Renaissance Faire does with the actual Renaissance.Report
Having read the linked story (but not heard audio version) I’m not sure I get the objection. I can’t see anything about this piece that strikes me as an attempt to “take on” the political philosophy of libertarianism. It feels more like a puff human interest piece. In fact, it sounds a lot like an NPR piece recently about an annual camp gathering of people who used to follow the Dead. That piece didn’t seem like it was trying to make a statement about liberalism either.
And the gold/silver bit? In a time when people on the highest rated tv news shows are encouraging us to give up cash and go to gold and silver, how is this example of people testing that out not interesting and worth writing about?
I get people getting upset about a lot of things that the media does; this feels a little over sensitive.Report
It feels more like a puff human interest piece.
Imagine a piece on D&D. Imagine the news reporter saying something like “the people throw bits of plastic across the table to resolve problems”.
This is not wrong. And yet…Report
… and yet if my D&D playing friend was offended by it I’d suggest he not worry so much.Report
Wait…who is worrying so much?Report
You have your hobbies. I have mine.Report
And yet none of them advocate a world in which all problems are resolved by throwing dice, nor do they disdain people who try to solve problems in other ways as “non-diceists”.Report
Your group, maybe.Report
Admittedly, I fit about 95% of the profile, but I’ve never gotten into role-playing games. (Joe Piscopo voice: “You shouldn’t get me to play D&D. In college, some friends got me to play D&D. Once!”)Report
I was just about to post this on your higher education piece, but saw this post and decided to combine comments: think of high school. There was a thread a while back here where various members of the commentariat fell over themselves to express how much they hated high school. Still, I doubt you’d find one person there who wished he’d dropped out at age fifteen.Report
The reasons I hated high school had *NOTHING* to do with Education.Report
I mostly liked high school, but mostly for the extra-curricular stuff and the girls. The education felt redundant.Report
My high school had little in the way of extra-curricular that interested me, and no girls.
Guess how much fun I had.Report
Sounds like prison.Report
The experience was worse in retrospect than I believed it to be at the time. I didn’t have much of a frame of reference.Report
This reminds me- anybody know how the Free State Project is coming along? It always seemed a little odd to me that people would make a decision as important as residence based primarily on ideology, but, hey, live free or die I guess.Report
Every time New Hampshire gets more awesome as the result of the voters, Californians move there and change everything back.Report
This article reminds me of the posts about “Texas Is A Welfare State” that showed up here a while back.Report
Shorter NPR — Wankers wank while conjuring a world that never will exist.Report
It took you 3 days to come up with that?Report
I wasn’t aware there were time constraints on commenting.Report
No, not at all. (Though the brief flurry of activity on posts from 2010 that show up from time to time makes me wonder if we shouldn’t.)
I was complaining about the lack of artistry in the finished product of an insult that had more time gestating than Jesus spent in the tomb.Report
Just needs to be fleshed out:
The economy’s in the tank
People starve while bankers bank
Their excuses, they all stank
Working people, they don’t rank
All their hopes and dreams have sank
Reading Hayek, wankers wank
It’s alright Ma
I’m only sayingReport
Frankly, I don’t find this sort of conversation particularly helpful. I prefer these threads when ideas are engaged. As soon as people start writing off libertarians as hopeless Utopians or liberals as commie-dems or whatever the glib dismissal might be, the conversation inevitably goes to shit.Report
See? Much better. This would inspire me to write a similar poem about centralized control.
Oooh. I’ll get to work on it right away.Report
Poem?Report
He certainly wasn’t singing.Report
They whittle down by small degrees
stand on your feet and feel the squeeze
free stuff for those upon their knees
They took a vote, “the vote agrees!”
They touched my junk, said “papers please”
Liberty, happiness: things die in threesReport
Artistry, very subjective, don’t you agree? Besides how do you know how long it was gestating?
Why do you find my commenting pattern worth noteing? You’ve mentioned it before.Report
Well, I know that you know that there are a number of folks on this board who have libertarian sympathies (if they don’t out-and-out call themselves libertarian).
Given that knowledge, I figure that your comment was a deliberate attempt to “tweak” said folks.
And then… I look at the comment and it’s weak. I don’t mind the attempt to tweak my foibles. My foibles need tweaking. It’s that I mind the lack of effort put into the mockery of the folks you don’t agree with in the absence of any other point you’re making.
If you’re going to insult me, either put your back into it and make me (or someone who doesn’t have 1:1 overlap with your viewpoints) laugh *OR* have a trenchant insight that makes me say “ouch”.
In the absence of those things, your comment does not communicate anything but “I am hoping to irritate libertarians”.
The semiotics of your comment demonstrate a fundamental lack of not only understanding but appreciation of the folks you’re hoping to irritate… which, quite frankly, is the most irritating thing of all. And, to bring us full circle, demonstrates that your comment wasn’t intended to engage but was only posted for your own pleasure. I don’t mind masturbation, per se. I mind it in a situation where we ought to be playing together.
Stop being so selfish and come up with a better class of insult.Report
Jay, Seems like you’re expecting too much from the “Shorter what they said” genre of commentary. Those comments are, by definition almost, glib throwaways. They don’t contain arguments and getting insulted by them is like getting insulted by Yo Mama jokes told by your friends.
As for the NPR story and its exploration of libertarian day camp, I think its less a dig at Libertarianism than it is at the idea that “Libertarianism = no government.” Modern libertarians, to their detriment I think, have internalized this idea that the government is always malevolent while free, unrestrained markets are always benevolent. This leads to a whole host of silly rationalizations that, while they make a certain logical sense, open up the door for “Hey, wait a minute, aren’t those USDA eggs?” comments.Report
Bob wasn’t mocking NPR’s lightweight treatment, though. He was using the treatment as a launching pad to poke at libertarians using a jibe that was not as good as any of the various pokes the NPR piece used.
If I wish to see less of this behavior in the world, there aren’t that many things that I can do. I’m stuck creating negative externalities and, I hope, planting an idea that the next time Bob tells a joke in this vein that he’ll either have to put more effort into it *OR* have to tell it to a more receptive audience… and if it’s the latter, I hope that the responses of “HAW HAW!” come across as empty and hollow and he thinks “my god… I’m in an echo chamber” and drain the pleasure of the joke that way.
I’ve only got so many tools in my belt. I hope, however, to cobble a better world with them anyway.Report