Comment Rescue: Once More, with Feeling
“But how can a libertarian believe that any system that transfers wealth by supporting social safety nets, public school funding, or progressive taxation is just?”
Ultimately, he can’t (unless all that stuff you mentioned is voluntary). However, contrary to popular belief, many (dare I say, most?) libertarians are realists. When we get caught up in these heated debates, we often sound like radicals, but most of us realize you’ve got to face reality and compromise when you actually want to get things done.
So, when we adamantly say things like “taxation is theft” and “public education [is] bad”, we mean it sincerely, but we’re usually willing to compromise as long as we’re moving at least a little in the direction of more liberty. So, we might agree to public education/welfare/healthcare if they’re done at the state or local level. We might agree to taxes, but we’d prefer a sales tax over income tax.
Given the constraints on the executive branch, what would we reasonably expect at the end of President Paul’s first term? A federal budget of about the same size (perhaps executive branch appropriations cut significantly), much fewer military operations overseas, and all federal prisoners incarcerated for drug possession released (unless they committed violent acts). That’s probably about it.
Brian is basically right, I think. (My own preferred setup would be a no-deductions negative income tax with a substantial guaranteed minimum income, minus the entire welfare state, but I digress.)
To me, a libertarian can be almost anyone who accepts that just about all state action is in a sense not 100% ethically right, whatever its good effects may be, and whatever moral catastrophes the state really does serve to avert. (And these can both be quite real.)
Libertarians also agree that much state action is perfectly inexcusable, averts no moral catastrophes at all, and is itself a moral catastrophe. What’s wrong with the state? It violates individuals’ rights, understood as including property, security of person and effects, and general human autonomy. Some of these violations may actually be unavoidable, but at least we should still be appropriately embarrassed about them. Perhaps we’ll eventually find a way out of having to do them, but admitting the problem has to come first.
We have a state because we are flawed, ignorant, cruel, and short-sighted. But those flaws apply to the state as well. Often more than to individuals. Necessity does not make virtue, and the appealing fiction that we all consent to everything won’t get us there either.
That said, we libertarians are not all radicals. Many of us have a rationalistic side, and libertarian theory has convinced it of some fairly radical conclusions. But we won’t necessarily know how to implement those conclusions, and it’s best to be candid about that. We all have an empirical side as well, and that side recognizes that we should work on the really big, really easily solved problems first. Perhaps we will learn things along the way that will allow a more fully informed, more careful, more empirically justified approach to the heights that our rationalistic side already declares that it can see.
Or maybe we’ll never get there. Maybe time and experience will show us that the rationalistic conclusion was false. Some subtle flaw along the way just grew and grew until it wrecked everything else, as often happens in rationalism. (Some people are pretty sure that this is already the case, but keep in mind, that too is a hypothesis that it will take considerable convincing to get across, if it ever does, and whether or not it should get across.)
Anyway. The point is simple. I’m not actually on a seastead, smoking meth, clad only in a Gadsden flag wrapped around my wiener. I’ve got some ideas, some suggestions, and here I am, making them. Let’s end the War on Drugs. Empty the prisons of nonviolent drug offenders. Marijuana, mushrooms, peyote, the other “soft” drugs — legal for sale to adults. For the hard stuff, do like Portugal did, and adopt a public health approach. The sky didn’t fall, only the crime rate. We all know the War on Drugs hurts the poor and racial minorities disproportionately, which makes it even less excusable. Just be done with it already.
End the War on Terror. Rescind the president’s free-floating warmaking power, which he has enjoyed for way too long (I take for granted that this would end much if not all of our drone warfare as well. But if it doesn’t, just end that too.). Bring the troops home and put these smart, talented people to work in the United States instead, in the private sector. Close Gitmo and the secret prisons, end the extraordinary renditions, the military commissions, and the assassinations. Let the court system do the job it was intended to do, to separate the guilty from the innocent the best we know how.
Simplify the tax code, simplify zoning and land use requirements, simplify occupational licensing and business regulations. Shorten copyright and patent terms, and restrict the range of patentable “innovations.”
These are the things that I think are by far the most important, right now. Much of the rest I can take or leave. (Example: If I were asked to surrender same-sex marriage, and if it meant I could remake drug policy exactly how I wanted, I’d do it. Instantly.)
But a funny thing tends to happen around here, and just about everywhere else where libertarians find themselves in a mixed political crowd. I hate to be grumpy after such a conciliatory post, but I’m gonna.
Conservatives, to the extent that they remain at the League, tend to welcome the economic points of the above program, even as they disagree about the drug and the foreign policy suggestions. “You’re maybe about half right,” they’ll say, in effect, “and we respect that. We can work with you. Let’s talk.”
Liberals don’t even give us half credit. “It’s not worth talking to you. You never do anything right, or when you happen to do something right, it doesn’t count, because you’re too small a group. And also you’re evil. And you’re insane. Oh, and by the way, why do you always seem to tilt conservative? Because I find that suspicious.”
I feel as if the answer to that last question is just hanging in the air. I really, really don’t want to be a conservative, but you know…
Dear Jason, I agree with just about every one of the *compromised* policies you lay out above.
***
End the War on Drugs.
Empty the prisons of nonviolent drug offenders.
For the hard stuff, do like Portugal did, and adopt a public health approach.
End the War on Terror.
Rescind the president’s free-floating warmaking power,
Bring the troops home and put these smart, talented people to work in the United States instead, in the private sector.
Close Gitmo and the secret prisons, end the extraordinary renditions, the military commissions, and the assassinations.
Let the court system do the job it was intended to do, to separate the guilty from the innocent the best we know how.
Simplify the tax code, simplify zoning and land use requirements, simplify occupational licensing and business regulations. (Note: here is likely to be where we disagree. But only in terms of what “simplify” ultimately ends up meaning–that is, I’m totally for all of these things in theory, even if we disagree in how that should shake out in practice, which isn’t too bad really).
Shorten copyright and patent terms, and restrict the range of patentable “innovations.”
***
If I could get half of those things, I would give up ACA in a heartbeat (which is why I didn’t vote for Obama).
Of course, since we agree on most of these things, it’s unlikely we’ll ever have much reason to discussm them, which is why it might appear that we spend more time disagreeing about, say, the nature of “rights,” and the merits of negative income taxes.Report
Ethan and Jason (and Jaybird),
Everyone knows I lean classical liberal, and obviously have no love of a war on drugs. However, I am not sure a free market in crack, heroin or meth leads to a better world. My guess is the optimal approach is somewhere in between.
That said, what has Portugal done that you are recommending?Report
This.Report
It’s more that I see this being a complaint about everclear in a market where beer and wine are not legal.
I deeply suspect that if there is a real market for beer and wine, the market for everclear will collapse. Yes, there will still be some people who drink it, but a lot fewer… and, I suspect, fewer than find it a viable choice in a market where beer, wine, and pretty much all alcohol have spotty distribution, spotty dealers, and spotty availability.Report
Thanks guys. I support Portugals decriminalization of use. Totally.
It still appears they have a war on distributers though.
Another point. In a free markets anyone selling an addictive substance like crack or meth should be subject to lawsuits for gross negligence. When my kid died from overdose, I would sue them for everything they have. Where would this system end?Report
“In a free markets anyone selling an addictive substance like crack or meth should be subject to lawsuits for gross negligence.”
It’s just like how Jack Daniel’s was sued out of existence after–oh wait, they’re still in business and doing great? Welp.
Or maybe it’s like how we still have so many people going blind from drinking methanol or formaldehyde–oh, that’s the barest fringe of problems, both by percentage and by absolute numbers? Um.Report
Not sure what your point is. Jack can be drunk responsibly. Do you agree that we should be able to sue marketers of highly addictive drugs? If not, how do you recommend handling them?Report
“Jack can be drunk responsibly.”
Just like crack can be smoked responsibly.
“Do you agree that we should be able to sue marketers of highly addictive drugs?”
Just in case you’re honestly not getting it: No, I don’t agree, because “highly addictive” applies to a lot more than drugs. Should we also sue Cisco because people spend lots of time on the Internet?Report
Just like crack can be smoked responsibly.
The evidence doesn’t show that.
However, we can probably get agreement that decades-old laws that based the severity of mandatory sentencing on whether they were being used by poor blacks (crack cocaine) or trust-fund teenagers and upper class rich folks and rock stars (powder cocaine) are probably wrong.
Just like we can look back and on the basis of the marijuana laws being, in as many words, to target blacks and hispanics, say we should rethink that policy.Report
MA,
I have on good authority that a ton of highfalutin lawyers use crack responsibly (don’t hire one. they tend to be asses. find one that does pot instead).
In NYC during the 80’s, crack was something that a LOT of people did, even your high flight folks. (talk to a few folks on dailykos, if youdon’t believe humble old me).
It’s the same as booze or anything else. some people get screwed up, most don’t.Report
I am not convinced that the world will be a better place if we can buy crystal meth at the local circle K.
I am all for stopping the war on drugs. My guess is the better world exists somewhere in between where we are today and Needle Park.Report
Jason, I think the answer to “why do conservatives trust libertarians, while liberals don’t” is that both liberals and conservatives think that the economic issues where you guys side with the right–taxes, spending and health care are the big ones–are more important than the stuff where you agree with liberals. Which makes sense. When you look at the biggest political fights of the last 30 years, they revolve around just a few issues–health care, from Clinton’s proposal to Obamacare; tax cuts vs. tax increases (Reagan, Clinton, and George W. Bush); levels of government spending (basically nonstop, but especially the Gingrich Revolution, Tea Party, etc). The Iraq War would probably round out the list. But all the stuff you mentioned–copyright terms? Zoning? Even civil liberties and the drug war? I’d bet that most people, including the politically engaged, consider them less important than taxes, spending and entitlements. You can tell, because the political system spends a lot more time arguing about taxes/spending/entitlements than it does about almost any other subject besides a major war. If you side with conservatives on the stuff that government spends most of its time, money and attention on, liberals will feel a natural sense of disconnect even when it comes to issues on which we agree.
I’m not 100% convinced of this thesis, but I think it has some good explanatory power.Report
Also worth pointing out that until very recently, the prospect of national action on taxes/spending/health care was a lot more realistic than on the liberal/libertarian overlap zone.Report
That may be so. But I would rather free 100,000 drug offenders than cut marginal tax rates for 100,000 millionaires.
I think both are increases in liberty, but there can’t be any serious dispute about their relative magnitude.Report
I don’t think it’s indisputable. The top 100K taxpayers are (very roughly) equivalent to the top tenth-of-one-percent, which is a group of 137K tax returns, who earn about $1.5 million or more, according to Wikipedia. Of all the income taxes that flow into the Treasury, about 17% is paid by these folks, for a total of over $100 billion per year. That’s serious money, and adjusting it up or down by 50% would be a serious change. If the choice is “release 100K drug offenders, or fully fund insurance subsidies for that will provide coverage to 30 million people”, that’s a tough choice, at least for me.Report
(Or to do the equivalent from a libertarian perspective, “release 100K drug offenders, or reduce the burden of taxation by $50 billion per year”).Report
You’re suggesting — if I’m reading you correctly — that the rest of the nation gains in liberty when we tax the very richest.
I’d disagree. I’d say the rest of us may gain in material holdings, but not in liberty.
The richest people seem clearly to be coerced when they are made to pay higher taxes, but that coercion is tiny compared to what drug offenders experience when they’re thrown in prison. Yes, I know “how much coercion?” is a difficult question, and there aren’t units to measure it by. But some calls are easy, and this ought to be one of them.
And anyway, we could trim $100 billion (or even a whole lot more) from our defense budget and still have a vastly larger and stronger military than anyone else, and a vastly larger and stronger military than we need. We should do that.Report
I think there’s a good argument that taxing the richest more increases everyone else’s liberty.
Firstly, even if we weren’t doing anything useful with that tax money, concentrations of wealth tend to produce concentrations of political power, since a very rich person has more ability to influence the political system (not just by supporting candidates, but by hiring expensive and skilled lawyers and lobbyists to push the political system towards actions that favour them). I would argue that a country with more income equality therefore has, all else equal, a higher degree of democracy. If you wanted to increase freedom while keeping revenues constant, increasing taxes on the very rich while lowering them on people with less income in a revenue-neutral way would be one method of doing so. (It would also increase overall well-being, since a poorer person gets more utility out of an additional dollar than a rich person, in keeping with economic theories on marginal utility.)
Secondly, since we are in fact not taking that tax money and throwing it into the sea, it funds things that increase the freedom of others. Improving schools and funding universities increases access to quality education and thus the freedom to expand one’s skills, upgrade the quality of one’s labour, and thus increase one’s life opportunities. Increasing access to health care gives one increased freedom by increasing, though better health, their capacity to pursue whatever activities they choose. Improving public transit gives people who can’t afford or don’t want a car more freedom to get around.Report
Democracy is anathema to liberty, at least on an individual by individual basis.Report
Isn’t that just an instance of a truism: government is anathema to liberty?
And isn’t the absence of government also anathema to liberty?
Isn’t the trick to maximize liberty according to a certain metric?Report
It’s good to see “liberty” being discussed by liberals and libertarians.
I think there’s a good argument that taxing the richest more increases everyone else’s liberty.
OTOH, it gets frightening at times. This is FDR’s conflation of “freedom” with liberty, Freedom from Want, a perversion of the concept of liberty.
The argument for liberty is that’s it’s a self-evident good, or at least a utilitarian one. Otherwise it’s just one more civil commodity. “Freedom from Want” comes with beaucoup strings attached, and it should.
God bless the child who’s got his own. That is liberty.Report
Freedom from Want, a perversion of the concept of liberty.
Oh really?
Someone who can act to create a small business, clear from fear that one simple illness can utterly destroy them financially because they won’t have health insurance if they quit their day job to start the business, has liberty in that sense?
Someone who’s living hand-to-mouth, caught in the (relative) expense of living poor, has the same liberty as someone living middle class or higher?
No. That’s where strict-libertarianism falls down. It fails to look at the scope of ensuring a maximum amount of liberty for ALL parties and ignores the problems, coercive forces and diminishment of liberty created when liberty for the upper end is maximized first.Report
You’re using the same words like “liberty” and “freedom” but the meanings are a universe apart. What you describe isn’t liberty atall, each of us in thrall to each other via the state.
What you describe is nice and might even be desirable, but it is not liberty.Report
You’re using the same words like “liberty” and “freedom” but the meanings are a universe apart.
Exactly, but I’m using real meanings that apply in the real world.
God bless the child who’s got his own. That is liberty.
To paraphrase: “FYIGM.”Report
I’m not a libertarian, but you just showed the absurdity of these “discussions.” Liberals simply do not discuss liberty in any meaningful fashion, and libertarians just want to be liked by the liberals who despise them so tend to avoid the concept as well.
Liberty as a self-evident good that enhances human dignity and eudaemonia, and as a utilitarian good ala the “invisible hand” and the self-organizing system is the essential way for the libertarian to argue, not mere indictment of the status quo.
For the modern liberal, the irony is his emphasis more on the “order” part of the “ordered liberty” part of the classical liberal equation, for “fairness” as a cardinal civic virtue is achievable only by near-total coercion and imposition of a new “order.”
At least the conservatives are unapologetic about the “order” part, and indeed are far more libertarian in the economic liberty department, willing to trade a bit of unfairness for the robust economic plenty created by true liberty, as opposed to the constipating quality of FDR’s version of “freedom.”
God bless the child who’s got his own. That is liberty.
Like it or not.Report
Liberals simply do not discuss liberty in any meaningful fashion,
No, we discuss it in quite meaningful fashion, it’s you who perverts the meaning. Liberal thought is about maximizing liberty for all concerned, which often means assisting those who are economically so far down the ladder that their liberty is curtailed by other forces.
Liberty as a self-evident good that enhances human dignity and eudaemonia, and as a utilitarian good ala the “invisible hand” and the self-organizing system is the essential way for the libertarian to argue, not mere indictment of the status quo.
Oh goody. Magical Market Fairies.
the irony is his emphasis more on the “order” part of the “ordered liberty” part of the classical liberal equation
Not in the slightest. I’m concerned with liberty, the ability of each person to act with maximum agency and choice. EACH, not just the fish-holes at the very top.
for “fairness” as a cardinal civic virtue is achievable only by near-total coercion and imposition of a new “order.”
Your premise is invalid. Fairness does not require maximal coercion and imposition of “new order”, it requires a set of rules and an appropriate enforcement of those rules.
The problem with your entire theory is that you want to create a system that is not and cannot be self-stabilizing. Libertarianism’s magical market fairies can only move the ball one way, towards a situation of maximal disparity.
The entire tenet of Liberalism is to create a situation tending towards, not away from, stability. The system returns to the same level, hopefully an appropriate and sustainable level, of disparity which maximizes liberty throughout the system.
Libertarianism and “free market faeries” conservatism create a system of absolute instability; it cannot hold.Report
Freedom from Want, a perversion of the concept of liberty.
The argument for liberty is that’s it’s a self-evident good
Freedom from Want (as FDR meant it) sure strike me as a self-evident good. I think everyone should be free from want. Don’t you?Report
Stillwater,
I don’t think it’s self-evident. I think it’s a desire, not an a priori right. That is, I don’t think any of us can make a claim on others to provide us with what it takes to be free from want. That’s the essential problem libertarians have with positive liberties. Negative liberties don’t demand that you do anything for me, they just demand that you leave me the fish alone. So they don’t give me a claim on you. Positive liberties demand that you do something for me; they do give me a claim on you. It’s that idea that any of us can make such a claim on others that libertarians reject.
Without trying to argue that you should agree with me on it, I think that’s a pretty fundamental level difference between liberals and libertarians.Report
Stillwater said it was a self-evident good not a right. I don’t think I can argue with that.Report
Well, do you think libertarians would argue that it’s not a good in its own right? But if the question is whether it’s relevant to liberty, that’s a lot less self-evident, isn’t it?Report
Katherine,
I would suggest that the income tax should be set up impartially to reduce the inherent tendency for people to lobby congress as winners and losers. Asking someone else, especially someone who pays WAY more than their proportionate share today, to pay more, seems inherently antagonistic. Said another way, I think it is immoral or at least dangerously leaning toward abuse for me to demand that someone else pay more for collective benefits. I suspect a bad dynamic.
Instead I would argue for something like a set tax of 25% of all wages subject to a large personal deduction, of lets say $25,000. This would make the income tax both progressive and more fair. We could then argue about raising or lowering the rate for everyone or the deduction, but stop the rationalizing, demonizing and politics of envy that we have today.
I also believe that higher incomes left in personal hands leads to private capital investments. Thus the argument for more money for public goods is coming out of more money for private goods, which is invested substantially more efficiently than public spending.Report
(Jumping in mid-thread so I apologize if I am off base but, here goes…)
I have a theory that all tax rates should change proportionally. An example…
Assume three tax brackets, 10%, 20%, and 30%.
Taxes need to be raised. Everyone’s tax RATE goes up 10%. So 10% becomes 11%, 20% becomes 22%, and 30% becomes 33%. Everyone pitches in more, a relatively equal amount.
But then taxes can be dropped. Everyone’ tax RATE goes down 20%. So 11% becomes 8.8%, 22% becomes 17.6%, and 33% becomes 25.4%.
The ideas behind it:
A) Everyone’s taxes go up or down together. This also means it is REALLY important to get those initial brackets/rates correct.
B) It remains progressive.
C) No one must lose so that others gain. I’m not raising YOUR taxes so I can LOWER mine. We’re ALL having our taxes go up or down; it’s just that if you make more, yours goes up more or down more, etc.
Now, there might be mathematical reasons this breaks down and I’m sure folks can poke all sorts of holes in it but, assuming we can get the basic brackets in order (and I don’t suggest 10/20/30 as realistic brackets), I see no reason not to strive to lower or raise everyone’s taxes together.Report
Kazzy,
I like the spirit of what you say. It seems like a better approach.Report
+1.Report
Roger,
Definitely some kinks to work through (including the basic math error up there… should be 26.4%) but the broader idea that most broad based changes should be universal is a sound one.
My solution to the debt ceiling “crisis” was that, absent an ability to come up with a sustainable solution, everyone’s taxes go up X% and everyone’s spending gets cut Y%. Apolitical, yes, and not necessarily fair but, hey, if we’re all fucking up, we all pay the costs. A “We’re all in this together” mentality works both ways.Report
K,
I like the way we all get in the same boat.Report
Congrats Kazzy, you just outlined the Romney tax plan. But it’s good now, cause a liberal thought of it.Report
Ward,
Did Romney have a tax plan?Report
This isn’t funny.Report
The problem with this is that static costs and minimum costs move more than the costs for the upper level.
Where would you move the line? If economic indicators said to move it 3%, but the static costs of living that everyone has to use (electrical bills, water, gas, basic food) went up by 5%, you’ve just screwed the poor.
In fact, this is a lot of what’s been going on even now. The Bush tax cuts and EITC are interesting cases that haven’t kept up with inflation even as they made it so the right wing complainers can kvetch and whine about the percentage who pay no “income tax” (ignoring all the other very real taxes, many quite regressive, that are also paid).
And all the while, this happens.
A rising tide isn’t lifting all boats equally or even nearly equally; it’s only lifting the very wealthy at the expense of everyone else, in very real terms because the immense pull of those top 1% who are now controlling not just almost 20% of the income, but a much higher percentage of the raw wealth already collected in their hands, which crowds out and minimizes the purchasing power of the working hours of economic actors lower down.Report
Yes. invested in China. Are you okay with that?Report
Asking someone else, especially someone who pays WAY more than their proportionate share today, to pay more, seems inherently antagonistic.
The rich don’t pay “way more than their proportional share”. Their share of total tax payments is roughly proportional to their share of total income, and I think that’s excluding capital gains (which are taxed at a much lower rate, and which make a larger share of wealth people’s money) and sales taxes (which make up a larger share of lower-income people’s costs).
Our economic system is not remotely impartial. The amount you make is not proportional to either the amount you work or the degree to which you contribute to society. The way the economic system is set up benefits certain people over others. Either that system can be completely deconstructed and a more equitable one set up, or as an inferior but less disruptive alternative, the people who benefit the most from the way the current one is set up should pay more into maintaining it in a way that’s at least minimally functional for everyone.Report
Katherine,
The top one percent make 17% of total income and pay over double that share in income taxes. The top ten percent make 47% and again pay almost double that in share of income taxes. What data are you using?
I suggest we pray they start making even more. Right now, you and I appear to be free riding on these people. If I write the thank you note, will you sign it?Report
Roger,
you’re looking at weird data. You look at the top 1% of income tax payers, and then say, “look the rich pay a lot” — of course, you just made a tautology.
I look at the 100,000 cap on SS & medicare, PLUS the capital gains “tax” and I say, “the megarich don’t pay jack shit.”
Increase the cap on SS&medicare, and tax capital gains as income, and I’ll be a happy camper.Report
Once you throw in largely regressive state, local, and other taxes, the tax burden is actually remarkably flat. Also, if the top 1% had less of the total wealth in this country, they’d pay less taxes. To quote the ole’ Willie Sutton line, that’s where the money is.Report
The top one percent make 17% of total income and pay over double that share in income taxes. The top ten percent make 47% and again pay almost double that in share of income taxes. What data are you using?
The bottom 50% are earning a maximum of $33k/year. Doesn’t even matter if you are filing single-no-dependents at that point, you’re not making a lot of money and you are not going to pay a lot of taxes thereby.
In 1986, the top 1% only took in 11% of the income. They’re sucking up more now than they did then.
All you’ve done, Roger, is lie with numbers. You don’t want to discuss real income disparity, you don’t want to discuss the ever-growing problems that prevent mobility and that stagnated the earning power of most so that your happy upper crust can take ever more.Report
What about if you include payroll, medicare, and sales taxes, Roger?Report
Critics from the left,
I stated that those making higher income pay a disproportionate share of the income tax today and thus it is problematic to ask them to pay an even higher income tax burden. It is antagonistic and reeks of envy. I supported the underlying fact when questioned.
I also clearly suggested a process which is both fair and less antagonistic. Kazzy added on to the idea. Thus your comments on SS and such miss the point.
Yes, we are all going to have to pay more taxes to pay for our inability to spend wisely. Let’s move forward in a way which doesn’t degrade into tax warfare and envy.
Remember also, we depend upon the wealthy both for their taxes and for their reinvestments in the capital infrastructure that makes us well off. The wealthy are not in general making money by stealing it from others. They are creating wealth, and in most cases are enriching us via positive sum interactions. There are exceptions to this, but you an I already know what they are so please don’t bother snarking me with them.
PS would you guys please help police MA? He embarrasses you.Report
Roger,
MA’s rather upset. I was too when I got here. He does a better job of summoning facts than I did.
I’d sacrifice a lot for a 90% inheritance tax. It’s not the entrepreneurs I worry about, it’s the Romney’s. The people who have never worked a day in their life (other than being a shyster)Report
Would you guys please help police Roger? He embarrasses you.
Yes, we are all going to have to pay more taxes to pay for our inability to spend wisely. Let’s move forward in a way which doesn’t degrade into tax warfare and envy.
Ooh, I hit my Conservative Bullshit Bingo Card!
“tax warfare and envy” – because after you add up the fact that the bottom 50% are making crap wages to start with, the fact that they are inordinately hit by regressive state taxation schemes and fees, the fact that they are inordinately hit by the broken medical system and regularly bankrupted should one member of a family have to spend even one night in a hospital, the fact that they live paycheck to paycheck…
Remember also, we depend upon the wealthy both for their taxes and for their reinvestments in the capital infrastructure that makes us well off.
And that makes them morally better? Hardly.
There was plenty of reinvestment – arguably more – in the 1950s when tax rates were much, much higher than they are today. It is trivial to show that lower tax rates on the wealthy increase income disparity and thus, by decreasing the purchasing power of the lower rungs, cause there to be less jobs for those lower down on the ladder.
Multiplier effect has shown time and again: tax cuts to the wealthy have a negative effect and suck money out of the economy, rather than encouraging economic activity.Report
Kim, why were you upset? Seems like a good forum to learn from others.
I agree tax rates and SS need to go up, but I don’t feel right demanding Romney’s kids pay. Their inheritance is theirs, not Congresses. Furthermore I suspect they will do more good with it than the average congress person.
Do you guys not see the dangers of asking, no strike that, demanding that someone else pays more? Someone who already pays more? Do you not see the benefits of what your fellow leftie Kazzy suggests as a more collectively responsible way is?
Let me put it another way. If some of us can get government goodies while passing the bill to others, we are going to establish a self destructive dynamic. I find this approach distasteful and counterproductive.Report
Would you guys please help police Roger?
THIS IS HOW LIBERALS ACTUALLY THINKReport
Jaybird, I’ve provided sources, you’ve provided… what, exactly?Report
Roger,
I actually agree with you. That’s why I advocate against 0% capital gains taxes.
The most inventive people I know aren’t wealthy, though they’ve started a lot of businesses/non-profits/collaborations.
As to why I was angry? I still am, actually.
Watching smart people die even with insurance, because they couldn’t afford to actually get diagnosed with anything. And then watching people whimper and whine about how Obamacare infringes on their freedom.
Watching economic terrorists (Bush’s treasury sec’s term not mine) stage a takeover of congress, and threaten to collapse our entire economy, not to mention Breton Woods II!
And I’m not even going to get into the stuff of a more personal nature, other than to state that grassroots is not astroturf.
Watching everyone who wasn’t part of the elite lose money, lose their retirements, as the elite made a profit? Gets me steamed.
Watching people sing the praises of a vulture capitalist conman who’s never had to deal with contradictory opinions? Gets me steamed.
So pardon us if folks like MA and me want to shout and be a little unproductive. It’s called stress relief.Report
Oh… I didn’t see how Roger pulled that card out first.
I apologize, M.A.
Roger: Don’t pull that crap.Report
MA,
Jay’s providing a JOKE, intended to defuse hostilities.
I suggest you laugh, it was quite funny to me.Report
Roger you’re fighting the good fight, but your opponents have zero concept of Queensbury rules. Being “liberals” they can and will claim the moral high ground while simultaneously kicking you in the nuts. It is an old song, what with the one note and all.
Meantime to deconstruct all the crap in here let’s look at some other stats.
1) More than 3 million Sub S filers today, a number which has been growing every year since the designation was first modified. Hence digging up old statistics won’t help because they refer to a time before the Sub S corp existed in its current guise. There was a time when it would have been absolutely INSANE to organize as a Sub S corp because the tax laws totally attacked high income earners. When Reagan turned that around intelligent people flocked to the “new” designation.
2) 137K “millionaire” filers are made up of 112,340 Sub S filers representing over 20,000,000 EMPLOYEES. Let’s hammer the Sub S owners so they can get rid of those stinking employees and see how high our taxes get. Whoops.
3) Raising tax rates is not an algebraic formulation. Because businesses and individuals modify their behavior accordingly. Therefore saying, “We’re taking in $100B today, let’s raise the tax 50% and we’ll have $150B tomorrow” has NEVER worked. But since the definition of insanity is trying the same thing again and again expecting a different result, well it is no wonder the libs embrace such a mechanism.
4) Stealing from Peter to pay Paul will invariably result in the support of Paul. A neat summary of our last and all future elections. We have already crossed the threshold between the makers and the takers Roger and you’re arguing against ignorance and blindness in the way of the world. The only “equality” possible will be when everyone is “equally” miserable and poor. Except the plutocrats “managing” things, they’ll manage like the plutocrats in China to accumulate vast wealth, all the while claiming they have the best interests of the plebeians at heart.Report
Once you throw in largely regressive state, local, and other taxes, the tax burden is actually remarkably flat.
The regressivity of state and local taxes is a myth, largely an artifact of the fact that income tends to vary far more over the course of a lifetime than consumption. If we were to look at the relationship between lifetime income and lifetime payment of state and local taxes, it would likely be somewhat progressive. It only looks regressive on an annual basis because people who are spending down their savings, like retirees, have no income but pay sales and property taxes.
And can we please stop with this “Social Security is regressive” bullshit? If it’s so regressive, then the you’re all in favor of abolishing it, right?
I didn’t think so.
The truth is that paying Social Security taxes isn’t like paying income taxes. When you pay Social Security taxes, the government credits you with the payment and increments your scheduled benefits accordingly. As the tax is capped, so are the benefits, and the formula is such that the less money you make, and the less you pay in, the better a deal it is for you.
Until you’re ready to call for the abolition of Social Security, stop with the crocodile tears.Report
Kimmi,
Can those of us trying to have a discussion get a list of those trying to pursue stress relief? Maybe we could get color coded name tags.Report
Roger,
people who aren’t trolls tend to mix their stress relief with their actual content. you did it yourself upthread.Report
“Secondly, since we are in fact not taking that tax money and throwing it into the sea, it funds things that increase the freedom of others. Improving schools and funding universities increases access to quality education and thus the freedom to expand one’s skills, upgrade the quality of one’s labour, and thus increase one’s life opportunities. Increasing access to health care gives one increased freedom by increasing, though better health, their capacity to pursue whatever activities they choose. Improving public transit gives people who can’t afford or don’t want a car more freedom to get around.”
That’s an interesting concept — the more we tax rich people, the more freedom that generates for others. I suppose we haven’t taken enough from the rich, yet, since public education isn’t producing skillful, economically liberated students, and the more that government interferes with healthcare through Medicaid, the more doctors are turning down Medicaid, creating less access. Given how much government has spent already on education and healthcare, how much more do they need to take from the rich to generate this freedomn of which you speak? And, how much more public tansportation do we need? I see empty city buses riding all over this town.Report
So you’d be okay with more public transportation if people are kept waiting for hours because the buses are full? Because that’s what it looks like around here, on the college routes…
‘sides, everyone knows public transportation is cheaper than private vehicles (less road usage).Report
That’s an interesting concept — the more we tax rich people, the more freedom that generates for others.
Well, it’s true, if you mean “free” as in “free lunch.”Report
HAHAHA.
Remind me to tell you about some of the free lunch that the rich folks get. In montana, where they build unmaintainable roads (like there’s any other kind?) solely for the purposes of giving a few people a better road out to a resort.Report
I do believe America gains in liberty when we tax the very richest more than we tax the least of us. For one thing, it means that we can tax the very richest less.
Having a robust social safety net means less stress for the lowest of us, which means better health outcomes. Which means we have to spend less on health care, which means that we can have the freedom to more efficiently allocate our economic dollars towards More Cool Stuff! (and everybody likes cool stuff, don’t they?)
And the person who is suddenly able to catch a public bus to work has gained a lot of liberty, vis not being able to get to that job (or half a dozen others outside of walking distance).
Would you support taxing the richest of us more, if I could show that it would increase liberty for the least of us?Report
I think the disagreement between Kim and Jason here points out a major fault line between libertarians and liberals. When libertarians insist on a rigid negative liberty, liberals immediately start to wonder whether libertarians aren’t just crypto-conservatives, defending privilege with the language of equality and liberty. It’s hard to think of what could be more frightening to a liberal.Report
When libertarians insist on a rigid negative liberty, liberals immediately start to wonder whether libertarians aren’t just crypto-conservatives, defending privilege with the language of equality and liberty.
I have ceased to wonder. There are no real Libertarians on this blog from what I can tell, just crypto-conservatives by your measure.Report
Roger will defend a social safety net, when the mood suits him (which, apparently, is not when he’s talking with you).
I suspect his notion of what it is differs from yours, but it isn’t completely radically different.
And if you needs must find a real Libertarian, I am at your service.Report
I’ll ask you this then, Kim – I asked the question once way back when I first submitted a guest post long time ago, but you might not have been around.
Is there, within (your concept of) libertarianism, a possibility of any scenario in which the restriction of “liberty” to one person or a few persons might serve to correspondingly increase liberty for many others?
I ask this un-facetiously, as it’s one of my biggest complaints with Libertarianism; they will commit to never decreasing the “liberty” of someone who is already immensely high (through whatever means, legal or ethical or not-one or neither) on the economic ladder, while simultaneously insisting that the coercive forces those high on the economic ladder can bring to bear on those much lower down do not count as “true force” because “only government has a monopoly on force.”
And this seems quite odd to me. “Liberty” is surely curtailed by many larger corporations, those who have become part of oligarchies or monopolies in their field, offering nothing but “take it or leave it” deals at increasingly tilted terms to truly individual actors. The fact that the best deals are reserved for the rich, while being poor can be extremely expensive when expressed as a percentage of what the poor’s income is, is ugly and harmful to society as a whole from where I see it.
So: is there a point where we can say that yes, the “liberty” of those high on the food chain must be curtailed at least to some extent, in order to increase aggregate liberty throughout society?Report
I mean, I appreciate when libertarians point out how government welfare measures can actually have a detrimental effect on the poor (e.g. Social Security taxing poor and middle classes but mostly funding middle-er class people who live to age 65), but it’s frustrating that this is so often accompanied by Pollyannaish beliefs that property rights are all you need. The libertarians here are pretty unwilling to theorize about structural poverty, and are instead content to wave it away.Report
I don’t find that unreasonable. Particularly in a society where the rich have far more ability to leave it than the poor.
And where do the rich flee from? Aruba, Bahamas, places without much in the way of limitations, back to places like Pittsburgh.Report
The libertarians here are pretty unwilling to theorize about structural poverty, and are instead content to wave it away.
Libertarian theory on poverty is that if we removed all government, removed all of what they see as “restrictions”, that somehow the Magical Market Fairies would make all problems go away.
Take, for example, their insistence that minimum wage is “harmful.” It’s very intriguing to look at. They insist that if the floor price of labor were to be dropped, there would be more jobs – and I have to question what jobs they would be? If they’re expecting a deflationary effect on prices, that’s an economic disaster all its own. If they’re expecting that more people will come out of the work to take those “jobs”, working long hours a week at $4/hour while also working on today’s prices, we’ve just put more people on the poverty rolls anyways.
The logic fails but that’ll never stop libertarians from insisting that the minimum wage is a “moral wrong” for “impinging on the liberty of the employer to offer whatever wage they want” or similar argumentation.Report
MA,
their theory is that these people will be teenagers, and not newly divorced “outof the workplace for ten years” single moms. And that $4 an hour is better than zero, when your rent is free.Report
Actually, I have more time for that kind of argument, M.A.. And I should have been more specific: libertarians are pretty unwilling to theorize about structural poverty outside the context of what they view as “government interference in the market”. Libertarians theorize plenty about how government actions can hurt poor people, and I think this is great and often accurate (there’s some pretty interesting empirical evidence about the minimum wage thwarting economic opportunities for the poor, actually).
I’m just upset that libertarians stop there and don’t question the ways that government protection of property claims can have distorting effects of its own. I would like to see right-libertarians engage articles like this one, for example: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2154069Report
And where do the rich flee from? Aruba, Bahamas, places without much in the way of limitations, back to places like Pittsburgh.
I can’t tell if that was meant facetiously or not.
Currently, there’s a great “sucking sound” in many of the communities in the US. Communities where median income doesn’t meet a certain threshold continually have what little value’s there sucked out of them.
Going and visiting an older, mostly-black neighborhood in my city, I’m amazed at how many otherwise well-built houses have patched-broken windows and are desperate for a coat of paint. Why? Because the folks living in those houses are mostly elderly. The majority of them didn’t have much income to start with and scraped and saved to get that house and try to do better for their kids. For some it kind of worked, for some it didn’t.
Try out the same sort of people in a smaller town, where Wal-Mart moved in? Many of them are doing the same job in Wal-Mart that they used to do running the local feed store, the local gas station, the local grocery. The difference? Wal-Mart is paying half the wage and pocketing the rest, a lot less stays local and the few people in town that don’t work at Wal-Mart just making ends meet are now the only people who may have any non-subsistence wages left.
Ask them why the neighborhood appearance is down? Fixed incomes, the fact that it was the house or the savings but not both. Can’t afford the cans of paint, much less some money to hire someone with a stronger back who can handle the physical labor and time; a 70-year-old woman or man has trouble holding up to the day of painting (not to mention potentially needing access to a 25ft ladder if the house is 2-story).
It’s not a pride issue, nor are they lazy – many of these people look far older than they are because of how hard they worked and how hard they sacrificed in their younger days.
Libertarians think these people “got what’s coming to them”, that it’s a natural “market forces” problem. Market forces aren’t going to fix this shit, market forces NEVER fix this shit.Report
Not facetious at all, MA. I keep my eyes open.
After all, the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy lives
just a handful of blocks from me.Report
Hey, Robert Greer
government protection of property claims can have distorting effects of its own
I downloaded that paper and started reading it – um, could you save me some time and point me to a page where this is discussed in relatively concrete terms? Up to page 7 it was pretty abstract and I couldn’t see the connection….Report
Kim, not if you have a Skype phone number. Then you get those calls. And how.
(Well, we have Ooma and not Skype, but I suspect it to be about the same as far as that goes.)Report
When libertarians insist on a rigid negative liberty, liberals immediately start to wonder whether libertarians aren’t just crypto-conservatives,
Pretty funny, considering that negative liberty was originally a liberal idea.Report
If I may, I just read a student paper saying that in China, all children have a right to a compulsory education. That’s a pretty accurate depiction of how liberals often appear–to me–to think.Report
Do you really think that this is how dumb or self-contradictory liberalism is?
Maybe you are more extreme than I thought. (I thought you were in favor of some market regulation, say for large markets, for example.)
Or maybe you are joking or making a point that I don’t get?
It seems to me, though, that you’re sending out the sort of attack at liberalism that I think that you don’t think is fair when it is levelled at libertarianism.Report
Eh, the socioeconomic landscape is a lot different now than in the time of the classical liberals. It’s easy to argue that modern American liberalism is consistent with the concerns and ideals of classical liberals, albeit tweaked for a different environment.Report
It seems to me, though, that you’re sending out the sort of attack at liberalism that I think that you don’t think is fair when it is levelled at libertarianism.
Funny how that suddenly bothers you.Report
I’m trying to be conciliatory.
Lord, I’m trying.
Your claim makes me think Libertarians -even the putative moderates- sometimes talk like extremists. “Anyone who wants regulation of markets, protections for unions, forcing polluters t pay for externalities, a equality of opportunity (construed broadly), and any kind of progressive taxation believes in crazy things like “a right to be compelled.” Down with all regulations and all liberalism! Destroy the new deal, don’t just modify it!
I know you don’t think all of that (do you?), but the attack on liberalism seems to be an attack on any attempt to justify moderate policies.Report
Shazbot,
What distinguishes an over-the-top comment about liberals by a libertarian from an over-the-top comment about libertarians by a liberal?Report
Look, it’s just this simple. Libertarians take a dim view of government. Liberals don’t. We’re never going to reconcile this dispute: the power to help is also the power to harm. It’s just power, as abstract as the forces of nature. It’s a matter of who holds power and how it’s used.
The Libertarians don’t understand what they’re asking for and the Liberals seem unwilling to acknowledge the nature of power itself. The Libertarian diktat against government is patently insane, taken in isolation. The Liberal trust in government is misplaced, taken in isolation. Libertarian trust in market solutions is idiocy, taken in isolation. Liberal mistrust of the power of capitalism to improve the world is equally stupid, again, taken in isolation.
There is a synthesis, but I don’t see the Libertarians willing to offer any ground without a knock-down, drag-out fight. But mostly, I’m sick of the Libertarians constantly redefining every word in the dictionary to suit their purposes. That which annoys us in others annoys them in us. Either we’re going to come to terms, literally, and admit men are not angels, in which case we do need government — or we’re going to go round and round this prickly pear, only growing angrier at each other’s insistence on definitional constraint.Report
“Either we’re going to come to terms, literally, and admit men are not angels, in which case we do need government — or we’re going to go round and round this prickly pear, only growing angrier at each other’s insistence on definitional constraint.”
I admit men are not angels, and I also admit that government is filled with men and women who are not angels. When these men and women who are not angels are given power to control all the rest of us who are not angels, we get corruption, authoritarianism and incompetence. When we create limits on government power, retaining the power to enforce rational laws that protect individual rights, because government is filled with men and women who are not angels, then we set the peaceful structure within which we can work together to solve problems to the best of our ability.Report
Blaise,
Your first two paragraphs were great; I’m in perfect agreement. Then in the third you shift to laying the blame all at the feet of the libertarians again.
For a while there, I thought we actually were making progress.Report
When we create limits on government power, retaining the power to enforce rational laws that protect individual rights,
I wonder how many liberals will actually notice that a libertarian is explicitly arguing for giving government power to enforce laws, and how many will ignore this and continue to repeat the refrain that libertarians are simply opposed to government, period.Report
I did say that which annoys us in others, etc. You can cast aspersions on my goodwill but I’m telling you plainly, we’re either going to arrive at common definitions or we’ll be forever talking past each other. I wrestled with you about the definitions of markets. You didn’t give an inch. You’re going to believe the cleaner fish are running a market no matter what I say or what the dictionary says.
And while you continue in this, you’re part of the problem. Maybe we can just call my linear function wherein risk varies directly with the need for regulation the BlaiseP Function. Below a certain threshold, we enter the Hanley Limit, wherein no regulation is needed.
Until you Libertarians can come to terms with your constant and ongoing problem with specious redefinitions of everything, you’re lost souls. I’m offering you a chance to recognise this is a problem. Either accept it or reject it, as it suits you.Report
But mostly, I’m sick of the Libertarians constantly redefining every word in the dictionary to suit their purposes. – BlaiseP
God bless the child who’s got his, for that is liberty. – TvD
I say again: Libertarians pervert the meaning of the word liberty.Report
Are you aware that TvD doesn’t call himself a libertarian? And that we libertarians would agree, he isn’t?Report
Blaise,
Set aside the cleaner fish for a moment. For the sake of discussion, I’ll drop that as an example; I’ll give that one to you.
Here’s my issue. I gave a definition of the market that came right out of the dictionary. And then you claim I am redefining the word, without regard for the dictionary. You, on the other hand, never gave a specific definition, and disagreed with the definition I pulled from a dictionary.
Can you see why this troubles me?Report
the power to enforce rational laws that protect individual rights
Defined by the Libertarians as “thou shalt not impinge one iota on the liberty of the privileged rich.”Report
We’re fortunate that we have M.A. to tell us
Muslimslibertarians what we really believe. Now we need to just stop lying and admit that weactually are all terroristsreally do love the rich and want to help them screw over the poor.ReportThe problem with you talking in code, Hanley, is that you started and now we have to assume everything you say is in the standard libertarian code.
I don’t think any of you are really libertarians no matter what you call yourselves. Crypto-conservatives is about right.Report
When we create limits on government power, retaining the power to enforce rational laws that protect individual rights, because government is filled with men and women who are not angels, then we set the peaceful structure within which we can work together to solve problems to the best of our ability.
Sure, not-angels game and abuse the government. The thing is, when you substitute the market for government, and they abuse the market, too! Perhaps if people actually were rational utility maximizers, this wouldn’t be a problem because the market would fix it. The thing is, people aren’t, even people whose job it is to be!
Look at the post up-thread about the derivatives market and the kind of destruction that unregulated greedy behavior caused. These markets had all of the credit evaluation, short selling, and other market-based mechanisms in place libertarians say will prevent this problem. And yet, it didn’t.
Most people are really bad at understanding risk, or think that it doesn’t apply to them, even people whose job it is to understand risk!. People who understand risk better can (and do) use this to their advantage to become fabulously wealthy, but it generally hasn’t enough to prevent that behavior from happening.
That’s why liberals *want* a hybrid system with a well-regulated market. We’ve seen the destruction unregulated markets cause because the people’s inability to really understand risk. We’ve seen plenty of government failures, too, be it of central planning or other governmental systems. So we’ve settled on using market mechanisms when possible and regulating them to make sure risk in them is well managed.
I actually think that many libertarians probably agree, but when they spend so much time talking about the evils of government and so little time recognizing the shortcomings of markets, it’s sometimes hard to tell.Report
Here are the societies that seem to be doing really well, by my way of thinking:
Australia
Canada
Hong Kong
New Zealand
Singapore
Switzerland
United States
Which one is a “third world” country? (Is this some kind of liberal code?)Report
M.A., all I can say is that it’s a good thing we pseudo-libertarians have you around to determine who is and isn’t a real libertarian. You’ve done us a great service through your ability to understand us better than we understand ourselves.
And to think that I was so foolish that I didn’t realize that supporting SSM, decriminalization of all drugs, and to our policy of invading every country that thumbs their nose at us, and elimination of subsidies for big corporations are actually all conservative policies.
Wow. It’s so good to start the day off with a hefty dose of enlightenment.Report
When you say “end corporate subsidies,” you really mean “support corporate subsidies.”
Just like we learned earlier — when you say “Kelo was awful” you really mean “Hooray for Kelo!”
War is peace, freedom is slavery. That kind of thing.Report
The thing is, Hanley, when MA interprets MFarmer’s language that way, you have to understand that that’s probably how it comes across to most people who’ve spent time talking politics with libertarians. (And no, I’m not saying MA is representative of the average person or average liberal. Thankfully.)
So much libertarian talk of government is focused *just* on enforcing property laws and contracts as opposed to other things that we need government for, for example regulating markets, that non-specific talk about government law enforcement still comes across as “make sure I get to keep my stuff”.Report
Libertarian thought and Kelo.
Also this: Earth to Libertarians: Private Parties Have Coercive Power Too.Report
elimination of subsidies for big corporations
Quick question:
Are you aware that most big corporation subsidies come in the form o f tax breaks or tax exemptions?
Are you, or are you not, in favor of lowering corporate tax rates and capital gains rates both?
“I’m not for subsidizing corporations I’m just for taxing them less”, which is the usual Libertarian line, is just doubletalk.Report
Kinsella is making a narrow, federalist case. He’s also knowingly being a contrarian, much like the occasional leftie who opposes gay marriage. That’s why he’s got these very, very severe qualifiers right up front:
I understand his federalist argument against Kelo as a decision on purely procedural (not substantive) grounds, but I disagree. By far the most common opinion among libertarians is the one shared by Randy Barnett, Richard Epstein, Ilya Somin, the Libertarian Party, the Institute for Justice, the Cato Institute, and many others. Kelo was an appallingly bad decision.
The fact you can find one or two voices dissenting just proves we’re a group of individuals. Not much more than that.Report
Are you aware that most big corporation subsidies come in the form o f tax breaks or tax exemptions?
When I recommended eliminating those, you said you didn’t believe me and that it was “bullshit.”
Are you, or are you not, in favor of lowering corporate tax rates and capital gains rates both?
Not right now.Report
@ James, there’s no need to abandon the cleaner fish. We put them below the Hanley Limit, which I’ll attempt to define as a symbiotic and self-regulating relationship.
But even in nature, there’s an attempt to game that system: there’s a species of blenny fish which impersonates the cleaner fish: the unsuspecting grouper who comes to the cleaner fish’s market floor opens his mouth for a nice cleaning, only to have this bastard blenny fish bite a chunk out of the grouper.
Caveat Grouper.
Here’s a more elaborate definition of a market:
A market is how a product or service flows from producer to consumer. Someone has to want a product. Some will have the resources to obtain that product. The product must conform to some mutually-agreed-upon set of standards: sell-by dates on gallons of milk, weights and measures.
Buyers and sellers must also conform to standards, both internal, as in being a member of an exchange, with validated credentials and confirmed margin accounts, or external standards, such as legal requirements for lawyers, banks, physicians and the like.
But the most important aspect of risk markets and concomitant regulation is the separation of buyer and seller. Markets close at the end of day or upon agreed upon limit swings, buys are matched with sells, accounts are settled, disputes put to arbitration, cheaters arrested or expelled, everything we’d expect from rational markets, all to ensure winners win and losers lose.
But the cleaner fish, beer for lawn mowing, kids running a lemonade stand, that sort of thing, how much regulation is required? Very little, if any. And why? Because there’s very little risk. These are all below the Hanley Limit.
The Libertarian shibboleths about government, constantly presuming the worst of regulators, are incoherent. If regulators and judges are corrupted, who corrupts them? Those who would pervert the separation of winners from losers. In point of fact, when Singapore went about eliminating corruption in bureaucracy, their first step was to pay the regulators enough money to remove the temptation of corruption.
Even government obeys market principles. That’s the last nail in the coffin of the Libertarian Diktat.
Over-regulation damages markets and faith in government, such as we see with officious little bureaucrats shutting down lemonade stands and making little kids cry. In such an example, we see a transgression of the Hanley Limit. Likewise, all these insane drugs laws fill our prisons: yet another violation of the Hanley Limit: drugs should be merely regulated and not prohibited.
But some transactions should be prohibited. I really don’t want to hear anyone defend the sale of nuclear weapons to terrorists.Report
Blaise,
For discussion purposes I can accept most of that, except your insistence upon focusing on winners and losers. In market exchanges there normally aren’t losers. That’s the positive sum win-win. Even in a stock trade there’s usually not a loser in the sense of the winner having beaten the loser. If I buy a stock expecting the price to rise, and instead it falls, yes, I’ve lost. But the person who sold it to me didn’t take advantage of me and didn’t beat me–they just made a more accurate prediction than I did.
This really does work as a roadblock to communication, because it at least appears that we view markets as very different things. Where I see them as effective means for you and I to both improve our standing through a value-for-value trade, I get the impression that you see them as a competition in which someone necessarily wins at the expense of the someone who necessarily loses.
And yet you support markets over communism wholeheartedly, so far as I can tell, so that understanding of markets doesn’t seem reflective of what you really think. So I’m not saying you do view markets as zero-sum exchanges; I’m only saying you often give that impression, but at other times you give a contradictory impression, so that in the end part of my problem in communicating with you is that I just don’t get what you’re actually saying.Report
Are you aware that most big corporation subsidies come in the form o f tax breaks or tax exemptions? …
Are you, or are you not, in favor of lowering corporate tax rates and capital gains rates both?
I don’t really care one way or the other about corporate tax rates. Corporate taxes are likely to just get passed on to the consumer anyway, to the extent the corporation can manage it, so I don’t see raising them or lowering them as having as much to do with how much we directly tax corporations as it is how much we indirectly tax consumers.
But let me ask you this. If lowering corporate tax rates and cap gains rates were to be the necessary political price to pay to eliminate the tax breaks and tax exemptions, with the end result being that net corporate/capgains tax revenues are increased, would you take the deal?Report
No losers? Surely you jest. Of course there are losers in markets. That’s why people try to cheat. To make any money, you need to buy low and sell high. With short sales the sell can precede the buy, but the rule’s the same.
In a real market, you know, one beyond the Hanley Limit, the world I know, regulation makes sure I get a margin call and get stopped out of my positions when my margin reserves reach Zero Dollars. That’s called Losing. When I’m in the money and my counterpart suddenly claims he didn’t take my bet, that’s a problem. That guy made a bet and he lost and I am entitled to collect. Promises made must be promises kept, even if they don’t work out in my favour.
Feel free to comment on anything below the Hanley Limit. Out here in the real world, where markets involve risk, this is my territory and I’d appreciate it if you’d accept the notion that Winners must be separated from Losers. Your 401K might make money or lose money. Your house might appreciate or depreciate. Quit living in the world where every market transaction is mutually beneficial: most aren’t.Report
“No losers? Surely you jest. Of course there are losers in markets.”
You’re talking about two different things. In any market transaction, the buyer and seller are agreeing on an exchange. The buyer gives up what the seller wants in return for the seller giving him what he wants. If it wasn’t beneficial for both, then they wouldn’t be making the transaction. Two winners, no losers.
Now, if it turns out that what the buyer bought loses value, then, yeah, you could call him a loser. But unless the seller had deceived him, it was a fair exchange at the time it was made. If what was bought lost value due to some sort of fraud, then yes, there’s an issue and we can talk winners and losers. But it’s logically incorrect to say markets require losers.
When you buy in at the Blackjack table and then lose, are you really going to blame the casino?Report
Blaise,
Once again you want to restrict the term “market” to the stock market. Color me bored with that game.
As to your “losers,” that depends on how we define the term, right? They didn’t lose through an exchange that was unfair in any sense, they lost through making bad predictions. Of course they have to pay up, if that’s the rules of the game. Who here has ever argued against that?
But that’s not the same as losing through an exchange, where you give me, say, $100 worth of value and I only give you $90 worth of value. You’re conflating different things which only serves to confuse the issue.Report
I would love to see Blaise or anyone agreeing with him answer James and Brian’s questions.
There are no expected losers in a voluntary, non fraudulent market transaction. Both parties expected to improve their position compared to the base case. That is why they agreed to the exchange.
Certainly every libertarian agrees people make mistakes, and later regret voluntary transactions in both the market and other domains. Certainly we agree that cheating or fraud cannot be allowed. The policing of cheating and coercion can come externally or internally, but absent controls for these factors, I will agree that you do not have a free market.
So, can anyone agreeing with Blaise lay out a clear, honest rebuttal of this argument? It would be massively appreciated.Report
James,
>But that’s not the same as losing through an exchange, where you give me, say, $100 worth of value and I only give you $90 worth of value. You’re conflating different things which only serves to confuse the issue.
Okay, so my verizon bill. That’s an example of me paying out more than it’s value. I am getting ripped off with the transaction.Report
Once again you want to restrict the term “market” to the stock market. Color me bored with that game.
Friend of mine recently bought a used car from a dealership. Had it die completely two months after.
Found out? The shady car dealership KNEW it had a busted head gasket. What did they do about it? They disabled the check-engine light (completely removed the bulb itself) and sold the car claiming it had no problems for $5000. Poof, they “win” and my friend loses.
Is that another good example? The stock market is just one area where shady deals and bad actors go on.
But let me ask you this. If lowering corporate tax rates and cap gains rates were to be the necessary political price to pay to eliminate the tax breaks and tax exemptions, with the end result being that net corporate/capgains tax revenues are increased, would you take the deal?
If that were the case – not that it is – then that’s a deal I’d be hard-pressed not to take.Report
“Okay, so my verizon bill. That’s an example of me paying out more than it’s value. I am getting ripped off with the transaction.”
Then why are you doing business with Verizon?Report
Brian,
1) It’s a quasi monopoly
2) I lack the interest and resources to start my own company.
3) It is eminently bribeable.
4) Its rather permanent mangling of my name makes it more convenient to screen out junk mail as “sold by verizon”
5) I rather prefer a company whose biggest enemy is squirrels.
This does not make up for its failures, but does make “better than nothing” a possibility. If you had a better deal, I’d switch.
Verizon has broken irreplaceable machinery of mine, it wouldn’t have to be that much better of a deal.Report
Heh. About as soon as I can get the Libertarians to agree on the definition of markets, we’ll be all set to ride. All this hooey about Everyone’s a Winner intrigues me greatly. I’d love to find out where that’s true.
(musically)
Take the last train to Marxsville and I’ll meet you at the station
You can be be here by four thirty ’cause I made your reservationReport
Based upon the responses and Monkey’s songs I am going to say that Brian’s point stands.
Kim admits that she prefers having the phone to the base case of not having it, and the dark necromancer provided an example of fraud.
Oddly, nobody brought up externalities, which do need to be accounted for, but can we all just agree Voluntary, non fraudulent market interactions are expected positive sum moves for both parties?Report
@M.A.,
If that were the case – not that it is – then that’s a deal I’d be hard-pressed not to take.
So we agree on at least that.Report
Verizon is in no way a monopoly. Half of a duopoly maybe. Part of an oligopoly. But Verizon does have to compete for its business. They actually even sell resources to help people afford cheaper options if they want to pay less.Report
Kim,
I’ve hated my cell phone provider as much as the next guy, but it’s hard to argue that cell phone service isn’t a glowing example of a free-market success. Even with the moderate level of competition in the cell provider market, the quality and quantity of service we get for our dollars has grown by leaps and bounds over the past 20 years.
Coverage? Major improvements. Phone quality? Obviously a big win. Data speed and availability? Huge. We’ve gone from cell phones with limited, high-cost, voice-only plans being a specialized item for the rich to ubiquitous data plans with huge monthly usage allowances for the average person. Almost everybody has a cell phone now. In fact, it’s killing the land line market. How is this not a win? Because the phone company knows what the plan is worth to you and is able to get you to pay very nearly that amount?Report
To add to what Frog is saying, Verizon provides 4G LTE coverage in Twin Falls and Butte. That’s pretty remarkable, when you think about it.Report
What T-Frog said. I have a friend who was having trouble with dropped calls, and became (reasonably) irate. He claimed that cell phones were not an improvement, and that the old landline system was better because his phone always worked. I argued that it didn’t–it didn’t work in his car, it didn’t work when he was at the grocery store, it didn’t work at the airport, etc. He got the point, but still wasn’t persuaded, feeling that somehow things actually had gotten worse. So I suggested he ditch his cell phone and return to a landline. He actually wondered if that was possible, and I pointed out that not only did our employer rely on landlines, but that his apartment had a phone jack. If he really thought landlines might be superior, he should give it a try.
After some thought, he never gave it a try.Report
M.A. — “Defined by the Libertarians as “thou shalt not impinge one iota on the liberty of the privileged rich.””
It’s useless to answer you because you don’t read and comprehend well, but in a Libertarian world, the privileged rich would likely not fair too well unless they started competing and succeeding on merit, but in most cases the bad habits and the bloated companies the privileged rich have developed would probably put them at a disadvantage as small, innovative, nimble economic actors win market share from them. In a Libertarian world, one of the first actions would be an end to all corporate welfare and all favortism, by limiting the power of government to favor anyone over others.Report
Troublesome frog, et alia,
I was talking about my landline service, for which Verizon quite rightly thinks that they have a captive audience and can charge over market value. (and continue to waste my dollars sending me mail about FIOS that they haven’t put in on my street yet!! grr….)
My cell phone is with AT&T.Report
James,
oh, no doubt about it, cell phones are surprisingly more useful than landlines. Useful for assassinations, for finding missing people, for pranking people… (can you use them to make cars drive in circles? ;-P I think that stunt was with wireless, actually.)Report
Kim,
You can ditch the landline, though! Very easily, if you have broadband.Report
Will,
the true missing voters are those who use skype. They’re nearly impossible to poll using conventional methods. And people whine and bitch and moan about cell phone users… 😉Report
I haven’t had a landline for years. It amuses me that my house was built before telephones were invented, and still exists in this post land-line era.Report
Can’t ditch the landline if you want a centrally monitored alarm system.
Personally, I don’t think we need it, but Zazzy really appreciates the piece of mind. I’d be lying if I didn’t say I do as well.Report
You can’t have an alarm system with VOIP?Report
You *can* use a VOIP but it has to meet a bunch of standards, which most providers don’t meet. As a result, you have to pay for a cell-service based monitoring device, which is an additional monthly fee. Combined with the installation fee, you outpace whatever savings you may have gotten from dropping a landline. Couple that with the cost savings (including accessing literally thousands of free wifi hotspots our provider has that are only available to tri-bundled subscribers) we do get by bundling our landline with our internet and cable and it is a clear win to keep the landline.
I don’t know the technical details, but my guess is that VOIP doesn’t provide the constant, dedicated, uninterrupted signal that a hardwired landline does and that this is pretty crucial for a properly maintained, centrally monitored security system.
We also get a discount on the service itself via my wife’s veteran status and having the system knocks a bit off our homeowner’s policy. It doesn’t pay for the service by any means but it certainly makes it easier to swallow than if we were paying full freight and not getting the insurance discount.Report
we could trim $100 billion (or even a whole lot more) from our defense budget and still have a vastly larger and stronger military than anyone else
I bet we could cut $100 billion from our defense budget and actually spend more on actual defense, if you know what I mean.Report
“I think the answer to “why do conservatives trust libertarians, while liberals don’t” is that both liberals and conservatives think that the economic issues where you guys side with the right–taxes, spending and health care are the big ones–are more important than the stuff where you agree with liberals.”
Moreover, on issues of “personal liberty”, like SSM or the like, support seems to be half-hearted at best, whereas on issues of “economic liberty”, the guns are blazing full-force. Sales tax instead of income tax? Really?
Liberals and libertarians are in agreement on both the War on Drugs and the War on Terror. We disagree about what to do about the first, though, I’m sure.Report
Jason, I think part of the problem for me, at least, is that a lot of the standard libertarian tropes (taxation is theft, government is coercion, I didn’t agree to be governed) have been shoved at me so many times by hard-core libertarian minarchists who aren’t nearly as thoughtful as many of the more realistic libertarians here. As a result, though, when they’re off-handedly mentioned by more moderate realist libertarians, it puts our hackles up and pushes the arguments to extremes.
The whole scene reminds my of something I saw on Chris Hayes’ show a few weeks ago when Avik Roy and Ta-Nehisi Coates were on. They were talking about racism and the response to the election, and started talking about a Romney supporter who had hung a sign on his business door about us abandoning the heritage our forefathers left us. The following conversation then ensued:
***
COATES: The heritage and tradition is racist. I just hate — it is.
ROY: This is the problem is that if the heritage and tradition of
America is racist, then conservatives are all racist, because —
(CROSSTALK)
COATES: Because the heritage is also a lot of other things too. It`s
not just racist. There are a lot of other things you can believe in too,
but it is racist. That`s part of it, and you can`t really deny that –
***
Coates wasn’t wrong about the heritage and tradition of this country being racist, but those kinds of statements don’t facilitate discussion. When said that way, many people think he’s saying that the most important part of this country’s heritage and tradition is racism, not just that *one component* of it is racism.
Similarly, when I hear libertarians emphasizing that “government is coercion”, my experience arguing with minarchist libertarians makes me think they’re saying “government is only about coersion and therefore bad”. On the other hand not that “an important element of government is about coercion, but it has a useful and necessary role to play in society.” Now, I’m not saying this is libertarian’s problem – maybe it’s mine and there’s adjustment on my part to make when I discuss things here. However, I think it’s also important for libertarians to understand how their messaging is coming across to many of the people they’re talking to.
Likewise, I’m sure there are arguments that liberals make that set libertarians on edge and derail productive conversation. Identifying those to us would also be helpful.Report
Excellent comment. From my pov as a liberal, anyway. I think that gets to the heart of one of the very sticky issues we’ve been dealing with over the last few days. A libertarian and a liberal can agree that a specific instance of government policy or power is unjust or bad. But all too often the libertarian makes gestures that the reason he feels this way is because all government is bad. Government, for the libertarian, is a necessary evil. For the liberal, on the other hand, government is sometimes an unqualified good. SO the liberal hears the libertarians as advocating – either in principle or (unfortunately) in practice – for the dissolution of government. And so it goes.
It’s a matter of perspective, it seems to me, and I’ll say this from the pov of a liberal and how I think liberals view libertarianism: Liberals think that libertarians view all government as inherently bad when compared against an ideal in which government would be unnecessary. But the ideal is unrealizable. (Even on the libertarians own terms!). So … why does the libertarian persist in thinking that all government is inherently bad – a necessary evil! – instead of being an unqualified good?
That takes us down to psychology, and an effort to understand or attribute various reasons to the libertarian for holding what are quite obviously crazy beliefs. (From the liberal pov, of course.)Report
{{Which isn’t to say, of course, that the libertarian doesn’t view liberals as holding wildly crazy beliefs, and etc., and that our craziness doesn’t contribute to the communication breakdown.}}Report
I’d put it down as “government’s a necessary evil”– and I’m a liberal (or at least I’m pretty sure that’s what someone else might call me).Report
But only according to an idealized model where human behavior was so radically different (maybe even logically impossible) where government would be unnecessary. TO me, the analogy would be like saying the rules which define the game of football are a necessary evil. It just makes no sense.Report
I think you’re mistaking me. To me, the rules are relatively flexible, and smart people generally break a good few of them during a day.
I wish everyone were smart enough that government wouldn’t be necessary.
It’s a rules versus guidelines perspective.
still…
“eight years old, dude!”Report
SW,
On why so many of us you-know-whats lean more right than left…
The right’s take on evolution, science, religion, homosexuality, abortion, borders and drugs are all distasteful to us. However, most of these issues are kind of irrelevant or of minor importance.
Abortion is legal and thus a moot point.
Evolution is a fact and failure to teach it is just sad, but not earth shattering.
Science is best when private, so unless the right actively interferes with private science, it is no big harm.
Drugs and borders are areas where the left isn’t really aligned either.
Gay marriage just isn’t that critical of a factor to heterosexuals. I certainly wouldn’t vote just on this issue.
That leads one area where I clearly disagree with the right in a meaningful way, wasting money on defense and wars.
The real action for me comes in the economics and the role of government. In a room full of college educated republicans, there is little problem getting them to agree to the importance of free enterprise, minimal government interference, the role of competition, decentralized institutions and creative destruction, free trade, market wages, decentralized dolutions to climate change, right to work and so forth.
In a room full of college educated democrats, I would be lynched for bringing these up.
The most important issue for the plight of humanity in my opinion is our prosperity. I can see eye to eye on the recipe for prosperity with those on the right. They get it and can be persuaded I know for a fact that my recipe is viewed as evil bullshit by the left. Stupid, Evil, BS.
Thus many of us lean right, politically.Report
“The right’s take on evolution, science, religion, homosexuality, abortion, borders and drugs are all distasteful to us. However, most of these issues are kind of irrelevant or of minor importance.”
These are all VERY important to liberals, especially this one — and should be to libertarians, since they all impact “personal liberty”. But then we get “process is more important than outcome” and similar — what sounds like nonsense to us, and all in favor of the Right’s “fewer taxes and fewer regulations”.
And you wonder why we can’t talk to each other?!Report
I explained why they are less relevant. Abortion will still be legal. Gay people will still live with gay people. Evolution will still be true and anyone smart enough to understand it will be able to learn all about it. Science will operate the same or better. And the other issues are not really handled better by the left.
They may be important issues, but practically speaking they matter less than the prosperity of the human race…to me.
And no, I do not wonder why we cannot talk to each other. This website makes it abundantly clear. Libertarians and college educated liberals have VASTLY different takes on economics and institutions of progress.Report
Science is the engine that drives our economy. Any precious second spent not teaching kids how to make thermite, or other fun science games, is a second we are making ourselves poorer, statistically speaking.
America’s economic prosperity comes not from Engineers, nor Farmers, but Scientists.Report
“They may be important issues, but practically speaking they matter less than the prosperity of the human race…to me.”
Right there. The Left makes a big deal out of privilege, and this is why. As a straight, white male, these issues aren’t important … to you. They aren’t important personally to me either, but they are important to others, and we on the Left think they’re important too.Report
Jeff,
I think prosperity matters even more to those that are not prosperous than those that are. That said, many of the other issues aren’t really in play at all. They are just poster topics for voting blocks.Report
Again, Roger, you aren’t getting it. If a woman gets pregnant, it doesn’t matter if she’s making 25k or 50k – abortion is still illegal. Same thing with gay marriage and a host of other issues. Not every human cares most about their checking account.Report
Obviously I don’t get it because I thought women had a right to choose.
I am not talking about paychecks. I am talking about long term economic prosperity and well being of the human race. See the difference?Report
No, you really don’t get it. Clinics are closing or are being forced to close. Doctors, nurses and clinics are under attack. “Right to chose” means nothing if there’s not opportunity to chose.
I’m talking about the well-being of people right here, right now. In the long term, we’re all dead anyway.Report
Jeff,
Got it man. The overriding issue of importance is how convenient we make it to have abortions. Ok…. Cool.Report
No, Roger.
A “right” that exists in theory only, impossible in practice, ceases to be a right.
Mississippi only has one clinic left that will perform the services women have a right to receive. Mississippi’s government has enacted a crazy, impossible-to-follow law requiring any physician performing abortions to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital, then promptly threatened all the nearby hospitals with being shut down if they gave admitting privileges to any doctor known to perform abortions.
A law that “looks” reasonable, but was just a pretext; and that’s the kind of fishing nonsense we get from your side all the time. Lies, doublespeak, and worse.Report
Don’t get me wrong I am pro choice…. Oops, my bad. I didn’t realize the new PC term is pro convenient choice.
Indeed I am gonna start a petition or whatever it is you kids call it today for mobile drive by abortions. Kinda like taco trucks. But better.Report
Roger: shut the fish up. Your misrepresentations of the situation are duplicitous and dishonest.
A legal right with no way to exercise it, ceases to be a right.
I have examined the hurdles many states have already attempted to place on abortion (South Dakota passed a law requiring doctors to LIE to their patients; North Dakota has tried three shady laws in the past two years, and then there’s the Mississippi thing).
The relevant precedent is Planned Parenthood v. Casey , 1992. The standard for a law is that it may not created an “undue burden”, which is to say, may not have “the purpose or effect of placing a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion of a nonviable fetus.”
Now, if you are really going to argue “well this is all convenience, they can drive 1000 miles to wherever the last few remaining abortion clinics are after the right wing firebombs and shutters the rest”, then I think we’re done here. You wouldn’t know an undue burden if it walked right up and smacked you.Report
Roger,
You’ve read the theories raised on how abortions killed the American Crime Wave (TM)? I’d say you can make a pretty decent argument that “long term economic prosperity” is tied, both primarily and secondarily to abortion (primary in that teens getting pregnant reduce their income earning potential, secondarily in that the subsequent stress decreases their health outcomes, so we all end up paying for someone’s baby that they can’t afford).Report
I am ashamed to admit that I am not a fan of proactive eugenics. Perhaps Jeff is right, I just don’t get it.Report
Roger,
Eugenics is a thing. An enforceable by law thing, in America, as it so happens.I stand against that, in all manifestations.
And I don’t actually think that people having abortions is very eugenic. It does delay when they actually have babies until they can afford it… (which causes its own problems! Autism if you catch my drift).Report
The climate thing matters for the human race, I think.
Also, the New Deal set an example for how to organize society happily and peacefully and stably (SP?), and every country that has copied it has prospered. This is what liberals gave to the human race and what they want to continue to give to the human race: a model for how to maximize overall happiness, autonomy, and equality.Report
Which parts of the new deal? Are you referencing safety nets? Or government management of the economy? The data on the second is not encouraging to prosperity. I agree with good safety nets though.Report
The new deal model of safety nets is also not prticularly efficient either. There are better ways to construct safety netsReport
The real action for me comes in the economics and the role of government. In a room full of college educated republicans, there is little problem getting them to agree to the importance of free enterprise, minimal government interference, the role of competition, decentralized institutions and creative destruction, free trade, market wages, decentralized dolutions to climate change, right to work and so forth.
In a room full of college educated democrats, I would be lynched for bringing these up.
That’s just because you try to talk to them on your terms, not on their terms. Any good speaker knows that you have to take into account the audience you’re talking to. So, just as the lesson the GOP needs to talk to the young and minorities in terms of the problems they really care about, libertarians need to talk to liberals about providing meaningful solutions to the problems they actually care about.
Start by talk about how ineffective the government is at actually reducing poverty, actually providing good schooling to low-income americans, and providing high-quality health care and housing to the poor. Then tell them you want to give every permanent resident or citizen $10k/year (including for dependents) to use as they will. They would be able to use all of this to pay for job training, healthcare, housing, and the school of their choice for their kids. Tell them you also want a progressive income tax starts at -35% and caps at 35% to help low-income Americans get meaningful pay out of their jobs. You do that, and they might even agree to end SNAP immediately, and would probably agree to wind down other anti-poverty programs over time, too.
Throw in ending the drug war, the war on terror, and all the other things you have common cause with on liberals to close the sale.Report
Good advice, PB
The problem though is I am not really trying to win their vote or avoid getting strung up. I am really hoping to get those on the left to understand the importance of free markets, free trade, profits, competition, experimentation, non coercion and choice. I can’t do it. They do not as a group see eye to eye with me at all. A sizeable portion are absolutely convinced I am selfish, naive, and either deceptive, exploitative or both. In nine out of ten discussions with the far left on this forum, the conversation ends with just such an accusation. Feel free to review yesterday’s threads for examples. I can provide several hundred more examples.
The notable exception is those on the left that are well educated in economics or various fields which involve designing or managing complex adaptive systems. Indeed, I may be closest aligned politically and philosophically with this subsection.
On the right, I can usually get the majority to see eye to eye. They are capable of getting it, almost intuitively.
The reason this is so interesting to me is I am researching the nature of progress. Progress in culture, in economics, science, technology and so forth. As such, I like to play back my thoughts on the issue to an audience. There is an audience from the far left that just flat out stares back in complete and total disgust.Report
Naive, yes, and only occasionally right. Blaise is right when he says you have to have rules to play a game. Markets are just another game, and sometimes, just like monopoly, a market can get into a really bad state.
In an ideal market, competition reigns supreme. But there are surprisingly few honest markets around.
One side says “government corrupted the market” … and the other side says, “Government’s just another tool in the game”
I know an economist, he’s learned a lot from Roth. He talks about the dangers of the super-rich. Now, there’s some stuff that I’ll keep off this blog, but let it not be said that the super-rich are folks just like you and me. Their psychology is different, due to them never having to shoulder any risk in their lives (not Gates and other self-made men, to be clear).
If you want to learn something about progress in culture, you might check out /b/ on 4chan. Fascinating stuff that. Or study the differences between Redstate and DailyKos.Report
We tried a totally free, unregulated market recently? We let the players play; set their own rules, with absolutely no government intrusion. None.
And then it collapsed. Yes, we’re talking about the derivatives market.
That’s Brooksley Born, former head of the CFTC talking.
$680 trillion. In a market that did not exist before the 1980’s. From zero to $680 trillion in just 15 years.
And depending on private property rights to regulate doesn’t work out so well, this market shows:
Yet it had all the proper bells and whistles. The rating agencies rated it, and the insurers insured it. And it was good. People made loads of money. The economy grew. And then collapsed.
In a world where this is possible, freedom means being safe from the consequences of people who would risk economic stability in the name of profit. This is an illness, and it’s catching.
the worst part is? the rich got richer when it all came crashing down. They’re the type to do it again.Report
“with absolutely no government intrusion”
Interesting choice of words, intrusion. But how about involvement? Backstopping it all was the implied and then realized TBTF protection of the government. Wall Street is driven by greed and fear. Fear took a holiday on this one.
I like what Simon Johnson had to say about cleaning up after the financial crisis. Is this bank bankrupt? Then go bankrupt, already. Risk-taking should have consequences. I think this is perfectly consistent with libertarian thought on the matter.Report
Had we actually let Bear and Lehmann go bankrupt, we would have had to use martial law.Report
We did let Lehman Brothers go bankrupt.Report
We bailed out Goldmann and most of the counterparties. That’s not actually letting the stupid people get poorer because of their stupid fucking decisions.Report
As I said, I like Simon Johnson’s prescription that the FDIC should have put all the underwater banks into receivership. Throw out the management, clean up the balance sheets. Zero out the equity shareholders and give the bondholders whatever haircut was needed. Break up the big ones (reserving my opinion on that) and sell the cleaned-up remains back to the private sector. That would have provided some lessons to the banking oligarchy! You should read the article – he talks about our banking system as if it were a 3rd world banana republic (my words – he was more polite using “emerging market”).Report
Major,
Pardon, but I still believe that fixing the problem before it starts leaking is the best way to fix things.
And that martial law ought to never be a good solution to anything.Report
Kim,
I agree that prevention is preferable to cure. Going forward, part of the prevention should be to make the risk-takers shoulder the risk by removing TBTF guarantees. Behavior will change! Instead, we are moving in the opposite direction, allowing banks to get bigger and reassuring them that failure will not be an option.Report
Kim,
Just to clarify, JH and I (among others) argued that you have to have rules. Blaise argued that the rules absolutely have to be enforced by external agents.Report
Your rules are not my rules. My rules say that one ought to start out “reasonably equal” and then have the opportunity to accumulate money from there. No Reward Without Risk.
Free Riders are more dangerous on the upside than on the down.Report
Actually according to my definition of a fair game, they are only fair rules if we both agreed to them before we started playing.Report
Then no game is ever fair. Because when we play, we play for keeps.
And half the rules you have, in reality, are biologically based.
Did anyone get folks to agree that chocolate is a mind-altering substance? How about coffee? Did anyone get folks to agree that using our sex drive is a good way to “popularize” products (including the aformentioned chocolate)?
How about Victimware (the deliberate engineering of clothing so that a guy has an easier time getting into a girl’s pants — while not bothering to disclose this to the girl, thus giving her a false illusion of safety)?
So, Sir, you say that fraud is a reasonable thing to prosecute someone for? How about someone creating victimware? If a woman has non-consensual sex, due, in part, to the clothing she was wearing, is she entitled to damages from the manufacturer?Report
And therein, Kim, makes you a fundamentally different libertarian than any other type I’ve seen before.
I have yet to see another Libertarian who noticed that while Wall Street took all the value from everything they did, when it came time that the markets crashed grandma’s retirement fund became worthless while the Wall Street bankers were all nicely protected from the fallout and experienced only the barest hiccup.Report
they made a profit while robbing grandma. I pay attention to these sorts of things. It’s why I couldn’t in good conscience vote for hillary…Report
Good luck getting the crypto-conservatives like Hanley or Kuznicki to ever admit the truth of that statement.Report
Wait, what? You think Kim is a libertarian?
No wonder you’re so confused. This may help:
A short, incomplete list of folks I’d call libertarians around here:
Me
Jaybird
James Hanley
Brandon Berg
James K
Brian Houser
A short, incomplete list of people who are definitely not libertarians around here:
Kim/Kimmi/Kimsie
Tom Van Dyke
DensityDuck
North
I really do hope this helps. I mean it.Report
Hold up Kuznicki!
You don’t get to have James K. AFAIK he’s self identified as neoliberalish with libertarian sympathies (so pretty close to me). Stop trying to kidnap my commonwealth cousins!
Also have you ever heard the kiwi accent? Like Australian but smoother. You can have him when you pry him from us neoliberals cold dead hands (or if he clarifies that he considers himself libertarian of course).Report
If memory serves, I think Kim self identified yesterday. Granted she hasn’t learned the secret hand shake yet.Report
Roger,
Yeah. stripes and spots make even the black panther shine.
I think it was finally hearing that to build an ordinary house in some cities, you need to hire lobbyists.
I’ve always been more of the school of thought of “numbers first, test everything, and go with what works” rather than trying to force everything to fit under one ideology.Report
I think it was finally hearing that to build an ordinary house in some cities, you need to hire lobbyists.
[Citation needed.]Report
I feel left out. Which list am I in?Report
Kim may (or may not) have been referring to my reference to a woman in Steuben County, Indiana, who couldn’t get a building permit because she wanted to build only an 800 square foot house, and that was below the minimum size allowed. But by her own estimation she not only didn’t need, but couldn’t afford to build, a bigger house.
Steuben County is lake country, and Republican territory, and they want to keep their property values up. Can’t have somebody making their lake homes less pricey by building a small house somewhere out in the country.Report
I think it’s hilarious that M.A. calls me a crypto-conservative while my brother (a liberal) swears I’m really a liberaltarian. I guess my own brother of nearly half a century doesn’t know me as well as this anonymous guy on the internet who’s “known” me for only a few months.
Can anyone please tell me what the secret crypto-conservative handshake is? Or is it the same thing I’ve been doing, thinking all along it was the secret libertarian handshake?
I just don’t know anymore. M.A.’s thrown me into a terrible identity crisis.Report
awww, I don’t get to be in your club? 😥Report
I am really hoping to get those on the left to understand the importance of free markets, free trade, profits, competition, experimentation, non coercion and choice. I can’t do it. They do not as a group see eye to eye with me at all.
No, the problem is that your underlying assertions and underlying presuppositions are wrong. If that’s not “seeing eye to eye”, I guess that’s how it works.
“Free” markets, as libertarians describe their ideal, tend not to actual freedom but to oligarchy or monopoly in any given field, followed by hostile takeovers by oligarchy players into other fields. That’s only temporary freedom.
“Free” trade, as libertarians describe it, is likewise a canard. Trade between relatively equal partners is one thing, the sort of “free” trade libertarians describe looks more like the the days of colonial economic rape than actual freedom.
profits, competition, experimentation
Profits, competition, experimentation – in many sectors, good things. Not uniformly in all sectors, but in many sectors and you’ll be hard-pressed to find a Liberal who disagrees. But we Liberals are going to say you can have all three while still having a well-regulated, actually FREE market rather than an oligarchy market.
non coercion and choice
And here’s where your whole line of argumentation breaks down, not that you can ever seem to see it.
Those on the lower end of the economic spectrum live in a constant state of coercion. Many of their “choices” are really no choice at all, or at best a choice of a raw deal with lube and a raw deal without lube.
Economic coercion is just as much a factor as the “monopoly on coercive force” that Libertarians constantly claim only exists for government. Moreover, it’s a function whether or not government actually exists.
Libertarians think that economic coercion would go away if government didn’t have power to do certain things, but Libertarians at the same time want government to enforce contract law and liability law. And even absent a government that lent itself to that, those with coercive economic force would just hire leg-breakers instead.
On the right, I can usually get the majority to see eye to eye. They are capable of getting it, almost intuitively.
Do they really “get it”, or are you just starting in agreement to them and engaging in a nice back-patting circular effort of philosophically masturbatory nature?
There is an audience from the far left that just flat out stares back in complete and total disgust.
And you can’t step back a moment in order to think about why that is and understand their perspective on it.
I’m reminded of a friend of mine who’s been suckered into the “gummint budgit should be run like a home budgit gawddamnit” austerity-madness of the more extreme Tea Party wing, who can’t understand that “austerity” of the type he is advocating is a death spiral plan.Report
You can explain to your friend the sucker that when he bought his house, as a sound fiscally minded person was, he put himself in debt, to the tune of at least 3x his income. This is a HELL of a lot more than The Us gov’t’s current debt, as a ratio of GDP.Report
Again, then show how to use these ideas to solve problems liberals care about. As you’ve seen here, many liberals think that *all libertarians* just want to burn down the government and start over. They think that, in terms of the economy, you don’t care about the things they care about *at all*, and so everything you say comes across as crypto-conservatism, as someone else said up-thread.
So pick your favorite poverty topic that you think libertarian ideas can solve better than current government programs. Talk about the practical problems with the government-run program in terms that the listeners will care about, say poor management and maintenance in public housing, or people not being able to take jobs for fear of losing access to medicare for their kids. And then show how some particularly libertarian approach to solving the problem might work, and *that* is when you talk about choice, and free markets, and such. Telling them that you want to guarantee them a basic income to give them the choice of how to solve these problems themselves and get housing and health care from the free market will get their attention.
Sure, they’ll be skeptical. Sure some may think you’re trying to pull something over on them. Building bridges to the left on economic policy is going to take time and energy and hard work. The first step, though, is convincing them that the problems they care about are problems you care about, too, and you have ideas and meaningful things to say there.Report
…everything looks like a nail.
Regardless of the adequacy of the status quo, life isn’t fair and men are imperfect: there is always room for improvement.
And so, the hammer of government is always at the ready to pound on something, or someone.Report
“adequacy of the status quo” Adequate for who?
Its easy for those aren’t affected directly by a problem to not see a problem at all.Report
Exactly, Robin Hood.Report
Wow no substance to that response at all. Thanks for exactly meeting my expectations.Report
Griswold v. Connecticut isn’t enough; you have to force others to pay for contraceptives as well! Go for it, brother, all the substance you can handle is right there.Report
Conservatives didn’t seem a contraceptive mandate a few years back. Hell, Alabama Republican’s voted for it.
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/feb/15/nation/la-na-gop-contraceptives-20120216
“Four years later, the Arkansas law easily cleared that state’s Legislature, with help from Republican lawmakers, including two GOP cosponsors. Huckabee signed it in April 2005. … like the original federal regulation proposed by Obama, the Arkansas law did not exempt church-affiliated hospitals and universities. It exempts only “religious employers” that are nonprofit organizations whose primary mission is “the inculcation of religious values,” and primarily employ people who share the same religion, a standard few Catholic hospitals meet.”Report
*I* would have argued how far we have come from Giswold vs. Connecticut… we’ve gone from “it’s none of your business if I take birth control!” to “It’s your responsibility to see that I have it!”Report
Next thing people will be saying health insurance should cover chemo therapy or broken legs. I mean come on HI covering medications….its like so socialist.Report
I think it’s more that using health insurance for a product that costs four bucks a month is to misuse insurance.
There are discussions one could have over first-dollar coverage… most of them involving cost.
To have first dollar coverage for something that costs four bucks a month?Report
And it’s been gone over multiple times that many women can’t use the $10 birth control prescription, but for some reason, conservative and libertarian men can’t get that through their skulls.Report
JB. Like pregnancy/contraception isn’t one of the biggest health-care issues women face.
For most healthy women between like 15 and 55, it’s pretty much the ONLY reason they see the doctor. Really.Report
http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-cohn/101372/limbaugh-weekly-standard-birth-control-pills-target-9-dollars#Report
Prescribed contraceptives cost a bit more. This was covered in a thread. They can be a bit pricey, certainly as much as other meds. As has also been noted contraceptives are often prescribed for other reasons than just preventing pregnancy.
A follow up question is how much input does your employer have in your health care? I understand the religious issue even though i don’t think much of it. But the corollary to the people advocating the religious exemption is that your employer can decide what medical care you can and can’t receive. I can find the bill some R’s were pushing allowing employers to be able to opt of paying for just about any medical care they didn’t want to pay for.Report
many women can’t use the $10 birth control prescription
And we’re probably no longer talking about birth control at that point, but issues involving pain, hormone regulation, and the ever elusive “other”… and if you want to talk about first-dollar coverage for those drugs, I’d be happy to.
The problem is that if we’re talking about “birth control”, the majority of women can, in fact, take a 4-dollar/month, 10-dollar/3 months pill and, like Griswold vs. Connecticut says, it’s none of my freakin’ business.
What I object to is it being made my business *AND* being told that I’m not allowed to have an opinion about it afterwards (unless it’s supportive, of course).
If it’s my business, it’s my business.
If it’s none of my business, it’s none of my business.
Quit trying for all of the upsides of it being my business and all of the upsides of it being none of my business. That’s irritating.Report
You can have any opinion you want. The decision about what BC a woman uses should be between her and her doc.Report
Actually, it’s none of your business what your employee uses in their health care plan any more than it’s any of their business what they use with their paycheck.
And again, as I linked, a contraceptive mandate was such a controversial idea that the _Alabama_ legislature passed it and _Mike Huckabee_ signed it. I guess the death of religious freedom started in Birmingham.Report
What if health care becomes a nationalized kinda thing? Can I have an opinion about it then?Report
And we’re probably no longer talking about birth control at that point, but issues involving pain, hormone regulation, and the ever elusive “other”… and if you want to talk about first-dollar coverage for those drugs, I’d be happy to.
And in this level of fishing dishonesty is where you find companies trying to make their employee swear on penalty of perjury that they are using a BC product for “other” reasons other than birth control, and giving the company right of refusal anyways if they don’t “believe” the employee.
Lie about the cost: check. Lie about the real objections: check.
“Waah we’re being forced to pay for it.” No, actually, it’s a very small part (but important to the women involved) of a comprehensive healthcare insurance plan.
Whether a woman chooses to use hormonal BC, or a diaphragm, or has a tubal ligation, or asks her significant other to get a vasectomy, or has any other medication or operation that may in some way involve the operation of her vagina, you conservative fishtards want to get in the middle of it. And that’s something I don’t understand.
But woe betide the one who says that maybe you 60-70 year old senile wrecks shouldn’t be getting your viagra subsidized by the same plans.Report
Jay- Both Jesse and i have specifly mentioned employers. The R view on this and what you seem to be sharing is that EMPLOYERS can pick and choose the HC their employess recieve. I have no qualms about saying that is wrong. Its also a road i doubt many conservitives really want to go down.
If and when we can get nationalized HC than everybody can and will and should have opinions. And again the choice of HC should be between the doc and patient. The payer can decide what they pay for preferebly based on the best science about what works.Report
The R view on this and what you seem to be sharing is that EMPLOYERS can pick and choose the HC their employess recieve. I have no qualms about saying that is wrong. Its also a road i doubt many conservitives really want to go down.
The R view is that employees become chattel of the employer, and I’m sure that’s Jaybird’s view too. Anything can be withheld, and the employee can dictate pretty much any lifestyle choice or non-choice of the employee under threat of firing.
These are the people who supported Chick-Fil-A’s right to fire a woman because CFA’s manager thought she should “be a stay-at-home mom” even though the woman thought different, so it’s no surprise they want employers to have say-so over womens’ reproductive choices too.Report
These are the people who supported Chick-Fil-A’s right to fire a woman because CFA’s manager thought she should “be a stay-at-home mom” even though the woman thought different
There’s a conception of Libertarianism under which that type of activity ought to be prohibited by government, it seems to me.Report
MA- No that is not where Jay is going. I’m pretty sure i know where he is going and i don’t agree with him if he goes where i think he is. But he won’t be saying employees are chattel. Now some R’s are going essentially go there.Report
But woe betide the one who says that maybe you 60-70 year old senile wrecks shouldn’t be getting your viagra subsidized by the same plans.
I poop you not: I have had this conversation and someone (on the left even) argued against me because: sex is a human right.
Anyway, I think that you guys need to be a *LOT* more careful about what is in the private sphere and what is in the public. Like it or not: if someone else is paying for it, they’re going to have an opinion on it and you’re going to find yourself hard-pressed to pull the “It’s a privacy issue! It’s none of your business!!!” in one minute and “We need more taxes to pay for these things!!!” in the next.
You might find that you, seriously, preferred when these things weren’t anybody else’s business.Report
the _Alabama_ legislature passed it and _Mike Huckabee_ signed it
How does the Governor of Arkansas come to be signing Alabama legislation?Report
I got two Southern states that start with A confused. I humbly apologize.Report
Complete nonsense and a perversion of the concept of liberty.Report
I would just like to point out that Patrick could be describing a moderate libertarian platform or a neoliberal (neoclassical liberal) platform. It’s Matt Yglesias’s platform.Report
PB,
I would really value continuing this type of discussion with you. Very much so.Report
I’d be delighted to, Roger. If you want to continue offline, Google of my name finds my home page easily, which has my email address linked from there.Report
“The solution to all your problems is to give the other side what they want in the short term, because in the long term, you’ll be better off. And on the stuff where I agree with you? It’s not important, so just let it go.”
I can’t imagine why anyone would object to that.Report
Funny, I don’t see a lot of privately operated particle colliders….
Fundamental science is by nature publicly funded. The most important discovery of the past 50 years is a gigantic, multinational collaboration.Report
Nob,
According to The 2003 OECDs Sources of Economic Growth, the net effect of state funded R & D is to crowd out private R&D and to have a net damage to economic growth.
That said, I do agree that the optimal mix of science would include a mix of private and public. I could be wrong of course, and would value data rither way. The fact that universities are blended private and public further confuses the issue too, as does the mess we have made with patents in recent years.
Terence Kealey’s book on Sex, Science and Profits is a good summary of the issues.
Let me just step back though and say that I do not see the GOPs anti science wing as a major threat to the advancement of science. If it was I would be very, very concerned.Report
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider
I think not funding projects like the SSC have been a net loss for science and for the US outside of economic impacts.Report
You may very well be right that particle accelerators are the type of science that should be funded publicly.Report
Nothing compared to the cost to humanity of Europe free-riding on pharmaceutical R&D costs by imposing price controls.Report
Syphilis research was halted because of these ignorant sunsofbitches.
Stem cell research was severely crippled in America because of these folks. And that’s the only thing that stands a prayer of keeping our Pharmaceuticals competitive.
Public research is great for “basic science”. Private research is great once we’ve got something figured out (cat ears that read your brainwaves and react accordingly! — no way you would get EEG out of a private research lab, it takes too long to show that it’s safe, let alone profitable.)Report
Roger,
are you aware of NOAA? Bush appointed some yahoo to run the hurricane response down in Florida. NOAA basically started a (civil) insurrection.
Read up on it, it’s a good bit of history.Report
This would be a really good thread someday. The role of private vs public funding of science and the pluses and minuses of conservative and liberal interference in the process.Report
Big time. I think some of the effects of liberal interference are… interesting, to say the least.
And then I gotta throw in the effects of libertarian interference…Report
It’s a matter of perspective, it seems to me, and I’ll say this from the pov of a liberal and how I think liberals view libertarianism: Liberals think that libertarians view all government as inherently bad when compared against an ideal in which government would be unnecessary. But the ideal is unrealizable. (Even on the libertarians own terms!). So … why does the libertarian persist in thinking that all government is inherently bad – a necessary evil! – instead of being an unqualified good?
I always think of it all this way: Government is a lot like fire, incredibly useful, & incredibly dangerous.
Say, Society is a bunch of people living in a house. Government is the 200 year old gas furnace. The furnace is rickety, it’s been maintained, repaired, upgraded, but not always by the smartest technicians or in a consistent manner. It’s operation can be… problematic.
When it gets cold out, Liberals want to turn up the furnace, Libertarians think you should just put on a sweater, & lately I can’t decide if conservatives think everyone should pray for warmer weather, or build a bonfire in the living room.Report
Fish it, forget to close out the tag!Report
When it gets cold out, Liberals want to turn up the furnace, Libertarians think you should just put on a sweater, & lately I can’t decide if conservatives think everyone should pray for warmer weather, or build a bonfire in the living room.
When it gets cold out, Liberals realize that there are 20 people and only 5 sweaters, so maybe we need to turn the furnace up anyways.Report
Liberals think the furnace runs on cold fusion (i.e., free energy).
Libertarians point out that you need to use those 5 sweaters and most of the rest of the clothes (or furniture) to burn as fuel in the furnace. You’ve got to take to give.Report
Liberals believe in empiricism so cold fusion is out. Cold fusion is a great theory. That the theory doesn’t work should be a stern warning to those who propose basing policy on theory without proof. The liberals believe things are “free” as in free health care is one of the tiredest and stupidest misstatements by libertarians and conservatives.Report
No, not at all.
Ever noticed how the groups that Liberals have said we need to return to sane tax rates on (I deliberately use this wording because our insanely LOW tax rates at present are a historical aberration) would, if they were paying a double marginal tax rate and double capital gains rate tomorrow, barely notice any impact?
It’s true. Despite the cries and lies of the right wing, higher tax rates on rich people do not hurt the economy or make lazy people out of the lower brackets. In the 1950s and early 1960s, the top bracket income tax rate was over 90% – and that’s the period the right wing otherwise wants to go back to.
Nothing of that high tax rate prevented actual businessmen from investing, creating new businesses, working harder. NOTHING.
Entrepreneurs get this. They don’t care about high tax rates, it just means hey, if they pay taxes, they go out and keep building the business and making more money.
On the other hand, Wall Street executives, banking group scammers, and groups of vulture capitalists that exist by exploiting legal and tax loopholes and dodges in order to make otherwise suicidal gambits into cash flows? THEY are the ones crying to keep tax rates low.Report
Something to think about:
Super-low tax rates on rich people also appear to be correlated with unsustainable sugar highs in the economy–brief, enjoyable booms followed by protracted busts. They also appear to be correlated with very high inequality. (For example, see the 1920s and now).Report
also, tulips.Report
It’s true. Despite the cries and lies of the right wing, higher tax rates on rich people do not hurt the economy or make lazy people out of the lower brackets. In the 1950s and early 1960s, the top bracket income tax rate was over 90% – and that’s the period the right wing otherwise wants to go back to.
Nothing of that high tax rate prevented actual businessmen from investing, creating new businesses, working harder. NOTHING.
Well, there were also “expense accounts” that a lot of workers of a certain level-and-up had access to. Going out to lunch? Expense it! Going on vacation with the wife? Expense it!
It wasn’t considered taxable income, and didn’t fall under the 90% tax rate. When Kennedy passed his tax cuts, he started collecting a lot more of the taxes he wanted.Report
Yes; as people have pointed out, the “massive increase in executive compensation” was more of a bookkeeping issue.Report
For the liberal, on the other hand, government is sometimes an unqualified good.
If it’s only “sometimes” an unqualified good, isn’t that a qualification of its goodness?Report
For the liberal, on the other hand, government is sometimes a better alternative than the others.
There you go, MUCH more accurate.Report
And by “sometimes” you mean “whenever the other alternative is the market,” right?Report
No, James. The “free” market. That phanstasmagoric ideal that exists in people’s imaginations and is logically entailed by yourownself-evident first principles.
Do you really want to do this?Report
I’m not even sure what we’re doing. I’m pretty sure it’s not the same thing.Report
Have at it, then.Report
Oops, I thought that was a reply to our other subthread. As to what we’re doing here, it’s pretty standard fare going the other direction, so I’m not sure why you seem concerned about it going in this direction.Report
We don’t actually worship government and insist that all of its consequences are ipso facto the best possible outcome. Unlike (I don’t really need to say it, do I?)Report
You don’t make a daily sacrifice at your Obama shrine?
SOMEONE is itching for a one way trip to a FEMA camp. Just sayin’.Report
Christ, here we go again. Sometimes is specific to certain types of actions, not a partial critique of it’s totality.
But you confirm my earlier view by what you say: that libertarians view government is inherently bad. Necessarily so.Report
You took a comment on linguistic logic as confirmation that I think government is necessarily and inherently bad?Report
Based on tone, texture and context, yes. Your comment missed the entirely of the point being made and instead focused on nutpicking … just to score some cheap points.
It seems to me.Report
It’s a blog, dude. Sometimes we just like to make jokes.
But I get it that there’s bad blood, so things are likely to be viewed through that filter right now.Report
By the way, what was the texture of my comment? I’m hoping it was soft and gooey. I’ve always liked soft and gooey things.Report
Definitely soft and gooey. More like an ooze, really.Report
Ah, slimy. Perfect. With any luck I can market it to the kiddies.Report
We’ve got to get back on track, you and I. I apologized for the “bad guys winning” thing. I was wrong there; I should have answered the question asked more directly and clearly than I did. When it comes right down to it, our views, in general, aren’t separated by that many degrees. We’re hung up on something. I’m not sure what it is. If it’s the Jesse thing, I take full responsibility for that.
I just hope it isn’t something worse, like my liberal privilege. There’s no coming back from that 🙂Report
And for my part I realize I mis-read what your point was in critiquing my definition of markets, and apologize for that.
I’m just really tired of the liberals here who love to announce what libertarianism is, then get all shocked when we tell them they’re wrong, and then get all huffy when libertarians turn the table on them. Don’t be that guy, or his variants, and we’re cool. (So, yeah, maybe it is that liberal privilege thing. Sorry.)Report
More like when you tell them they’re wrong. There are all sorts of crazy libertarians roaming the wilds. Liberals too. Conservatives? They’re all in the wilds these days. If the only problem we have is my liberal privilege from here on out, I’m alright with that. I can live with that.Report
I think I had one of the OIC moments. When you say “liberal privilege” you really mean “liberalsplainin”, yes?
That’s different, isn’t it?
{{Now I have to reconsider…}}Report
And if you don’t get the distinction, that’s OK. You’re not a liberal.
Here, I’ll explain it to you…Report
Sure there are crazy libertarians, and not many libertarians here mind you saying so. It’s when you, any of you, imply that the craziest libertarianism is “the” libertarianism, when you conveniently choose not to differentiate, that we–I–say you’re wrong. Because it’s just as wrong as someone defining all liberals by their most whacked out extremes. Liberals want to shut down free trade because it’s bad for workers and the environment, want to ban the eating of meet, think we should only take herbal remedies because big pharma is trying to poison us, and think it’s government’s job to provide each of us with a living. You’d be suitably pissed if I started saying that’s what liberalism is (see Shazbot’s none-too-happy response to me plating that game above) but that is exactly what a lot of liberals do here in reference to libertarianism.
I honestly wonder if you really get that. There seems to be a sense here that liberals really do get libertarianism (so who do those libertarians think they are telling them they’re wrong), combined with a sense that of course libertarians ar wrong about liberalism (so of course we liberals are justified in telling them they’re wrong).
Either you recognize that and understand the problem it poses for reasoned debate, or you don’t. I maintain hope that you do, or will. Others I’ve written off.Report
Excellent comment James. I’m admonished and in agreement at the same time. And thanks for saying you think I can – and maybe even do to a certain degree – understand libertarianism. I like to think I do, and in the places I don’t I try to be honest about it. {{FWTW, or course.}}
I think there’s a big difference between liberals and libertarians that liberals in general are probably not ina position to see all that clearly, namely, that libertarians are looking at what constitutes good policy, and liberals are looking at what constitutes good policy in a context, usually a political context. But – and here’s the problem – libertarians aren’t looking at policy thru the lens of politics. They’re just looking at policy, granted from certain starting points that liberals might be reluctant to accept, but policy nonetheless.
For the most part, I don’t think liberals disagree with libertarian arguments as an ideal to strive for (in general!). I think the stumbling block is that achieving those ideals requires playing the game of politics, and as I said upthread, libertarians are sort of predisposed to reject political solutions to problems, or to try to minimize the effect of politics on policy decisions.
So, that, I guess, is one – maybe the biggest – reason why a moderate sane liberal and a moderate sane libertarian are going to disagree about things. And end up talking past each other.
On the flip side, the above reminded me of Jason K’s comments (not stated in this thread, I don’t think) that dismantling existing institutions to achieve more libertarian friendly policies and practices is something to be inherently cautious about. I say that to suggest that even a staunch libertarian is making a concession to the context of policy as it exists and the institutional structures which have evolved out of specific policies.
The normative ideal of libertarianism is a goal worth striving for. I think lots of liberals agree with that. So the resistance, and in-fighting, and name calling, comes from some other place. And that’s the best I can do to explain what the place might be.Report
+1 StillReport
– libertarians aren’t looking at policy thru the lens of politics.
I’m not entirely persuaded, but I think I get what you’re saying, and I think it’s a common enough thing that you’re justified in making that argument.
I get very impatient myself with idealistic arguments. I was talking to my environmental politics class the other day about fishing quotas that were imposed in Maine fisheries in the last decade. Instead of being individual transferable quotas, which most libertarians would probably find the best solution, the quotas were given to local fishing co-ops which parceled them out among their members. Locals were concerned that with ITQs the permits would eventually be sold to big corporations, and the traditional fishing culture of their villages would disappear. As I told my students, that’s not an economists ideal market solution, but it’s a solution that more easily elicited political support because it took account of other values, not easily priced in the market, that people cared about. A smart libertarian would take account of that and, in my opinion, say that this policy is–if not an ideal solution–nevertheless a good solution.
For the most part, I don’t think liberals disagree with libertarian arguments as an ideal to strive for (in general!).
I’m afraid that a number of liberals on this board cast doubt upon that. I guess it depends on whether they constitute the “most part” of liberalism or whether your type does. I hope it’s your type, but I’m pessimistic.Report
Hanley-
I have gotten so used to parsing League-Slang that I at first thought you were giving a very profane lecture to your student’s on Maine’s fishery policy.Report
Don’t be too certain I wasn’t!Report
Good point. No liberal will ever be willing to agree with a libertarian, because no libertarian will ever say “laws making certain kinds of speech illegal? Sure, that’s a good idea!”Report
Uh, this card-carrying ACLU member liberal is for pretty maximal free speech, including things I regard as stupid, offensive, and awful. Just how maximal free speech? IMO Citizen’s United was correctly decided.
Yelling ‘Fire’ in a crowded theater should still be illegal, though, but not because it’s bad speech, but because it’s incitement to riot – it’s not the speech that’s illegal, it the intent to cause chaos, mayhem, and the harm that results from that.Report
I am not a card-carrying ACLU member, but I *am* a liberal who also concurs with the CU decision.
More interesting than yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater is yelling, “Down in front! The movie is starting!” in the middle of a fire. A whole different chaos can ensue.
Seriously speaking, I think any limits on free speech should be handled through the civil court system when direct harm can be demonstrated. Repeat offenders might eventually justify a criminal action. I’m also a bit out there in thinking that we should be willing to consider demonstrable emotional and/or mental harm as we do physical harm; it seems off to me that I can’t physically torture you with my fists but I can mentally torture you with my words. But that just might be the crunchy PreK teacher in me…Report
And I disagree: Citizens United was definitely wrongly decided.
But I also disagree about corporations having “legal personhood” in other senses.Report
I think everyone should be free to spend their money as they see fit.Report
Had everyone started with an equal amount of resources, perhaps.
Since that’s not the case, and since disparities have increased dramatically, no sale.Report
Interesting. So if 10 million poor people each have a dollar to contribute and rather than waste 42% of that dollar mailing in an individual contribution, they choose to pool their money and send $9,999,999.58 to their preferred candidate, you think they should be barred from doing so?Report
How are they pooling their money otherwise? How do they get all 10 million dollars together with no overhead to start with?
And 10 million poor people each contributing a dollar is still chump change compared to what the billionaires spent this election cycle, so I think my point is made.Report
Even before CU, it seemed odd to me that there were limitations on speech and spending surrounding campaigning. I realize the concerns of not having those limitations; I just find the limitations themselves more concerning.Report
A political cartoon is your evidence that the Supreme Court decided CU wrongly? There is a difference between policy analysis and constitutional analysis which you may be overlooking.Report
Yeah, my problem with the libertarian approach to speech is that they tend to say, “Well, Citizens United was correctly decided, and now we don’t have to worry about campaign finance anymore”. There are real problems with campaign finance, and you can’t jump from “freedom of speech” to “the current system works fine” (or even “disclosure is all we need”).Report
Except that libertarians didn’t, actually, say that. They said “CU won’t cause the problems that critics say it will”, and it turned out that they were right.Report
Here is “Campaign Finance Reform: A Libertarian Primer”, written by the Chairman of Cato. A representative quote: “The proper answer to large expenditures for speech is either more speech or, if the existing system proves unworkable, a constitutional amendment. As for money, it’s just a symptom. We have a big money problem because we have a big government problem. By restraining the regulatory and redistributive powers of the state, we can minimize the influence of big money. Restoring the Framers’ notion of enumerated, delegated, and limited federal powers will get government out of our lives and out of our wallets. That’s the best way to end the campaign-finance racket, and root out corruption without jeopardizing political speech.”
So basically, the only legitimate choices are either a) stop worrying about the corruption that could result from unrestricted donations to campaigns or b) adopt a radically limited government. How…convenient for libertarians, but for the non-libertarians in the audience, you’ll hopefully realize that this isn’t exactly convincing.
There’s a long history of libertarians ignoring the problems caused by our campaign finance system, and it can’t be ignored.Report
So what he’s saying is that campaign finance is a problem, but that laws about campaign finance won’t solve the problem, because campaign finance isn’t where the problem starts.
That’s not “campaign finance isn’t a problem”. That’s “you don’t cure tuberculosis with Advil Cold And Sinus”.Report
Skokie, OH, dumbassReport
That would be Illinois.
Also, please try to be respectful. One never knows when an arrogant attitude may later give cause for regret.Report
no libertarian will ever say “laws making certain kinds of speech illegal? Sure, that’s a good idea!”
Skokie, OH, dumbass
And of course the Supreme Court ruled that the Nazis had a right to march in Skokie. And they did. And now their protest is nothing more than an interesting case in law textbooks. Evidence that prohibiting their speech would have been a good idea? Nil.Report
I think Jeff’s point is that allowing them to march was supported by liberal organizations, e.g. the ACLU. (I personally have very mixed feelings about it. but I understand that I’m not objective.)Report
“I’m not objective.”
Oh, you’re a Nazi.
Or maybe you’re from Skokie.
Both are bad.Report
Out of the two, being from Skokie is the worse of the two.Report
You guys are fishing hilarious.Report
Skokie’s actually a pretty nice little suburb.
But as to the real point, which I seem to have missed the first time ’round, it wasn’t libertarians who were pushing campus speech codes in the ’90s.Report
“…a lot of the standard libertarian tropes (taxation is theft, government is coercion, I didn’t agree to be governed) have been shoved at me so many times […] As a result, when they’re off-handedly mentioned by more moderate realist libertarians, it puts our hackles up and pushes the arguments to extremes.”
Good comments, and I do try to avoid using those temper triggers as much as possible. But sometimes they slip out in a desperate attempt to find some agreement on basic concepts to use as a starting point for debate. Much of the time, I just want the person on the other side of the discussion to show they understand why libertarians feel the way they do (even if he doesn’t agree with it).
Consider this: when I pull out the “taxation is theft”, “government is force” stuff, this is what I usually get in response:
“You libertarians are insane!”, or at best, “Please stop talking now; you’re just trying to insult me rather than having a real discussion.”
The response I’m hoping for is:
“OK, fine. Taxation is theft and government is force. But so what? Aren’t those things necessary in order to achieve the society we want when we can’t get everyone to participate voluntarily?”
There we’ve built a common ground of sorts on which we can proceed with the debate (e.g., how much force is justified in what situations?).Report
But lots of us don’t think taxation is theft. If you accept taxation is theft that is far from a neutral place to start. If its theft, then its wrong and not something we should anyway just because it works. Its not theft and is also part of having a working country (at least to me).
Gov is force among many other things. That force is a good thing at times when it legitimately provides for common defense and locks up rapists. Its bad when it does all sorts of bad things we likely agree on.
Building common ground is a good idea. My guess is a lot of liberals are trying to do the same thing with establishing the need for some sort of social safety net.Report
OK, see so we’re in agreement already on the force part.
The most constructive response on the theft part would have avoided using the word “wrong” and instead said something like this: “the definition of theft is ‘unlawful taking’. Last time I checked, there are laws allowing taxation, so it can’t be considered theft.”
So then I would know why you disagree with how I’ve used the word, and I can either agree to use some new term or phrase (which I will gladly do), or we can continue by debating on whether it’s actually legal or not (many libertarians would, but I find those arguments mostly pointless).
(sheepish grin on) In the interest of fruitful discussion, I hereby declare I will no longer use the phrase “taxation is theft”. Instead it will be “taxation is the involuntary transfer of property from an individual or group to an organization which has been granted a monopoly on the ‘legal’ use of force.”Report
Yay, a definition that only works in America. There are countries in this world where more than 50% of the men own assault rifles. There are places in this world where the government lacks the manpower to actually stop corporations from waging their own wars. Some of these places are quite nice to visit, actually.Report
Brian,
I agree the second definition of taxation is much better than the first. The taxation is theft line is unproductive and divisive.Report
I take “Taxation is theft” to be a verbal no-op. It’s certainly true for some definitions of theft. You could just as well say that “Taxation is marklar” for some definition of marklar. It’s the definition of marklar that makes the statement interesting or philosophically useful.
If your definition of theft implies that taxation is always immoral and cannot be justified, then your philosophy isn’t very useful. If your definition simply implies that paying taxes isn’t fun and we should design our system such that tax-paying is minimized subject to certain constraints, then your philosophy is trivially true and not very interesting.
If there’s something else in there, I’m interested, but you’d have to do better than simply using the word “theft.” Normally when I read, “If we could just agree that taxation is theft…” I hear, “If we could just agree to use emotionally loaded terms that favor my position, we could really find some common ground.”Report
How about a response of “Government IS force, especially when it protects the property claims of people whose privilege is based on prior atrocities”? I think liberals have a legitimate gripe when they say that libertarianism waves away thorny historical problems.Report
That’s all fair to say.Report
Robert,
I disagree. I do not support past atrocities, and support penalizing living transgressors and requiring them to compensate living victims. Are we thus in agreement. Or do you mean something else?Report
I wonder, if we can trace back current inequalities to past injustices, should those injustices be rectified even if the people who committed them, and the people against whom they were committed, are dead?Report
I wonder this too, and my experience is that right-libertarians bristle at even voicing this question.Report
Wrong-Libertarian scope on this is “they are dead, I’m not them, I may be descended from them but so what.”
Wrong-Libertarian thought on the matter is that every generation somehow starts off on a “level” playing field, which ignores reality yet again. If everyone actually DID start off on a level playing field every generation that’d be one thing but they don’t.
The irony is that if you start to talk about inheritance taxes, or tax rates that would serve similar purposes and force those of the next generation of the upper crust, you’ll find out that Wrong-Libertarians will never go for it. And that’s not surprising, because the people bankrolling Wrong-Libertarian “thinking” are people like the Kochs.
They’re not in it for the rights of everyone, just for the right of the oligarchy, and Libertarian “thinking” fits perfectly for that while simultaneously trying to deny doing so.Report
Wrong-liberal thought is that past injustices echo down through the ages for eternity, so that we all have corrupted blood, and must have everything taken from us to compensate the descendants of those who were harmed.Report
Liberals don’t think everything must be taken from those noble, pure classes. I don’t know why you’re so acerbic and uncharitable (mendacious) tonight, but it sure ain’t flattering to your credibility.Report
Meant to put a ? after “mendacious.”Report
Robert,
Why single out my statement and not M.A.’s?Report
Because I pushed back against M.A.’s uncharitableness elsewhere in this thread and I don’t see a need to repeat myself.Report
+1
And M.A. does need to tone down the rhetoric and be more charitable.Report
Robert,
Sorry, I didn’t see your pushback.
But please understand my comment wasn’t meant to be serious at all. It was meant to be ridiculous. And that ridiculousness was mean to highlight some other ridiculousness.
I’m not sure the highlighting worked.Report
Chris and Robert,
How do you suggest rectifying for sins of the grandfather?Report
Government can’t rectify sins, Roger. Redistribution isn’t going to solve all the ills of historically-oppressed populations. All I’m asking is that libertarians and conservatives stop using facile arguments in favor of using government force to protect their privilege.Report
perhaps how the people wnat it to be handled… given to the communities that were victimized…Report
Roger, I dunno. Maybe the same way we’d rectify the sins of our fathers.Report
Seriously…. I am asking the same question I did of Kazzy the other day ( he answered). What are you suggesting?
How do you suggest we improve the system today to compensate or adjust for past abuses?
I am only half way through the paper you suggested Robert, so if the recommendations are there just let me know.Report
I have utopian ideas about not using violence to enforce property claims, but while I think this would mostly prevent perpetuation of past abuses, I’m not in favor of mass looting because I favor evolution over revolution. So my prescription would be multi-pronged: there should be increases in private charity and in integration of class groups, and right-wingers should stop kvetching when historically dispossessed groups happen to win a little something for themselves through the political process.Report
I agree with the first two, Robert.Report
Roger, sorry it took me a while. I was away, and came back, and there were like 700 comments here, so I’d lost track of this one.
My answer is in the form I’ve already given it: what happens to the children of a man or woman who makes his or her fortune illegally? Do you not take the money because it will harm them even though they aren’t responsible for the actions of their father or mother? Why stop there? If we can trace current inequalities to past injustices, why not rectify them in a similar way?
Of course, my ideal answer would be, do away with property altogether. But I’m trying to be at least slightly more pragmatic.Report
Thanks Chris,
Patrick and Kazzy and I discussed the same issue elsewhere in this mega thread and landed on a process of using impartial rules which are biased at the outset to the disadvantaged.
Coercive redistribution is prone to self amplifying into a Hattfield McCoy situation.Report
what happens to the children of a man or woman who makes his or her fortune illegally? Do you not take the money because it will harm them even though they aren’t responsible for the actions of their father or mother? Why stop there? If we can trace current inequalities to past injustices, why not rectify them in a similar way?
Because at some point it becomes impossible to say how much of the current generation’s wealth is attributable to what their ancestor’s stole, and whether the victims’ descendants would actually have ever inherited any of their ancestors’ wealth had it not been stolen. It’s a purely pragmatic problem, from my perspective.
Perhaps there’s also a statute of limitations type concern, as an ethical issue. I don’t know about that myself, but I can see someone making such an argument.
Of course, my ideal answer would be, do away with property altogether.
I’d really like to see you write an OP on this someday, and explain to me why it’s wrong for me to own my house and yard. It’s a mysterious thought to me.Report
Coercive redistribution may be prone to devolving into feuds, but I wonder, what are the current affects of inequality that traces back to injustice? Are they not also something to consider.
I’m fine with everyone living by the same rules. I’m just not particularly fine with those rules being implemented in the middle of the game, after some people have already scored enough points to make a comeback impossible.Report
what are the current affects of inequality that traces back to injustice?
That’s a tough question, isn’t it? On the one hand, my ancestors came here as religious refugees, driven out of Switzerland. They thrive pretty well, and although I think I’d have preferred to grow up in the Alps, I can’t say the oppression of my ancestors has done me any harm.
On the other hand, a kid who grows up in the projects is far less likely to see real prospects for anything else, because kids just know what they see around them. And that means their kids are more likely than mine to also have to grow up in the projects. And their kids.
So it can have no effect over generations, or it can have a huge effect over generations. But I think we need to look for specific effects, instead of just assuming them. And I think we need to be able to trace those effects fairly clearly generation by generation. As our ability to trace an effect weakens generation by generation, it becomes more difficult to say with certainty that it was the original oppression/inequality that caused today’s problem–there are, at that point, so many other variables that plausibly play an even bigger role.
That’s not to dismiss it and try to lump everything into that latter category. It’s just to say that it’s a tough question.Report
James, you’ve said elsewhere in this thread that for you, as for someone else (Blaise maybe? Damn, this is a big thread), equality of opportunity is the goal. Is it possible to have equality of opportunity, even with “impartial rules” (whatever those may be — I’m not sure they’re not a pleasant fiction), if everyone is starting on a different rung of the ladder? And is this not even more unlike “equality of opportunity” if the run on which one finds oneself is, at least in part, and perhaps in large part, a result of injustices at some point prior to the implementation, or at least equal enforcement, of those “impartial rules?” These questions, of course, are not unrelated the the ethics of you owning your house and the land on which it stands.
I’ll put it another way. The general idea, I gather, is that in a market system with “impartial rules” (I’m going to have to keep putting that phrase in scare quotes, because I’m not sure I can utter it seriously otherwise), “a rising tide raises all ships.” But what if, when the tide begins to rise as a result of those rules, everyone starts out in different sized ships? Or if many ships are already well above the ships currently on the water line, and somehow they continue to rise too? This doesn’t look like equality of opportunity to me. It looks like a great inequality of opportunity that is excused because, for most people, the quality of life is greater now than it was before the tide started to rise.Report
Chris,
I don’t think perfect equality of opportunity is possible, and I don’t think trying to create it would actually result in desirable outcomes. Perhaps it’s not the best term for me to use. What I really mean is that I want everyone to actually have a reasonable opportunity. Poor people can have reasonable opportunities; it’s not lack of wealth itself that destroys opportunity–too many poor people have succeeded for that to be the case. It’s certain conditions that are strongly correlated with poverty that destroy opportunity, like growing up in the projects, having shitty schools, not having food in your belly, suffering the stress of constant worry about being shot or assaulted, and so on.
I grew up fairly poor at times. I remember going down to the fire station to get the government cheese we qualified for. I remember my mom near tears in the grocery store trying to figure out how she was going to feed her kids. I remember my parents worrying about how they were going to manage the house payment. And I remember my dad being ecstatic when he found a $20 bill tucked away in his wallet (the ’70s, when $20 meant something), because that tided us over until his next paycheck.
But none of that limited my opportunity, because it never got worse than that, I lived in a safe small town, and I went to a reasonably good school. I have friends who grew up upper middle class and lower upper class, had far more than we did, and went to top tier private Catholic schools. Was my opportunity equal to theirs? No. Was it good enough? Yes.
But right now I’m dealing with some African-American students we recruited from an impoverished place from a southern state I’ll not name. They’re driving me crazy, because despite having college diplomas they are not remotely prepared for college. Was their opportunity good enough? I don’t think so.Report
James, I see that we’re going to head down different paths at this point, so let’s take a step back and talk about these “impartial rules.” What if, because the present inequalities are, to an extent, perhaps to a large extent, a result of past injustices, and since we’re interested in some approximation of equality of opportunity, even if they weren’t, we chose to make the rules less than impartial? What if, for example, we attached a certain amount of privileged status to certain disadvantaged groups? For example, along the lines of what Young argues. Can we start there?Report
Culture does a lot of heavy lifting. The most important thing you can do for your children is read to them.
You can redistribute everything on the planet but, in, oh, two generations, the kids who were read to will be doing a *LOT* better than the kids who weren’t.
In four, we’ll be 95% back where we started.Report
Chris,
I can’t access the article until I’m back on campus, which won’t be until next Monday.
But if you want to focus on impartial rules, I guess I need to know which ones in particular we’re talking about. I don’t know that I’m wedded in binding holy matrimony to the concept of nothing but impartial rules, but I’m certainly not open to ending all impartiality in rules.
And I think that upfront we’re in agreement that we oppose non-impartial rules that specifically exist to benefit the better off?Report
James, no, I don’t mean to make the rules 100% partial. I just mean to make them tilt a little in certain directions to counter the fact that the playing field, as it currently exists, tilts in others.
I’m certainly opposed to existing structures that are biased towards the rich and powerfulReport
Jay, argh, I meant to include this in my response to James, because the last thing this thread needs is more comments (someone write a new post so we can start a new thread!).
Yeah, I know your position on the cultural aspect of it. My response here will be the same as it’s been elsewhere: the economics, politics, and cultural aspects of these inequalities, these imbalances of privilege, exist in a dynamic system in which the relationships are non-linear and operate over multiple time scales. Parents reading to their children is great, and will undoubtedly help, but a.) it will only go so far, and b.) getting to the point where parents can and will read to their children enough to make a difference is not simply a cultural issue.Report
Chris,
I’m in agreement vaguely and generally. I don’t know if I’m in agreement specifically, because I don’t know what the specifics are.Report
James, once we’ve agreed that “impartial rules” are not ideal in the current context, we can start to work out the specifics of how to tilt the rules based on the tilt of the playing field. So at least we’re there.
One of the first steps I’d proposed would be race-based solutions. Also, a transfer of money to not just schools but the entire educational system of poor areas.Report
Oh, and free health care.Report
Ah, race based solutions. Tricky. I don’t like them. I think coal miner’s kids in Appalachia are lacking in opportunity every bit as much as the kid in the projects in the city. And I have friends from Appalachia who tell me that. But on the other hand, every time we make a program that’s not race based enough, it ends up serving the needs of whites much more than the needs of minorities, instead of the needs of whites and minorities. From a policy perspective, it’s very frustrating.
But let’s say for constructive discussion purposes that I agree. How many generations does the program run? If Adam is the first generation of African-American kids to get the benefit of the program, I’m cool with that. Do his kids get the program, too? They shouldn’t need it, or at least as much, right? Do we disqualify minority kids whose parents benefited from the non-impartial rule (I wanted to write partial rule, but that reads wrong), so we can focus it on those who haven’t benefited (indirectly, through mom and/or dad) from it? Do we allow two generations but disqualify those who parents and grandparents benefited from it? Or do we just base it on race and keep it in place for….well, what’s our standard for deciding when the non-impartial rule has overcome the problem of the inter-generational effects of past inequality?Report
The response I’m hoping for is:
“OK, fine. Taxation is theft and government is force.
Well, on a very simplistic level, yes that’s true. But consider a scenario in which government is addressing only legitimate and real collective action problems. Eg, suppose a minimalist society in which criminals exist, and they violate rights and disrupt markets and just do bad things in general. What’s the remedy to that problem? Create disincentives to bad behavior by rounding up criminals and incarcerating them (or whatever). Who funds this entirely justified activity? Well, that’s a collective action problem that requires a solution, yes?, since it’s in every individuals self-interest to free-ride on everyone else’s contribution to a “police force”, yet it’s in everyone’s self-interest to have a police force.
The options available to people in this society are to a) agree to a police force to ensure payment of the tax to fund the police force or b) not have a police force, which is inconsistent with the initial conditions. IF we opt for a) we’re now in “taxation is theft” land. But the tax is entirely justified by the society’s desire to prevent theft. So, open question: is requiring the payment of a cop-tax theft? Only on a really broad meaning of the term, one that isn’t standard, it seems to me.Report
My point was that all along, I was just wanting a response like the one you just gave rather than “go away, you insane libertarian.”
I’m not looking to get into a debate about libertarian solutions in this thread (although you certainly ask important questions). I lean more toward the minarchist section of the libertarian spectrum, so I don’t have much of a problem solving the problems you mentioned with courts and police and such (although I’d prefer they be kept localized as much as possible). If there are any pure voluntarists here, perhaps they can chime in.Report
My point was that all along, I was just wanting a response like the one you just gave rather than “go away, you insane libertarian.”
This is bidirectional.
If “taxation is theft” pushes buttons that drive people to say, “go away, you insane libertarian”, then perhaps you ought not to start the conversation off thumbing people in the eye, that way.
In the spirit of charitable debate, using language that encourages other people to participate constructively is better than using language that encourages other people to participate destructively. You want to listen charitably, but you also want to speak in such a way that you demand as little charity as possible from your reader.
Generally.Report
Certainly. We are in agreement on this.Report
FWIW, while I’m not a libertarian, I do think that you guys have to put up with a lot of shit that is unjustified. One of the problems with being part of a relatively small political unit is that the nuts shine all the more brightly, and it can be very very tiring to feel like you have to say, over and over, “That guy over there isn’t me. I don’t even think he’s a particularly good exemplar of the label I’ve chosen for myself. And he’s an ass.”
I don’t really have a good answer for that.Report
+1 on this good buddy.Report
The problem is that the standard method of argument these days is to define the things you don’t like with negative terms; and then the argument doesn’t even need to happen anymore because, well, who can argue in favor of negative things?
I mean, is someone really going to argue in favor of theft by force?Report
Taxation isn’t theft.
Taxation, per Oliver Wendell Holmes, is the price we pay for a civilized society.
It’s not theft. It’s the cover charge to get into the nightclub that is America.
So when you say “taxation is theft”, damn right I think you’re a nutjob.Report
“Taxation is the price we pay for a civilized society” is rather simplistic in itself, since it doesn’t even begin to address the issue of what things we are taxes for (nuclear weapons, mass imprisonment and torture experts, how civilized), or what levels of taxation are and aren’t justified. You only think it’s a more sophisticated claim because it’s your own simplistic claim instead of someone else’s simplistic claim.Report
Patrick, I understand what you’re getting at here:
Coates wasn’t wrong about the heritage and tradition of this country being racist, but those kinds of statements don’t facilitate discussion. When said that way, many people think he’s saying that the most important part of this country’s heritage and tradition is racism, not just that *one component* of it is racism.
Coates was clear, that racism is a part of the heritage, not all of it. Misogyny is a part of the heritage, not all of it. Genocide. But here’s the problem I’m struggling with, and I tossed and turned thinking on it last night — the people most likely to be discomforted by these facts are the people most likely to embrace the charm of the past without dealing with the pain; without realizing that the present doesn’t start from year zero, but is built on that past.
For the libertarian/liberal argument, that distinction actually matters. I step into my daily life as a woman and encounter a system that’s often rigged against me in very subtle ways. I’m married to a musician, have spent much of my adult life in places where musicians work, and see first hand the weirdness black musicians face. And the progress that I see, that makes those things subtle instead of overt, is the result of government coercion; it’s emancipation and civil rights, suffrage. But — and here’s the essential thing — that coercion is us, it’s not foreign, it’s not imposed by anything or anyone except the people and the lawmakers they’ve chosen, working to make a more equal nation by ending the coercions of the past.
This nation is still built on a foundation of racism, of misogyny, and those, too are forms of coercion. While those traditions are distasteful and discomforting, they ought be recognized to help keep their coercive hooks in our day to day dealing. So when I hear talk of ‘big government,’ of ‘coercion,’ of ‘taxes as theft,’ I’m most left feeling like I’m looking at someone unwilling or incapable of recognizing the coercion the government has ended, the theft of labor, of liberty, of rights while claiming they’re being treated as slaves were, as women were.
They’re not.Report
+1Report
PB and Zic,
This comment started fine, but may I offer a different end point?
Exploitation of others has been the dominating narrative of human history (pun intended). Racism, misogyny, xenophobia, privilege and rent seeking, and the abuse of the weaker by the stronger. This was true in Mesopotamia, China, Rome, Japan, Central America and everywhere else since the advent of agriculture. Defining the problem as a US issue, is misleading. It was a historic part of our nature which had to be overcome.
The institutions and philosophy of the enlightenment pointed tentatively to ways out of this. The Netherlands, Great Britain, America and others began experimenting with more inclusive institutions. See Acemoglu, Pinker or Douglas North for multiple takes on these processes.
The solution set seems to be a central monopoly on the use of coercion focused on using fire only to fight fire, along with inclusive, impartial institutions which encourage constructive competition and cooperation and discourage needlessly destructive processes.
As a classical liberal, this is what I propose. My fear is that if the government takes too active of a role in using coercion to adjust outcomes (rather than stopping other coercion) that the history reveals it gets captured by competing interest groups and zero sum, us vs them rationalizations . Neither side wins, as the game shifts from positive sum to zero sum. If you all think I am wrong, please point out why.Report
The problem is that this lets the bad actors walk away with the spoils of their bad acts. African Americans and women still face a lot of discrimination in this country. African Americans and Hispanics still suffer disproportionately from poverty, and the poorer quality schools that going along with poverty in this country. And the poorer job advantages that result from that, and so on.
Let me use an analogy from control systems. Proportional control is the basic tool in linear control systems, and provides stability in dynamic systems in the face of unwanted disturbances. Proportional control on it’s own, though, has its flaws – it can take a long time to stabilize, and it can permit long-term steady-state error for certain inputs. Adding a small amount of integral control to a proportional control system (a PI control system) can greatly improve the responsiveness of the system, and remove unwanted steady state error from the system, but too much integral control can lead to overshoot and instability. Derivative control can be added, too, (PID control) to compensate for the problems that come from integral control.
We have a political/economic system in which a past disturbance has caused a steady state error that proportional control (the market) hasn’t been able to fix. And you’re saying we shouldn’t be allowed to use a small amount of integral control to fix it because a large amount of integral control is a bad thing. Color me unconvinced.Report
Let a parabola labeled Market exist in the first quadrant with its zeros upon the X axis. Let the zenith of that Market parabola represent an optimally efficient amount of regulation upon that market. That regulation may take two forms, both internal and external.
Proceeding along the X axis, the first zero represents no regulation at all. The market cannot exist: buyers and sellers have no confidence in it. It is anarchy. As we approach the second zero we see the formation of a totalitarian state economy. Markets cannot exist at either zero.
The real world never actually reaches either zero. Black markets form to compensate for too much regulation, ad-hoc barter markets appear to compensate for too little regulation. Neither are truly efficient market structures. Market efficiency lies between these two zeroes.
But in like manner, regulation is never optimally efficient. Recently, a fraud was detected against Citigroup’s ATM system. The lag time between an ATM withdrawal and the recalculation of the available balance allowed for the thieves to simultaneously withdraw money within the sixty seconds to balance the accounts.
In the real world, optimal regulation is equally impossible, as impossible as total anarchy or total statism. You can bet Citigroup’s security crews are pretty embarrassed about this lapse.
If the Libertarian complains about the right hand descending side of the parabola, correctly pointing out how over-regulation creates inefficiencies, the rest of us, who look at the ascending curve, believe external regulation are a necessary adjunct to efficient markets. Both are equally true.
I don’t believe I’ll ever get a Libertarian to agree with what I’ve written here.Report
Let a parabola labeled Market exist in the first quadrant with its zeros upon the X axis.
Of course its zeros are on the X axis! THAT’S WHAT FISHING MAKES THEM ZEROS!
Sorry. Carry on.Report
they could be on the y axis.Report
No.Report
Heh. The Libertarian parabola would be placed with the zeroes on either side and the zenith exactly on the Y axis. Which would, of course, lead them to conclude NO REGULATION is best.Report
Hmm. What is negative regulation?Report
when the regulators actively participate in what they’re regulating…profiting outsize others because they’re the regulators and they write the rules to suit ’em.Report
Oh, it’s all negative. Even when it’s the only thing which makes markets work. The Libertarians hate it all, even when they grudgingly accept its necessity and boy howdy, that’s like trying to milk a bull around here.Report
Blaise, you’re proposing points in the second quadrant, where the X value (the amount of regulation, not its effect) is negative. What does that mean?Report
I specifically excluded such points in the second axis. Markets will never actually reach the X axis: some form of barter or black market will emerge as X approaches 0. Absolute anarchy is practically impossible, so is absolute totalitarianism.
In the real world, market participants will start demanding some sort of regulation. Even the most ardent Libertarians, for all my joking about them, do insist on some sort of sanction against Force ‘n Fraud. They’re quite serious about it, too. They’re not anarchists.
And on their side, even the Liberals get angry with a totalitarian state. The zenith is sorta like Goldilocks’ porridge, not too hot, not too cold. Just right.Report
Heh. The Libertarian parabola would be placed with the zeroes on either side and the zenith exactly on the Y axis.
On either side of the Y axis, i.e. one with positive X, and one with negative X.
Never mind, the answer “what did you mean?” has been answered quite well.Report
I’m having a little trouble visualizing that graph, but I think I get your point. Here’s where I think we’re having difficulties: libertarians (most) aren’t suggesting you can’t have any regulations; the question is who does the regulating. I contend the people in the marketplace are best suited to choose which regulations they want (they’re the ones that need to trust the market, after all). I go back to the eBay example: it manages to be pretty successful based on regulations it imposes, not the government (mostly).
I agree there are other considerations when the market has external effects (pollution, etc.), but when those don’t exist or have little consequence, why not let the market regulate itself?Report
Ebay managed to be successful by manipulating the fourth estate. It wasn’t the best business model, but it didn’t have to be.
A self-regulated market leads to one which necessarily exploits information-deprived folks. (okay, not really. you can be fair, it’s just not in your interest to be).
An example: I show up with a credit rating of 700, and you do as well. We get signed up for two different loans (in fact, they don’t even bother telling me that I qualify for your loan, which is far better than mine.) You’re white, I’m black. There’s an information deficit here, wherein my friends all get the same loan rate, and so do your friends. Nobody sees the problem.
So, Joe Consumer wants regulations.
Joe Cheat does not, because he’s not going to abide by them in the first place.Report
I see your point about how there may be an incentive for the seller to hide the truth.
However, in this day and age, isn’t that relatively unlikely? Won’t the news quickly get around?
And how does eBay demonstrate this problem? I’m not seeing it. And, just out of curiosity, how did it become successful by manipulating the “fourth estate”?
I think the much better arguments to be made for external regulations are the ones that counteract the problem of people not being able to enter the market in the first place. For example (yes, I’m giving you one here), Obamacare’s requirement that insurance companies include members with pre-existing conditions. But this is a slippery slope (“um, I’m feeling left out of the market for private jets!”).Report
It took years for there to be a court case (North Carolina, in case you’re interested — also one of the blue states up on the northern coast.)
I cited Enron, I cited lead-based paint on toys. The second is particularly egregious, as anyone who’s taken chem lab knows that yellow is only from lead. These are things that you could take millions to the bank on, if only you bothered to read a few publically available documents.
Insurance Companies are another: since you have relatively few folks getting hurt in a given year, you can free ride on brand name for ages, without a problem. Hell, that’s Sears whole business model these days, with their repairmen (who used to be really something!).
I could write a whole book on people cheating. I just bought some potting soil this year. Well, it SAID it was potting soil, at any rate. That was a flat out lie. I had it tested by a friend of a friend, and it turned out to be poorly composted newspaper, plus miracle gro. Aka HORRIBLE to grow carrots in.
Now, that’s actual fraud. What they claimed to be selling isn’t what they actually were. But it won’t be detected by most people, because most people grow flowers in the stuff, and miracle gro works decent nearly by its lonesome for selling that.
Ebay spent 75% of its original capital on advertising. Then their advertisers wrote up news articles, and got the Washington Post to publish them (the Post predictably whined for graphs so that they could frontpage the article). The Post ran the articles as is, no changes, no research.
I’m not saying that demonstrates market failure, it’s just that most libertarians seem to think that a market will always produce the bestest most awesomeness and better products too. Which is ridiculous. I’d rather write some rules to make a “bestest awesomest and cool stuff too” market, rather than going with one on FIRE, and bound to go bust.
General Aviation costs about $100 an hour. No TSA for you! 😉
(something that’s reasonable, imnsho).Report
But I don’t understand how you think regulation would have solved these problems. How would you have done things differently if you were given free reign over setting regulations? You act like all these problems magically make themselves known before they occur. These things all tend be reactions, not preventative.
Horrible things happened on 9/11, so at great expense and inconvenience, we beef up Homeland Security and implement the TSA and all that, and have we really prevented anything? It didn’t bring back the thousands that died that day. And do you really think any terrorist worth his weight in oil is going to really try that again, even without the TSA?
Libertarians don’t claim free markets are the magical saviors of the universe; just that the more you interfere with them, generally the fewer outcomes they produce, and those outcomes may have included some pretty great ones. Do you really have the conceit to think you can magically dream up the best outcome better than the market can figure it out by trying things?Report
Brian, this is the second (and I may have missed others) time you’ve brought up the issue of regulation not initially preventing things.
That’s because there are free markets. Typically it’s not until harm’s done — until we see that lead paint lowers children’s IQs, that dioxin pollutes rivers, that drunk driving leads to frequent accident and death, that we regulate. Liberals don’t go around anticipating stuff that might go wrong and try to regulate that, they examine what has gone wrong and try to come up with a frame work for preventing it in the future.Report
I guess what I’m asking is, is regulation really all it’s cracked up to be if it really mainly prevents things after the fact–things that would probably be prevented by the market anyway? I mean, you’re not giving consumers much credit for paying attention to those bad things that happened. Once the dangers of lead paint are exposed, are companies really going to keep on using it, and if so, why will consumers keep buying it?
It seems to me that a lot of problems are avoided if the responsibility is kept with the producer and the consumer for making wise decisions. I can see a better case made for government services that attempt to educate rather than regulate, because this still leaves choices open. In that case, government is providing information rather than making value judgments.Report
Brian,
a market is simply a game. Sometimes it makes “good outcomes” (herein defined as “lots more cool shit”), sometimes it makes really fucking stupid outcomes — building houses that need $90,000 worth of work within the first five years of life.
In an ideal market, I regulate stupid outcomes. Do my best to break up oligopolies, and where oligopolies form, at least consider making the whole thing a governmental thing.
A whole LOT of regulations come about after the fact. People die, and then rules get made. Because 50 people died in a building in Georgia, we have mandatory fire escapes. Saved millions of lives since.
I want to let the markets have the free-est possible hand.
Yanno what I want? A damn high inheritance tax (after the first $6million). Because the worst person to play a game against is someone who has no fear.Report
Brian,
I love EnergyStar too. That one regulation saved billions of dollars, by showing people exactly where their financial interest lies. Are there other places we could do the same thing? As Efficiently?Report
And that’s exactly where Libertarianism fails. Yes, you’re right, on your side of the graph, external regulation attenuates efficiency.
But you’ll never, effing EVER, admit the other side of the parabola. It doesn’t fit into your worldview. The people in the marketplace will not trust each other to work out what’s best. They will always turn to a third party trusted by both, with the ability and mandate to enforce those regulations.Report
Picture the Laffer curve, with the X axis being amount of regulation and the Y axis being, say, wealth creation. Blaise is proposing that Y goes to zero at the endpoints (no regulation or completely suffocating regulation) and reaches it maximum in between.Report
Here’s where I think we’re having difficulties: libertarians (most) aren’t suggesting you can’t have any regulations;
Yes, that strawman is his constant companion.Report
Okay, but what is the difference between “libertarianism plus regulation” and “neoclassical or right-leaning liberalism”?Report
I can’t directly answer that question because there’s too much of it I don’t understand. My response is that it’s a mistake to think libertarianism means an opposition to all regulation. Libertarians almost all believe in, at a minimum, a legal system where those who are harmed by violence, theft, or fraud, can seek recompense. To me that’s a form of regulation.
For my money, the key is just that libertarians are far more skeptical about any further regulations, and would set a higher bar for finding them justified than would liberals. So we’re more likely to say no to a particular regulation, and we’re more likely to demand more in the way of justification of particular regulations. It seems that that comes off as just being opposed to all regulations, but it’s not really.
To me it’s just exactly the same as the way liberals behave when it comes to regulation of our private lives. It’s not that you all will say no to any and every possible regulation of our private lives, but you set a very high bar for justifying such regulations. And then conservatives accuse you of all just being libertines who favor having children snorting coke off the cocks of gay hookers on Main St., and you think, “What? Where the hell’d you get that idea?”
And we libertarians are right there with you, every step of the way. The difference is that when the talk turns to economics, we keep acting exactly the same way, and you guys apply a different decision rule.
Maybe you’re actually in the right. Maybe the two domains are different enough that different decision rules should be employed. But I don’t believe so (although I do think economic regulations are more likely to pass the bar than regulations of our private lives).
So when you find us puzzling, just say to yourself, “they treat the economic realm the same way they treat the civil liberties realm,” and you’ll mostly have it. That doesn’t mean you’ll agree, of course, and I’m not demanding agreement. But I think you’ll understand us more readily and accurately.Report
I think you got it right when you said that liberals think different rules should be applied. A person with no morals in the bedroom at absolute worst, may give some a few hundred people diseases. A person with no morals in the boardroom can literally destroy economies and end the livelihoods of whole regions.
So yes, we say, as liberals, for the well-being of society, you don’t have complete economic freedom. It’s more important you pay a decent wage and follow these rules than the maximum amount of money possible.Report
Jesse,
That’s fine. I’m not arguing that point here. I’m happy for you to hold that position against any arguments I might make.
I’m only talking about how liberals can better understand libertarianism, and I worry that by jumping too quickly to arguing about those positions you’re missing that point, so that next time around you’ll once again misunderstand us.
Instead of seeking just to refresh the argument, please just listen for a moment.Report
It seems fair to summarise the Libertarian perspective as a necessary check to over-regulation.
I might also add a fairly innocuous addendum to the BlaiseParabola, see if you can agree with this, too. Purely external regulation trends toward statism and purely internal regulation trends toward anarchy. At the zenith, market participants enjoy a bare minimum of regulation and bystanders (read taxpayers) are glad enough to see sufficient regulation, lest the market go apeshit again.Report
Purely external regulation trends toward statism and purely internal regulation trends toward anarchy.
I hope you’ll allow me some time to mull that over.Report
The zenith is the point of optimal possible efficiency at that point in time, which again is dynamic.Report
A fellowship at the Cato Institute? 🙂Report
Damon:
“All you do is insert yourselves into MY life, telling me what I can and can’t do:”
That’s what I wind up getting from Damon, from Brian. And I’ve even gotten it from you.Report
James,
“the key is just that libertarians are far more skeptical about any further regulations, and would set a higher bar for finding them justified than would liberals”
So both liberals and libertarians believe economic (and personal) autonomy is -other things equal- intrinsically good. And both liberals and moderate libertarians believe that it is sometimes justified to limit a particular economic freedom (speaking loosely), e.g. to break up a monopoly, enforce patents, regulate pollution, provide a safety net of some sort, etc.
Extreme libertarians (Nozick, say) do not believe that limitting economic freedom is ever just.
So therefore, isn’t it true that 1.) moderate libertarians and liberals agree on principles, while moderate libertarians and extreme libertarians disagree on principle? And isn’t it also true that 2.) names like “libertarian” or “liberal” are best thought of as names for political philosophy’s, i.e. labels for sets pf preferred principles of justice?
Well, if you agree with 1. and 2., then -and there is a deductively valid argument here- then you have to agree that you and Jason and all other so-called moderate libertarians ought to call yourselves “liberals.”
In simpler terms, you agree with the essential claim of liberalism -and disagree with the essential claim of extreme libertarianism- that we need to balance worries about maximizing autonomy with other goals: especially a minimum of utility and a minimum of equality.
So why not describe yourself as a liberal who favors markets and market-like structures (what they call “neoliberalism,” or like what Matt Yglesias accepts) with a minimum of gov’t structuring?
If you did this, you wouldn’t get attacked for being an extreme libertarian anymore. 🙂Report
Also, is this a simpler way of stating your disagreement with what most liberals believe: You believe that markets should be regulated (in all or almost all cases) less than they are and this would create more equality, overall utility, and economic autonomy. While most liberals want more regulation in too many economic spheres.
Of course, Yglesias et al want charter schools and the end of all sorts of licensures and housing regulations. So you aren’t alone as a deregulation loving liberal. You just have to argue -which you often do or try to do- that deregulation is a good liberal policy. This would be easier if you identified as philosophically liberal.Report
Now what I’m secretly hoping is to make some logical (at least algebraic) synthesis of Libertarian and Liberal thought processes, so’s the worthy Jason can write it up in Libertarian-ese.
The Progressive Liberals, (though this is a gross generalisation) tend to push for more regulation, or to rephrase it more charitably, more effective regulation of markets. This can be carried too far and is a distorted view of capitalism, witness all the nonsense about Greedy Capitalists and 99%ers. Fatuous nonsense with just enough of the glue of truth to make for dandy sloganeering.
Capitalism works, folks. But as with any force we wish to control, we must regulate it. That’s so obvious it’s a goddamn tautology. The Libertarians want to reduce regulatory friction and that’s a useful goal. Capitalism needs to evolve and regulation must evolve along with it.
Where more risk appears, we need more regulation. Where we can reduce risk, we can reduce regulation. The first step to effective regulation is the effective and timely promulgation of accurate information to all parties involved.
All this is so obvious, I can’t believe I’m saying it: but as surely as the market participants rely on that information, they rely on the bare minimum of regulation to give them confidence in that market, that promises will be kept, that secret collusion can be prevented, that corrupt regulators can be detected and punished, in short, that markets can be kept competitive.Report
Shazbot,
One of the things that distinguishes us is that I don’t worry about whether less regulated markets would create more equality. Equality in economic outcomes is a distinctly liberal goal, whereas libertarians are pretty neutral about it. If it happens, that’s fine. If it doesn’t, that’s also fine. Our goal is improved well-being for all, and if my economic status improves next year, I don’t really care if Bill Gates’ economic status improvement once again outstrips mine by unfathomable amounts.
And for my money, the effort to define us out of libertarianism is a shell game. I’m not at all interested in telling others how to define themselves, and I’m even less interested in having others tell me how to define myself.Report
James,
I mean a mimimum of equality of opportunity. (Which all liberals believe in, not equality of outcome, which only few liberals believe in.)
Surely you’re overstating your apathy about inequality. Surely you care about some minimum of equality, especially if we mean equality of opportunity.
Imagine a world where fair, unregulated market transactions result in one super-corporation (owned by a few hundred people) possessing all the wealth in the U.S. Let’s call it Mother-Corp. (You may think such a thing is implausible, but this is a hypothetical, designed to test whether you care about equality at all, just as Nozick’s Wilt Chamberlain case is a hypothetical.) Everyone else owes Mother-Corp money and Mother-Corp uses those debts to control virtually everything. The owners of Mother-Corp live like kings and everyone else lives in abject poverty. The owners send their children to a special business school that is very expensive and no other child of regular parents can afford it. To earn enough money to get out of debt or prevent going into debt would require going to that school.
Is this a just society? (Nozick would say yes, BTW, because any result of free trades is always just.) My guess is that you would say no, on grounds of equality. It isn’t fair that the poor children can’t go to the school that would allow them to succeed only because of their parent’s economic station in life. If you agree with that you believe that considerations of equality (especially equality of opportunity) at least can trump a set of individual’s right to not be taxed or have their wealth redistributed.
I get that you think in the actual world, as a matter of fact, redistributive measures are not helping or are making the problem of inequality (especially of opportunity) worse.
But my guess is that you believe children who are born into poverty who are blind or disabled should be given economic assistance (to help them become educated, which can be expensive for disabled children, and to help them compete in society).
And the money for such programs has to be transferred from somewhere. So, you do believe in taking money from the rich to help the poor have equal opportunities to succeed. No?
If not, you are an extreme libertarian like Nozick, who won’t redistribute resources society to help the blind and the disabled wo are born poor have a fair shot at success.Report
I mean a mimimum of equality of opportunity.
Not of outcome? Then, again, why are you not a libertarian? Because it sounds like you want just what we want.
As to your hypotheticals, I’m not going to engage them because you seem to want to draw where only extreme libertarians count as libertarians. If I don’t pass the Nozick test, I’m not a libertarian. I reject that idea.Report
MotherCorp would collapse under its own weight. Because it faced no competition, it would never respond effectively to changing consumer demands for this ‘n that. It would start issuing loathsome Five Year Plans and suchlike.
The Economic Barons of MotherCorp would need to build castles with moats. Their own standard of life would quickly plummet, however grand it might seem in comparison to the serfs. Since MotherCorp could stifle all the competition aborning, innovation would start looking like the Book of Kells, beautifully done work but almost completely illegible.
And soon enough, as with all monocultures, a plague would arrive to sweep it away. Or like the dodos, a few sailors would arrive and eat these fat, flightless birds and I’ll bet my life they were pretty damned tasty and we’d never hear of MotherCorp again.Report
Shazbot,
Another way to respond to your hypothetical is as such…
If free enterprise led predictably and consistently to bad results, pragmatic libertarians would not support it.Report
Roger,
If I understand what Shazbot is arguing (and of course I may be wrong, and I welcome him to correct me), I think your response demonstrates that these so-called “pragmatic libertarians” must actually be liberals.Report
Re: Blaise at 5:22 p.m.
I’m on board with that. I think we’ll still argue about which specific regulations are valuable or not, but as a general–but not uselessly vague–statement, I’m totally on board.Report
James,
I can’t get your link for some reason. (Probably my bad.)
We could choose the term “liberal” or “libertarian” for the philosophical principles we believe.
But given that a.) the vast majority of Americans (and English speakers more generally) associate the term “libertarianism” with what we are calling “extreme libertarianism,” or Nozick’s view; and b.) given that the majority of English speakers associate “liberal” with a belief in economic and social autonomy that is limited occasionaly for the sake of utility or equality of opportunity; and c.) we won’t be able to change how most speakers use the term only how we use the term, isn’t it true that it is wiser to fit our use of terms like “liberal” or “libertarian” to society’s use.
I mean you could call yourself a “theocrat,” too, but that isn’t how society uses the term.
In general, you agree with liberals that economic autonomy is not the only principle of justice. You think utility and equality of opportunity are also important. But “liberalism” is the name that society uses for a broad family of views that try to blend acceptance of those three principles together. (Rawlsian liberalism is one such blend. There are others.) So why not choose a term that other users of the terms “liberalism” and “libertarianism” will be able to hear and correctly glean information about your principles? (If you use the term “liberal” like others do, you might find that people stop misunderstanding your views. Indeed, maybe it is partially your fault -sorry that sounds aggressive- that people keep misunderstanding your position. Maybe you are using labels differently than society.)Report
Shazbot,
Here’s the URL.
As to your question, I regularly consider dropping the term libertarian, not because I think it’s inappropriate, but because, as you note, society’s an ass. (I may have paraphrased there.) Please allow me to say that it’s particularly frustrating when folks like you appear to use society’s tendency toward being an ass to excuse your own misuse of the term.
But if I dropped the term, I most assuredly would not start calling myself a liberal. Once upon a time, 20 years ago, I did, and the term fit. Today it’s like putting on one the suits I had 20 years ago; it just doesn’t fit at all. (I lie; I didn’t own a suit 20 years ago. But today I have 4 suits, and none of them fit.) Sorry, I’m with liberals on civil liberties, but on most other things you can all go to hell as far as I’m concerned (and I mean that in the nicest possible way, as someone who doesn’t believe in hell).
If I chose another term it would by polycentrist. And I’d spend just as much time explaining it.Report
Dammit, here’s the URL. https://ordinary-times.com/blog/2012/04/testing-ideology/Report
I mean a mimimum of equality of opportunity.
Not of outcome? Then, again, why are you not a libertarian? Because it sounds like you want just what we want.
So was the opportunity really equal between Barbara Pierce Bush and, say, my wife, born to an ordinary Joe and Jeanne?Report
I don’t know what a “polycentrist” is, but the term sounds like something I would want to identify as.Report
Tod,
Ironically, it’s an idea originally developed within communist theory. Essentially it means having multiple, and potentially overlapping, centers of political authority. It’s really a form of federalism, in which policy decisions are made at the level of all affected stakeholders (rather than being imposed from above). That would leave a lot more local authority than is currently the case. And so I often get liberals sneering, “so you’d allow southern cities to re-enact segregated schools.” No, we have a Constitution that guarantees certain fundamental rights, and I’d stick with that. But that doesn’t stop the liberal sneering, I’ve found. And it means you have to allow other communities to do things you personally find very distasteful. For example, Jessie gave me the impression that he’s so opposed to vouchers for private schools that he would try to ban it everywhere, even if the people in that school district overwhelmingly wanted it. I’d allow it, even if it turned out to be a phenomenally bad idea, because the stakeholders should get to make the choices that affect them, and I’m not a stakeholder in their community.
But here’s the thing, it wouldn’t be wholly honest for me to call myself a polycentrist and pretend that I don’t think of myself as libertarian, because polycentrism is very compatible with libertarianism. If a bunch of people want to start a commune, that’s fine with the polycentrist and fine with the libertarian. My community wants to ban strip clubs, street parking at night, and business signs bigger than 3 feet by 5 feet–I’m dubious about whether any of those is necessary, but I’m fine with letting my community have the authority to do so, and not letting either the state nor the federal government make that decision for us.Report
Thus, revealing another difference liberals and libertarians, James. You put the possible educational future of thousands of children on the same level as whether or not a business can have a sign that’s x inches tall outside of their office.Report
We also think it’s like some kind of job where it’s possible to judge whether someone’s doing a good job or not.Report
I think you can measure teachers fine, but not based on BS standarized tests and business school metrics I think don’t really apply to other peoples jobs either. The difference is the people in the cubicles took the BS business school “systems” lying down and the unions are actually fighting against them.Report
Good lord, Jessie, you really aren’t interested in a discussion, are you? There are any number of ways you could have phrased that, but you chose to phrase it in the “you don’t care at all about the children!” way. So you leave no real opening for discussion because you’ve already put the worst spin on it.Report
Won’t somebody pleeeeeeeaase think of the children!
Sorry, had to be said.Report
We libertarians think of children all the time. Sweet, tasty, children. Some like free range children best, but I like mine plumped up in a small cage for maximum tenderness.Report
James, that comment just earned you an extra beer… er, ale.Report
Alan Greenspan, 1994: “there is nothing involved in Federal regulation which makes it superior to market regulation.”
Alan Greenspan, 1997: “There appears to be no need for government regulation of off- exchanged derivative transactions.”
Alan Greenspan, 2002 post-Enron: “We do not believe a public policy case exists to justify this government intervention.”
Alan Greenspan, 2008: “Bank loan officers, in my experience, know far more about the risks and workings of their counter parties than do bank regulators.”
Alan Greenspan, 2009: “Oops.“Report
Blaise,
Your parabola sounds right to me. An unregulated market as you define it here is an absurdity. I also agree that the optimal amount of regulation is probably constantly changing due to feedback effects on the success of regulation at discouraging cheating vs the costs of the regulations.Report
Nunc dimittis! Many thanks, Roger.Report
I’m pretty sure I agree with it as well. I haven’t seen it put in quite those terms before, so I don’t want to endorse it without thinking about it for a while. But I like it at first glance.
Exchange is a strategy with hoped-for benefits, some of which can be positive-sum, that is, when an exchange produces a more efficient allocation of goods. The likelihood of that happening reaches a maximum at some point between zero regulation and totalitarianism. I think I can agree.Report
Gee, but Blaise said no libertarian would ever agree to it. How is it possible that we have not one, but two libertarians in good standing agreeing to it?Report
By God, I did get y’all to agree to my vision of optimal regulation. And that’s worth any amount of good-natured scoffing from y’all.Report
At no point did Hanley ever say that regulation was never required, or that all markets would function better without it.Report
STFU Duck. The smart people are talking now.Report
What’s funny, Blaise, is that you seem to think you have change anyone’s mind, rather than presenting a model with which they were already in agreement.
Nobody here’s in real disagreement with the general model. The disagreement is in the details of the parabola’s shape, who’s doing the regulating, and what form the regulations take.
It’s like arguing about the Yankees. We all agree they suck; we’re just arguing about whether they suck as bad as Hitler or only as bad as bin Laden.Report
It’s funny, Blaise, that you tell Duck to STFU in response to one of his rare clear and inarguably factually true arguments.
I urge you to go back and re-read it. He’s exactly, 100%, right. And half our disagreement would disappear if we could just get that fact squared away.Report
James now uses baseball metaphors. I thunk my work here is done.Report
The Yankees are a baseball team? I thought the word was just a hate metaphor.Report
Truth is, I brought this parabola up before. Some months back. Never got anyone to agree with it. All I got from your argumentative ass was something about Billionaire Arsonists. So excuse me for remembering that moment. It was easily google-able.
But memories are short around here and wit is in short supply.Report
Yeah, your parabola argument wasn’t interesting enough to elicit a response. The billionaire arsonists claim was.Report
Unfortunately, there doesn’t appear to be a good discussion of what we mean by “regulation.” A broad agreement in principle, but I’ll bet a lot of disagreement lurking. When are price controls justified? How much power should an administrative board have to decide what the rules mean? Etc.Report
Roger’s comment is really profound. 😉Report
PB,
Excellent response as usual.
First, I will answer as I did to Kazzy and Robert earlier that actual sins need to be rectified. Exploiters should be punished where practical and victims compensated by the transgressors.
But your model reflects the truth that there are wakes from earlier actions which have lasting effects. The debate then goes to the coerciveness necessary to correct this. To grossly oversimplify, I suggest we agree to institutional rules which inherently tend to correct for this. My metaphor to Kazzy was the NFL draft. The rules are set up impartially that the worse teams get first pick. An example of how this could work is to provide larger vouchers to poor parents. Another is where we agree to a flat tax with a large deduction that is structurally progressive. Another is to develop social insurance programs that are means tested.
I could go on with all the caveats I normally do about competing institutions, responsibilities for those getting aid, opt outs, local vs national, supermajorities and such, but the point I want to make is that rules can be impartial, non coercive and self correcting.
I would also be very reluctant to structure this racially. It should be based upon actual standing, not skin color. My grandson does not deserve special treatment just because his birth certificate says black and Hispanic. There are truly disadvantaged kids of all races out there and they should be treated fairly and impartially based upon their standing, not their race.Report
+1. And when you pitch this to most black folks out there, they think it over for a moment, and say “so I get to keep my piece of the pie, share with some redneck from WV, AND get the conservative racists off my back? Good Deal!”
I really wish such things were possible.Report
To grossly oversimplify, I suggest we agree to institutional rules which inherently tend to correct for this.
And funny thing is, we used to have them. But they look like the tax rates we had in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s.
And watch the Libertarians howl when Liberals point out how taxes are at an all time low and say hey, maybe we should go back to some of the earlier rates…Report
I find approaches like you suggest that bias based on outcomes appealing, too. Part of Zic’s point is that a lot of those sins continue today, but are hard to quantify or prove and thus prevent. You could argue this as *more* reason to bias on outcomes, not less – while we cannot see the sins themselves, we can see their impact in aggregate, and correct based on that.
I like minimum incomes, EITC, progressive income taxes, and negative income taxes (as Jason suggests, IIRC) for exactly that reason. I’d prefer a system that was much stronger there than today, even at the expense of reducing direct assistance programs somewhat. Finally, I’ll note that many, particularly conservatives but also some libertarians, complain about rewarding bad behavior, welfare queens, and socialist Kenyan anti-colonialism when some suggest biasing government assistance based on outcomes.Report
Patrick,
I think your concern about bad incentives is always valid, but would address them with my various listed caveats. As Blaise has pointed out quite well, there is no perfect system.
I wonder if the other libertarians agree with this position on correcting for past imbalances?Report
Roger, it’s not just ‘past imbalance.’ It’s imbalance that, like kudzu vine, grew roots nearly impossible to eradicate long before we decided there was an imbalance. We can pull the vine, but the roots remain, and eventually sprout new vines. That’s why I said we can’t start at year zero.
The imbalances factor into the assumptions we make. Think of a movie from the 1950’s, where it’s presumed okay to make fun of a woman’s driving or to presume there are jobs she cannot do. That’s why folks get offended at ‘dog whistle’ language like food stamp president. That’s why the Willie Horton ads worked. That’s why Hilary Clinton and Condi Rice have to spend two hours getting dressed for public, while their male counterparts can simply get dressed. Institutionally, we see it in incarceration statistics for black men, in pay disparity for women, in poverty rates for Latinos. Isn’t it possible that this is a continued and ongoing form of coercion that takes time to work out of our assumptions? And if we don’t work it out, then it perpetuates without check.Report
zic,
Is working it out of our assumptions more dependent on government action or more dependent on social action?Report
Andrew Sullivan just linked a few very interesting articles on this subject, for example: http://www.techyville.com/2012/11/news/unemployed-black-woman-pretends-to-be-white-job-offers-suddenly-skyrocket/#
I like the idea of replacing race or gender targeted programs with outcome-biased approaches, but it would have to be *much* more progressive than anything we have today and, I suspect, than most conservatives or libertarians would be willing to plausibly entertain.Report
@James: How would you suggest we address this problem? Just let the market work it out in the long term, eventually while minorities and women continue to pay the real price of ongoing discrimination and bias?Report
James, I think it depends on both. It took government action to give my grandmother the right to vote. It took social action to put Margaret Chase Smith in the Senate. But I still had to battle for pay equity in the 1980’s and 90’s. I still found I got paid less for freelance writing then male writers.Report
Patrick,
Does government operate independently of social action?Report
Uh, I’m not sure what you’re getting at, James. As numerous studies and anecdotal links (like I’ve shown above) illustrate, there are still huge problems with discrimination that bias the market – all hail – against women and minorities. Decades of social action, market forces, and government action have reduced that, but by no means eliminated it.
Are there policies you’d advocate to lessen the impact of the biases in the market on women or minorities, or do you think should we should ask them bear the burden of that bias them while those the bias in the market favors (like me!) continue to acrue the benefits of that bias in the market?Report
Patrick,
We have a democratic government. Does it make any social progress that is not desired by a large segment of the demos? Does it make sense to talk about government being progressive on these issues independently of people outside of government taking the lead and pushing them to do so? And if not, then any time we talk about government doing these things, aren’t we really implying that the motive force for these progressive things is already happening….out in the private world outside government?Report
Generally, of course in a democratic government, government action proceeds from a large number of the relevant population pushing it to do so. That’s not always the case, however. To cite two examples, I imagine most of the population of Louisiana would still love to have teacher-led prayer in public schools, and Ole Miss didn’t desegregate itself based on the wishes of the majority of the local or state populace.
Real discrimination and bias still exist and still bias the markets today, decades after women and minorities became “equal” citizens in the market. Do we do nothing about it and let the market “eventually” fix it while real people are penalized by this bias? If not, what should we do about it?Report
Sure, the change is spotty, but would Louisiana have had change forced on them by the government if the populace of a number of other states had not changed its views?Report
Maybe, maybe not. Sometimes the courts are out in front of the populace.
Your turn.
394 Patrick Bridges November 20, 2012 at 8:24 pm
@James: How would you suggest we address this problem? Just let the market work it out in the long term, eventually while minorities and women continue to pay the real price of ongoing discrimination and bias?
397 Patrick Bridges November 20, 2012 at 10:01 pm
Are there policies you’d advocate to lessen the impact of the biases in the market on women or minorities, or do you think should we should ask them bear the burden of that bias them while those the bias in the market favors (like me!) continue to acrue the benefits of that bias in the market?
399 Patrick Bridges November 20, 2012 at 11:23 pm
Real discrimination and bias still exist and still bias the markets today, decades after women and minorities became “equal” citizens in the market. Do we do nothing about it and let the market “eventually” fix it while real people are penalized by this bias? If not, what should we do about it?
Report
Gotta go to bed now, but I’m with Peter Finley Dunn, “th’ Supreme Coort follows th’ election returns.”
More seriously, in my former life as a student of constitutional law, I was deeply influenced by this book.Report
I look forward to your answers to my questions.Report
“I imagine most of the population of Louisiana would still love to have teacher-led prayer in public schools.
Ooo, that would be a delicious assertion of states’ rights if they went ahead and did it (in effect nullifying Everson v. Board of Education and consequently incorporation doctrine).Report
If you’re talking state’s rights and Louisiana, the case you should probably keep in mind is Plessy v. Ferguson.Report
Hmmm, that may have been a little edgier than I meant or you deserved, Brian. Talk about state’s rights and nullification, particularly w.r.t southern states, makes me a little punchy. :/Report
Touché.
Yeah, I’m not going there. Not tonight, at least. [insert maniacal laugh]Report
Patrick,
I’ve been a bit oblique, but my point is that relying on government to fix things because the private sector is failing isn’t really so straightforward. If the private sector is failing, that means there’s little public demand for whatever good social outcome you want; if there’s little public demand, then there’s little pressure on government, and little incentive for a democratically responsive government to act.
So thinking government takes the lead in these things is to buy into a myth. Government will only act on these things once there is sufficient demand among the citizens; i.e., in the private sector.
My point is that government and market are ultimately based on exactly the same foundation–the mass of the public. So if the market isn’t making any strides towards solving a social problem, government isn’t likely to, either, because there is insufficient public demand for a solution.
That’s not to argue that government doesn’t have a role and should never act. It’s to argue that assuming government will act when there’s insufficient demand to move the private sector at all misunderstands the basic foundation of both arenas of activity.
And let’s not forget that it’s government itself that has often been the worst perpetrator of these problems. Segregation in public schools was a government policy; and it wasn’t only southern states that discriminated that way–the federal government ran a segregated school system in D.C. Baseball broke the color barrier a year before the federal government integrated the armed services. And it’s governments that still maintain discriminatory policies towards gays, while businesses increasingly realize that being gay-friendly is good for their bottom line.
That’s not to say the market solves all problems and gov’t has no role. As long as some people remain biased, there will be segments of the market that cater to them. And although government will not play a role until there has been some forward movement in public opinion, government can then play a role in helping public opinion to continue moving forward, and in enacting rules that constrain those ugly market segments that remain.
The whole picture is just a lot more complicated than either market bad/government good or government good/market bad. And to phrase a question as “rely on the market or rely on government” overlooks that complexity.Report
The whole picture is just a lot more complicated than either market bad/government good or government good/market bad. And to phrase a question as “rely on the market or rely on government” overlooks that complexity.
Hmm. I never said anything vaguely resembling market bad/goverment good or vice versa, nor did I say “rely on the market or rely on government.” I really don’t have any idea why you think I did. Are you unintentionally channeling MA or something, James? 🙂
Seriously, though, I think we’re talking past each other here. I’m not talking about issues where many people would think there’s not a problem. I’m talking about things that most people *agree* are problems, but we haven’t fixed, *despite* the market and past non-trivial government action that people agreed to.
As I said up-thread, real dynamic systems, even very simple ones, can admit for systematic steady-state error and bias unless you specifically combat it. This is true even if it that bias is unwanted and the system acts against it (i.e. P vs. PI linear control). That’s the situation we have today – despite the system (both the market and the government) acting against discrimination, we still have real undesirable bias in the outcomes.
So the question isn’t whether or not to address it – it’s how best to address it. Perhaps that discussion is best continued down-thread where you and Chris are discussing something similar?Report
PB,
We tend to be able to meet in the middle, but let me push back nicely on a few things.
First, I am totally unconvinced that systematic discrimination explains disparities in wages for women. We had this thread a few weeks ago, and the data is pretty clear that gender disparities can be explained via the types of fields and the number of hours and other career choices that are made.
Markets “want” to penalize irrational discrimination. If a manager hires a less qualified candidate due to irrational bias, then he is harming the profitability of the firm, all else equal.
Most importantly though, I want to clarify that most of the classical liberals on this site strongly support well engineered social safety nets that correct for cycles of disadvantage. And this is exactly what we have today. The poor are supported by the non poor in tax rates, paying for education and infrastructure. The middle class and above built these. We all benefited.
Furthermore, we pay out almost a trillion dollars a year in means tested income redistribution each year. Divide this number by the number of disadvantaged families, and you get a mind blowingly large number per family. I encourage each of you to do the sums.
In summary, we do support basing society to help the less fortunate. Society is massively supporting them right now. So, to paraphrase Jaybird, when is enough, enough? Two trillion?
My guess is much of what we are spending today is going to the wrong people or is structured in ways which adds fuel to the problem rather than solving it. The discussion shouldn’t really be about stepping up more for the poor, it should be about using what we are spending on them now wiser.Report
You want to know the magnitude of steady-state error we’re facing? In 2011 dollars, the difference between mean African American per capita income and mean White Not Hispanic per-capita income has been holding steady at about $14,000/year for the last two decades with a mean annual per-capita income in this country of about $28,000/year in 2011.
How to do better than we’re currently doing, be it market or government based, is exactly what I’ve been asking. I want proposed solutions not theory, as this problem is real, it’s systematic, it’s not getting fixed, and real people are suffering as a result, not just numbers of spreadsheets. I don’t care whether the solution is government-based or market-based; I just want a solution that works and I don’t care where it comes from.
You proposed an approach, Roger, that’s great, I really appreciate it, and we should discuss it more. Same for Brian’s proposal for dealing with poverty and retirement among the elderly – I may doubt it will work, but it’s something meaningful to discuss. I find that much more useful and responsive than dancing around with oblique questions on theories of social change so that you can avoid answering specific questions about how to solve real problems.
And people wonder why libertarians sometimes have trouble talking to liberals and vice versa?Report
So when I hear talk of ‘big government,’ of ‘coercion,’ of ‘taxes as theft,’ I’m most left feeling like I’m looking at someone unwilling or incapable of recognizing the coercion the government has ended, the theft of labor, of liberty, of rights while claiming they’re being treated as slaves were, as women were.
It’s more to it than that.
The Conservatarian fringe – amply represented in this blog – has within it a group that is incapable of recognizing how many of the banners they have taken up (such as the “states’ rights” banner) existed for and continue to exemplify a desire to put some of those practices back into existence.
We see this when Jaybird and others whine on about how we are “forcing them to pay for someone else’s birth control.”
Or similar sentiment.Report
We see this when Jaybird and others whine on about how we are “forcing them to pay for someone else’s birth control.”
M.A., I’d ask that if you use quotes, you cut and paste what I actually said.
Because if I say “you don’t understand my argument”, you’ll come back with something like “I COMPLETELY UNDERSTAND HOW YOU’RE A RAPE APOLOGIST!!!” or something equally obtuse. Instead I’ll just ask you to do the courtesy of actually quoting me when you quote me.
Thanks.Report
M.A. has made it clear he doesn’t want to discuss matters reasonably or to debate fairly — he wants to attack, smear and spin. I just reponded to one of his obtuse comments, and I regretted it as soon as I hit sent.
These people who are attacking Jaybird and James for being conservatives are simply dense. It’s amazing how they can overlook so much just to protect their worldview from any form of critique, even the mild ones from Jaybird and James and Jason. Talk about a closed system of thought.Report
(My own preferred setup would be a no-deductions negative income tax with a substantial guaranteed minimum income, minus the entire welfare state, but I digress.)
I’m no expert on political philosophy though probably am closest to being a Rawlsian high liberal from what I’ve read, not a libertarian. Interestingly enough, though, a system like this would probably be my preference, too, assuming reasonable progressive negative, zero, and positive income tax brackets.
This is exactly why I think discussions of actual policy proposals are more interesting – labels between liberal, conservative, and libertarian are grey enough that we end up talking past each other when we talk abstractly in slogans and principles. I think there’s a lot more room and potential for agreement when we talk actual policy and ideas.Report
I’d prefer such as system as well, unfortunately there are two big obstacles to it.
1. It is so different from existing systems anywhere in the world that there may be no way from here to there except leaping in one go, which just isn’t going to happen.
2. For a lot of people it is important to stigmatise the non-working poor, having them labelled as part of a different set up to you is part of that. It is harder to whine about those in the ‘negative tax/benefits’ system when you’re in the same system.Report
I should add that despite my dislike of that attitude it does have a point. There really are good reasons to give incentives to work rather than not and shaming is one of those incentives.Report
I’d think a paycheck would be a good incentive to work. Sure, stigma has its place, but I’m not worried that we are applying it too sparingly.Report
Oh I agree, I was trying to be as fair as possible to those who would object to negative income tax because it ‘rewards laziness’.
Any system for providing a safety net can be abused and a properly calibrated n.i.t could reduce the push to avoid work by doing away with benefit traps.Report
I think a lot of people on the margins think, “if a job is so important, then why is the pay so bad?”Report
Jason talks about a paycheck. I’m going to talk girls. Because more guys are interested in getting da gurlz, than they are in getting a bigger paycheck.
Enough women will stigmatize a guy who sits on his duff…Report
1. It is so different from existing systems anywhere in the world that there may be no way from here to there except leaping in one go, which just isn’t going to happen.
I don’t think this is quite right, actually. The “from here to there” issue never really arises wrt anything specific Jason K is advocating in the OP. Each item on the list is just a change in policy. And each one in isolation can happen without any radical revision of our society or major institutions. Think of it as incrementalism, I guess.Report
The from here referred specifically to a negative income tax replacing both existing tax and benefits systems. The actual proposals in Jason’s post, yes they can be done. Hell we could open the cell doors for non-violent drug offenders tomorrow and nothing much else would change.Report
I think the problem is that lefties are fighting for the same political space as libertarians: Both groups are competing for voters who dislike the major parties. Conservatives haven’t had much to lose from engaging libertarians because their ideology is so much more dominant, although I’d argue this will change soon.Report
http://praxeology.net/RTLreachleft.pdf
This piece does a great job explaining why libertarians and leftists fight, and charting a possible rapprochement.Report
Even as a conservative, I’ve always disliked incarceration of nonviolent drug offenders. I’ve simply been against creating a “right to do a wrong,” a concept that goes to the heart of the conservative/libertarian divide. But I’m even willing to move off that position on the drug issue for the sake of limiting government and developing sensible policy, even while I would not put the thing in terms of a “right” to use drugs.Report
Are there any limits to your jurisdiction? In theory, I mean.
Do you just need more manpower?
Let’s pretend that the Democrats aren’t in power, if that helps you answer the question. Let’s pretend we’re in the heady days that followed November 2004.
Are there any limits to your jurisdiction?Report
or booze, cigarettes, tattoos, extreme sports, running with the bulls, etc.Report
Jaybird, not sure what you mean by jurisdiction here?Report
Areas in which you have the authority to put your nose and say “you’re doing it wrong, you need to change, we’ll put you in jail if you don’t”.
Are there any areas in which you will find yourself saying “you know what? That’s none of our business.”?
Any at all?Report
One of my law professors used to refer to a concept in Roman law, “law without a sanction.” I never was able to find much literature on it, but the idea always held true for me. It is my belief that man has a certain nature, and that part of his nature sees certain conduct as having a moral component. I assume that even some libertarians recognize that they make moral judgments on things even if they stridently believe their moral judgments have no place in the law except for certain narrow domains. I respect that about libertarians and libertarianism, but I don’t believe the law has no place whatsoever when it comes to nonviolent, noncoerceive yet immoral conduct such as drug use. I’ve also felt it falls into some middle category in which the law should be against it, yet not carry a sanction, at least not any stiff sanction.
From an old blog post:
“The evolution of laws criminalizing suicide and assisted suicide, as a more modern example, was based on long-standing history and tradition carried over from England’s common law as contemptible evils, punishable by confiscation of the offender’s property by the state. Later developments in the law, however, recognized that any purported punishment against the offender’s “lifeless clay” was, in reality, a sanction inflicted against the offender’s hagridden offspring. And yet even today, the act itself is still criminalized.
“And rightly so. Suicide is a deeply profound, private, moral affair bearing on the order of the human soul itself. But it is precisely for this reason that a state purporting to govern human souls cannot fail to recognize it and share in and reflect its governed’s contempt for the act.”
With all that said, I’m “soft” on what I’ve referred to as this “middle” category in the law: conduct that isn’t good, but doesn’t pose any exigent risk to the public safety. That these positions undermine my advocacy of limited government is also troubling. So I’m liable to equivocate on these issues.Report
I made a joke offline about whether raising children into a particular religion is a violation of the child’s First Amendment rights.
Now I’ll ask you seriously:
Is how you raise your child my business? Does it fall under my jurisdiction? Does your lying to your children about a caring God that looks out for them rise to the level of my having a responsibility to step in?
Is there any corner of your life that you are willing to say “this is not your freaking business, Jaybird. Butt the hell out.”?
Because, seriously, I think we both know that there are.
But it’s a lot less obvious when I ask you about your jurisdiction into mine, for some reason.Report
a state purporting to govern human souls
I think, Tim, that’s the heart of your disagreement with libertarians. The state can govern my actions, but they can’t government my soul.
As a Christian I believed the state had no jurisdiction over my soul, and as an agnostic I believe the state has no jurisdiction over whatever might pragmatically qualify as my soul. The state may indeed purport to govern my soul, but it’s well to remember that I also purport to be tall, dark, handsome and charming.Report
What makes nonviolent drug use a “wrong”?Report
Letting your children starve because of it.
*note: this is not a strawman, even though my example is quite a bit older than I am*Report
Hmm, I wonder how many things we can list that people could spend money on when they ought to be spending it on feeding their children?Report
In practice? Not terribly many.
Women and booze are the two classics, and why women kept pennyjars to feed the family. (chime in with more if you can)
I said it wasn’t a strawman!Report
Gambling, smoking (arguably this and booze belong in the drugs category anyway), tickets to sports events, religion, donating to charity.
If you want to argue that addiction is different go ahead but then you have to face the reality that there isn’t a category of addictiveness that catches all illegal drugs and nothing legal.Report
I knew a guy who had a kid that desperately needed to go to a special private school (local public couldn’t handle him). He could afford it, but he would have to stop spending money on his hobby race car that he easily spent $10K on & ran for $1K purses.Report
I can’t fully articulate it here, but at bottom it undermines man’s purpose, calling, flourishing, telos. That can be defined in many ways, of course, and not all drug use undermines all of them. This makes line-drawing often approach arbitrariness, which is why I said I’ve never been strongly in support of incarcerating nonviolent drug offenders. Instead, my tepid support for outlawing had always been in supporting society’s values against using substances that cause people to become detached and generally worse off to their own lives, families, and communities.
I may be off here, but I think this view about drugs is mainstream. I also think that the discomfort about drug laws is also mainstream: They’d generally prefer to mind their own business but at the same time don’t want to adopt a public policy that endorses drug use. Seems to me that framing the issue in terms of limited government rather than rights sums up that attitude about nonviolent drug use.Report
If this is your problem with drugs, it doesn’t seem like you’d be able to easily distinguish between laws against drug use and laws against watching too much television or eating too much junk food, both of which exhibit very similar enervating effects. (Addiction to refined carbohydrates actually works on the same dopamine neurological pathway as cocaine, for instance.) So how would you separate these laws?Report
They’re much harder to write for one thing. Harder to enforce for another. And that’s saying something given how well the War on Drugs has gone. And with each example we find it harder and harder to place limits on the scope of government, which was already a trouble spot for drug laws. To get a rough roadmap on these issues, conservatives could just watch Mike Bloomberg and do the opposite.Report
It wouldn’t be hard to draft and enforce laws prohibiting, say, advertising refined carbohydrates to children. And it wouldn’t be difficult at all to ban powdered sugar or large candy bars with a high sugar content. It would just be draconian and paternalistic, but then that doesn’t distinguish laws against marijuana use either. So I guess I’m still at a loss.Report
You said “laws against watching too much television or eating too much junk food.” Those would be hard to write and enforce. What’s “too much”? How do we know when someone has watched or eaten “too much”?Report
The same way you know when someone smokes too much weed or does too much cocaine, Tim. You DON’T know, and so you just lock up everyone who does even a little bit. Pretty crazy, right? But that’s exactly what you favor in the context of drugs.
What’s your opinion of my proposed limits on advertising refined carbs to children, or banning large candy bars? I’m genuinely curious.Report
Except this isn’t how the system, As Currently Constructed works.
The poor get locked up, the rich have “classy parties”. And the governmental officials get blackmailed.Report
Robert, I’m not in favor of “lock[in] up everyone who does even a little bit.” Probably not even in favor of locking up those who do a lot. Locking up is for people who are a harm to society.
As for your proposals, I’m willing to listen. There’s a point obviously where eating too much unhealthy foot is morally wrong, e.g., gluttony, sloth. The slippery slope you’re trying (not unfairly) to catch me on is why I’d make drug use unlawful but not eating too much unhealthy food. At the end of the day, maybe I’m just following the tide of public opinion on this point. Public opinion doesn’t change whether I view those things as wrongful, but it does change how we react to them. I don’t think people are changing their views on drug use so much as they’re changing their view that criminalizing it and locking people up for it is an imprudent response. As for eating too much bad food, we’re currently experimenting with this, aren’t we? Calorie counts are being put on more and more menus, organic products are more and more prevalent, many people are calling for more labeling of certain kinds of suspicious ingredients or GMOs. Like the sentiment against drug use, the sentiment against unhealthful foods is in the right place. I think it’s probably ok to experiment with how we express that sentiment, though being mindful of the potential of winding up with an uncomfortably large “nanny” state.Report
I apologize for making assumptions about your position, Tim. I also apologize for mischaracterizing your position here.Report
At a certain point, targeting the most vulnerable ought to be seen as a problem, yes.
We don’t allow advertising cigarettes to kids. If there’s enough evidence tying refined carbohydrate “snacks” to the childhood obesity epidemic we have (and the generalized obesity problem that creates a problem in the commons), maybe there’s something that needs to be looked at.
The Magical Market Fairies sure as fish aren’t fixing the obesity problem.
It would just be draconian and paternalistic, but then that doesn’t distinguish laws against marijuana use either.
The funny thing is, Libertarians enter a discussion under the idea that everyone is “just like them.” Would always make the “right” choices, always be an intelligent actor, etc.
And it doesn’t work out that way. There are some people who will sit there and eat an entire party-sized popcorn bowl full of M&M’s just because it’s sitting in front of them; they can’t help themselves. (I actually try not to have candy at my desk for this reason, I’ll eat it all and not realize consciously that I’m doing it).
When you start getting kids young on this stuff, what are you expecting them to be as adults?
“Waah, but why should I be punished, why should you assume I’m going to make a bad choice” is the wrong cry. The answer is, statistically, enough people are going to make a bad choice that impacts us all later via the commons.
Obesity, impacted by years of kids being marketed to in the junk food arena, now impacts us in healthcare costs. And like it or not, we all pay into that. Just one example to think about.
Am I, now, advocating the banning of sugar snacks and penny candies, or a complete ban on sugary sodas? No. Would I like to see Sugar Coated Gusher Bombs or Chocolate Frosted Candy Canes never allowed to be advertised in the commercial breaks of My Little Pony? Yes.
Do I think that maybe, a slight ban on endless-refill soda offerings and 66-ounce “drink your weight in nectar” sodas might be worthwhile to contemplate? Jury’s out but I’m open to argument either way.Report
I’m not one of these dipshits that gets incensed at bans on 48-oz sodas, but there are still some pretty epic pitfalls to this kind of paternalism.
If you accept that the government is likely to be steered by powerful corporate interests, then you have to worry that those interests will lobby for laws that benefit themselves. So for example the government’s dietary recommendations have for the past few decades been to eat way more grains, meat, and dairy than is actually healthy, because the livestock and industrial farming industries had a disproportionate voice in government. This is only starting to change very recently.Report
This strikes me as enormously off M.A. and I’m not even a libertarian. For instance opponents of this kind of paternalism (liberal and libertarian) would pretty readily point out that there’s a lot of paternalism already in the society that is encouraging this childhood obesity we’re decrying here. State subsidies of corn and barriers against cheaper imported sugars, for instance, are a fundamental subsidy of the fattening corn based snack foods you’re decrying here. Nimby zoning laws are preventing the very kind of dense walkable urban or near urban neighborhoods that could non-paternally encourage physical activity and are also promoting the food deserts that encourage the consumption of these subsidized snacks. In this case a pretty good argument can be made that the “magical market fairies” aren’t the only ones at work here.
Are libertarians and other opponents of paternal interventions off base by demanding that we should try removing or altering the state interference that is promoting obesity before we instead lard a new layer of state program onto the problem that is at least partially being caused by state programs? Maybe before we start painting on our ban the snacks paint with our left hand we should consider stopping our right hand from applying the promote the snacks paint?
I mean heck, there’s a good liberal position to be staked out against this paternalism. The snack promoting things the state does is mostly held over protectionism from an economically less literate era and flat out corporate welfare. The local Nimbyism is one part individuals protecting their own narrow interests and the other part meddlers enforcing their aesthetic preferences onto neighborhoods either ignorant of (or indifferent to) how their preferences hammer the welfare of the most disadvantaged among us. I mean this kind of self defeating non-reflective turning to paternal state power is pretty bad for liberals in a big picture way; it discredits state involvement in general including in areas where state involvement is likely the objectively optimal outcome.Report
What North said. I’d add that offering education to people about diet is a more valauble asset then limiting cup size.
Take a persons cup for a day and you’ve saved them calories for that day. Teach a person how many calories a bucket of Coke has and they are able make better decsiosn forever.
Unless we are going to truly control all products in supermarkets and kwik e marts and fast food joints and resturants people can always make crappy eating choices. People can only improve their eating if they want to and know how to.Report
I’d add that offering education to people about diet is a more valauble asset then limiting cup size.
Psychological research says you’re wrong. People think in units. You offer them the “standard” size of a 24-ounce cup which is really 3 servings, they guzzle it down and internalize it mentally as only having one serving.
Unless we are going to truly control all products in supermarkets and kwik e marts and fast food joints and resturants people can always make crappy eating choices. People can only improve their eating if they want to and know how to.
If someone’s going to guzzle 8 servings, then I suppose we can’t stop them. We can, however, make it so that people are reasonably aware of what constitutes an actual serving.Report
The funny thing is, liberals enter a discussion under the idea that everyone is “just like them.” Incapable of making “right” choices for themselves, never be an intelligent actor, etc.Report
The funny thing is, liberals enter a discussion under the idea that everyone is “just like them.” Incapable of making “right” choices for themselves, never be an intelligent actor, etc.
The funny thing is, Libertarians like Hanley are too dumb to realize it’s not that way.
Do I think everyone is like me? Hell no. For one thing I could never be a gym rat. I probably will never have the crazed discipline to be a vegan, or even maintain what some call an “optimum” diet.
I recognize full well there are sorts of temptation I need to keep out of my sight as much as possible on that front, like not keeping candy at my desk.
I can be an intelligent actor in many respects. On the other hand, you fishing ignoramus, I’ve done the research on some common grocery items (on a bet from a real Libertarian, someone a lot more intellectually honest than you) and determined how amazingly difficult it is to be a “fully informed consumer” on all the things I encounter for possible purchase in just the course of one week.
So, you megalomaniac twit, I choose not to expect of others the things that I have, so far, found it incredibly hard to become in even minor respects.
My experience, that it is very difficult to be making the “right” choices all the time and be an “intelligent actor” by the impossibly high standards the disgustingly dishonest Libertarian fringe claims all actors innately are, follows well from the statistical behavior of existing humans elsewhere in the system. The Libertarian model, on the other hand, is something that you have to constantly make excuses for. “If Only” more people were ‘intelligent actors’ (like you imagine yourselves to be but most likely, as I imagined myself to be before taking the bet, I found out I really wasn’t). “If Only” some set of mythical anarchic rulesets could replace the entirety of modern society in order to create Libertopia.
It quickly becomes a joke, and all the funnier for the fact that you can’t see what a joke Libertarianism really is.Report
M.A. this is totally over the line. I appreciate that you’re a passionate liberal (and appreciate that you’re about) but you’re starting to really badly damage our cause with all this baseless name calling. People have been remarkably tolerant with your aggression as well as your completely unfair and facile mischaracterizations of libertarianism (a complex and sweeping ideology which I’m beginning to fear you have a very poor understanding of) but with these “Dumb” and “megalomaniac twit” bits are not only offensive but they’re flagrantly in violation of the League’s culture and its official commenting policy.
So on behalf of the local liberals and the commentariate at large: good on you for your passion but knock off the misbehaving because dude you’re making us all look bad and you’re lowering the discourse.Report
Thank you, M.A., for demonstrating my point.Report
North, I’m going to disagree with you somewhat.
Comments like these are a warning to me. I haven’t been doing well here, clearly, and I should be seriously reconsidering either how I make my case, or else the case itself.
When many people think you are evil, the chances are that they are picking up on something, and maybe they are actually right. This is probably not the kind of criticism I would want to stifle. Especially if I am an unwitting advocate for evil.
So I think he should stay, and I think he should continue. And I will consider carefully the implications of his comments.Report
When many people think you are evil, the chances are that they are picking up on something,
Assuming it’s not mere tribalism.
I’m wondering if it’s actually possible to write in a way that enables communication with people who make a point of not listening. Look at the number of Republicans who are truly, sincerely, stunned that their predictions of a big Romney win didn’t come through. Was there any way of presenting the Nate Silver data that actually would have penetrated their refusal to listen?Report
I’ve been accused of not being here to discuss in good faith numerous times by Hanley, and it’s downright tiring.
I’ve been accused of far worse by Roger, who has yet to render so much as an apology.
And then there are those who insist I am making “completely unfair and facile mischaracterizations of libertarianism” and yet the very next reply will prove my points about libertarianism perfectly.
We get Brian Houser who insists that he shouldn’t be “punished” by taxation or regulation that comes in dealing with markets that do NOT function according to the Libertopia theory, because enough actors are irrational or ill-informed enough to screw up the system.
I’ve watched more FYIGM nonsense, more “me me me why do I have to put up with this” BS, in the past two days than I really care to. Including TvD’s absolutely insane “god bless the child who’s got his, for that is liberty” nonsense.
You want to know what I really think? Libertarians don’t understand the first thing about Liberty. They use the word, but they pervert its meaning so far that it doesn’t resemble real liberty.
I’ve watched libertarians insist, via handwaving magical market faerie logic, that their proposed system would have no unintended consequences. I pointed out mathematically that their proposed system only leads towards greater inequality and the result? Not a peep, they ran away from it.
I’ve challenged them to take a look at their own policies and examine for second- and third-tier effects and unintended consequences and the insistence is always that they don’t want to be bothered because “Markets RAWR.”
Standard libertarian responses to real questions of the unintended consequences of their policies? “OWS had cell phones.” “We can’t perfectly rectify for the sins of parents or grandparents so we shouldn’t try at all, we should just pretend everyone is starting on a level playing field right now.”
I’ll say it again: Libertarians don’t follow the idea of liberty, they pervert it and stick it into such a narrow and small definition that it becomes worthless. That’s how you get Libertarians taking up the banner of “states rights”, up to and including Ron and Rand Paul’s commentary about how the 14th Amendment and the Civil Rights Act were abominations because they “took away states’ rights [to pass Jim Crow laws]”.
I refer you to my post that the Libertarians all ran away from here.
Point out the necessary consequences of libertarian “thinking”, and you get the same two responses: they either run away shouting “that’s not what we really think” or they start shouting “Markets RAWR lalalalalalala” and insisting that the necessary consequences don’t matter.
Jack and John both start with equal resources. They wind up in a “positive sum” interaction in which John gets 90% of the benefit and Jack gets 10%.
At the end of 40 years, John is living in a mansion, Jack’s situation has barely changed. Then they pass this inequality to their kids and repeat the process.
End result? “Libertopia.” Which is the economic version of Divine Right Of Kingsville.Report
M.A.,
If if I had doubts about your good faith before, that last comment has certainly dispelled them.Report
Jack and John both start with equal resources. They wind up in a “positive sum” interaction in which John gets 90% of the benefit and Jack gets 10%.
At the end of 40 years, John is living in a mansion, Jack’s situation has barely changed. Then they pass this inequality to their kids and repeat the process.
To be perfectly honest, as long as basic non-economic liberties remain intact, and with a few footnotes here and there, what you have just described is the recommendation made by one John Rawls. (Incidentally, if we iterate a 10% gain even a few times over, Jack’s situation is vastly improved, not “barely changed.”)
So anyway, it’s clear that your beef isn’t entirely with libertarians. You’re a relatively strong egalitarian of some form, and modern liberals aren’t necessarily so.Report
That’s ok, Hanley. I gave up hope in your coming with any remote semblance of desire for honest conversation or even ability to present honest discourse without lying about libertarianism some time ago.
You did exactly what I expected. You ran from the point.
This is you, Hanley:
http://www.hark.com/liar-liar/its-devastating-to-my-caseReport
I know how you feel. I get sick of Muslims lying to me about Islam, calling it a religion of peace when I know it really isn’t even a religion, but just a terrorist ideology. I’m doing my best in good faith to teach them the truth, but they don’t have even a remote semblance of desire for honest conversation or even ability to present honest discourse without lying about Islam.Report
To be perfectly honest, as long as basic non-economic liberties remain intact, and with a few footnotes here and there, what you have just described is the recommendation made by one John Rawls. (Incidentally, if we iterate a 10% gain even a few times over, Jack’s situation is vastly improved, not “barely changed.”)
Untrue, Jason, but at least you’re discussing honestly.
Inflation will happen. That will cut into John’s situation far less than Jack’s.
The unequal resource allocation will allow John to “crowd out” Jack at any point.
The end eventuality is that John’s descendants become the slumlords, the Ebenezer Scrooges of the world, while Jack’s descendants become the class of people locked into a servitude role living in the slums. As mentioned in another part of this thread, the benefits of any technological advancement in the society will accrue to them both last and least.
Libertarianism is how we get right here. It doesn’t solve poverty traps, it CAUSES poverty traps because it is in the rational economic interest of the privileged rich to do so in order to cement their economic dominance.Report
Address the point Hanley. That’s twice you’ve run from it now.Report
You mean I should address your point. But I’m making my own point, which you reciprocally are not addressing.Report
The end eventuality is that John’s descendants become the slumlords, the Ebenezer Scrooges of the world, while Jack’s descendants become the class of people locked into a servitude role living in the slums. As mentioned in another part of this thread, the benefits of any technological advancement in the society will accrue to them both last and least.
Libertarianism is how we get right here. It doesn’t solve poverty traps, it CAUSES poverty traps because it is in the rational economic interest of the privileged rich to do so in order to cement their economic dominance.
If inflation happens, but if it’s less than 10% per iteration of your mechanism, Jack’s still doing okay and possibly very well. Compound interest and all.
It also happens to be the case that great fortunes are both made and lost. Turnover among the elite is real, and I suspect it would be greater in a world that restricted corporate privilege along the lines I have suggested.
As to “poverty traps,” I’m not sure what you mean. I look at this and it seems obvious to me that the way to escape poverty is to have a relatively free market. We can obviously argue about individual cases, and I would entertain the possibility that the trendline might reverse itself shortly after right where we are. But I wouldn’t say that the way to more wealth is obviously to enact greater economic controls.Report
Address the point Hanley. That’s twice you’ve run from it now.
And while you’re at it, you can explain why you’ve stopped beating your wife. Because the “point” is equally a strawman.Report
There you go again Kuznicki. Heritage Foundation. Are you really a “libertarian”, or are you just a Conservative stooge?
Heritage Foundation documents are worth precisely the paper it would take to print them out and use the printed version as toilet paper.
Poverty traps are real. And they happen WORSE in your third-world Libertopias around the world. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_trap
The situation I described is the Libertarian ideal, and it’s also a poverty trap. What you are missing and refuse to acknowledge is the crowding-out effect. Jack and his descendants are crowded out of technological advancement except for the dregs that trickle down. Meanwhile, the production of society begins gearing more towards those things John’s descendants want to see and less towards those that Jack’s need – after all, Jack’s got relatively less and less resources to offer.
When I spoke of visiting a neighborhood in my city that’s predominantly poor blacks, this is exactly what has happened. Many of these people “own” their homes, but lack the resources to maintain them. They worked at what Libertarians would laughably call “positive sum” work all their lives and for what?
Most of their kids are stuck in the same poverty trap. And it’s not because of “government aid programs”, it’s not because they WANT to be in that position, it’s the “market forces” you Libertarians worship that put them there.Report
your third-world Libertopias
Because we just love us some brutal dictator/war-lord action. In fact I’m busy signing secessionist petitions on the White House website because I can’t wait for southern Michigan to become a lawless state ruled by the Michigan Militia. It’ll be paradise!Report
M.A., what is frustrating about your comments is that I never get any sense whatsoever that you’re trying to consider the points made in what you respond to. With the majority of the other commenters, it feels like they are at least reading what we type, thinking about it at least a little, and making an attempt to respond based on that thought. With others, I usually feel like we might actually be sitting at a table having a debate (sure, sometimes it turns into a shouting match, but at least we’re listening to each other). With you, it’s like an interview with a zombie. In fact, sometimes I feel like right after I post a comment, I should just go ahead and post your response, because I know what it’s going to be.Report
Jason, I’m not even remotely an official moderator or anyone with any power here at the League so obviously I have no power for banning or anything like that (nor am I calling for it). I’m protesting on two angles: A) he’s actually violating our commenting policy with the name calling and B) he’s making liberals look bad with his behavior.
M.A. is fine with some of his arguments and he’s abrasive and perhaps counterproductive on other of his arguments. I’m just throwing a yellow flag over the name calling. The offending sentences could have been left off his comment and would have changed his argument not a whit except that some name calling would have been absent. I’m not asking M.A. to change his positions or arguments; I’m just asking his to raise his courtesy level a notch and leave off some of the gratuitous name slinging at individuals.
For his mudslinging at libertarianism itself, well the ideology can take it. It’s tough so he can go nuts.Report
MA,
I’ve hardly been here long enough to consider this my home, but I have to agree with North here. You’ve made the point that the things a lot of people here believe are upsetting to you. The point we’re making is the way you’re behaving is upsetting to a lot of us. The sheer volume of unnecessary vitriol is off putting, and I’m usually pretty good at skipping over it.Report
Thanks North,
His constant name calling and posts starting with “fish you”, are not acceptable behavior according to league standards.Report
Yes, the League prides itself on forcing commenters to come up with more artful and imaginative ways to imply “Fish you”.Report
I’ve had fun in the “you’d think Libertarians would support galactic genocide” kinda threads with many (if not all) of the pinkos on the board.
M.A. isn’t fun.Report
You know, you can model this. It’s not hard.
Program a bunch of agents, give them a rationality factor (because not all humans are rational, of course), give them a set of rules and a closed system, and run it. And then run it again for a different spread of rationality factors, and again, and again, and again.
I will predict that what you will find after 100,000 iterations is that the wealth distribution varies *astronomically* wildly.
Now the liberal will choose the x% of them that wind up with a small number of agents having most of the money, and they’ll claim that there’s the problem. And the libertarian will chose the other 100-X% of them that wind up with a relatively equitable wealth distribution, and they’ll claim that no, there’s the answer.
Fact is, we run an open system, not a closed one. And what happens after repeated iteration is highly dependent on stuff that isn’t tightly connected to our system, at all.
Which maybe should teach everyone the lesson that this system is not so easily modeled by their first principles and they ought not to put so much faith in them, but apparently not.Report
I’d hate to see M.A. banned when I haven’t lost all hope in him yet, although, granted, I’m a relative newcomer here and may not know all the history. So let me offer some constructive advice, M.A.
There’s a chronic caller to the libertarian radio show Free Talk Live whom the hosts have dubbed “Scott the Bigot”. Like many callers, he calls in regularly to complain about government abuses and the ills of society. But before Scott’s call is over, he always manages to blame the world’s problems on the Blacks and Jews. Time after time, the hosts try to help him get past his bigotry, but he always eventually lays the blame on “the lazy Blacks” or the “evil international Jewish bankers”.
Your comments here sound a lot like “Scott the Bitgot’s” if I substitute the word “Jew” for “libertarian”. Other commenters here have a (at least somewhat) rational fear of free markets. But I suggest yours are often irrational (if they’re not, you haven’t convinced me).
Their advice to him is the same I offer to you: try real hard, just for a moment, to forget about whatever incident or series of incidents happened in your experience that made you so distrust the free markets and personal liberty. And then carefully re-read the things we’ve said here while avoiding any collectivising or labeling. Think of each of us as a person rather than as part of a group. Anywhere we’ve claimed to speak for libertarians as a whole, substitute “I”. Put aside your preconceived notions.
I’m pretty sure you have an important perspective to bring to the discussion, and I’m worried it’s going to be lost because we can’t find it amidst all the bluster.Report
James,
Take away the government, and you still have market forces for banning sugary softdrinks. You still have market forces for making bicycle helmets a permanent fixture on kids’ heads.
The fact that the market appears to be using the government indicates that the government is the most efficient way to create a healthier (more profitable) society.Report
“The fact that the market appears to be using the government indicates that the government is the most efficient way to create a healthier (more profitable) society.”
Interesting suggestion, but you’re making big assumptions on “most efficient”, “healthier”, and “more profitable”. None of those things have been definitely proven–and the “healthier” part concerns me the most (remember the food pyramid, where the government told us we need lots of refined carbs–sugar–and proceeded to make sure that’s what our kids ate at school!?). I’m certainly not the first to suggest that government programs were (are) actually a significant factor in our current obesity epidemic.Report
“Take away the government, and you still have market forces for banning sugary softdrinks. You still have market forces for making bicycle helmets a permanent fixture on kids’ heads.”
Congratulations, you’ve invented Public Choice Theory.
I look forward to your warm acceptance of how “market forces” are making same-sex marriage illegal, and how “market forces” are making it okay to demand that nonwhites carry proof of citizenship, and how “market forces” are OK with pervasive surveillance and monitored communication.Report
The “Food Pyramid”, being reviled by Brian, isn’t as evil as they say.
http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/Fpyr/pmap.htm
Here’s the thing: humans suck at serving sizes. A single serving of breakfast cereal – not ” sugar” as he calls it but carbohydrates, true – is only one ounce.
A “serving” of bread is about one slice. Your sandwich at lunch gave you two of those.
2 ounces of cereal, two slices of bread on a sandwich, and one cup of rice is not a lot of food to most people’s mind. But that’s the bottom edge of the recommendation from the food pyramid.
The problem wasn’t the pyramid. The problem was, people are idiots who operate by quantum rather than by quantity. They’ll fill a 4-ounce bowl with cereal and think they only got one “serving” of grains.Report
M.A.,
Or is the problem that the government rather arbitrarily defined what a “serving” is, without much reference to how much people actually eat?
There’s no natural constant that determines the size of a serving–it’s a purely human artefact, and the legal definition is under government’s control. And setting the serving size too low (or allowing producers to set serving sizes lower), misleads people into thinking they’re getting less sugar, salt and fat than they really are.Report
Brian,
I remain open to different ideas.
The “healthier” part is the fun part, actually. My employer researches that one (among other things). We may not have the science right just yet, but we’re working on it.Report
“The “healthier” part is the fun part, actually.”
And that’s why we should keep it fun and keep the government out of it. When we ban soft drinks, we risk killing the market for innovation around that product and putting a damper on the potential future branches of that market.
I picture society A where Coca-Cola goes out of business (substitute tobacco companies if that makes it easier), leaving millions of people out of work or at least with less pay (consider the whole supply chain).
I picture society B where not only is Coca-Cola booming, but we have thousands of new jobs because a company discovered a pill that counteracts the negative effects of simple sugars on the body.
Society B is substantially less likely to occur in a society with a soft drink ban.Report
Brian,
again, market forces. If you want to write a guest post on why we should get rid of health insurance, be my guest.
What pisses me off about certain libertarians is that they think their enemy is government, when it’s really insurance companies.
It’s easy to knock over pawns, but it don’t do you much good.Report
I don’t think use is wrong, but I do think that creating a business model that takes advantage of addictive properties of a drug and relies upon roughly half of your business coming from habitual, heavily addicted users is plain evil.
And yes, that essentially means I think tobacco and liquor industries are immoral.Report
even craft breweries? cause that’s kinda strict, bro.Report
Jason, this is a wonderful post, thank you.
I want to explore this:
We have a state because we are flawed, ignorant, cruel, and short-sighted. But those flaws apply to the state as well. Often more than to individuals. Necessity does not make virtue, and the appealing fiction that we all consent to everything won’t get us there either.
I don’t necessarily agree with the counter argument I’m about to offer, I want to consider the it. You’re suggesting the flaws of individuals are amplified in groups, the group here being ‘the government.’ (I refuse to subscribe to language that makes government a ‘them’). But there’s an alternative: that aggregating the individuals into government also has the potential to smooth those flaws, to flatten the flawed spikes individuals have. That does not mean a bunch of flaws won’t clump together and amplify the spike.Report
I think both things can happen. Sometimes governments do well, and sometimes they do badly.
I would not use language suggesting that the government is simply “us,” because that language suggests to me a transparent enactment of the collective, consensual will. It sweeps aside all dissenters, libertarian and otherwise, and it tends to conflate the majority with everyone.
I would also not use language suggesting that the government is simply “them.” Such language suggests that not only are they different individuals from me (true, but possibly quite trivial) — it also implies that they have different psychologies or fundamental values, and that isn’t at all the case. They’re just as shortsighted and ignorant and cruel as I am. But, like me, they aren’t demons or devils, either.
Ultimately, I think the language of principal-agent problems is the most accurate way to go. We can speak of the government acting as an agent that either does or does not reflect the wishes of any particular constituency without seeming to infer anything too problematic about actors’ psychology or morals.Report
This thing about government here is cogent, Jason, I like it. It’s also roughly analogous to how I feel about money.Report
Excellent. Well said, Jason.Report
I’ve got some ideas, some suggestions, and here I am, making them. Let’s end the War on Drugs. Empty the prisons of nonviolent drug offenders. Marijuana, mushrooms, peyote, the other “soft” drugs — legal for sale to adults. For the hard stuff, do like Portugal did, and adopt a public health approach. The sky didn’t fall, only the crime rate. We all know the War on Drugs hurts the poor and racial minorities disproportionately, which makes it even less excusable. Just be done with it already.
You’re saying exactly the same thing Liberals have been saying for a long while regarding the drug war hurting minorities primarily. The problem is, the best we’ve been able to get the Conservatives to agree to is to start breaking apart some of the mandatory-sentencing baloney that was targeted deliberately towards those drugs commonly used in lower income areas (crack vs powder cocaine for instance).
End the War on Terror. Rescind the president’s free-floating warmaking power, which he has enjoyed for way too long (I take for granted that this would end much if not all of our drone warfare as well. But if it doesn’t, just end that too.). Bring the troops home and put these smart, talented people to work in the United States instead, in the private sector.
Which was the policy of Obama running for office, and has been worked on for 4 years, and is coming to fruition. But it takes time to turn around a juggernaut like that and pull out of places we were in without just leaving a giant mess behind us.
What’s the old camper’s motto again – leave it as good as, or better than, you found it?
Close Gitmo and the secret prisons, end the extraordinary renditions, the military commissions, and the assassinations. Let the court system do the job it was intended to do, to separate the guilty from the innocent the best we know how.
I’ll remind you it was Republican filibusters and outcry, including outcry about “letting terrorists step one foot on American soil”, that blocked all this from the start when Obama tried to implement it.
Simplify the tax code,
This always comes down to the specifics and you know it. “Flat Tax” scammery? No thank you. Romney campaigned on “simplifying” the tax code but wouldn’t say what loopholes and favorable rate programs and other exceptions he’d actually close.
Absent a concrete plan, “simplify the tax code” is wankery not policy.
simplify zoning and land use requirements, simplify occupational licensing and business regulations.
Depends what they are. There are a hell of a lot of occupational licensing and business regulations that function as intended. Where I live, builders have to be licensed and certified, and you’d be a fool not to make sure they’re bonded, but the roofers’ union got themselves exempted from this requirement, and a lot of people wind up with bad roofs as a result. There are so many fly-by-night roofing companies, and a lot of time if you’re in a rebuild situation they roofers are subcontracted by your builder, which makes it impossible to tell what you’re getting.
Shorten copyright and patent terms, and restrict the range of patentable “innovations.”
I’d love to see this, theoretically. How do you get there? What range do you advocate we go to?
Liberals don’t even give us half credit. “It’s not worth talking to you. You never do anything right, or when you happen to do something right, it doesn’t count, because you’re too small a group. And also you’re evil. And you’re insane. Oh, and by the way, why do you always seem to tilt conservative? Because I find that suspicious.”
Guess what? Libertarians do themselves no favors with Liberals.
Screaming about how tax money is “stolen from us at gunpoint” doesn’t make you sound sane.
Screaming about how any government regulation is inherently morally bankrupt doesn’t make you sound sane.
Screaming about how individuals will “always” make the right choices and those will “always” aggregated better to a magical-thinking market that will create Libertopia… is not sane.
http://www.spectacle.org/897/trust.html
And final point: when have Libertarians ever tried to come to the table with Liberals? When have they, really, ever put the social issues question above the “big government bad rawr taxes evil rawr starve the beast rawr” standard tropes of what passes for Libertarian “thinking” of the past 4 decades?
Look at that seriously. You declared that Liberals will never give you “half credit” and come to the table with you. Seriously I want to ask: WHEN have you ever tried to come to the table? I don’t see Libertarians talking about moral issues. When it was time to stand up and say “enough is enough” to Dubya, you cowered and hunkered down. When it was time to stand up and say “enough is enough” to the freak sandwiches from the GOP who were grandstanding about closing Gitmo, where were you and why were you not standing with us?
You don’t get “half credit” because you talk a minor game and you never fishing show up when it matters. And then you whine and moan about not getting half credit.
Show up. Ask for a seat at the table and act like you fishing mean it, rather than acting like Liberals are the devil and cozying up to the GOP/CPAC/”Values Voters” crowd every chance you get, THEN you can have half credit.Report
“Screaming about how individuals will “always” make the right choices and those will “always” aggregated better to a magical-thinking market that will create Libertopia… is not sane.”
Do you in any way grasp how condescending and arrogant you sound when you declare that you are in a better position than me to tell me how I should live my life? Who are you to decide what are the right and wrong choices for anybody? How attractive do you think modern liberalism sounds when the tagline is ‘we will make your choices for you’?Report
It sounds like you don’t have a financial adviser. They can be quite condescending, but they’re also quite helpful.Report
http://www.spectacle.org/897/trust.html
This is the longer version of it. Try a little reading comprehension. I’ll even bring out the relevant section:
An apparent paradox of libertarianism is that humans can be trusted individually but not in groups.
A democratic government consists of humans acting as a group. The government carries out the will of the group. In Rousseau’s terms, it carries out not only the will of the majority, but in a sense, even of the dissenting minority, who despite their disagreement with the particular action, endorse the majority will by continuing to participate in the society.
Libertarians believe, therefore, that we are singularly inept as a group. Assuming for a moment that the proposition is true– there is a lot of evidence for it–a cynic would propose that the reason we are collectively incompetent is that we are individually incompetent as well.
Libertarians, however, are optimists. I cannot fault them for this; I have written elsewhere about the importance of optimism in any human scheme, even to the point of self-deception. Nonetheless, libertarians assume, as most people do, that there is a way out of any given dilemma; their self-deception may consist of believing that what we cannot accomplish collectively, we can more effectively do individually.
Let’s take a look again at the Pennekamp reef example. Testing the proposition that commons should not exist because they will always be mismanaged, let’s try a thought experiment. Who would you rather have manage the Pennekamp coral reef so that it will remain alive, clean and available for future generations: fifty randomly picked people, or one?
Libertarians would say that fifty people, if they were acting as a government, will inevitably destroy Pennekamp, while one person, following a profit motive, is more likely to regard it as being in his self-interest to preserve it for the long term. But I think there is substantial reason to look at this the other way. Any one person you pick from the street may wish to break up the coral and sell it to souvenir shops, make a quick million and retire. If you randomly pick fifty people, chances are much greater that most of them will appreciate the benefits of preserving Pennekamp for the future. Thus, acting collectively has a smoothing effect: recognizing that we really do share some agreements as a culture which we may call values, the more of us we involve in the Pennekamp decision-making the more likely it is that we will make a decision reflecting these common values. In fact, in the classic tragedy of the commons, the tragedy happens because the villagers are not deciding collectively how many sheep to add. The tragedy happens because each individual using the commons has the right to think selfishly–exactly as an individual who owned the land might do.Report
See, the problem is that you think you’re arguing for collective responsibility, but what you get looks like gridlock and partisan refusal to compromise. There might not be a majority of those fifty people who want to grind the reef to dust and sell it; but there also might not be a majority who wants to raise their taxes to pay for garbage collection.Report
Prior to idiots like you in the mix, “partisan gridlock” wasn’t nearly as bad as it is today.
Reagan compromised. Clinton compromised. Nixon? “Only Nixon could go to China.”
What we’ve lost thanks to the Tea Partier crowd is that ability to compromise.Report
The problem is, the best we’ve been able to get the Conservatives to agree to is to start breaking apart some of the mandatory-sentencing baloney that was targeted deliberately towards those drugs commonly used in lower income areas (crack vs powder cocaine for instance).
Are you aware that you’ve been kicking down the doors of medicinal marijuana dispensaries?
Which was the policy of Obama running for office, and has been worked on for 4 years, and is coming to fruition. But it takes time to turn around a juggernaut like that and pull out of places we were in without just leaving a giant mess behind us.
How many secret assassinations did Bush pull off? How many drone strikes did he have? How many democrats wrote essays explaining how the world works and drone strikes aren’t that bad, really? (I can find you a handful from this very site!)
I’m very busy today and can’t finish this but the general thought I’m having is that you’re not lying to me, dude… you’re obviously lying to yourself. You shouldn’t be surprised that others notice it, though.Report
How many democrats wrote essays explaining how the world works and drone strikes aren’t that bad, really?
The problem with Libertarians is that they are batshit absolutists.
Is that what you wanted me to say? Because that’s how you’re acting. The inability to see “X is less bad than Y” as itself a moral assessment is a function of absolutism only.
Precision strikes beat the hell out of firebombing Dresden, morally speaking. It’s a fact. That you personally have a problem even with precision strikes is a separate argument you’ll need to make. If you’re unwilling to meet us halfway on that, but you’re perfectly ok with Dubya getting us into wars he kept off the books and wasting our money invading at least one nation we had no business invading, a mess Obama was left to clean up, then you are in fact useless to any reality-based conversation.Report
Great. Let me know when it hits you that we aren’t forced to make a choice between precision strikes and Dresden.Report
It’s my hope that eventually we won’t be.
At the moment? I’ll take “less harmful” and “more strategic”, to the limits of as-least-harmful-and-most-strategic-as-possible, when I can get it.
Would I ideally not like to be in the situation we are in right now? Yes. But that ship has sailed. You and your friends, the pals of the conservative movement, got us into it and bitching about it after the fact saying we “don’t have to” be in the current conflict isn’t going to get me on your side.Report
So the President is ordering the death of people in countries we aren’t at war with, and not bothering to inform those countries of his actions or get their permission…
but it’s actually George W. Bush’s fault. So it’s okay. It’s not, like, me pushing this button that launches this missile that kills that guy.Report
” You and your friends, the pals of the conservative movement, got us into it and bitching about it after the fact saying we “don’t have to” be in the current conflict isn’t going to get me on your side.”
It’s funny how fast the collective ‘we’ is dropped when it comes to blaming someone for something that happened after January 2001 and before January 2009.Report
Precision strikes beat the hell out of firebombing Dresden, morally speaking. It’s a fact.
It is?
Because I look at Dresden today and I see a pretty workable place. I mean, I could go there and hang out and get along with people and generally feel about as safe as I do in Pasadena.
On the other hand… all those limited war places? The Korean DMZ? Iraq? Libya? Afghanistan? Israel/Palestine? Well, you’ve got Vietnam, I hear it’s nice there. Guam, if you consider that a war.
If “making it better, long term” is a moral good, limited war is – at best – a very mixed bag of results.Report
Umm when we bombed Dresden we killed tens of thousand of innocents. Drone strikes certainly kill far fewer innocents. That is an improvement. Does that make precision bombing moral, no of course that does not automatically make it a good thing to do solely on killing less children. But less collateral damage is good in general.
There is a big difference between total war and limited wars. both suck but many millions were killed in the two big total wars. that doesn’t make either good of course.Report
Umm when we bombed Dresden we killed tens of thousand of innocents. Drone strikes certainly kill far fewer innocents. That is an improvement.
An improvement, sure.
But if the situation doesn’t actually improve, long-term, all you’ve done is determine that it’s your job to occasionally kill a couple dozen civilians in another country somewhere because the situation never gets better.
That’s not an improvement. That’s actually worse, in terms of long-term stability.
If long-term stability is a part of the issue, then we need to keep that, yanno, on the table. If long-term stability is not part of the issue, then… well, take that logic where it takes you and get back to me.Report
I’d say the least amount of violence is always best. If we have to blow something up i’d sooner have precision strike then carpet bombing. The long term goal should always be to stop needing to use violence as soon as possible.
It seems the problems we are having is we see the need to get involved in blowing up too many things and in places where there is no strategic solution or way out. Total war is about achieving total defeat of the other side. Those aren’t the wars we are in. I’m not sure of the point you are trying to make. The use of a weapon or tactic should be based on achieving our strategic goals. Part of many problems is our tactics aren’t suited to our strategic goals nor do our strategic goals seem all that achievable.Report
I’d say the least amount of violence is always best.
The long term goal should always be to stop needing to use violence as soon as possible.
There is a credible amount of evidence to say that signs point to these being orthogonal goals.
Grant me that for a second?
Now, if you had to pick one, which one would you pick?Report
urr…ummm…I’d say violence, if it has to used, should be that which meets our strategic goals as best as possible.
PS Violence meets strategic/ political goals far less often then people believe. See East, Middle.Report
I guess just to be clear, if that means carpet bombing gets the job done best, then carpet bomb. If precision strikes works best than that, etc.Report
Dresden today is pretty workable.
Dresden after being firebombed, with many thousands of civilians dead, not so much.
By your logic, we’d be better off if Israel had just firebombed Gaza into complete ruin and killed just about everyone there some time ago. I think we can pretty much all agree that nobody wants that option, no matter which side of the argument you’re otherwise on, right?Report
By your logic, we’d be better off if Israel had just firebombed Gaza into complete ruin and killed just about everyone there some time ago.
Who’s “we”?
If you’re talking about “America’s Best Interests”, oh hells yes. If Israel had firebombed Gaza into a complete ruin forty years ago by now most all the perpetrators would be dead of old age and there would not be the prospect of another 40 years of low-grade continuous warfare in the Middle East, which would be great for us. We could even be clucking our moral disapproval at them the whole time. Granted, the inhabitants of Gaza would have thought it sucked.
I think we can pretty much all agree that nobody wants that option, no matter which side of the argument you’re otherwise on, right?
I’m not really sure what anybody “wants” out of the continual Israel/Palestine affair. I’m not sure that people really even have an end-goal in mind.
I object, generally, to getting involved in another nation’s business (or another pair of nations) without knowing what the end-game is supposed to be.
(Get back to me in 10 years and let me know if you still think getting involved only to the extent we did in Libya was a good idea).Report
Do we get to compare Libya to other counter factuals?
Like say Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria?Report
Why wouldn’t the rules we use for Obama using drones against people on his list also apply to Israel using drones against Hamas?Report
“If Israel had firebombed Gaza into a complete ruin forty years ago by now most all the perpetrators would be dead of old age and there would not be the prospect of another 40 years of low-grade continuous warfare in the Middle East, which would be great for us.”
That seems really false to me.
1. You still have the West Bank conflict. Which might be worse if there were even greater anger over even more violence aimed at Palestinians.
2. Arab anger in the region would have been worse over the years, which might’ve made the treaties with other countries, especially Egypt, not happen. And that could’ve lead to all sorts of awfulness, even worse than what we’ve seen.
But really, these counterfactuals are hard to judge as true or false. Just my opinion. Neither of us seems to have evidence about what would have happened, just plausible-sounding guesses.Report
Granted, we’re talking counterfactuals. Fair enough, this isn’t a clean problem space.
I look at cases of total war, post industrial revolution, and it seems to me that in all of them there was a clear winner and a clear loser. Indeed, it seems like the one time that it didn’t really resolve the situation was when there was a clear loser and then everybody decided at Versailles that the next thing to do was make the loser eat dirt for forty years. Barring that one case, which made everything worse in the long run, it seems like bombing the shit out of somebody, entirely, crushing their will to ever be involved in conflict for another two generations, and then cleaning up seems to work out for the losers okay (at least, granted, the ones that survive).
I look at case of limited war, post industrial revolution, and it seems to me that in very few cases was there a clear winner or loser, and in almost all cases the conflict continued, in various degrees of “low- to mid-grade” for decades, and it always seems like the loser’s situation gets worse, instead of better (which is probably the reason why the conflict winds on interminably).
Note: this is why I’m not big on war. The first is abhorrent to anyone with a moral sense. The second really ought to be as well, in fact moreso because it is persistent.
But that’s me.Report
Well yeah. Limited war usually means some sort of guerrilla war and hearts/minds and rebuilding. Building is always harder then breaking. Also countries can piddle along with little bursts of limited war since they don’t have to risk total defeat. Or like in the Israel/Palestine, neither side can actually win a limited war but they feel they can try to accomplish some objectives with violence. That doesn’t bring them closer to winning anything though.Report
What is a “total war”? Is it just a war with a winner and loser? Because then your claim that all total wars have winners is a truism.
I’d say there are situations throughout history where total war (defined how you see fit) made things worse long term and partial war made things better.
Also, Israel doesn’t have the ability to win what I think you are calling a total war in Gaza. They can easily take it, or bomb it, but holding it (or continually bombing it) gets too expensive, monetarily, in terms of life lost, and in terms of international pressure.
Gazans have nowhere to go. Killing 10% of them indiscriminately (a nearly genocidal act) wouldn’t solve anything now, so how would it have solved anything then?
The situation is not the same as WWII, where you can break the will to fight of a wealthy nation (by making their lives shitty, so they will surrender to get back to their wealthy lives), or where you can kill their leaders and win by eliminating their governmen, or where you can take away a country’s industrial capacity to wage war at a high level.. Gazans have no wealth to get back to by surrenduring and no industrial capacity with which they fight. And the Israeli’s can’t hold all of Gaza and the West Bank the way the Nazi’s could hold France. (Israel is small and too poor to engage in real conquest, and even the U.S. couldn’t protect them diplomatically if things get really bad.)
There is no military solution in Gaza and the West Bank, anymore than there was a possible military solution in South Africa. (I am thankful, because a “military solution” would almost certainly be a moral tragedy worse than what we are seeing.)
The solutions are all political, but average people on both sides don’t seem to want them.
IMO.Report
Total war usually refers to when the opponents have fully mobilizes their military and economy all towards winning as defined by the opponent surrendering. you’ve hit on the problem in the I/P conflict. Neither side can win a war but they still see violence as a way to achieve their goals. But the violence just puts off a long term solution and makes it more difficult to achieve.Report
Neither side can win a war but they still see violence as a way to achieve their goals. But the violence just puts off a long term solution and makes it more difficult to achieve.
Right, this.
That may be because they’ve adjusted their goals from, “Win the war” to “Get X, Y, and not Z”.Report
What is a “total war”? Is it just a war with a winner and loser?
That’s a good question. No, it’s not just a war with a winner and a loser.
I’d say there are situations throughout history where total war (defined how you see fit) made things worse long term and partial war made things better.
Such as? I’m interested as to your take.Report
Hey Patrick,
I’m not able to answer your question. I thought I knew what I was talking about, but am unsure what to say. I’ll think about it and maybe get back to you. Sorry.
It’s all best saved for a more relevant OP. This is supposed to be about libertarianism, not Israel-Palestine,Report
I thought I knew what I was talking about, but am unsure what to say. I’ll think about it and maybe get back to you. Sorry.
Are you kidding? No need to apologize, my friend.
Any time… any time anybody of any persuasion on this blog says, “Hm, I need to pause and reflect on that” when talking to somebody else? That’s a magic moment, right there.
If you go away and come back thinking something else, awesome. If you go away and come back with something that makes me think something else, that’d be awesome, too. If you come back and say, “I thought about it, and I think you might have a point, but I disagree still and I’m not sure why”, heck, that would be an interesting conversation, too.Report
“I object, generally, to getting involved in another nation’s business.”
We are so involved and have been for so long, that the (correct) principle “Don’t get involved” is out the window 50 miles back.Report
We are so involved and have been for so long, that the (correct) principle “Don’t get involved” is out the window 50 miles back.
To paraphrase elsewhere on the thread: “How do you suggest rectifying for sins of the grandfather?”
At some point, you have to recognize that what you’re doing is digging a hole, and then filling it up again, and then digging another hole in the same spot, and filling it up again… all the meanwhile, the two guys arguing over what ought to be in that spot are getting progressively more irritated at you for digging holes (if they want them filled up), or filling them up (if they want the hole there).
It might feel real good to just stop.Report
Here’s some reading.
On George W. Bush:
http://www.cato.org/store/reports/power-surge-constitutional-record-george-w-bush
http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/tortured-history-pursues-george-w-bush
http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/george-w-bush-ceo
http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/why-attack-iraq
Gitmo:
http://www.cato.org/multimedia/daily-podcast/close-guantanamo-bay
http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/tribunals-trials-tribulations
http://www.cato.org/testimony/ct-tl120401.html
Values Voters:
http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/marriage-equality-protect-or-promote
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/same-sex-marriage-some-cato-resources/
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/same-sex-marriage-wont-harm-maryland-families/
Copyright:
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/how-copyright-industries-con-congress/
Simplify the Tax Code:
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/end-dont-cap-the-mortgage-interest-deduction/
Starve the Beast:
http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/v26n2/cpr-26n2-2.pdf
You can find more if you look. Meanwhile, here’s what I get from the Democrats about the war on drugs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sX2Xi6ovMA4Report
Jason, I neglected to give you the kudos you deserved for this excellent OP and the intelligent points it addresses, and furthermore this particular comment pointing as it does to /so many/ thoughtful opinion pieces done by your group over the last decade is eminently bookmarkable.
That said, I’m guessing M.A. is going to pretend you never posted it.Report
Great. Position papers.
Now where were you guys in the last election cycle?Report
Now where were you guys in the last election cycle?
Arguing for the guy who opposed the drug war, secret kill lists, and wanted to bring everybody home from Iraq and Afghanistan, like, yesterday.
Where were you?Report
I was working to get something done, something positive, and not making the perfect the enemy of the good (or in this case, the pot-addled the enemy of the good).Report
I’m sorry that the libertarians won a handful. For what it’s worth, I’m sure you’ll still have the satisfaction of seeing some feds kick in some doors and maybe even shoot some dogs!Report
Oh no. I’m just fine with the marijuana legalization laws that passed.
On the other hand, Gary Johnson, the GOP’s Hand-Me-Down Sweater Vest, as your candidate? Hardly a good way to get people to take your party seriously.Report
I was hoping Badnarik would come back and start slapping the taste out of people’s mouths but he’s not been the same since his heart attack.Report
Now where were you guys in the last election cycle?
As an organization, the Cato Institute is legally prohibited from supporting candidates, laws, or ballot initiatives.
Individual scholars can do so, on their own time, but even that’s fairly rare. The biggest exceptions I can think of from the past cycle were several Cato scholars who worked in support of same-sex marriage in Maryland, all on their own time, not Cato’s. But there is always the worry that we will lose our tax exempt status, which we would prefer to keep.
If you insist on reading something sinister into that, then I’m afraid I just can’t help you. (Speaking of Cato’s time, it’s been a very slow day for me, but even so… I’ve probably got some “real” work to get back to…)Report
“As an organization, the Cato Institute is legally prohibited from supporting candidates, laws, or ballot initiatives.”
Like that stopped ANYONE else!
(This is meant as a somewhat frivolous comment in an overwrought thread…)Report
I’m going to add at this point:
If you want us to take you seriously, how about nominating your own candidates once in a while? Or even find some Liberals who might match enough on issues to come over?
On my ballot, every Libertarian candidate running was somebody who started out running for the GOP nomination but lost in the primary. From Johnson on down.
It’s hard for those of us on this side to take you seriously at all when all you do is run the other side’s hand-me-down candidates as your own.Report
There is no excuse for Bob Barr. I refused to vote for him, actually. I voted for Charles Jay that year. Gary Johnson is the type of politician we’d actually *WANT* running. The fact that the Republicans didn’t want him is an indictment against the Republicans, not the Libertarians.
As for Badnarik, Browne, Marrou, Paul, Bergland, Clark, MacBride, and Hospers… well, we can discuss Paul and those damned newsletters again if you want, but the rest of those guys stand up as guys who would have been preferable to the guy who did win.Report
Adam was in love with Barbara, but Barbara had a crush on Charlie. Charlie, though, made it clear that he was repulsed by Barbara, so Barbara went out with Adam and found out that they were actually quite compatible.
Stupid Adam.Report
For your last point, I think the main thing is that symbols matter.
And for much of the last 50 years, libertarians have consciously or not taken on symbols that are more anathema to liberals than conservatives and had an overt focus on emphasizing economic liberty over other sorts of liberty. The early political proponents of the movement (insofar as one exists) has usually allied with paleo conservatives and regionalists to the point where there’s a lot of messaging that simply does make it seem suspect to liberals.
Perhaps as a petty example is the name of the institution you work at. Cato the Younger, for whatever his virtues was also a staunch defender of the entrenched system of privilege and inequality that symbolized the late Roman Republic. He and his fellow optimates were no fans of the plebes. I ask how you would be likely to react to an institution that named itself the Gracchus Institute. Would the populism of Tiberius Gracchus be swept aside when they advocated for market reforms?
This is magnified with more popular libertarian symbolism: the emphasis or even worship of “states rights”, the veneration of the Founding era to a notorious degree, and a tendency to defend economic institutions that are at best, morally dubious. (The common defense of sweatshop labor, for example)Report
As usual. “I have a picture in my head of what a racist is. Some of the things you do look like that picture. Therefore I’m going to call you a racist.”Report
If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck…
*ducks*Report
Heh..Report
Something something…pettiness, rabble, rabble.Report
I am, reluctantly, a liberal. I can agree with the libertarians on a number of things: the War on Drugs, the War on Terror, the imperial executive. But my fundamental positions are determined by being part of a society, and I want that society to be stable. Not stable in the sense of unchanging, but stable in the sense of not collapsing. My reading of history leads me to believe that providing stability means that you have to consider outcomes and inequality. If too many are denied the benefits of a society’s technologic reach for too long, Bad Things happen. Namely, the poor will tear the whole thing down. At least for me, believing that excess inequality matters means that a certain amount of coercive redistribution is necessary. I also think that (wild hand waving here) the higher the level of technology, the more redistribution will be required.
Which leaves me in bed with the liberals, the only group that seems to think as a fundamental part of their position that inequality matters and has to be addressed. I disagree with many liberals about how much inequality is too much. I disagree with most of today’s liberals about ways and means. I’m in favor of markets; I’m in favor of individual liberty; but both have to be restricted in various fashions to ensure that the society survives.Report
“If too many are denied the benefits of a society’s technologic reach for too long, Bad Things happen. ”
OWS had iPhones. If the problem with inequality is that the less-rich have crappy lives that suck, well, what happens when the less-rich don’t have crappy lives that suck?Report
Its just adorable Duck that you think “OWS had iphones” is a trenchant comment. That just so really is the big concern about inequality.Report
I guess you didn’t read Michael Cain’s post where he complains about “too many” being “denied the benefits of a society’s technologic reach for too long”.Report
I did read it. I didn’t read what he was saying as a goofball conservative trope that the biggest issue for OWS or with liberals regarding inequality is yuppie kids not having enough iphones. Ask MC was his tech statement referred to if you are curious. I would be more concerned about poor people having access to advanced tech like MRI’s, medications, etc.Report
Poor people are far more likely than the upper class to lack internet access.
In days when many companies put their application process online, that’s a killer.
The USA’s broadband, at-home internet penetration is stupidly poor compared to other nations. When nations like South Korea and Vietnam beat us, something is really wrong.Report
“Ask MC was his tech statement referred to if you are curious.”
Maybe you should have just waited for him to respond. But hey, I can understand that the urge to white knight just overcame you.Report
sorry to offend you but lame conservo trope is still a lame conservo trope regardless.Report
I use “technology” broadly. For the US, a large subset of the following. Climate-controlled living space. Clean water. Modern plumbing. Ready access to MRIs and cancer treatments. Broadband. 500 cable channels. Personal transportation. Long-distance transportation. Access to strawberries on a year-round basis. Higher education. Productivity sufficient to have two weeks or more of paid vacation per year.Report
Michael Cain, you realize your list is nothing less than heaven on earth for the 96% of humanity who /don’t/ live in the US?Report
Yes, and life in NYC in 1896 was better than 95% of the world as well. Didn’t mean we still didn’t try to make it better.Report
Don’t you understand that whatever remains after we’ve crushed the unions, done away with any protection for labor, and eliminated workplace safety rules still leaves you better off than anyone living in 1200 AD? Even Frederick II. King of Sicily and Holy Roman Emperor. had to wait for one of his court historians to laboriously research questions you can answer instantly using Wikipedia. And moreover, that it is our sacred duty to rid the world of these things, because they interfere with the freedom of the market?Report
Moses should’ve stopped bitching about being in slavery in Egypt. He was better off than Homo Erectus after all.Report
some of them did, at least.
DD, we live in a society where retirement is a fool’s dream for most 20soemthings. Where JOBS are a fools dream for most people of color.
Are you truly trying to tell me that our lives don’t suck???Report
“Are you truly trying to tell me that our lives don’t suck?”
I quote the man: The poor will always be with us.
“retirement is a fool’s dream for most 20somethings”
um okay bro retirement for most 20somethings is FORTY YEARS AWAY. If you go back forty years we had only just invented microprocessor computers. You go back forty years from that and we didn’t even have jet engines. I don’t even think it’s worth planning that far ahead, beyond “put money in a retirement account”.Report
you mean so that the rich folks can steal it?
god, how I hate dealing with idiots.
“fool me once, shame on you…”
“fool me twice…”Report
Density, to quote another part of the Bible Proverbs:
When arguing with fools, don’t answer according to their folly, or you will become as foolish as they are
Remembering this has stood me in good stead and is why I never, never never will answer another comment of Kim1’s.Report
Only a fool does the impossible three times before breakfast.Report
To paraphrase: it’s not that they are rich, it’s how they got rich..
It’s not that they are rich, it’s the fact that their rising tide DID NOT lift all boats.
Wages for the top 1% skyrocketed while wages for the rest stagnated.
Purchasing power for far too many relied on credit. Poof.
Those at the top have been insulated from the very real effects their economic malfeasance had on the rest of us.
“OWS had iPhones” is a crappy, dishonest-conservative response. Those who don’t have a job; those who are working multiple part time jobs wishing they could get a full time one for health insurance (a number of my friends in that boat); those who wish they could get a better job but are crowded out by the din of so many people applying for so many jobs; those who would start their own business and are stopped, NOT as the lying conservatives and libertarians always claim by “government regulation” but rather because they can’t get a small business loan, can’t get other backing, and can’t take the risk of being without the healthcare insurance they currently have from their existing job.
I bet you’ve never lived paycheck to paycheck.
I bet you’ve never tried to squeak by between jobs, looking for work while still supporting family or friends who are in worse-off shape.
In fact I know you’ve never been there, because you’re the sort of jerk who accuses people in that situation of being “lazy” and “looking for handouts.”Report
The original comment was about access to technology.
If you want to have a discussion about income inequality, you can do that. But that’s also a different conversation. It’s not entirely unrelated, but it is different.Report
Okay, so we gonna talk about MRIs now? Or you got something different to bring up?Report
“Most people who are on public assistance don’t have a character flaw, they just have a tough life.” – Lindsey Graham, yesterday.
A few Republicans still get it. A few of them realize that their rhetoric of demonizing anyone who’s had a tough time of it, of equating wealth with morality, goes nowhere.
The rest? Soulless at best.Report
Why am I even replying to you? I’ve been down that rathole before.Report
I have the same feeling, rat.Report
Only a moron, or Bill Maher (but I repeat myself) would conflate Venture Capital with Private Equity. But so long as that fits into your moronic narrative, rock on.
Meanwhile your hero Bronco Bama has squandered $80Billion on failed “ventures” such as Solyndra and A123 and several more that haven’t quite left the frying pan. “Venture Capital” indeed.
Fact: Venture Capital (and Private Equity) have done more to raise the GDP in this country and the world than ALL other forms combined. Bain gets a black eye because they gave money to companies NO BANK WOULD TOUCH and that makes Bain the bad guys? What about the banks? Proverbs says don’t join a fool in their folly but it also says reproach the fool /for/ their folly.
I bet you’ve never lived paycheck to paycheck.
I bet you’ve never tried to squeak by between jobs, looking for work while still supporting family or friends who are in worse-off shape.
Wrong, wrong and wrong again. I’ve been there, done that. Unlike YOU, I’ve formed a company and made sure every one of MY employees received their full paycheck AND made damn sure the government received ITS paycheck while paying myself absolutely nothing, and this while I had absolutely nothing in the bank. I’ve scrimped and saved like nobody’s business, I know how to do things like make a loaf of bread from scratch not just because it tastes better but because it is 10 times cheaper than buying a loaf at the store. I’ve made my own yogurt, tofu, wine, beer, canned fruits and vegetables, you name it. Unlike those who sit on street corners (making $200/day) with their “will work for food” signs, I’ve physically gone to farmers and offered to weed their gardens so I could take home enough gleanings to eat when I had not one thin dime to my name. I’ve lived in my car for months at a time and had to cobble together enough change to buy the gas I needed to move the car so it wouldn’t get towed. So don’t talk to me about being poor, or knowing the plight of the poor. I’ve been poor as hell, but one thing I’ve never been is envious.Report
If there was a reasonable way that we could give you, and folks like you, money, and take it away from those who never earned it, I’d do it in a heartbeat.
Oh, wait, there is. Increase the estate tax (above $6million only), and increase the capital gains tax. Voila!Report
As the author of the first quoted sentence in your post, I feel that I should respond.
Liberals believe that autonomy is imtrinsically good, too. We agree on that. And we agree that any limiting of autonomy is, other things being equal, unjust.
But we believe that there are certain cases where, say, someone’s right to keep 67% of their income as opposed to 75% can be violated to insure, say, that everyone has access to nearly equal education.
It seems to me that so-called moderate liberatarians that there are lots of practical considerations that trump comsiderations of autonomy. Thus, it appears that they agree with liberalism in principle and disagree (in only some cases) about the best policies to meet those principles.
So why call yourself a libertarian? After all, we are talking about how you should name your political philosophy, i.e. your principles. But you seem to agree with liberals on principle. And you seem to agree with some right-leaning liberals on policy.
I think that so-called libertarians run into a lot of trouble with liberals, only because the name libertarian suggests a disagreement on principle. The confusion is only compounded by the fact that there are libertarians who do disagree with liberals on policy.
Do join the dark side and accept the liberal label. You know you want to.
🙂Report
These are excellent questions, and I will want to respond in more detail soon. They deserve more than just a comment at the tail end of a very long comments section.Report
Thanks Jason.
I should also say that I feel like my comments come across too aggressively. (Apparently, I speak too meakly and write too aggressively.)
Our goal, I think, should be to find some sort of truce or agreement between classical and neoclassical liberals and moderate libertarians on principles. Then we can focus on disagreeing about which policies (the ones that are plausible) are most likely to make good on our agreed upon principles.
I think ending the drug war and criminal penalties for drug use, but leaving some sensible regulations on drugs and medicines (you don’t want every medicine and drug to go over the counter, IMO), is a good start. A more dovish foreign policy is also good. Ending certain things like cab medallions and hair-styling licenses is fair game, too.
I think liberals might be sold on scrapping or reducing the income tax in favor of something else (VAT, added to capital gains, inheritance tax on big money, financial transaction taxes, energy taxes to pay for externalities, amd maybe even a wealth tax) too, as long as it was guaranteed to improve or at least do no harm on inequality.
Moderate libertarians can give ground on health policy, maybe accepting Obamacare or something close enough. (The penalty for not paying insurance or for healthcare taxes is justified, because you are always covered by emergency rooms and hospitals, even if insurance can’t pay.) Also, healthcare is necessary for the worst off to compete, and the worst off can’t afford it.
Moderate libertarians can agree that laws that offer union protections increase the autonomy of workers to bargain for higher wages. Moderate libertarians should be natural allies of unions, IMO.
Liberals can agree that some charter schools and privates are okay as long as there are scholarships and public subsidies, and as long as their is public oversight and a strong public-school option.Report
I like everything you just said. I would be a much happier person if we could manage to come together to make something like that happen in 2016.
I’d advocate for a national sales tax (specifically, the FairTax–which makes it progressive) to replace corporate, income, and payroll taxes. I’m fine with unions except in the public sector; unions need the market to provide limits over their power.
And of all the social programs, universal healthcare is the one I’ve come to be most open to. It’s easier than the others to make a case for as a “right”, and we’ve messed up the current system so bad (mostly due to government interference, mind you), I’m having trouble finding a practical path back to a free market solution. Maybe we could trade universal healthcare for agreeing to move education toward a voucher system?
Oh, and regarding “I should also say that I feel like my comments come across too aggressively,” I suspect many of us feel that way (I know I do much of the time). I was thinking about how it’s a little odd that, given the technology we have today, that we aren’t doing these sorts of things as videos since with those, it’s so much easier to convey tone.Report
The superrich see vouchers as just a gateway to letting the Catholics take over schools… so that the superrich don’t need to pay for it. You’d have your Tony public schools (British sense), and then you’d have the rest. And the rest wouldn’t learn evolution, and would totally suck, and you’d never let them into the good colleges.
And the rich would have more money, and that would make them happier.
Remember, folks, veterans benefits are the new welfare.
Playing the have-nots against the have-littles is an old, old game…Report
Yeah, the vouchers would have to be well regulated if they’re going to work. The top schools could price out the poor kids who have little money to add to the voucher. Top colleges and employers will hire from only the rich kid schools. Then you’ve got an unequal playing field again.
Not sure if it can work and, at the same time, be a whole lot different than a non-voucher system.
Also, our schools are very good. Relatively poor students here (and world wide) drag down overall test scores. And we have too many poor kids compared to the rest of the world, so our scores are lower than they should be.
Reduce inequality and the problem goes away.
In the mean time, school busing would work, but racism prevents it from happening.Report
+1
Cut child poverty by 20% before you bust the union and give away the store to charter schools.Report
Unions are awesome. Just love what they did to Hostess.Report
There is far more to Hostess going belly up than the union.Report
Thanks TVD,…
I mean Hanley.
Sorry, I got confused there.
🙂Report
Also, I hate what those teachers unions did to the kids in Canada and northern Europe. Damn unionization is killing our smart kids.
Oh well, at least the little idiots will have a sweet union job waiting for them making Ho-Ho’s…
Nooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!Report
If only they’d agreed to earn negative salaries, Hostess could totally have afforded the management raises and paid off the debt.at the same time.Report
Why haven’t we reconsidered the company shop as a neoretrosolution? Those workers could have been paid in scrip redeemable only for Hostess products. They’d still have their jobs and Hostess would still be solvent. Win-win!Report
Imagine trying to get insurance for a group that lives on Twinkies and Ding-dongs.Report
Aw come on prof. Libertarians should be entirely enthusiastically in favor of private sector unions. If anything statist regulation is probably a major accomplice culprit in the death of private sector unions in the US.Report
Hey, I’m a union member.
But even the Teamsters tried to talk the Hostess employees out of striking.
They are like any other institution, useful but highly problematic.Report
+1.
Verizon’s union did a better job than the scabs they hired (they accused the union of sabotage because the union workers WERE the best folks to hire for the job, so the scabs couldn’t get anything to work right).Report
Sure prof but if we’re painting any association of human beings with the colors of their worst examplars where does this put us? Did Enron discredit corporations everywhere for eternity? Did Arthur Anderson discredit partnerships? I don’t think so, thus I don’t think Hostess’ dumb ass unions discredit unions everywhere.Report
Did Enron discredit corporations everywhere for eternity?
No, but Enron+MCI+Worldcom+LehmannBros+(alltheothers) did put a major hole in the libertarian “if we let the markets self-regulate everything will be fine” theory.
And the damage Enron did can’t be cleared up satisfactorily by Libertarians’ worship of liability law either, since by the time Enron was done much of the “value” they stole was already frittered away and unrecoverable.Report
Blind trust in anything is fucking stupid.
Yes, let everything be a bit discredited (especially our dear scab Ralph Nader). Be wary folks, and caveat emptor with everything you see.Report
Did Enron discredit corporations everywhere for eternity?
Citizens United would give Lay and Skilling the absolute right to use Enron’s corporate checkbook to buy elections. That’s enough for me.Report
M.A. there’s an error in your reasoning here. In order for Enron+MCI+Worldcom+LehmannBros+(alltheothers) you would have to demonstrate that these incidents occurred in a libertarian market system. They didn’t, the market is heavily regulated with significant state intervention. If anything the Enron+MCI+Worldcom+LehmannBros+(alltheothers) suggests that liberals may not be correct that a regulated market can prevent these problems.*
*Mind some liberals would say that the market simply needs more regulation but most libertarians would say, fairly in my mind, that the market would need to be much more free before its scandals could be laid at libertarianisms feet.Report
Sure prof but if we’re painting any association of human beings with the colors of their worst examplars where does this put us?
Precisely the point I’ve been trying to make lately. But of course you were never one of the folks who had trouble grasping it.Report
North,
there was plenty enough information publically available to show that Enron was a pyramid scheme. They were required to report it.
Likewise with the lead in toys scandal.
I think the onus is on the libertarians to explain this obvious inefficiency in the market, as to why these were allowed to persist for a relatively long period of time, despite being really worthwhile things to debunk.
I think the answer is obvious: people are lazy. And this is why pure libertarianism fails.Report
North,
see Stiglitz for the opacity and unregulatedness of Lehmann/Bear Stearns.Report
Kim,
Considering the four examples North gave, in highly regulated markets, which force had the better track record of eliminating the offender, markets or regulators?Report
Roger: you can take the regulators out of your enumeration. The regulators, to wit, CFTC, were out of the picture by virtue of deregulation. Enron was allowed to play both sides of the card table, as both dealer and player. When Enron didn’t like the cards in the hand it was playing, it would throw them into the trash can hiding under its own table.
Accounting regs changed. Enron built up an incestuous group of corporations to puff smoke in the faces of what little regulation remained and hired in Andersen to run the smoke machine.
The markets didn’t eliminate Enron. The markets crashed.Report
Blaise,
I think we can agree that Enron was in a highly regulated industry. They were the most fraudulent company in the room, and when it came to light, bankruptcy was the result. Markets got them and Andersen, and all the other companies on the list that went bankrupt.
Another place we can agree is that stupid deregulation helped cause the launch of Enron. Enron thrived playing the games created by stupid regulations and just as stupid deregulation.
I am all for a responsible layer of regulation and rules. I am against situations where success and failure in the maket is determined by how well one games the market and the regs. Even LWA and I were able to agree on my examples of this in P&C insurance.Report
Enron was once a highly regulated industry. It was deregulated with a bit of underhanded chicanery. That deregulation allowed Enron to create the accounting nightmare which followed.
The CFMA would also set in motion the Catastrophe of 2008.
Upstream, I said a symptom of bad deregulation was barter markets. Enron was able to play an incredible game: allowing people to bet on its future stock price — on its own market floor!. What an interesting scam, eh? It wasn’t real money in that market.Report
Excellent comments Shaz, in the whole subthread. I think what you’re highlighting here is workable solutions vs. ideal solutions. Ideals have to be put on hold for a bit, until people become better than they are. But a workable solution that both solves problems and leads people in the right (towards the ideal) direction have lots of merit.Report
Thanks Still.
And back at you.Report
Yeah, the vouchers would have to be well regulated if they’re going to work.
Every metric that is used to measure public school efficacy shall be used for any school that accepts a voucher.Report
Including how well they do with the disabled? 😉Report
Reduce inequality and the problem goes away.
This is pure speculation, isn’t it?Report
It’s worth noting that Singapore, Hong Kong, and Shanghai topped the PISA rankings in 2012, and they have more income inequality than the US. Well, Singapore and Hong Kong do, anyway. I’m fairly confident that Shanghai does as well, but I can’t find city-level data.Report
2009, not 2012. There are no 2012 PISA rankings, as far as I know.Report
The Chinese data can’t be compared to the world wide data. Only the Kids in the good schools take the tests.
Imagine how well NYC would do if poorer kids just didn’t go to school at all (and not take tests).
Surely the data from Europe (and across states in the U.S. as well) implies a strong correlation between equality and high test scores. There is also a correlation between strong teacher’s unions and high scores. Certainly, there is no correlation to suggest the opposite,
I am too lazy to link to Ravitch.Report
What’s your evidence for the claim that Chinese data aren’t comparable because of sampling bias? Obviously this would entirely invalidate the rankings, and I’m not seeing any kind of acknowledgement of this in the official reports. In fact, unless I’m misreading, the PISA committee selected the schools themselves using a random sampling weighted by number of students.
Let’s be clear: The US scored low on the PISA tests because black and Hispanic students drove down the average. For reading scores, at least (the only ones for which I could find a racial/ethnic breakdown), Asian American students scored better than students in most Asian countries, and non-Hispanic white American students scored better than students in most European countries. Here’s an international comparison adjusted for race and immigration.
Why American blacks and Hispanics tend to underperform academically is not entirely clear, aside from the fact that a sizeable chunk of the Hispanic population did not learn English as a first language. But there’s no evidence that using redistribution to smooth out inequality will fix this.
I’m eyeballing it, but I’m not seeing any real correlation between PISA rankings and Gini coefficient within Europe. The European countries with the least income inequality are, starting from the bottom, Sweden, Montenegro, Hungary, Denmark, Norway, Austria, Malta, Luxembourg, Slovakia, Kazakhstan (not European, but a great example of the problem with Gini obsession), and Finland. Of those, Finland was the only one ranking in the top 20 across all three subjects in the 2009 PISA rankings.
So I’m guessing that your assertion of a correlation is just based on a comparison between the US and Europe. The problem is that the US is sui generis in a lot of ways. You can’t just pick two that you don’t like and say that one causes the other.Report
Brandon,
For one thing, it’s not the U.S. vs. China. It’s the U.S. vs. Shanghai (just one city, and amongs China’s wealthiest).
If they compare, say Palo Alto, with all of China (including rural China where poverty is high and test scores aren’t published for fear of embarrassing the Chinese government) you would see the opposite. Both Shanghai and Palo Alto are cities that are magnets for success and education. (Hong Kong, too.)
In the U.S. poor children -whose parents moved to some place just to get a job to get by- attend public schools and -on average- drag down the test scores. In China, the children of migrant workers who have moved from rural areas often don’t go to school at all. They certainly don’t take the PISA. Moreover, I can’t find a link, but I have heard that lots of the most affleunt families in China will send their kids to Shanghai for schooling. (Imagine we compared all of China with some town, say in Connecticut, that had a lot of elite boarding schools where the best American students came to study.)
“The plight of migrant Chinese children living in burgeoning urban areas in many ways exemplifies the momentous challenges facing the world’s most populous nation. China has traditionally denied public schooling to migrant children, most of whose families were drawn to the cities by economic opportunity, and only recently (in 1998) did it begin to allow the children access to for-profit city schools, most of which are operated by migrants themselves. But that access ends after middle school, as the government often prohibits migrants from entering high school in their adopted cities.”
http://www.hks.harvard.edu/news-events/news/students/migrant-china
So yes, comparing the U.S. to just Shanghai is misleading. Adjust for poverty and the U.S. system is excellent.
Also, there is no doubt that the Chinese system gets kids to work hard on test prep. (The longer school day, longer school year, greater work ethic, and the threat of low test scores completely ruining your entire life are the main factors here, IMO.) But all that test prep is driven by and habituates students into rote learning, which isn’t all great. (While I was in China, all the teachers and admin knew the college system had a problem with too much rote learning, but college is too late to fix anything.)
—
Also, this:
“Researchers for the National Association for Secondary School Principals disaggregated the PISA results by income and made some stunning discoveries. Take a look at this link (“PISA: It’s Poverty Not Stupid”). It shows that American students in schools with low poverty rates were first in the world when they were compared with students in nations with comparably low poverty levels. ”
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/Bridging-Differences/2011/01/dear_deborah_i_have_been.htmlReport
Also, having taught college students in China, I can report that yes they are hard workers (but not as much as you think), but really bad at a lot of things our students (who ain’t great) are better at: analytic writing, giving professional presentations, and generally planning, managing their own time, and organizing their own work. Rote learning with high stakes (we’re talking how happy you’ll be forever) isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
European students on average -I haven’t taught there, only taught their student’s here- kick butt on all measures, IMO.Report
Not what I hear from physics profs, on grad students. They’ll take a C American student over an A+ from Romania OR China. And the C Student will do better too…Report
Evaluating foreign grad school applicants is hard and a bit of a crapshoot. Pure grades and GRE/TOEFL scores are not particularly reliable or good indicators. In computer science, we have Asian schools that we know are reliable and from whom good grades are really meaningful, but for a lot of other schools, an A+ student could be great or awful.
The real reason to prefer American and western european students is you actually know what you’re going to get. You know how to evaluate the school, you know how they likely calibrate the grades, you know the GREs are generally meaningful.Report
PB,
I love the eval of Chinese grad students
“they love assembly language, but they can’t program well in it, because it takes a lot of imagination to do it right”
(note: this comes from someone who writes self-modifying code, so…)Report
http://dianeravitch.net/2012/07/23/your-homework-berliner-on-education-and-inequality/
That’s a start. I might be wrong, but I’m not making this up out of whole cloth.Report
Liberals can agree that some charter schools and privates are okay as long as there are scholarships and public subsidies, and as long as their is public oversight and a strong public-school option.
And libertarians can agree on that strong public oversight since there are public monies involved. And while some are total privatizers, most of us can agree on keeping the strong public school option because we just want to create competition for, not eliminate, public schools.Report
Just for the record, I’m only part of that “most of us” as part of a transition plan. You have a decent chance of getting me to support public assistance for education, but I have a really tough time seeing how government-run schools are a good thing.Report
I’m less interested in the outcome than the process. Let it be competitive; i.e., let the parents choose. If the aggregate choices are all voucher-supported private schools, that’s fine. If the aggregate choices are all voucher-supported public schools, that’s fine. If–as I suspect would happen–the aggregate choices are a mixture of voucher-supported public and private schools, that’s fine as well.
Set up a good process, and the odds are that the outcome will be good (enough). Focus on achieving a particular outcome, and we’re likely to screw up both the process and the outcome.Report
Nah, I’d rather not once again profitize the commons for the well-being of the few. If rich people, libertarians, and neoliberals truly believe private or charter schools are better, fine. Use your own money and set up a no-charge private school.
I know, I know, what about the taxpayer money you’ve already spent? Guess what, your property taxes aren’t tuition you’re paying directly to the public school district for your kids. It’s simply funding the school district, whether your kids are there or not.Report
Jesse,
That’s a fairly shallow response. Let’s keep those tax dollars exactly the same. Childless people, those whose kids have already graduated, they still have to pay to support the education system.
It’s still their tax dollars, and it’s still going to fund education for all kids. It’s still a public education system, because there’s public provision. But public provision doesn’t require public production. In the same way, our roads are public roads; publicly provided, but usually privately produced.
Now here’s what you’re saying. “Those people using public tax dollars to educate their kids should all have to do it my way. None of them should be allowed to use those public tax dollars to educate their kids in a way they think is better.” It’s not good enough for you that your preferred option still exists for those who prefer it; in addition you want to deny others their preferred option.
And here’s the real kicker. The only way actual public schools disappear in my proposed scheme is if the vast majority of parents don’t want to send their kids to them. And your response to this is, “Don’t let that overwhelming majority have that option.” How very democratic of you.Report
Oh, and public education is not a commons. What I take out of it does not detract from what you take out of it. It’s really a private good with extensive positive externalities (and the presence of positive externalities suggests the market will not supply it optimally, so some public subsidization is indicated).Report
Now here’s what you’re saying. “Those people using public tax dollars to educate their kids should all have to do it my way. None of them should be allowed to use those public tax dollars to educate their kids in a way they think is better.”
There’s this little thing called the 1st Amendment.
We don’t fund religious schools. Period.
It’s still their tax dollars, and it’s still going to fund education for all kids. It’s still a public education system, because there’s public provision. But public provision doesn’t require public production. In the same way, our roads are public roads; publicly provided, but usually privately produced.
What we discovered is that society runs better – and everyone, childless or not, kids grown or not, kids themselves – gets a better lot in life when we have a public education system to at least attempt to get all kids up to a certain standard before entering the workforce.
Do some kids slip through? Yeah. In a system the size of the USA, some are going to.
Is there room for improvement? Always. No system is ever perfect. We commission a lot of research on trying to make it better. Sometimes we find actual solutions and implement them. Sometimes we find what we think are solutions, but they lack validity and don’t scale or transfer well outside the confines of where the study originated.
The only way actual public schools disappear in my proposed scheme is if the vast majority of parents don’t want to send their kids to them. And your response to this is, “Don’t let that overwhelming majority have that option.” How very democratic of you.
If the aggregate choices are all voucher-supported private schools, that’s fine. If the aggregate choices are all voucher-supported public schools, that’s fine. If–as I suspect would happen–the aggregate choices are a mixture of voucher-supported public and private schools, that’s fine as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segregation_academiesReport
M.A.,
You’re so eager to pick a fight that you don’t take time to think about this.
Religious schools: I never said I would fund religious schools. I wouldn’t. I’m as close to a First Amendment absolutist as you’ll find. Your assumption, your error.
Second, as I explicitly said, we’re not talking about doing away with a public education system. It would still be publicly provided through tax dollars, and so the recipient private institutions would be subject to state rules on acceptance and treatment of students and required outcomes.
And that latter reason is why there wouldn’t be segregation academies. Thank you for that lovely strawman.Report
Yes, if you were Czar of Education, James. But you’re not, so in reality, we’re seeing public money in states like Louisiana going to religious academies that are basically all-day Sunday school lessons and then we see that same Governor (Jindal) who instituted those policies getting awards from proponents of Charter Schools.Report
+1 to what Jesse said, James.
Vouchers are a tainted term, about as tainted as “States’ Rights.”
It would still be publicly provided through tax dollars, and so the recipient private institutions would be subject to state rules on acceptance and treatment of students and required outcomes.
Great. And then we get to re-fight the civil war again over “local control” and “states’ rights” again about the “overburdensome regulations that won’t let us teach our kids our values in school.”
They’re doing it where I live right now, complaining about how schools don’t have enough “local control of the curriculum” (though what they really mean is they want another round of creationism-indoctrination and another Scopes trial).Report
Bingo. There are fundamentally, four constienuncies for the expansion of charter/voucher schools. Note I’m not including libertarians in here because you’re not really an important constinuency for anybody. 🙂
1. Rich people who want to bust unions – Not a big electoral bloc, but a big electoral funding bloc.
2. Religious people who want government funding for their bible academy or parochial school.
3. Poor people in urban areas who believe public schools have failed them for a variety of reasons.
4. Parents in suburban areas who think that more choices are better and partly buy into the “my property tax is tuition” myth.
In my view, groups 1 and 2 should be ignored for a variety of reasons, there are better ways to fix the problems of group three without further defunding public education, and group four won’t really believe in it much (see their high ratings of their own school districts) if group one isn’t funding initiatives and buying off politicians.Report
I don’t really understand how giving a voucher to the parents to use for their children is an example of the government respecting an establishment of religion. It seems to me that forbidding the parents from using the voucher (gasp! even at a *CATHOLIC SCHOOL*) would prohibit the free exercise thereof more than anything else.Report
Jaybird,
Giving voucher money to a Catholic school is using tax money to pay the Catholic school to religiously indoctrinate the kid. That is, in every sense of the word, government endorsement of religion.
Not. Happening.Report
Also, I’ll point out I have far less problems with non-profit, locally-created, democratically accountable charter schools with union teachers than I do the other broad swathe of charter schools out there.
After all, the original vision of charter schools came from teachers unions, but as usual, corporations trying to find profit everywhere have twisted it.Report
I’m familiar with the argument, M.A.
I see a distinction between “the government giving funds to the Catholic Church” and “the government giving parents vouchers to be given to schools to be exchanged for education funds”.
The former strikes me as Unconstitutional. The latter strikes me as perfectly within the Constitution’s boundaries.Report
Shell games hold no sway with me, Jaybird.
It’s tax money, it came from the general tax funds. It is not “refunding the tuition they won’t be using from the public schools” as too many brain-addled middle-class Conservatives think of it when they are railing against public schools.
All your argument does is prove it’s a shell game, a cheap trick trying to launder money for an unconstitutional purpose.Report
See, I don’t see it as a “shell game” given the direct action taken by parents. The parents choose the schools and hand over the voucher. The state isn’t respecting one institution over another, the *PARENTS* are, and the Right of the parents to do so is enshrined in the First Amendment.
You’re discriminating against the institution based on some of its speech content… I mean, it’s not even like we’re arguing over “what if the school is *WORSE* than public school?” because we know that, as a general rule, they aren’t: They’re better.
So we’re stuck wondering why parents can’t use their vouchers at certain institutions and it seems to me that you’re saying “because I can pass laws prohibiting the free exercise thereof”.
The agency of citizens is exceptionally important here.Report
Under this reasoning, any tax break of any kind constitutes government support of religion. If you didn’t get the tax break, you wouldn’t have as much money, and you wouldn’t be donating it to a church. Therefore, tax breaks constitute government support of religion.
Hey–not only that, government money is used to pave the roads, upon which people drive when they’re going to church! Clearly paved roads constitute government support of religion!
Hell with that–given that we’re told that the existence of a functioning society is entirely due to the existence of functional government, it’s therefore obvious that the ability to have organized religion is DIRECTLY DUE TO GOVERNMENT SUPPORT OF SOCIETY. If it weren’t for government, we wouldn’t be able to have religion! Therefore, all religion is unconstitutional.Report
Should someone be permitted to use Pell Grants to attend Notre Dame? Should someone be permitted to spend a portion of their unemployment check on a Joel Osteen book? On donations to their church at Mass on Sunday?
If the answer to any of the above is “yes,” how do you distinguish between this and a means-tested school voucher program?Report
The state isn’t respecting one institution over another, the *PARENTS* are
The moment the money flows, it’s the state funding a religious school.
The “but these guys laundered the money so it’s clean now” argument doesn’t matter, any more than the “agency of” some form of dishonest vote scheme allows infiltration of public schools with religious indoctrination goals.Report
Not. Happening.
Yes. It is.Report
Mark,
We’re diverting funds from what used to go to a publicly-funded secular resource (ie. public schools) to a privately-funded private resource.
Your unemployment example is an example of a public program with no stated goal other than “helping people from being destitute.” It’s not diverting public money from say, training new people to sending them all to a Joel Osteen conference. OTOH, Notre Dame does has to follow certain rules about religious freedom and other federal laws to receive Pell Grants. Their are however, private religious schools that have more onerous requirements that don’t receive Pell Grants for that exact reason.Report
Jesse,
Let’s be honest here, the public schools in Louisiana are often Sunday Schools. They have prayers; they distribute Bibles in classrooms, they teach creationism.
But you won’t take that as evidence that there’s something fundamentally wrong with public schools. And yet them just doing the same thing in charter schools is supposed to be evidence that there’s something fundamentally wrong with charter schools.
I have a problem with your variable standard.Report
If the answer to any of the above is “yes,” how do you distinguish between this and a means-tested school voucher program?
Notre Dame does not require religious indoctrination of its students. The requirements of theology classes are academic only.
For a Joel Osteen book, or for donations to their church, it is much as if they were employed, enrolled their child in a religious school, and then became unemployed and used part of their unemployment benefits to continue paying tuition. The unemployment benefit money is a form of insurance benefit (literally, unemployment insurance), which is actually, 100% theirs.
Vouchers cross the line because the vouchers are not their money. Vouchers are the state paying the religious school, no matter the laundering-agency used to hide that fact.Report
Jaybird,
Of course private schools are better. If public schools could exclude people based on ability to pay, test scores, and behavioral problems/learning disabilities, they’d do great too.
As for the rest of your argument, again. We live in a society. Liberals like me think it’s best for society to fund schools that are open and available to all, damn what individual citizens want to do with their agency. If they want to send their kid to a private school, fine. Just like you can buy health insurance while still paying taxes for Medicaid.Report
Aside from the creationism thing, which I haven’t heard about it, if you have actual evidence of either teacher-led prayer schools or Bibles being handed out as something other than a text to read in a class about religion in general, then the ACLU has some lawyers who would love to get your call.Report
When you start damning individual agency, you’re going to find yourself in a fairly collective mess.
I imagine you’ll blame the individuals rather than the collective theory. That’s how it tends to go.Report
Notre Dame does has to follow certain rules about religious freedom and other federal laws to receive Pell Grants. Their are however, private religious schools that have more onerous requirements that don’t receive Pell Grants for that exact reason.
Not exactly. Yes, the school can’t directly discriminate by denying admission to people of different faiths, but in general all a school has to do to be eligible to cash Pell Grant checks is to be accredited by an accrediting agency recognized by the Dept. of Ed. It’s easy to get a Pell Grant to study religion at a private Christian college with the purpose of becoming a minister.
So your tax dollars are going to help train ministers.Report
When you start damning individual agency, you’re going to find yourself in a fairly collective mess.
I treat “individual agency”, canard of libertarianism, with about the same level of trepidation I carry for your standard “Markets RAWR” argumentation.
There are limitations. When we find that “individual agency” fails, statistically, it fails for reasons and that needs addressing. When we find that it’s just being used to whitewash something far more ugly, then it’s not worth the pixels that display it.
That you’re now using “individual agency” the same way the dishonest, lying defendants used other standard creationist tropes in Kitzmiller v. Dover weakens, not strengthens, the chance that I’ll take Libertarians seriously on other “individual agency” arguments because I can see right the facade on this topic.Report
Jesse,
Louisiana is a virtual make-work program for ACLU lawyers.Report
That you’re now using “individual agency” the same way the dishonest, lying defendants used other standard creationist tropes in Kitzmiller v. Dover
“Individual agency” is a creationist trope? Seriously?Report
I am less than convinced that these are or should be meaningful distinctions for purposes of the Establishment Clause, but for the moment, in the interest of attempting to arrive at compromise:
If a hypothetical religious school made its religion classes electives rather than mandatory components of a curriculum, would that answer your establishment clause objections?Report
I’d be cool if there were as much introspection on violations of the “Free Exercise” clause… and as much snarling at the idea that such might be violated.Report
“Of course private schools are better. If public schools could exclude people based on ability to pay, test scores, and behavioral problems/learning disabilities, they’d do great too.”
The data reveals this is incorrect, Jesse. Private schools are better for all students. I’ve linked to the studies repeatedly.Report
I’d be cool if there were as much introspection on violations of the “Free Exercise” clause… and as much snarling at the idea that such might be violated.
In what way does saying “tax money will not go to a religious school” mean they can’t go to church on sunday (or any other day for that matter), pray as they want, observe as they want?
School isn’t a religious observance. Tax money going to a school that forces kids into religious observance, on the other hand, is a violation of the 1st amendment.
Voucher programs otherwise for private non-religious schools? Strict, strict regulations and thorough checks are in order to ensure we haven’t just created segregation academies.
The problem, the thing you libertarians refuse to acknowledge, is that these responses aren’t coming from a vacuum. They come from noting the actual history of what the creationists, segregationists, and the rest of the conservative movement have actually tried.Report
I won’t speak for anyone here, but when talking about the Free Exercise clause, the guy whose opinion I am going to take the most seriously is MA, the guy who wants to throw religious leaders in jail for being wrong.Report
Roger,
The data reveals this is incorrect, Jesse. Private schools are better for all students. I’ve linked to the studies repeatedly.
Does this apply to open-admission private schools?Report
Of course they still have to pay. I never said otherwise. But, I was cutting off the response I get a lot, which is when people say, “I paid taxes to the school district, so if I send my kid to a private school, I should get it back” or something along those lines.
Actually, the difference is, I can access any road I want that is publicly funded even though it’s privately built. OTOH, there will be tax money going to private or charter schools that will restrict the ability of children to go to that school, either through the approval process, onerous parental requirements, or testing. If taxpayer money is going to a school, it should be open and available to all, regardless of ability or monetary need, just like public schools.
Yes, I totally am. Shockingly, I think people should follow the policies I believe in. In fact, in my perfect world, I’d basically bribe voters. We’ll cap local property taxes at one percent forever, the federal government takes care of most of the funding, but that means it also it gets most of the control and makes local school boards largely impotent along with giving more control to teachers. Oh, and I’d cut the number of total school districts down from about 10,000 to 2,500. Not every exurban subdivision needs a school district.
But yes, my “preferred” option would still exist. But, it’d be the second-tier, second-rate option for kids who didn’t have parents who could navigate the charter school maze, for children who have personality, learning, or behavioral problems, or bluntly, the bottom 60% of kids who aren’t going to get into most charter schools. It’d be segregation by ability, by income, and likely in a lot of state, by religiosity even more than we currently do now.
No, I don’t think public schools will disappear. But, they will become the second-tier option pretty damn quickly. After all,Report
But, I was cutting off the response I get a lot
And that’s where I stopped reading, because once again you’re assuming the worst “libertarian” response even though you ought to know me better by now. Instead of engaging in a discussion where we figure out what limits we can agree on, you immediately draw the line at the spot most conducive to your argument, regardless of the fact that that line didn’t reflect anything I’d actually said.
You might have said something worthwhile after that, but why would I bother to continue reading you after that?Report
Well, it makes total sense you took the minute or so to type up the response instead of actually continuing to read.
When I write a comment, most of the time, I think about all the commenters, not just the person I’m directly responding too. So yes, I thought there’d be a chance that somebody else, not you, would do a drive-by about my first paragraph. I’m sorry that thinking about that possibility offended your sensibilities.Report
Jesse,
Serious question: do you want a conversation or a fight?
Because immediately drawing lines in the sand and assuming onlookers will jump to the worst position sounds a lot more like you’re looking for a fight than a conversation.Report
I want a conversation, but I’m going to make sure I don’t get rhetorically sucker punched by a random third party in the middle of the conversation.Report
Well, Jesse, we have that in common, too.
But if your response to that fear is to throw the first punch, then you’re not helping.Report
I have much more of a hard time seeing how children ought not to understand what sex is. But that’s why I’m not a conservative who homeschools their kids (NB: I realize not every conservative is that … idiotic)Report
Shazbot, Libertarians treat people keeping any less than 100% of “their” income as a moral evil.
That’s the basic problem this whole multi-day discussion has danced around. Libertarians think that asymptotic approaches to zero taxation are the only option.
The idea of the commons, the idea of dealing with those things where “strict liability” cannot hold.
There are, finally, undoubted fields where no legal arrangements can create the main condition on which the usefulness of the system of competition and private property depends: namely, that the owner benefits from all the useful services rendered by his property and suffers for all the damages caused to others by its use. Where, for example, it is impracticable to make the enjoyment of certain services dependent on the payment of a price, competition will not produce the services; and the price system becomes similarly ineffective when the damage caused to others by certain uses of property cannot be effectively charged to the owner of that property. In all these instances there is a divergence between the items which enter into private calculation and those which affect social welfare; and, whenever this divergence becomes important, some method other than competition may have to be found to supply the services in question. Thus neither the provision of signposts on the roads nor, in most circumstances, that of the roads themselves can be paid for by every individual user. Nor can certain harmful effects of deforestation, of some methods of farming, or of the smoke and noise of factories be confined to the owner of the property in question or to those who are willing to submit to the damage for an agreed compensation. In such instances we must find some substitute for the regulation by the price mechanism.
That was Hayek, btw. Seems he was smarter than most of these “Libertarians” around today. And even he doesn’t see the necessary flaw in Libertarianism free-market nonsense, that causes problems by concentrating wealth in only a few hands until oligarchy can be the only result.
Libertarians like to quack a lot about “non-zero-sum” arrangements, but when you deal with the oligarchy, their idea of a “non-zero-sum” arrangement is where you get only a 2% benefit while they take a 98% benefit. The result over time is that their “non-zero-sum” is still so close to zero-sum as to asymptotically approach it.
Positive-sum interactions work great when Jack and John get together, engage in a business partnership, and each see a 50% return with no damage to others around them. Positive-sum interactions cannot hold the way Libertarians claim them, because we see how it exists today; the rich get preferential interest rates, preferential tax rates (capital gains). The rich can go into investment banks or a mutual fund, dump a million, and get a virtually guaranteed high return rate. I can go into a bank and get 0.01%.Report
I mean “do disagree with liberals on principles”
In short, if you believe that considerations of autonomy are incredibly, but not everything in political calculus, you are a liberal of some sort. (Or maybe you think liberals don’t value autonomy.) So why hide that by calling yourself a libertarian? Why send a signal to liberals that you disagree with them on philosophical principles of justice, when you don’t? Why use the same name as a label of your preferred principles that extremists do?Report
“Liberals believe that autonomy is imtrinsically good, too. We agree on that. And we agree that any limiting of autonomy is, other things being equal, unjust.”
Not this liberal. Or at least, not unless we agree that “all things” are almost never equal.
Unlimited autonomy is not morally or logically defensible, in my view.Report
Hmmmm. Not sure what to say. First let me explain my claim that you are disagreeing with.
Imagine 2 worlds X and Y. In both worlds there are 1 million people with the exact same amount of overall happiness, and in both worlds there is the exact same amount of inequality (say a small amount of inequality). So a utilitarian and an egalitarian would both say that both worlds are equally good.
But suppose in world X people have more autonomy and freedom than in Y. Indeed, imagine that the difference in autonomy is great. Maybe people in world Y never get to keep the things they produce.
Isn’t world X a better world than Y? (That’s all I’m saying.)
Do you think Y might be (if so, please explain) X?
The dispute between moderate libertarians and classical liberals, IMO, is about which policies best bring about equality (at least of opportunity, if not results), autonomy, and overall utility.
I mean, Marx (and he was not really a liberal, but just to make a point) thinks (and I’m oversimplifying here) that what makes life meaningful is your connection with what you have produced. The problem with capitalism, according to Marx, is that it takes a worker’s control and ownership over what they produce through exploitative profits. In some sense, the basis of socialism is the goal of trying to give workers autonomous control over what they produce through unions, government protection, shared ownership of businesses, or through taking away the ability of the wealthy owners to “steal from” the workers, by regulating business, having a social safety net, progressive taxes, a court system, etc.
I do think here are protections that I am in favor of that some libertarians will say “limit autonomy.” A good example is Bloomberg’s soda rule. I see that as a rule that helps people make healthy choices that they would make if the companies selling weren’t so manipulative and good at overriding our autonomy. Another good example would be preventing cigarette companies from advertising to teens and requiring them to put warning labels on their product.Report
This is what I meant by “all things” not being equal.
In your thought experiment? Sure, they’re equal.
Is such a scenario possible? I have never seen evidence of it.
Specifically, in nearly any human society you care to name, no one is ever perfectly autonomous; everywhere we look, there are limits and pre-existing claims on our autonomous self.
This idea of the complete autonomy of the self, even if it is pursued with the recognition that it is an impossible ideal, is what I attack.
Because in my view, it is at the very root level that it is wrong and dangerous.
Society is created when we allow the self to be pierced and our fates comingled, even if only to a limited degree.
The ideal that needs pursuing is the idea of a mixed society, where individual and communal spheres overlap.Report
Agreed. No man or woman is an island.
But I think you agree that maximizing autonomy (where possible) is good. You just disagree with moderate libertarians about how to best maximize autonomy and what the most likely way to maximize autonomy is.Report
True, only to the extent that maximizing [X] is always good, when possible.
Those last two words are doing all the work.Report
As the author of the first quoted sentence in your post, I feel that I should respond.
Liberals believe that autonomy is imtrinsically good, too. We agree on that. And we agree that any limiting of autonomy is, other things being equal, unjust.
But we believe that there are certain cases where, say, someone’s right to keep 67% of their income as opposed to 75% can be violated to insure, say, that everyone has access to nearly equal education.
It seems to me that so-called moderate liberatarians that there are lots of practical considerations that trump comsiderations of autonomy. Thus, it appears that they agree with liberalism in principle and disagree (in only some cases) about the best policies to meet those principles.
So why call yourself a libertarian? After all, we are talking about how you should name your political philosophy, i.e. your principles. But you seem to agree with liberals on principle. And you seem to agree with some right-leaning liberals on policy.
I think that so-called libertarians run into a lot of trouble with liberals, only because the name libertarian suggests a disagreement on principle. The confusion is only compounded by the fact that there are libertarians who do disagree with liberals on policy.
Do join the dark side and accept the liberal label. You know you want to.
🙂
Just want to thank Shaz for putting into clearest possible terms the basic driving point that has animate whatever discussions of libertarianism vis-a-vis other ideologies or ideological labels I’ve ever participated in here. I’m not sure why I was never able to put it this clearly.
(Perhaps it’s because I’m not convinced that is actually the fairest way to see libertarianism, even though I agree that it this is an at times overwhelming surface-level impression of it that is very hard to ignore. It’s why I’m always on about how, with a slightly expanded understanding of the term liberal, really liberals and libertarians could fit nicely under one tent if they wanted. The term libertarian was invented to change the emphasis, however, which indicates what they perceive to be an important difference between themselves and liberals. So we should be attentive to that disinclination to co-identify with liberals depite the practical similarities, and I therefore look forward to Jason’s response.)Report
Whoops, forgot to italicize, sorry.Report
Thanks Michael,
I think based on your past comments, out of all the people here, you come the closest to my way of thinking.
And that is the biggest insult that I can think of. Sorry dude.Report
:DLOL
Like minds think alike, what can we say.Report
Michael,
The reason for not calling myself a liberal is that in practice it turns out that liberals and I keep disagreeing on lots of actual real-world policies.
And to the extent liberals agree with me on policies, why is it that I should call myself liberal instead of them calling themselves libertarian?Report
Liberals disagree with each other about economic policy, a lot, especially if you look over time or at a wider range of places than just the U.S.
Do you disagree on the need for some kind of safety net or the need for some regulations (maybe some kind of environmental and food safety regulations -administered through the courts or gov’t, or a non-profit with power)?
Then you might be a liberal.
I’m the new Jeff Foxworthy: You might be a liberal if….Report
Shazbot, Let me turn that around on you.
Libertarians disagree with each other about economic policy, a lot.
Do you agree that sometimes regulations are over-reaching and cause more harm than good? That sometimes their primary purpose is to protect the interests of producers, not the public?
Then you might be a libertarian.
If you find that facile and tiresome, then we have that in common.Report
You are missing my point about the natural language use of “liberal” and “libertarian”
So, we agree on principles: sometimes it is justified to limit economic autonomy for the sake of maintaining a minimum of utility and a minimum of equality of opportunity.
The only question now is which word should be used to describe those principles. You say “libertarianism” and I say “liberalism.”
My evidence that we should use “liberalism” to refer to our position is as follows:
The vast majority of speakers of English already use the term “liberal” to refer to our position and” libertarian” to refer to the more extreme view associated with Rothbard and Nozick (this is the view you hate being accused of holding, even though you know everyone associates the term “libertarian” with the extreme view.)
The most famous intellectuals who call themselves “liberal” (Rawls in particular) believe in balancing economic autonomy with equality (usually of opportunity) and a minimum of utility as you do. The most famous intellectuals associated with “libertarianism” are explicitly arguing for a view that rejects considerations of anything but autonomy (economic and political) in disputes about justice and policy.
What is your evidence that you should call the principles that we share libertarianism amd not liberalism? (BTW, you can call yourself whatever you want, but if you use terms differently than society, you are guilty for causing confusion.)
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And you are facile.
“Facile” is academic speak for “nanana booger nuggets” or “I’ll kick your butt.”Report
Shazbot,
Of course we share some principles; liberalism and libertarianism have a common ancestor. We’re bickering cousins. But see response to Stillwater about the self-evidence of freedom from want. I think there are principles that separate us, even as we share some other principles.
I’m pretty sure the vast majority of English speakers identify those who reject positive liberty claims as something other than liberal in its modern sense.Report
I’m pretty sure the vast majority of English speakers identify those who reject positive liberty claims as something other than liberal in its modern sense.
If they do, I’m among those who don’t. Personally speaking, a person can be against any welfare state and still be a liberal in my view for starters. But I don’t make a majority-of-speakers claim about that view of the word. So in terms of contemporary public meaning, a person can be for a welfare state but not think that the beneficiaries thereof have any valid claims on the benefits – they can simply hold the position that they want the state to offer benefits to the poor on the basis of charity (a charity they would enforce on their fellow citizens through redistributive taxation). They could also be for benefits like that out of a belief that it improves the general economy in some way. None of those positions require a belief in a positive rights claim to benefits from the state, and I would argue that a majority of English speakers would say that someone who holds one of them is a liberal (provided they also want to protect a slate of basic negative liberties), even if that person also specifically denies that people have valid positive liberty claims to subsistence benefits from the state/society — *and* even though a majority of English speakers may *also* say that the person is a libertarian.Report
But don’t you accept that children have a claim (a positive right) to some modicum of equality of opportunity that can override negative property rights?
Certainly, you believe it is just for society to take tax dollars and use it to help the poorest get the kind of education that will allow them some chance of competing. (maybe subsidies for the poor to help them pay for school on an open market) But how can you believe that this is just if each person does not have a positive claim to equality of opportunity?
If you do not believe that people have such a claim, you are an extremist like Rothbard and Nozick (who I respectfully disagree with his extremism).
If you believe that people have such a claim, then you believe in some positive rights, and that equality is valuable, and that negative property rights are sometimes violable. But that is what liberals believe about rights.Report
Shazbot,
So if I say I’m ok with taxing people to educate kids, I’m suddenly all about positive liberty?
Look, I’ve never shied away from the fact that libertarianism has a problem when it comes to kids and the disabled. It’s a philosophy for reasonably competent adults. So I’m happy to help out those who aren’t reasonably competent adults. But I prefer that voluntary programs do that to the extent possible, and government just pick up the slack rather than being the primary source.
But once you’re a competent adult? You’ve got no claim on me and I’ve got no claim on you, unless and until you and I agree to a contract specifying those claims. If you’re drowning, I’ll help you out because I’m actually a fairly decent person, but not because I think I have any duty to you or because I think you have any moral claim on my assistance.
Shaz, if you want to call me an extremist, go ahead. It’s pretty tiring language, though. It really seems like you’re insisting that a person’s either “an extremist like Nozick” or they’re not really a libertarian. That’s ridiculous; a classic case of the fallacy of the excluded middle. And by pushing it you’re really making it hard for me to respond politely.Report
If (and this is by no means clear — are you done pondering about the sum of vectors for external and internal regulation yet?) you’re willing to accept education as an investment grade vehicle, with a demonstrated payout in the form of taxpayers, or more cynically, that not investing in those children will only create problems for everyone — why can’t you get as far as dispensing with this “picking up the slack” rhetoric?
You’re a nice guy, let’s go from there. There’s Shazbot, floating down the roaring river, you throw him a rope and save him. Good on you. But there are tens of thousands of children in horrible schools, all floating down that river. We know where that river goes, straight into the prison system unless society intervenes. You don’t have enough ropes as an individual to save them all.
Nor, in fairness, should you be tasked with rescuing them. How the hell did those kids get in the river anyway? Maybe the solution is to keep these kids out of the river.
You don’t have a duty to these kids, that’s your call. But they’re gonna get awfully expensive while they’re incarcerated. Maybe you could view educational reforms in terms of your own self-interest and keep those kids from ever falling in the river.Report
You don’t have a duty to these kids, that’s your call. But they’re gonna get awfully expensive while they’re incarcerated.
I actually wrote that I take a pragmatic view, and see education as insurance against crime. But then I erased it because in fact I do have a stronger view–if anyone has a claim on us, kids do. At least enough of a claim that they be given what it takes to enable them to then be independent.
Ideally the market would solve that problem, but to explain why I don’t think the market will, I have to explain my understanding of education.
People like to think of education as a public good. It’s not, because a public good is defined as one from nobody can be excluded (once it is produced, all necessarily receive the benefit) and where my use of that good does not diminish your use of it. But we can and do exclude people from receiving the benefit. A public good will not be produced by the market because there’s no way to capture revenue when you can’t exclude anybody from enjoying it–you can’t exclude non-payers. But education’s not a public good, so it won’t go totally unproduced by the market.
And those who think the market will solve all education problems assume education is a private good, like a chair. A private good is one in which it is easy to exclude someone, and one person’s use of it diminishes another person’s use–it’s easy to exclude you from using a particular chair, and if I’m using it, you can’t. Private goods are satisfactorily produced by the market, so government production or subsidization isn’t necessary. But education’s not a private good, either–as noted above, the education I gain isn’t thereby made unavailable to you.
Education is a toll good, where it’s easy to exclude non-payers, but one person’s benefit from the good does not diminish another person’s benefit. Like a movie theater, or a toll bridge. Toll goods are not wholly unproduced by the market, but they can be underproduced by the market.
In addition, education has extensive positive externalities. Educating me benefits you, and vice versa, but we don’t pay for those benefits. Goods with extensive positive externalities will also be under-(but not un)produced by the market, so government plays a role in subsidizing or producing it to catch it up to optimum production.Report
Exactly. See, that’s a rational approach to the problem. And yes, market forces should be brought to bear on the problem. We’re working with an antique funding model which arose from colonial times: the townspeople would pay a teacher, feed her in their homes, build the schoolhouse and suchlike. Even school times and vacations are all artifacts of farming life: the early start, the spring vacation (planting and calving) the summer vacation (cultivation and harvest) — it’s all due for a massive overhaul.
While all the Stupid People run around and shriek like ninnies, education professionals have been advocating for serious reforms since the time of John Dewey. If we’re ever to impose some reason on this mess, maybe we could listen to the people who face the problems.Report
“…there are tens of thousands of children in horrible schools, all floating down that river. We know where that river goes, straight into the prison system unless society intervenes. You don’t have enough ropes as an individual to save them all.”
I like the analogy. But my hope is that I’m not the only one standing there on the bank witnessing the drowning kids. I’m going to yell and scream and go get other people to show them what a horrible thing this is. And we’re all going to pitch in and save those kids. Eventually we’re going to get tired of that and figure out a way to keep them from falling in the river in the first place.Report
I’m not saying “you’re all about positive liberty.” Different liberals value positive liberties differently. You -it seems to me- are a right leaning liberal who values the right to an equal opportunity to succeed.
BTW, the right to a minimum of equality of opportunity is a huge, huge deal. It’s not a little thing. It is a positive right that all adults have, a claim on each other and society that justifies violating the economic autonomy and property rights over others.
There is a also a serious question about how far the right to an equal chance at success goes. Obviously, it means everyone should get a good education. But does it mean poorer young people should have access to loans to start businesses even though they don’t have parents to help them qualify. Does it mean that nepotism in hiring should be made illegal? But right-leaning liberals (e.g. you! 🙂 ) will have to debate how far the right extends. Some right-leaning liberals will think the right is minimal.
Granted, it may be possible to ensure most everyone’s right at an equal opportunity to succeed can be met by giving them resources before they are 18. (This will not be the case for the victims of tragedies that harm their ability to compete equally, e.g. people who go blind, become mentally ill, etc. after 18.)
—-
I appreciate that you can restrain your aggression, but see no reason for you to be aggressive at all.
You seem to be saying it is annoying to discuss this with me because I am so dumb. True, but you don’t need to say it.
—
BTW, the fallacy of excluded middle assumes that there are only two alternatives, when there are in fact more. I am not assuming that there are only two alternatives. Rather, I am arguing for that claim, as you argue in any sort of argument with the form of a dilemma.Report
James,
If you will accept me into the tribe based on my present positions (allowing I haven’t been saying a lot of late, so they may not be terribly familiar to you at the moment), I am happy to accept membership into libertarianism. Just not on pain of saying I’m not a liberal. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that I’m a liberal by my lights (and we’ve gone over what I think that means vice what you think the modern public meaning of it is). If I’m also a libertarian by your lights, I’m quite happy to go along with that (though I won’t accept that it confers any obligation on me to further change my positions so as to better fit in). But that’s largely because I don’t have much in the way of any light in my mind about how to figure out whether I’m a libertarian, nor much independent interest in it, so I’m happy to let you guide me on the question, as you’re among my favorite libertarians. I don’t have the independent interest because “liberal” is good enough for me – my take on it allows me plenty of space to be as concerned about liberty as I foresee myself wanting to be (hence the lack of any felt need on my part to look for a label that emphasizes liberty more than I think “liberal” does) while also leaving room to pursue other ends using means that restrict liberty a bit in some ways where I think justified. But if you think I’m a libertarian nevertheless, I’m happy with that. I do happen to also think that you are a liberal in terms of my understanding of the term, but I have no agenda that you embrace that; I just have to consistently apply the term to what/whom I see in the world according to my understanding of what it means. And when I do that, it applies to you.Report
I’ll happily let you call yourself what you want. I’m a live and let live type, all in favor of allowing self-identity. If, as I seem to get a hint of, your positions on some issues have recently shifted a bit, perhaps you are reasonably described as a libertarian. Or maybe you’re just a libertarian-compliant liberal. My tribe is really just the tribe of people who are willing to discuss these things without demonizing each other and deliberately (or even just overly carelessly) misrepresenting each others’ views.Report
I don’t think my views are shifting, but on the other hand I often used to argue for positions slightly past the ones I really held just for the sake of working things out here. I’ve just had a decrease in available energy lately.
I never meant to argue (so I guess I agreed with Shazbot a bit more than was accurate) that libertarians shouldn’t call themselves that. In practice, though, I agree that it seems that libertarians and liberals are group that largely share sets of principles and just differ on where the lines of application should be drawn. My point was that I think you could call yourself liberal, hold all your current positions, and not run afoul of anyone’s correct view of what it is to be a liberal. (I reject the Freddie DeBoer view that “progressive” is the weasel word for liberal, which means leftist. That’s just wrong. Progressive is a softer word for leftist, and liberal is something else entirely.)
So my response to your saying why shouldn’t liberals call themselves libertarians where they agree with them was to say, hey, basically, say the word and I will – just not exclusively. I would be happy to be informed (reliably would be all the better) that, by doing nothing on my own accord so far as I am aware, it turns out I clear the bar for being libertarian. I already believed that many people are libertarians and liberals. I just didn’t know if I was one – and had no real interest in finding out, because I felt just the liberal part sufficiently described me (but then I felt it could be sufficient to describe a large number of libertarians too if they wanted, but they don’t, and that’s okay). To turn out to be a libertarian while still just thinking what I think would be a bonus as far as I’m concerned. But not one I feel any need to put extra energy into pinning down.Report
Oh, I’m just teasing when I say, “why shouldn’t you call yourself a libertarian.” It began some time back when someone said, “so if you accept some regulation of the market, aren’t you really a liberal?” And I said, “so if you oppose some regulation of the market, aren’t you really a libertarian?”
Both are stupid because they rely on an assumption that the other ideology must be extremist, either opposing each and any regulation or supporting each and any regulation.Report
I’m starting to ask myself if ideology itself is a pipedream. Every industry is different, and some make better marketplaces than others (insurance, for example, is particularly prone to anti-entrepreneurism, simply based on the business models used).Report
I don’t think either is stupid, because it really is unclear who’s what outside of what people call themselves. I’ll say it until you get the point: you’re more conversant in what it is to be a libertarian than I am. Say that it applies to me, and I’ll happily add it to the list of descriptors I would self-apply. I don’t know what the term means, but I would think you should.Report
I’d agree it’s wrong, if not stupid, for them have said “really a liberal,” if that meant, “therefore not a libertarian.” But that’s not what you raised – you raised whether/why not call oneself a libertarian (in addition to liberal) on some very minimum bar for prioritizing liberty. I’m very happy to take that one seriously if you’re going to raise it. And likewise, I do feel that way wrt to you and the term liberal. But I don’t feel any ownership over the term libertarian – I want to defer to those who know from it. So if you’re offering to vouch for my libertarianism to other libertarians, yea, I’m going to take that seriously.Report
“I’ll happily let you call yourself what you want. I’m a live and let live type, all in favor of allowing self-identity.”
Yes, but there are mistakes that people can and do make in describing themselves that lead to confusion and uneccesary conflict. There are some things that it would be wrong to call yourself, like say a “theist.”Report
No doubt people make mistakes in self-identification, but I suspect people make considerably more mistakes in other-identification. So I’ll stick to the approach that has a lower error ratio.
And I’m deeply puzzled why it seems to important to you that I change my self-identification. You seem certain that I have misidentified, and don’t seem willing to consider whether perhaps I know some things about myself that you don’t know.Report
It’s not important to me, just interesting.
I think in general it would be better if people used philosophical terms in a way that eliminated confusion. There is a great confusion here over whether someone who believes in positive rights, a minimum of equality of opportunity, etc. should be called a “libertarian.”
The best way to eliminate that confusion is if we all agreed (as most people do already, and we can’t change that fact) that the term “libertarian” was reserved for people who don’t believe in positive rights, or anything other than negative rights in explaining their theory of justice.
If you are fine with confusing people, I can’t stop you.
I suspect the problem is that we all become attached to certain descriptions emotionally and irrationally. My mom self-describes as Christian, despite her avowed atheism and despite not believing anything remotely like what Christians believe. She does this because it helps her fit in with her friends and peers and because her identity as part of her community requires her to self-identify in this way. I don’t want to attack you, but I wonder if your attachment to “libertarian” and avoidance of “liberal” is more emotional and about signalling that you want to fit in with some groups and not others.Report
I think this post is going to get a lot of commentary, so I’ll add some other thoughts and peruse the rest of the commentary later…
1) ALL drugs-heroin, meth, smoking, etc. are legal for anyone of legal age. No restrictions on time/locations where they can be used, assuming property owner consents.
2) I own my body: I should be able to sell a kidney if I want or all my organs upon my death with the proceeds going to my estate.
3) No US presence on foreign soil unless we’re at war. Our armed forces should be majority defensive.
4) Eliminate restrictions on trade except for national security related items (like ITAR and EAR-and severely pare back those lists) that the gov’t actually OWNS. I want to buy oil from Iran, I should be able to.
5) No search without probable cause/warrant for anything.
6) Eliminate the Fed-return to hard money currency-specieReport
IMO, the libertarian/liberal divide is mostly about wealth: its creation and disposition. To wit,
Libertarians are primarily concerned with the making of the pie (creating wealth) and insuring that the pie gets bigger every year. They take a cavalier attitude towards the division of the pie into equitable slices, feeling that that will pretty much take care of itself as long as we enforce laws to keep thieves and con-men at bay. When pressed by liberals on this, their responses, as seen by liberals, are either inadequate, ignorant, or insane.
Liberals on the other hand are primarily concerned with the division of the pie and insuring that no one is left starving (hmmm… guess that’s not a metaphor). They take a cavalier attitude towards the making of the pie (yes you do!), feeling that it will pretty much take care of itself as long as everyone gets a piece. When pressed by libertarians on this, their responses, as seen by libertarians, are either inadequate, ignorant, or insane.
Lots of vulgarity today, folks. Let’s try to dispense more information and less vitriol, okay?
But here’s what I really want to talk about: the state of the pie
I did a little digging around, and it seems libertarians don’t have much of a leg to stand on in complaining about ever-increasing taxes, at least overall. Looking at overall tax receipts by the US gummint since 1960 (personal, corporate, excise and other, but not social insurance receipts) the fraction of receipts compared to GDP has been pretty stable and actually falling a bit, starting around 14% average for the 60’s and down to 11% in the 2000s. (Not talking about spending here; that’s another story. Not talking about which percentile pays what; that’s another story).
Also looked at US Census data on real household income (here and here). Liberals are right about growing inequality: the ratio of the 95th %ile household income to the 20th %ile went from around 6 in the late 60s to around 9 today, pretty steadily.
From the late 60s to about 2000, household incomes grew – pretty steadily by decade – at an annual rate of 2/3 of a percent for the bottom 80% and something like one and a quarter percent for the top 20%. This is a glass-half-full-half empty kind of thing. They didn’t grow equally, but at least they all grew.
(Liberals, feel free to present more data about the division of the pie. Being a libertarian, I don’t care. NB: that’s a joke; I do, but again another story).
The problem is the pie is no longer growing.
From 2001-06, income growth has been flat, and since then it has gone down, across the board. (I don’t have data on the top 1%, but the top 5% are doing worse than the top 40%.) This does not bode well for the future under anyone’s political philosophy.
So what happened? I think I know (and expect the liberals know) how most libertarians will answer, so I would humbly ask the liberals first to proffer their diagnoses before countering the libertarian answers. And please, let’s try to respond to each other with facts instead of name calling.Report
http://www.businessinsider.com/history-of-tax-rates?op=1
Salient points:
Contrary to what Republicans would have you believe, super-high tax rates on rich people do not appear to hurt the economy or make people lazy: During the 1950s and early 1960s, the top bracket income tax rate was over 90%–and the economy, middle-class, and stock market boomed.
Super-low tax rates on rich people also appear to be correlated with unsustainable sugar highs in the economy–brief, enjoyable booms followed by protracted busts. They also appear to be correlated with very high inequality. (For example, see the 1920s and now).
That second one is what happened. A brief, enjoyable sugar-high of debt-fueled economic hyperactivity followed by a prolonged bust economy. Action taken by the Fed with Republican urging in support of various bubbles just made it worse, not better when things finally cratered.
The mistake was letting Republicans keep lowering tax rates to the point where the sugar high, and corresponding income disparity problem, both occurred.Report
MA,
The income disparity (in this metric) evolved steadily since the 60s. The top bracket bottomed out in 1988 and rose after that, so I don’t see the connection. Also, your explanation implies it took from 1988 to 2000 for the sugar high to crash. I suppose that’s plausible. But deliberate Fed actions – creating the internet bubble in response to the S&L crisis, then the housing bubble in response to the tech stock crash, seem equally plausible.Report
MA,
Sorry, I should have read the article before replying. Very interesting. (1) As I already stipulated, no one can argue credibly that tax rates are too high today. (2) That levels of spending are too high is another point I agree with. (3) Super high tax rates do not make people lazy (true), but they do make people shift income in ways to avoid the tax. There’s probably a drag on the economy, but it can’t be catastrophic, seeing as the economy did OK most of the time. One thing that concerns me is the effect that high marginal tax rates have on people who aren’t now but could become wealthy, like owners of successful small businesses. The already-wealthy can shift their wealth to muni bonds or whatever and hold on to it, but it seems to me high marginal rates are an impediment to upward mobility; they benefit the already established wealthy people and big businesses. Something I don’t think you would approve of. Show me some data if I’m wrong. (4) Finally, about low rates causing booms & busts – the narrative presented there has a bit too much cherry picking (the 70s don’t count?) to be convincing. I’d rather see some superimposed graphs or real statistical analysis to prove that point. Got any?Report
The 70’s wasn’t a bust. Look at the Tulips craze for a bust.
I’d prefer we simply have a decently high tax on capital gains (at least at parity with income), and tax inheritance a lot. As far as I’m concerned, capital gains is the least worthy income (and thus most deserving of taxes), as it is less productive (I stuff money in a bank. it’s not out there contributing to the economy (the fair exchange of goods and services), yet I earn money on it, because the bank uses it to purchase assets).Report
Kim,
I don’t see any logic in treating cap gains and ordinary income any differently, up or down. Also not comfortable passing that kind of moral judgment. Your money in the bank is (or used to be!) loaned out to support businesses. Besides, that would be interest income, not cap gains.Report
Ah, you did have data on #4 – I followed your link to page 13 figure 5 left. No relation at all, positive or negative. So unless you can rebut this, please stop claiming that high marginal tax rates are good for the economy.Report
Hi Zed,
I can’t answer for libertarians in general, just for this “classic liberal”. You are totally right that we focus on the pie creation process. I will add that the role of safety nets are to ensure those without adequate slices are taken care of. I’m proud of the safety nets we have here. Some are market based, most are government run. The pie creators pay for these public safety nets. Let’s make sure they keep on baking.
The pie per household stats have indeed flattened out. One reason is obviously that we hit a large recession. The larger reason though is that there has been a shift in inequality. Highly skilled jobs have become more in demand with global markets and technology, and lower skilled jobs are less in demand, especially at above market clearing wages. Economists are notably in consensus on this latter trend. I can point you to some links if interested.
On a broader scope, it is a good thing for humanity. What we are seeing is a transfer to more equality of income and opportunity worldwide. Indeed, on a global scale the last decade was far and away the best for humanity in us getting more people out of poverty than ever before.
One other thing to keep in mind is that the household pie data that we look at usually excludes the safety net part of the pie. In the US alone, we transfer almost a trillion dollars per year to lower income families. Thus even if they are baking less pie themselves, they are still consuming more pie than ever.
So, in brief, it is a pretty darn good story.Report
And yet, still people die. With Insurance, because they can’t afford to even get diagnosed, let alone treated. Smart people, the type that you’d like to have on your side in an emergency.
People are still voluntarily pulling their teeth, before they rot out of their mouths.
The income flatlining started after the Nasdaq crash in 2001, not attributable to this “recession” unless you want to agree that FIRE was just a convenient bureacratic illusion, and we’ve been in recession (or stagnant) since 2001. Greenspan’s free money didn’t create growth (contra Ryan, who argued for it)Report
There is an interesting disconnect in the stats. If you look at real GDP per capita (or here) then recent times look like a big recession post-crash, but GDP still growing before the crash. Look at the household income, though, and there’s another 5 years before the crash where income was stagnant (again, emphasis:) across the board, not just for the non-rich. (We already have a lost decade?) Where did that 5 years worth of growing GDP go if it didn’t flow though income? Is there an economist here that can explain that to me?
Ah. Perhaps you are saying it was concentrated in the FIRE sector and went to inflated asset values. I’d like to see data to back that up. If it’s true, then the post-2000 stagnation needs explaining (for those of us who don’t accept “low tax rates.”) If it’s not true, then the disconnect is not explained. So I’m still scratching my head.Report
Lots of paper wealth disappeared when the dot com bubble busted.
Stock options that were, on paper, worth tens or hundreds of thousands were used as collateral for loans. The options turned out to be worthless. Loans were defaulted and written down, or people scraped by for a half-decade paying them down with discretionary income.Report
Zed,
There are four issues that affect this. First, the data excludes non wage benefits, which are a rising share of compensation. Second, it excludes taxes and transfer payments. Those making money pay less in taxes, and those not making much make more in benefits. Third, some of us believe CPI is biased upward.
Most importantly though, family sizes are shrinking over this time period. Per capita wages are growing, but the number of families is rising and the workers per family are decreasing.Report
So we have people getting poorer, while health care makes out like a bandit?
It’s no wonder our infrastructure sucks so hard, isn’t it?
I mean, they’re building houses with glue these days…
CPI is totally biased (shadowstats has the real numbers), and has been since reagan.
Can you throw some stats on workers per family decreasing?Report
Kim,
Follow this link.
http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2008/08/adjusted-for-household-size-real-income.htmlReport
Roger,
How will you run this up against the decisions of people to not have more kids because their income is dropping? (see birthrate crashing over 2008)Report
Has anybody who follows shadowstats actually done the calculation to sanity check the inflation numbers? I mean, they seem to be selling us the idea that we’re all massively poorer and just haven’t noticed it.Report
I know one of the people who made shadowstats. They did it because the financial industry needs the REAL numbers, not the government manipulated ones.
The fact that shadowstats stays in business is proof that the market needs those numbers, and that they’re actually pretty good metrics for good business decisions.Report
Thanks for turning me on to shadowstats. Way cool. Libertarians should love this stuff. But it would pay to research the controversy before buying in too heavily.Report
Upon closer inspection, shadowstats looks like just another investment adviser with a hook. I’m inclined to give the BLS statisticians the weight of credibility.Report
I don’t doubt that raw data is useful, but the inflation numbers seem to be… well… not very useful. If they were true, we would all somehow have gotten enormously poorer without really noticing. Just take the numbers from 2000 to 2012 and calculate how much real purchasing power would need to have eroded.
My understanding is that this is mostly a rejection of hedonic adjustments, but why? Should our measure of our standard of living ignore the fact that a lot of us are walking around with the equivalent processing power of a mid-80s supercomputer in our pockets for a few hundred bucks?
I’m skeptical of a lot of the economic analysis done by financial managers, so the fact that they’re buying the data doesn’t surprise me. Look at how many people are out there have lost their shirts betting on an inflation spike. Then again, Shadowstats does a lot of stuff, so I’m sure that there’s a lot of value there–M3 estimates could be useful to some.Report
Roger, thanks for taking the time to suggest some solutions to my puzzlement.
Unfortunately… Taxes and transfer payments are zero sum to GDP and income is measured before them, so I don’t see how that can have any effect on the stagnation. CPI bias might do it, but it would have to be suddenly and materially more out of whack than before. Family size shrinkage is small in recent decades, even Perry’s adjusted graph shows stagnation since 1999. That leaves non-wage benefits. Hard to imagine that explains it all.
I’m thinking asset inflation (housing bubble) measured into GDP but not going to anyone’s income. Someone who knows more about GDP calculation can tell me if I’m off base here. Conclusion: we have already had our “lost decade” (and might be starting our second).
Why was the engine sputtering 5-7 years before the crash? What happened?Report
Newly built houses and renovations count toward GDP. Sales of existing houses does not. Fees collected by middle men count toward GDP, and at the peak of the bubble, brokers’ commissions made up a surprisingly large percentage of GDP. I don’t have the original data, but Calculated Risk has always done a good job of producing reliable numbers.Report
So I think you are saying I’m right about asset inflation (housing bubble) measured into GDP but not going to anyone’s income. Thanks. Still, no one is opining on why the engine of our economy flamed out in 1999-2000. (Unless Kim and Patrick Callahan are suggesting a prolonged recession after the dot-com crash? A recession masked by a pumped up money supply going into the housing sector?)Report
Well, that’s what I’d suggest. That’s what the economist-type folks I know say.Report
Zed,
I am sorry, I just lost your comments in the crowd and gave up trying to find them. Your comments on CPI and family size changes post 2000 seem valid to me. I concur with you. I also agree that benefits couldn’t have changed that much.
Are you sure though that government transfers don’t show up anywhere in GDP? For example, they may not count when they are handed to the person, but are they not counted when they are spent?
This gets to another interesting trend. Household consumption is not tracking as closely with household income. Obviously debt needs to be factored in, but poor households consumption inequality looks nothing like the income inequality.Report
The transfer itself doesn’t, but anything that happens to the money after the transfer certainly does. As well it should. GDP is supposed to measure our economic output, and lettuce purchased with food stamps is part of our output just as much as lettuce purchased with cash.Report
Yes and no. If your house increases in value and you sell it at a profit, that shows up as income for you, but the only contribution to GDP would be fees for services like brokerage commissions. The capital gain is not part of the GDP calculation, so we can’t “pump” GDP by selling the same house over and over again.
The other effect on GDP would be if your house appreciates and you increase your spending because you feel wealthier, or you take a loan out against the newly created equity and spend that. This happens with any asset bubble, but I suspect it’s especially pronounced because it’s very easy to borrow against real estate paper-wealth. Much easier than borrowing against overvalued Cisco stock.
Robert Schiller was always a good read for the stock market bubble–both reasons for it to inflate and reasons for it to pop.Report
Liberals are right about growing inequality
Well, sort of. But not really. Income inequality within the US and most first-world nations has increased. But globally, income inequality has decreased. These phenomena are of a piece. First-world workers now face competition from workers in poorer countries; consequently there has been some convergence in their wages. Nothing like full convergence, but it has been a drag on wage growth in wealthier countries.
So overall, inequality has been decreasing, and the decrease has been in the bad kind of inequality—the kind where the poor are very poor, rather than the kind where the rich are very rich.Report
yes, facing competition from slaves, enslaved by corporations. (note: this is naturally more true in some industries than others)
Oh, wait, are we supposed to be cheering the fact that 8 year olds can now “earn” a “living”?Report
Well my comp problems at the employment are still plaguing me. I can read occasionally but I can’t post without blowing the whole thing up. Most annoying, you know how I like to talk.
Jason, great initial post, definitely a comment worthy of rescue. Just a few off the cuff observations:
-Liberalism and libertarianism are both really big ideologies and the terms encompass an enormous amount of nuanced positions and interesting theories and ideologies. Anyone attempting to sum up one or the other in a (often pithy and snarky) one or two sentence blurb is doing two things. A: they’re comically simplifying the subject they’re attempting to define, often unjustly and usually by taking aim at the subjects most extreme and unpalatable elements. B: they’re making their own subject look bad by their lazy characterizations of the other group.
-Libertarians in America are really really really bad at talking to Liberals primarily because they’re been in bed with the conservatives so long that they’ve mostly internalized not just conservatisms linguistic habits and tics but also conservative emphasis and focus.
-Liberals in America at least are really really really bad at talking to Libertarians mostly because I fear liberals have never taken the ideology seriously enough and they have lazily accepted the conservative branding that libertarianism belongs to the right (my own view, libertarianism is the Grandpappy of modern liberalism and has far more in common with it than modern conservatism).
-All the fooferaw and fire that blasts back and forth on the subjects of divisions between liberalism and libertarianism obscures that both groups are a lot closer on a lot of subjects than they think. Liberals have moved a great deal closer to libertarians in the last few decades than libertarians give them credit for (a coup of conservative messaging that) and Liberals remain stubbornly resistant to accepting that on a lot of things Libertarians were on the side of the angels longer than/before liberals even got there.Report
Libertarians were often there first, indeed… back before they used the word and instead called themselves liberals.Report
But the people who call themselves “liberals” today don’t have anywhere near as much overlap with the people who called themselves “liberals” then but the “liberals” took the name anyway.Report
Seems like the market in political labels favored todays liberals.Report
Barriers to entry.Report
Okay, we can talk about contraception if you want to.Report
Dude. That’s none of my freakin’ business.Report
Damn right.Report
But then why would Jaybird care if the health insurance paid for it?Report
Is it nationalized yet?
I suspect you guys will go back to wishing you’d kept running with the whole “privacy” thing. I’m kind of dreading what I think your plans will turn into, at the end of the day.Report
Because if something is paid through the gov or mandated by the gov then every busy body and panty sniffer is going to want to have say. By making health care public it opens it up to oversight by the public. On its own that is actually a good point. However all the proven and successful HC models involve either single payer or heavy gov regulation of private companies to ensure universal coverage and a basic standard of care.
Libertarian theories are not only unproven but take a view filled with hubris and conceit that their theories will work exactly as they think without all those darn unintended consequences. As they point out to liberals, most things don’t work as well in the real world as they do in Ivory Towers.
Also Americans have been just fine with Gov provided health care historically. Medicare, SCHIP, VA are all popular and successful. What is more nobody seems that inclined to tell vets or old folk exactly what kind of pills they should take based on their own religious views. The influence of busy bodies and hard core religious believers is not nearly as automatic as i think Jay believes. The actual issues of disagreement are actually small although heated. If people wanted to find solutions to the issue of contraception within a National model they could. However the religious issues seem to me to be more like convenient issues to try to take the moral high ground to stop the ACA. Certainly many states had laws saying insurance companies had to pay for contraception before the ACA got them all upset.Report
Jaybird:
– If it’s none of your fishing business, and
– If all have the same equal right to access,
then WHY does it matter to you so much to give some neanderthal, knuckle-dragging, bible-humping loser the right to insert themselves between the patient, doctor, and the normal terms of a medical insurance policy regarding what will and won’t be covered just in the case of some medication that may or may not be intended as primary purpose of prescription to allow a woman a bit of freedom from the possibility of getting pregnant?
Seriously.
It’s none of your fishing business.
It’s none of the boss’s fishing business either.
So why the fish do you care? What possible impact does it have on the boss? He doesn’t even have to fishing KNOW whether his employees are trying to get pregnant, or not trying to get pregnant, or are cohabiting with someone of either gender, or whatever else they do.
He doesn’t, or at least shouldn’t, have the right to know whether the medicine is being prescribed for menstrual cramping, for other hormonal issues, for the purpose of pregnancy prevention due to desire, for the purpose of pregnancy prevention because the doctor’s recommended it due to the real possibility that a(nother) pregnancy could cause serious health issues for the woman (such as gestational diabetes and complications).
The. Boss. Does. Not. Have. A. Fishing. Right. To. Know.
The boss is not involved in the decision. Not with the patient, not with the doctor, NOWHERE in this chain should the boss have any say-so.Report
Er, a moment on this last.
I used to work in a two-person shop where the other person got married and then rapidly got pregnant twice in the span of three years. California has very liberal parenting laws and as a result she was out for basically a calendar year and her performance was degraded highly during the other two years.
Now. Before the high horses start jumping. I only very mildly resented the increase in work without a corresponding increase in pay. Because I do believe that we, as a society, ought to give certain leeways for early parents (more leeways, say I, but that’s a different conversation and it’s loaded with gender privilege implications so let’s leave that for another day). But I very, very much believe that I had a goddamn right to know about those things, as I was going to be suffering the direct burden. Of course, that didn’t come into question because she talked to me about these things.
When my wife got pregnant, much more recently, I took advantage of California’s even more liberal parenting laws and took a lot of time off, and my performance was degraded as well (not as much, I don’t breastfeed). I was quite open about planning with my employer and my coworkers, for the same reason.
If you think that raising the next generation is nobody’s business but yours, you don’t have much sympathy from me when all those people who are picking up your slack at the office without extra pay start grumbling about you. You screwed them. Not by choosing to have children, but by choosing to not give them time to prepare for the adjusted workload. You violated their trust, and they’re going to resent it.
Yes, I grant that there are situations where an employer may take power-imbalance steps if you inform them that you have medical issues or upcoming pregnancies or whatever. That is unjust, and I’m not arguing against that. We should have frameworks in place to compensate for that power imbalance, sure.
But while you may have a right to privacy, you certainly have an obligation to inform other people that you’re about to shift a large burden on them. In civil society, anyway.Report
But I very, very much believe that I had a goddamn right to know about those things, as I was going to be suffering the direct burden.
What the fish burden would it possibly have been to you if she’d been using birth control and not getting pregnant?Report
Pat,
If i ever worked for an employer I trusted again, of course I’d talk about this!
Sadly, trust between employers and employees is a dying art…Report
Pat,
Also, note: you aren’t whining that you have to be told every time I go skydiving, even though that has a reasonable chance of leaving you without an employee.
(Substitute major surgery if you must: .1% chance of death through anesthesia, leaving the rest of it out of it).Report
M.A.: you’re responding to a comment you think I made, not the comment that I made. I’m not defending (or attacking) Jaybird’s position, here. I’m clarifying what a “right to privacy” means in the workplace.
Kim: fully granted, trust is a serious problem. There are employers that you can trust, out there, you just have to find them.
On your second comment, if you’ve documented your stuff, I don’t care if you go skydiving or commute on a motorcycle or smoke or whatever. You die, we can hire somebody else, and I’ve had to deal with replacement employees often enough to know that this works out to be an advantage some of the time. You go out on maternity leave, and our boss is still paying you, but our budget typically doesn’t go up by your salary, so now I’m doing some (if not all) of your work. Again, this is a tit-for-tat thing so I’m disinterested in “whining” about it, in the sense that I think it’s perfectly legit for you to get pregnant, go out on maternity leave, and me to pick up the slack… because I want that same privilege for my daughter and my wife had that privilege. But *generally*, I’d consider a trustworthy coworker to be the type that told me that she was trying to get pregnant -> or, to be clear, if they’re male, that they and their wife are trying to get pregnant because as Will and the good Doctor have been posting recently, having a newborn changes things for you at work, too.Report
But the people who call themselves “liberals” today don’t have anywhere near as much overlap with the people who called themselves “liberals” then but the “liberals” took the name anyway.
I would argue that the differences that we see today were still there back then but that the name included a larger group of people (in terms of kinds of viewpoints, if not sheer number). The term was simply referring to a broader thing (generally, preserving liberty against a complete, accountable despotism). Some of the liberals came to think that certain social programs meant to help people’s conditions were consistent with liberalism; others disagreed. The ones who disagreed left the tent and got a new name, one way or another. I don’t know how you “take” a term that people agreed until some point applied to you. I’m not sure exactly how the divorce settlement shook out wrt the “liberal” house – what actions or logic led to that. The social-programs-are-consistent -with-liberty folks got the name. My impression is that the no-they’re-not folks were kinda ready for a place of their own at that point in any case (hadn’t such places existed all along?), while the ‘consistent’ folks were happy to have the one house with diverging viewpoints in it, so long as people were willing. It was always liberals who were willing to be more flexible in their understanding of what it could be to be a liberal, if I am not mistaken.
So no, ‘the people who call themselves “liberals” today don’t have anywhere near as much overlap with the people who called themselves “liberals” then,’ (actually, now I’m confused what groups you’re comparing there… I think you need another “…as they do…” clause) because lots more kinds of people called themselves liberals then. Then they stopped. (Coincidentally, around that time, it got to be so that being called a liberals could get you investigated for pursuing un-American activities, denied employment, etc. Meanwhile, those who adopted a label that had also sometimes embraced the idea that social programs were inconsistent with liberty (and often not, and never consistent with the principles of liberty across the board) – a label that starts with a ‘c’ – were being spared those problems. It’s completely understandable why people would stop calling themselves liberal so long as what they basically believed was respected or at least tolerated by those with whom they now associated). The structural situation around who called themselved liberals changed permanently.
Nevertheless, Shazbot’s point above about liberals and libertarians, the one I’m most concerned with now to be honest (my quip about how many people used to call themselves liberals was actually not meant to carry much rhetorical significance, more just to be gentle ribbing), was meant only to apply to the reality today
And I think it does apply pretty well, or at least it’s a pretty fair observation to make and ask about wrt libertarianism as seen in practice in this country today.Report
unaccountableReport
Agreed.Report
The “no-they’re-nots” are what I have described as the FYIGM crowd.
At best, their analyses never leave the first order, never question for unanticipated side effects, and never leave the realm of “thou shalt not impinge one iota upon the liberty of the wealthy privileged.”
It’s Divine Right of Kings for the 21st century. That’s all “Libertarianism” is today.Report
They would (do) say we do the same thing wrt our precious programs, and sometimes they’re right.Report
I’m going to post this as a direct reply.
Jason, this is why Liberals won’t take you Conservatarians seriously.
This right here.
These pseudo-Libertarians like to mock the idea of a diligent person being homeless. Diligent? I used to load boxcars in the rain for minimum wage. Considering the rents nowadays, how the hell does one pay them? The modern jerks won’t admit to themselves that their parents greased their way through life. It was nothing they did. People I know, including myself, now live in places doubled-up, without even heat or running water. And we’re grateful for even that much. Thank goodness for libraries and their warmth between junk jobs. Thank goodness for college shower rooms that one can sneak into to get clean.
More Conservatism posing as Libertarianism – using the average income rather than the mode. Hell, by that reasoning all serfs and slaves were middle-class when you average in the vast wealth of the lord with the zero of the lackeys. Average in one of Reagan’s new billionaires with 999 homeless and you get an “average” of one million bucks apiece. I never mix up middle-class with working-class. There was a period in the past when many working-class people made it up to the middle class, but they fell back.
I’m 41, and I’ve spent a couple of hours a day agitating since 1967. But check out the new Libertarian Party leadership: they once sent me, along with all the other delegates, some necessary forms that had to be filled out, but timed so that they arrived one day before they were due back. When I asked how the hell we were supposed to get them back in time, I was told that rather than use a 25-cent stamp, we should “use overnight mail; it’s only twenty dollars.” That way they blocked all non-rich Libertarians. These are the tricks people use to put everything into the hands of the born-rich. Still another tactic is to conduct communications as much as possible over expensive computer networks. True Libertarians don’t have thousands of dollars worth of computer crap.
So the new L.P. wonders why it can’t get young people, while everything is now priced to attract the middle-aged who have big salaries. If it had been this way years ago, I’d never have been able to get in.
Sometimes even I get suckered, though: Around 1980 we were told to try not to be so radical in the Libertarian Party, in order not wo scare away people. So I went along and toned everything down. However, they meant to only tone down the personal-liberty stuff; they went right on being extreme with the economic-freedom notations. So we weren’t supposed to push heroin legalization as it would frighten people. Yet it was okay to push getting rid of Social Security even though it conjured up images of old people starving in the gutter. The result was what the party leadership wanted – the left was sacred away while the right was attracted.
The Conservatarian “Libertarian” Party hasn’t changed much since 1991, Jason.Report
This is why this guy doesn’t take Democrats, Liberals, Conservatives, and Republicans seriously. It’s the whole “human improvement” aspect. All you do is insert yourselves into MY life, telling me what I can and can’t do:
You tell me I can’t smoke in my own house or condo, or in a bar or restaurant. You can’t let the owner decide; no you have to tell him how to run his business.
You mandate automobile safety features that drive up the price of a car, for which I have no use, and don’t want. I don’t need a rear view monitor on my car–I know how to backup.
You tell me I can’t have a 32 oz. soda if I want one.
You tell me that I can’t buy certain types of light bulbs because they aren’t efficient instead of letting me figure out how to best spend my money.
You tell me I have to get certain type of insurance even if it’s not in my best interest to do so.
You tell me I can’t text and drive when it’s already an offense to operate a motor vehicle when “distracted”.
On and on and on.
Frankly, the presumption that you know better than me how I should live my life is offensive and false.Report
Wait, we decided to ban CFLs now?Report
You tell me I can’t smoke in my own house or condo, or in a bar or restaurant. You can’t let the owner decide; no you have to tell him how to run his business.
Interesting. Where I live, businesses have the right to that decision to themselves. Maybe it’s a local thing for you?
You mandate automobile safety features that drive up the price of a car, for which I have no use, and don’t want. I don’t need a rear view monitor on my car–I know how to backup.
Congratulations. The minimal requirements of a functioning headlight, taillight, brake and signal lights are not for you; they’re for the people who have to deal with you driving like a stupid loser at night, so they can see you coming.
The rearview mirrors? Same purpose. When you’re on the road they aren’t for backing up, they’re so you can tell when a police car, ambulance, fire truck, or other emergency vehicle with hazard lights on – or for that matter, some bad driver about to do something stupid – driving down the road behind you and give you a chance to clear a path.
Statistically, those things save lives. Not just your life, but the lives of the people you are putting in danger by having to share the road with you.
You tell me I can’t have a 32 oz. soda if I want one.
Ah, the famous “soda” argument. Again we’re looking at something locally based (and here I thought Conservatarians loved “local control” and “local sovereignty”).
You tell me I have to get certain type of insurance even if it’s not in my best interest to do so.
If you want to drive a car? Yes.
If you want to operate certain businesses where your acts have the potential to do great harm to others? Yes.
It “infringes on your liberty” but makes sure before you go doing something stupid that can result in harm to others that there is a mechanism to handle the liability issues, which means everyone else’s liberty is enhanced. Even YOUR liberty is enhanced by it, because you have as much chance as others to be on the receiving end of harm. Suck it up already and learn to see past your own nose.
Frankly, the presumption that you know better than me how I should live my life is offensive and false.
“Me me me me me me me me meFYIGM.”Report
I don’t need a mandatory 500 dollar backup camera to see what’s behind me. I don’t need collision avoidance, lane deviation warnings, etc. Don’t want and don’t want to pay for them, but I’m forced to because you decided it was good for me.
Insurance. I see no reason why I have to “buy” insurance. I could put up a bond in an amount to cover liability. That’s not allowed. It’s about choice, which I’m not given, other than “do it our way or not at all”.
RE the soda. My ranting has nothing to do with local control or not. It’s all about being told what to do by those who think they know better.Report
Wowsa. What a thread. I’ve rarely seen such an exercise in diving into the weeds at the League.
Jason,
I’ve long read your posts. While I rarely agree with your Randian/libertarian solutions relative to addressing national issues, to my genuine delight we’re often closer than we might guess on actually identifying the nature of many of those issues. Also too, I’ve never ever felt inclined to hold suspect the authenticity of your views; you’re a true believer, vs. an opportunist. I respect that, irrespective of whether or not we agree on stuff.
That said, as more of a League lurker than a League commenter, I hope you’ll take this with the goodwill that I intend.
Post-election, there is a seriously bitter tone to your posts. To my mind, this likely speaks to the fact that you, yourself, more closely align with today’s conservatives than you do with today’s liberals. And that’s fine.
But you seem intent on beating the liberals around here with a “y’all are just evil” stick, and I don’t think you’re the objective Libertarian champion that you think you are to justify wielding that particular stick. So maybe you can understand why the liberals around here are reacting the way that they are.Report
I think the election is coincidence, not causality.
If I had been forced to pick between Romney and Obama, I’d have picked Obama.
If I’d been forced to pick between “generic Republican” and “generic Democrat,” I’d have remembered the Republican primaries. Romney was the least bad of the lot.Report
I think the election is coincidence, not causality.
I don’t think it’s just coincidence that the GOP offers up a primary slate of nutballs, whereby Romney was indeed, as you put it, the “least bad”. If that’s not a reflection of the modern day GOP and the makeup of its electorate, hence causality, what the heck is?
Clearly, we disagree.
But you didn’t vote for Obama, right? So stop already with any Romney vs. Obama equivocations, because that’s a done deal. And it does nothing to explain the post-election bitterness that infuses your post-election posts, which was my point.Report
I didn’t vote for Obama. I voted for Gary Johnson.
But a preference for Obama in an Obama-Romney matchup ought to weigh against my “more closely align[ing] with today’s conservatives than… with today’s liberals.”
I think today’s liberals are very wrong about how the economy ought to work, but at least they seem less likely to start future wars, they aren’t religious fundamentalists, they occasionally take civil liberties seriously, and if either party’s going to do it, they’ll more likely be the ones to finally end the Drug War.Report
if either party’s going to do it, they’ll more likely be the ones to finally end the Drug War.
I sure wish I saw some evidence of that. Maybe we’ll see something positive from how the Feds react to Colorado and Washington, but I’m not hopeful.Report
You and I mostly agree, except that I am hopeful (as a card-carrying member of the Not Cynical Party) that the Feds, under a second-term Obama, will not only bow out but will lay the groundwork for dismantling the War on Drugs.Report
From your lips to God(ess?)’s ears Ktward!Report
Except for the economy part, you and I agree. Yet, your post-election posts certainly don’t seem to reflect that kind of thinking.
As to the economy part … explain what it is, exactly, that the conservatives, Reagan onward, got right. I mean, c’mon.
W/r/t the pro/con list, you seem to have more checks in the liberal column than you do in the conservative column, yet you’re bashing libs. Go figure.Report
I haven’t been following long enough to know whether Jason has become more bitter in his writing. But I certainly wouldn’t be surprised. I admit I’ve struggled with this as of late. It’s simple psychology. Following the election, many liberals seem to have interpreted the results as a validation of their philosophy. It was not. So, any perceived ratcheting-up of attitude come as an emotional defensive response to us sensing an increase in liberal confidence.
Granted, we would have presumably had much the same experience if Romney had won.Report
Brian, if libertarians ever win an election i’m pretty darn sure you will see it as a vindication of your ideas and as a mandate to put in your platform. That wouldn’t necessarily be a wrong thought either.
Why does liberals having confidence make you defensive?Report
“Why does liberals having confidence make you defensive?”
Not the confidence, per se, but that the election results have seemingly ratcheted up their confidence, which has in turn ratcheted up my defensiveness. Winning an election only proves you were able to convince a majority of the voters that it was the best option, not that it actually is the best option. Here’s a nice little video discussing that.Report
I know the criticisms of democracy. But its what we got. Again if libertarians ever want to have your ideas put in place you are going to have deal with messy messy democracy.Report
It was the best option. we weren’t electing a king, after all. Romney was too fragile and easily broken.
There will be other choices, and I hope that we will make the best choice then.Report
Following the 2010election, many Conservatarians seem to have interpreted the results as a validation of their philosophy. It was not.
As for the rest you assume that Libertarians – or as I think you really are, Conservatarians – are natural enemies of the Liberals.
The piece that started this off was Jason whining about how Liberals will never give Libertarians “half credit” for anything. The answer is: you’ve been in bed with the Conservatives for so long you might as well take the label Conservatarians.
I’d like to see a group of Libertarians actually show up at the Democrats’ door. Caucus with them or at least get an Independent representative to say “here are the things I can work with you on, or at least compromise with you on.”
Conservatives get to automatically assume Libertarians are on their side and have been able to do so for a long time. They know, instinctively, that the Libertarians aren’t going to throw them out for social issues as long as they talk a good game on tax cuts. They know that they can let the radio jocks and the hyper-crazies go on, and the Libertarians aren’t ever going to say “screw it you people are crazy, we’re out of here.”
Yet, you have Conservatarians like Damon down below acting as if a limit on the size of fountain sodas is the equivalent of reenacting Slavery.
I think that’s the real rub here. The hardest thing for Libertarians to see; that 3 decades of cozying up to the Conservatives have poisoned the well when it comes to seeking common ground with the Liberals.Report
I think that’s the real rub here. The hardest thing for Libertarians to see; that 3 decades of cozying up to the Conservatives have poisoned the well when it comes to seeking common ground with the Liberals.
Amen. But worse, to their mind, it’s somehow the fault of liberals. Because we’re all so dang “anti-liberty”.
There are indeed plenty of whiny ignorant liberals, but they don’t remotely run the Dem party much less direct Dem policy. In that respect, the libertarian fringe of the GOP has proven exponentially more influential.Report
Indeed.
Kuznicki keeps trying to throw Heritage Foundation fooferall at me.
Cato papers were for the longest time – and still occasionally are – reference material for Rush and the other right wing radio jocks.
Where was Cato this last election? Relentlessly attacking Obama while being rather glowing when they mentioned Romney at all. I’d provide a further list of links but it’d get caught in the filter, I don’t have the privileges Kuznicki does to pepper a post with a plethora of links.
And now they want to blame Liberals for “not giving them half credit.” Well where were they this past election? Some of them were barking up their own tree, fine and dandy. The rest? Most of Kuznicki’s fellows were in bed with the Conservatives, collecting fleas.
Where they weren’t is reaching out to the Liberal side with any honesty.Report
Ya mean folks like Tester aren’t enough?Report
I’d like to see a group of Libertarians actually show up at the Democrats’ door.
Isn’t that what we’re doing here?Report
No. When Dr. Brin shows up and posts fascinating things at dailykos (in addition to bringing his own unique perspective on why we might want to consider electing democrats…), that’s showing up at the Democrats door.
Donating, volunteering, persuading your friends (and voting of course!).
Me? I want the libertarians to open their own door. It’s a good time for it.Report
Yeah, most times I’ve shown up at a liberal blog, the reception is pretty much what I get from M.A. So I have a hard time believing he’s sincere in wanting us to show up at Democrats’ door. I suspect he means he wants us to show up abjectly begging forgiveness for our errors and promising to always vote Democratic in the future and never ever again argue against any economic regulation. Then we’ll be good libertarians.Report
Once again dishonest.
What we (or at least I) want to see is a modicum of ability to work with the other side.
Start by admitting (troubling I know) that Libertarianism might not be perfect. It doesn’t cover all edge cases, it doesn’t even account for all cases in general. Even Hayek had to admit there were going to be cases where the market mechanic would fail and where something else would have to be substituted because his much-vaunted ideas of liability law would run up against cases where irreparable harms or judgement-proof offenders would exist.
Admit that hey, there are bad actors in the system, will always be, and the system needs to account for that. Admit that sometimes they screw things up and that’s something we have to deal with.
Admit you can at least SEE that the bad actors in the system are why Liberals think regulation is often warranted. Quibble over a certain regulation if you think it’s unwarranted, fine. Bitch and moan and scream “why are you trying to tell me how to live” whenever regulation is brought up and you’ve just made it an impossible conversation.
You start from the absolutist “Rawr government bad, government has monopoly on force.” Your solutions involve “liability law” and harm-redemption constructs restricted only to “offenders”, but then we have to have court systems to work with that. Enforcement requirements from government.
The idea of other actors in the system exerting force? I’ve never seen a Libertarian admit it, certainly never seen a Libertarian admit that it can be a problem. The idea of stratification and inequality? Where the upper crust get great deals while those below get squat?
If I were making double what I make now, I could invest in the stock market either directly or via mutual funds – but not to the extent that I’d get much return back.
If I were making quadruple what I make now, I’d be comfortably in the 1% and at that point I’d have a lot better offers on the table.
What do I get now? A savings account or CD options that can’t even keep up with inflation.
Take credit the same way. If I were up in the 1%, I could get incredibly low credit card rates. Where I am now? Feh, the rates are a joke, literally 2 orders of magnitude greater than what I can make investing my own money, and my credit score’s well above 700.
Libertarians don’t see that as a problem at all. At least I’ve never seen one admit that the inequality of treatment might be a problem.
I want you to show up at the Democrats’ door. I want you to sit down and start by showing you can do more than just shout “stop telling me how to live” (the refrain of Brian and Damon) at them too.
You don’t take that sort of attitude with Conservatives, but you come in to the Liberals expecting a war. Maybe you’re just bringing that war in the door with you.
Oh and as I mentioned earlier: It’s probably going to take a while for Liberals to warm up to you in any case. You just spent 3 decades sleeping with the Conservatives, do us the favor of a little cleanup and drop some of the rhetorical ticks and fleas you’ve picked up from them. There are plenty of ways to signal a Conservatarian identity verbally and in general; Libertarians aren’t shy about using them and probably don’t even realize they are doing it.Report
For the record, I’m less interested in working with Liberals than with them co-opting my ideas, instituting them, and then having them insult me for being a Johnny-come-lately on the topic.
“Oh, so *NOW* you’re opposed to kill lists! Where were you in 2018???”, I look forward to them saying.Report
I’m pretty sure that all of the things you are insisting that James do here are things that he has, in fact, done. Quite explicitly on many occasions. Also, I’m pretty sure James was never in bed with the Conservatives in any way, shape, or form.
As far as liberals are concerned, James should be considered one of the good guys, someone who, if given some breathing room, would be able to make a persuasive case for moving libertarians away from the right and towards the left. By constantly making him answer to liberals for things he does not, himself, necessarily believe, throwing various labels on him that ignore his actual positions, etc…..well, any efforts he makes to persuade libertarians to move a little to the left quickly get drowned out.Report
You don’t take that sort of attitude with Conservatives, but you come in to the Liberals expecting a war.
Heh, that’s a hoot.Report
I can attest to James being too far Left for my libertarian taste.Report
“I want you to show up at the Democrats’ door. I want you to sit down and start by showing you can do more than just shout “stop telling me how to live” (the refrain of Brian and Damon) at them too.”
Well, stop telling me how to live and let’s focus on important issues.
I want us out of Afganistan, Iraq, the persian gulf, etc. I want the drone killing to end. I want black rendition sites closed and those who tortured folks and gave the torturers legal cover investigated and prosecuted.
Oh, but wait, where’s all the knashing of teeth over BOB not investigating Bush over all the torture stuff? Funny how that really went away when BOB was elected the first time….
Start acting with some consistency and integrity and you’d probably win some supports. OFC, all this applies to the repubs too.Report
Slacktivist. Not all liberal blogs are dailyKos, Balloon Juice or [shudder] Shakeville. Present your ideas the same way you do here, and you’ll get a lot more Norths than M.A.sReport
Jeff,
I used to comment on Slacktivist occasionally. It’s a good place and Fred seems like a great guy. I wish he had the faintest understanding of economics (he’d drive me crazy with his posts on that), but we can’t all know everything, and the amount of stuff he does know probably puts me to shame. I’d get disagreements on Slacktivist, but almost always civil ones.
It’s one of the reasons I know not all liberals are nut jobs. That and all my academic friends, who are, of course, wrong about nearly everything, but not nut jobs. 😉Report
–glances over at Bonddad’s blog–
Breton Woods II is over? And nobody’s posting about it here?
Seriously, I would have thought libertarians would be all over this sort of shit.Report
I used to lean conservative, until I realized that they were just as bad as liberals. The other side of the nanny state coin. I have nothing but contempt for most mainstream dems/repubs.Report
Crikey, somewhere in this mega-thread I read Jason saying that he’d be willing to sacrifice his own SSM rights for … something. (Drug laws?) I have a close friend, gay, who might have something to say about that, but I can’t now find Jason’s comment. (My googling skills are wanting, obviously.) Was it even Jason’s comment– maybe it was someone else’s? Might someone point me?Report
It was in the original post, where I wrote:
“If I were asked to surrender same-sex marriage, and if it meant I could remake drug policy exactly how I wanted, I’d do it. Instantly.”
Speaking personally, I wouldn’t gain very much from that trade, and I’d lose a whole lot. I’m in a same-sex marriage, and I’m not a drug user.
But as a question of what’s good for the country, we really need to end the Drug War. It’s killing thousands of people and destroying tens of thousands of careers and families every year. It’s wasting huge amounts of money. It’s enriching and encouraging criminal gangs, and it’s keeping virtually no one clean and sober.
In terms of human welfare, the Drug War is an unmitigated catastrophe. The lack of same-sex marriage is very unfortunate, but it’s not remotely in the same league.Report
Jason, the only universe where one can see SSM rights and the end of the War on Drugs as an either/or thing is the conservative universe. The liberal universe allows for both SSM rights and the end to the War on Drugs.Report
I don’t see that it’s possible even over there. I offered it only to give a sense of my priorities. If you want me to say what I really meant just a little bit more clearly, try this:
I feel strongly enough about the Drug War that I would endure significant personal stigma, inconvenience, and/or hardship to end it.
That’s what I meant. Not “I’m tied to the Republican Party so I can’t imagine anything else,” which would be preposterous. The Republican Party isn’t offering the supposed deal, and it doesn’t seem likely to.
(You’ll note that I never once mention cutting taxes in the original post, which ought to give some idea of the priority I assign to that.)Report
It’s funny, because way back when this post first showed up, I had drafted a comment saying “Jason, the stereotypical liberal is going to look at that and be Very Very Upset that you consider gay rights to be of less importance. And if you’d gone the other way, the stereotypical liberal would have looked at that and been Very Very Upset that you consider the treatment of minorities and the poor to be of less importance. And if you’d gone for both then you’d obviously be childishly insisting that you get everything exactly perfect instead of being realistic about solutions.” I figured I didn’t need to post it.Report
My this thread is far more vitriolic than Jaybird’s “Essay” where they are talking about exes – Oh and evidently I am sleeping with the enemy. Interesting.Report
People who are still sleeping together can create Melchizedeks of vitriol.
People you no longer sleep with, speak with, or even see occasionally? There’s a lot less impetus to generate much of anything at all… except the occasional drop of nostalgia and/or the humors that splatter out of a boil you forgot you even had when you scrape your nails over it for the first time in a long time.Report
So there is some bad liberal/libertarian lover’s quarrel going on here? The breakup is evidently too fresh for some.Report
We’re in the early stages of discovering that the promise that Liberaltarians wouldn’t X in our Y turned out to be less than accurate.
They Xed in our Ys but good.Report
FWIW too many liberaltarians who started from the libertarian side seemed, after talking to them, were only really interested in getting liberals to buy into libertarianism. They weren’t interested in buying into some liberal ideas or hearing from that side. That was disappointing to me.Report
Console yourself with power.
Ignore how the polite thing to do would be to at least get a person a bottle of water.Report
I do LOVE my power over all other lesser beings. I’ll decide when others want water. That is all i’m about.Report
Uh … whoa. I missed an episode of The League? Holy cow. I might be sad here.Report
W’re not really going to forced to choose sides here, right? We can like and appreciate both Js, right?Report
Both? There are 4 commenting and one referred to…Report
[slinking away … because this stuff is none of my biz and shame on me for noticing …]Report
No slinking necessary. I forget some people don’t know or forget which is fine, but I did realize that there are quite a few libertarian Js here. I’m just a mere libertarian sympathizer.Report
I’m just a mere libertarian sympathizer.
All lies. She’s a European Social Democrat who wants to make America the next Sweden. She’ll deny it publicly, but she talks in her sleep so I know the truth.Report
Is she is then she and I have yet another reason to sit around and braid each others hair while you dig your own Galt’s Gulch bunker in the back yard!Report
Well, I assume you don’t want me digging the bunker in your back yard, so that means you have to come down and visit us instead of us driving up to visit you. Come on down anytime, you’re always welcome.Report
Goodness no! We live in a condo so our back yard is a parking lot. You couldn’t dig your bunker there, the CVS would break your kneecaps.
We’ll have to visit you guys sometime, though Johanna would have trouble with my hair; it’s too short to braid.Report
I count myself as a libertarian sympathizer. Which explains why I read here. (Or at least why I started reading here, way back when.) I appreciate Jaybird’s perspectives. Equally, yours. (Readers, unite!) But obviously there’s been some, er, drama, and I evidently missed it and all I want to say is that I appreciate you both.
Please let me slink away now.Report
KT, your contributions are too valuable to let you slink away. And hey, I don’t even know what Jaybird post Johanna’s referring to, but we can still have fun chatting around the edges of it.Report
Mr. Hanley, you’re all too kind, as usual.
But I’m gonna slink away from whatever drama exists between JB and Johanna, not because I genuinely appreciate both of them in terms of League contribution, though that’s true, but because I am decidedly the last person on earth equipped to judge personal relationships.Report
Johanna and I have drama?
This is so like my life.Report
No drama between us that I can think of, of course this may just also be due to that darn libertarian sympathy again.Report
Oddly libertarians have had a much closer relationship with conservatives yet most of the poo flinging around here is between liberals and libertarians. Maybe i missed a covert affair someplace.Report
greg, we all know that libertarians have a much closer working political relationship with cons than with libs. This is hardly a secret.
But Jason’s bitterness post-election is betraying an ilk of hubris that I find … objectionable. And I find it objectionable because I find it unconstructive.
Jason’s colors are deeper than his recent posts reflect. But he’s not doing a great job of burying his bitterness in eloquent rhetoric. Fwiw, I like that about him.Report
Given only the top two choices, I’m glad Obama won. I’m complaining about him not because I wish Romney had won, but because… well… I would have complained about either of them winning. I had a negative opinion of them both. I still do. But Romney is never going to be president, so that’s that.
I really wish you’d been reading me when George W. Bush was still in charge. Honestly. I’m not sure how else I can convince you of my sincerity.Report
I agree. I think Jason is a bit focused on proselytizing his beliefs.Report
Maybe my libertarian sympathies are skewing my view on this but I really did not find it proselytizing at all. Given the tone of the attacks in this and most any other thread discussing libertarian thought, I consider his demeanor and tone appropriate in context.Report
I think he expressed irritation some where up thread that he wasn’t being successful in winning converts. Those are my words so maybe i misunderstood or misremember.Report
“Wah, those liberals are so mean, they won’t give us any credit for agreeing with them” doesn’t constitute much to me.
Libertarians have been behaving as part and parcel of the Conservative wing for a long time now. So long that they’ve adopted much of the C rhetoric and C attitudes towards liberal thought.
Their insistences that they “agree” with Liberals often come off as condescending or worse, similar to the way Conservatives often insist they “really care about minorities more than Democrats do, Democrats are the real racists” while putting up some puffery about how under a Conservative regime, every minority will instantly be able to start a successful small business and be elevated out of the poverty traps that the market has placed them in
Side note: I’ll be REALLY brutal here, I am fishing tired beyond belief with hearing the lie that “government assistance” programs cause people to be entrapped in poverty.
You know what causes people to be entrapped in poverty? Having kids unwed at an early age and having multiples of them, because “abstinence only” programs are not offered and access to birth control for the poor is constantly assailed by Conservatives.
Being unable to take advantage of educational opportunities because they are worried more about whether they’ll be eating dinner that night or if they’ll have to worry about gang members roughing them up or worse. Having to make the choice between joining a gang for some type of protection, or taking the risk of being a target for every gang in the area.
Growing up in a situation where the father’s likely to be in jail now, or will be in jail at some point during their life.
Knowing that one day, they will get sick, they won’t have insurance, and then they will NEVER be able to get out of poverty because the moment they start making any money, the bill collectors will show up looking for money for the hospital stay.
Being shut down into the worst-of-worst options for things like banking or groceries. The middle class can drive to a nice grocery with non-wilty vegetables. The poor? Corner store grocery. The carrots are weeks old and unrefrigerated. And instead of a real bank, their options are a payday-advance/cashing store that charges hefty percentages, or a car title-loan place with similarly hefty percentages and fees.
Poverty traps don’t come from government. They come from the fished-up “market” that Libertarians like to worship like some sort of misbegotten deity.Report
Ktward here we have one of the major animating forces of this epic thread, bless his heart.
MA, there’s some points you have in here sure but I’m going to try and point out that your comment here contains some issues I’d like you to consider.
Firstly, conservatives (especially since George Bush the lesser went down in flames) have been draping themselves in Libertarian mantles in words while behaving like statist conservatives in deed for years now. Can you accept that Conservatives occasionally mouthing libertarian platitudes are not the same as actual libertarians?
With regards to poverty you have a good list of bullet points but have you thought these through?
“You know what causes people to be entrapped in poverty? Having kids unwed at an early age and having multiples of them, because “abstinence only” programs are not offered and access to birth control for the poor is constantly assailed by Conservatives.”
I’m all about birth control programs but surely you can concede that they’re no panacea. People being poor is strongly correlated with having a bunch of early unplanned kids but how on earth do we lay this at libertarians feet? Conservatives oppose abstinence only education, not libertarians. Also (and I shudder at picking up a conservative shibboleth here) do we entirely and completely excuse people from any culpability for their choices here? I mean there are plenty of liberal areas where abstinence only education doesn’t exist and yet the poor still have ill advised numbers of kids.
I’m going to lump the gang point and the jail point together. Both of these things are very strongly correlated with the War on Drugs. You are aware, I trust, that libertarians have been against the WoD from the get go? Decades before liberals were in fact? How on earth do you rationalize laying the War on Drugs at the feet of libertarians???
With regards to banking you are aware that regulations currently imposed are a significant driver of the plethora of fees yes? Financial regulatory rules keep eliminating fees but of course the financial institutions just invent new ones and this cloud of confusion makes it really hard for the poor to clearly tell which institution actually offers the best deal. Is this an area where more regulation would be helpful?
With regards to food deserts we’re again talking here about poor people who are being forced into these areas by regulatory restrictions that prevent the construction of affordable housing in more well serviced areas. Zoning, rent control, historical preservation etc… etc… these are all examples of well intentioned liberal regulations that hammer hardest on the poor. I’d note that often those big grocery stores we want the poor to be able to shop at are zoned out of the poor areas by, again, liberal regulations.
I mean heck, I’m a liberal myself but I can half way think like a libertarian and these obvious retorts came to me pretty easily. Do you know what a real libertarian will likely be able to do against this stuff?
Reading you M.A, I get this uncomfortable feeling like you actually have bought into the GOP’s branding campaign and you ascribe conservative positions to libertarians. I also get the feeling like you don’t have a very good grasp of libertarian’s policy positions or thought. Is it possible that the GOP has snookered you on this? That you think that the capering conservative politician wrapping himself in a threadbare libertarian flag (the tea party for instance) has actually fooled you into thinking that they are real libertarians?Report
North, have I told you lately how much I love you?Report
As I’ve pointed out before, if libertarians really just wanted the poor to stay poor, or only wanted handouts to big corporations, we would have to think the War on Drugs was awesome. Instead we think it’s abomination.Report
Not enough obviously; I’m needy.Report
Well, that’s just the liberal in you…Report
Also (and I shudder at picking up a conservative shibboleth here) do we entirely and completely excuse people from any culpability for their choices here? I mean there are plenty of liberal areas where abstinence only education doesn’t exist and yet the poor still have ill advised numbers of kids.
Culpability? Certainly exists. The poor tend to – ironically – be the most religious group too, a conflation not lost on me nor on the conservatives who hoped to raise anti-homosexual rhetoric as a wedge issue with poor religious types in the last election.
I’m going to lump the gang point and the jail point together. Both of these things are very strongly correlated with the War on Drugs.
Now if only Libertarians would be clear on that instead of screaming about wanting to eliminate the social hand-up programs at the same time.
Financial regulatory rules keep eliminating fees but of course the financial institutions just invent new ones and this cloud of confusion makes it really hard for the poor to clearly tell which institution actually offers the best deal. Is this an area where more regulation would be helpful?
You missed the point. The point is NO financial institution offers the same sort of deals they offer to the lower end that they do to the upper.
The upper end gets the best deals; the lower end gets interest rates that don’t even keep up with inflation. And that has nothing at all to do with government regulation, that’s just plain banking discrimination.
Is it possible that the GOP has snookered you on this? That you think that the capering conservative politician wrapping himself in a threadbare libertarian flag (the tea party for instance) has actually fooled you into thinking that they are real libertarians?
Gary Johnson, Libertarian nominee but actually a Republican. Sigh.
There’s so much flittery between the two they might as well be the same.Report
Lord knows I appreciate the stuff that Gentledudes the likes of North and Mr. Hanley have to say. Among a whole bunch of others.
But seriously, I really do not understand why y’all harp unmercifully on M.A.Report
Tone.
That’s just me, though.Report
KT,
M.A. keeps attributing positions to libertarians that libertarians here don’t hold.
For pete’s sake, he’s calling me a conservative, although I opposed both Iraq wars, want to slash the defense department’s spending, have been pro-SSM since 1991, am for the decriminalization of all drugs, am pro-choice, almost violently opposed to religion in public schools (try to make my child pray to your god and I guarantee you’ll be meeting him sooner than you expected), and am an advocate of open borders.
Exactly why should I take M.A. seriously?Report
Well, I know better than to accuse Hanley of being a conservative.
And its true that there are differences between libertarians, and conservatives. But not as much as one might think.
Its already been pointed out somewhere on this thread that the policy differences between them (War, subsidies, SSM) are spoken, but softly, and without much action.
The policy similarities (Taxes, entitlements) get not just spoken but acted upon.
And operationally, the differences aren’t as significant, when bundled with the similarities.
I mean, if you are a minimum wage waitress, knowing that President Gary Johnson supports your right to an abortion might warm your heart, but if the safety net gets shredded and Denny’s is allowed to prevent you from using insurance money to purchase one, you might as well just buy a coat hanger.Report
Its already been pointed out somewhere on this thread that the policy differences between them (War, subsidies, SSM) are spoken, but softly, and without much action.
And because a liberal said so on a blog, we know it’s true.
Yawn.Report
Ktward, I harped on M.A. once because he went too far on some name calling for my delicate sensibilities and I dropped my monocle in my tea. To his credit, mind, he’s not been too bad prior to that and hasn’t been bad on it since so that’s a minor issue.
My major concern with M.A. is that he seems to saddle onto libertarians policies that they have nothing to do with (and in some cases abhor). I’m not even talking about FYIGM accusations or accusing them of wanting to tear down the safety nets. I’m talking about stuff where libertarians pretty much universally assert the opposite. Stuff like the War on Drugs for instance or foreign entanglements. Frankly I think it makes him (and by extension the rest of us liberals) look kind of foolish.Report
M.A. some interesting tidbits in this response.
Regarding the poor having tons of kids the problem here that poor folk have a tendency to have a lot of kids and this really hurts them economically. Whatever excuses we put on top of it the underlying fact remains that it’s something they choose to do and in the case of most urban areas of the country they choose it knowing full well what they’re doing (abstinence only education is the province of small town and rural areas mostly and urban schools are pretty emphatic on full fledged sex ed).
I’m confused by your response on the War on Drugs. Libertarians clear on this? What do you mean?? As far as I know the history books are really clear on this matter: When conservatives and liberals joined forces to prohibit drugs of various sorts (prohibition for instance) in general the libertarians were adamantly opposed. When the conservatives launched the War on Drugs in particular the libertarians were opposed. As far as I know the libertarians -invented- opposition to drug prohibition and the War on Drugs. How on God(ess?)’s green earth could they be more out front and clear about it than that? Heck, we liberals probably got the idea of ending the War on Drugs from them!
“You missed the point. The point is NO financial institution offers the same sort of deals they offer to the lower end that they do to the upper.”
To this I can only respond that libertarians simply face up to the reality of the matter. You can loan money more safely to wealthy people than you can to poor people. Poor people are gonna default more (because they’re poor, not because they are immoral or irresponsible mind). If any business ignored this reality it would promptly go out of business. If any government agency attempted to fill this gap and ignore this reality it would suck the entire government inside out from the fiscal black hole it would create. You just can’t. That’s not libertarianism, that’s reality.
If we’re talking about savings accounts and the like, well I got news for you; the wealthy don’t have any more access to low risk high yield savings vehicles than the poor do. We both know why the interest rates are so low: the wealthy have so few places to put their money that they’re effectively paying the feds to hold onto it for them (which is why when you factor in inflation treasury bills have a negative return). No one has access to safe high interest savings vehicles. Heck, if anything the poor on agregate actually have better access since their savings individually come in below the FDIC insurance limit.
I don’t deny there’s overlap between libertarians and conservatives. They’ve been allied in the past (though those alliances are tearing and straining) but you still seem to be overlooking that a lot of what we may consider alliance now is actually the conservatives essentially pretending to be libertarians as a marketing strategy. My point is that the simple brush strokes you’re using don’t seem to match up to the libertarians you’re trying to paint, at least to my eyes.Report
I wasn’t talking about loans, I was talking about savings.
You can loan money more safely to wealthy people than you can to poor people. Poor people are gonna default more (because they’re poor, not because they are immoral or irresponsible mind). If any business ignored this reality it would promptly go out of business. If any government agency attempted to fill this gap and ignore this reality it would suck the entire government inside out from the fiscal black hole it would create. You just can’t. That’s not libertarianism, that’s reality.
What I am saying is:
– Making the money I make, my options for “investment” are the local savings bank at interest rates that don’t even keep up with inflation, Certificates of Deposit at same that don’t even keep up with inflation, or very minor other savings options that amount to the same thing.
– If I were making double what I make now, I would be able to dump money into stock-trading services and mutual funds that all seem to require a pretty hefty initial-placement option but pull interest rates that at least keep pace with inflation.
– If I were making quadruple what I make now, surprise surprise, my investment options would suddenly have interest rates that make it actually reasonable to do so.
This isn’t about loans. This is simple: the poor are discriminated against when it comes to trying to have so much as a savings account. They’re discriminated against in terms of interest rates, AND they are discriminated against in terms of things like yearly fees (I at least can get a fee-free savings account with a certain maintained minimum balance and direct deposit registration, good luck to someone starting back on their feet who works at a job that doesn’t do DD like, say, construction).Report
MA,
why not just take the test to be your own broker? One of the trading desks online was offering $5 a trade (flat fee). If you wanted to buy into the stock market, that’s $1,000, assuming a relatively moderate amount of trading per year.
Are you one of the 66% of Americans who doens’t have that much in their savings account?Report
I’ve been here a while and read Jason quite a bit and I’ve observed that he does tend to cycle from a more mellow level tone briefly to a tone that smacks strongly of impatience and mild irritation, then back around to his more mild tone for most of the time.
Keep in mind also that in politics right now and at the League in Particular conservatives have been kindof routed. I mean at the League we don’t really have a very strong emphatic conservative vocal group. Tim of course has little time to comment a lot. Tom tries earnestly but he has his issues and peccadilloes. Mike D is of course a regular but he’s also not very vehement. The rest of the conservative commentariate is mostly confined to drive bys. So around here the conversation is really strongly between libertarians and the newer young blood liberals who’s taken to hanging out (with us pathetic centrist liberal squishes in between). So Jason, when he gets testy, would indeed sound testy with Liberals (that’s who he’s mostly stuck talking to).
My point is that I don’t think Jason is testy about the elections specifically but it can sound like that when he gets testy because he’s talking to, well, us and we did just win the election (barely).Report
North. You so give me chuckles. All the good kind.Report
Then my work here is done dear lady.Report
The problem with Tom Van Dyke is that when people started acting like assholes in the comments section of his post, they didn’t get slapped down, and now they think that’s just What You Do To Tom.Report
You’re wrong, DD.
TVD has been wrong for a very long time on a specific range of issues. Folks didn’t just “start acting like assholes” in comments here, they simply began to call out his bullshit en masse as this blog evolved.
Interestingly, both Hanley and Blaise are equally liable to call out TVD’s bullshit, and lord knows they’ve no love of one another. So what does that say about TVD?Report
While I agree with ktwards point here I’d strongly advocate that we do not let a TVD meta thread develope in this libertarian thread. It might well spawn a singularity that will destroy this entire section of the internets and all my best comments are stored here.Report
Nice, KT. Missed you too.Report
TVD, I’m gonna read you as sincere in your gracious missive. Missed you too. 🙂
North: OMG you’re so right! Please please please let this already ridiculously long comment thread not devolve into another TVD-bashing thread. For the record, I didn’t start it. DD did.Report
I’ve read my post back front and sidways, and I can’t figure out how it’s calling for a TVD-bashing thread, except in the sense that I pointed out how there are posters who see his name and go all Two Minutes Hate.Report
Jason, North, Johanna …
Please don’t mistake my criticism of the tone of Jason’s post-election posts for criticism of Jason, the person. I continue to think highly of the latter. I’m pretty sure I explained this.
I just think that he is capable of less obvious partisan bitterness. The breadth and depth of this comment thread might suggest that I’m right. Just saying.Report
Quite possibly, we also have some very energized passionate newer liberal voices kicking up their heels around the digs as well.Report
Actually, MA was here a while back, and then he sort of took a break.
It’s been my experience that when a contentious commentor takes a break and then comes back, he is…pretty much just the same as when he left.Report
Indeed, a few newer lib voices. I’m glad about that. (M.A. takes a lot of flak around here, but I totally like him/her.) I’m glad about that not because they’re lib voices, per se, but because they bring fact-based, or at least reality-based, arguments. I’ve so tired of tired old ideology-based arguments.Report
Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy is all too real.Report
Whatever that means, TVD.
You’re a clever fella, no question, but perhaps you impress yourself more than you impress anyone else.Report
I **REALLY ** wish I could watch the latest LeagueCast (Google Transcribe is a joke). It would be interesting (to me anyway) to hear what Tom has to say ina “real” conversation.Report
And I just find it perplexing that you diagnose me with “partisan bitterness.” Really, truly perplexing.Report
Perhaps it is as an outsider that I observe this, Jason. And I could be wrong, no question. But it’s decidedly more important, more meaningful, that you reflect on my suggestion, than it is that I cling to it.Report
kt – I didn’t think you were insulting him. I guess I haven’t witnessed a particularly partisan tone from Jason. I’m thinking instead that this comment thread is an extension of several others recently that have been getting needlessly partisan and unnecessarily nasty here at the League. I’m seeing serious hackles up on both sides and Jason doesn’t strike me as one of the particularly partisan offenders.Report
Johanna,
I didn’t think I was insulting Jason, either. But it did occur to me that I was observing something that he might not appreciate. Then again, I would not be offended if he found my observation not credible. It’s just my opinion, after all.
Nevertheless, I hear a distinctly different tone between Jason’s pre-election and post-election posts.
Hey, I’m hardly the authority on all things JK. But perhaps my role as League lurker and casual observer can be of use, and it is in this vein that I humbly offer my thoughts. Y’all do with it as you will.Report
One thing I think we call ALL agree on — Liberal, Libertarian, Conservative, whatever, is that Justin Beiber may not totally suck, but he certainly is NOT best thing since [some spectacular invention]. (Sliced bread may work better in the toaster, but the crust tends to be a Total Fail.)Report
I so want to be contrarian, but…no, you’ve found something I just can’t argue against.Report
I’ll thank you to not be bringing up the subject of Canada’s latest world destroying bioweapon. At least not until it has matured enough that it’s carapace is bullet proof and its cellular structure is radiation proof. *tents fingers*Report
“I mean a mimimum of equality of opportunity. (Which all liberals believe in, not equality of outcome, which only few liberals believe in.)”
A few, such as this liberal.
Lets tackle “equality of outcome” for a moment. On one level, saying that we should demand absolute equality of outcomes is every bit as absurd as its critics suggest.
But favoring “equality of opportunity” is equally absurd, since it masks inherent priviledge that can never ben factored out.
How can we measure “equality of opportunity”? How would we know when we have reached it?
More importantly, don’t we create laws with an eye towards a desired outcome?
By focusing on alledgedly “neutral” and “fair” processes and shrugging our shoulders at the outcome, are we like the surgeon who proclaims that the operation was a success, although the patient died?
Assessing outcomes is a good way to evaluate whether the processes that we craft are working, empirically. Even if the process is rigorously neutral and fair and beautifully constructed, yet yields an outcome that is persistently unequal, and favoring one group suspiciously well, its reasonable to think the process itself is flawed.Report
There are lots of questions about equality that are legitimate for all liberals (right-leaning and left-leaning) to debate. It may be (as Chris Hayes argues) that if inequality of outcome is large enough, it necessitates inequality of opportunity going forward, because once people have power or wealth (in terms of money or connections), they will almost certainly use it to benefit their friends, children, and tribe (loosely constued). That is they will pull the ladder up behind them and only let it back down for the people in their in-group.
But you could disagree with Hayes about that and still be a liberal.
Actually, I think an avid belief in equality of outcome, if strong enough and absolute enough, might make you something other than liberal, maybe socialist or old-school Communist. (IMO, Hayes is sort of worried about this and is questioning whether liberalism, maybe Rawlsian liberalism in particular, can be made just or whether it needs to be scrapped for something more egalitarian and Marxist and less competitive. Sort of.)
But all liberals have at least a minimal belief in equality of opportunity. Hanley and Jason’s position on egalitarianism and equality of opportunity seems broadly consistent with right-leaning liberalism to me, and inconsistent with the position held by the philosophical giants of Libertarianism, Nozick in particular, but Rothbard too which is the position that is being referred to ordinarily by the vast majority of speakers when they say “libertarian.”Report
I wouldn’t say i’m for equality of outcome but for equality of opportunity. I do agree that you need to look at the outcomes to get an idea how well a society is working out. Libertarians seem to quickly to dismiss outcomes as a reasonable factor to look at.Report
I think maybe libertarians are just looking at a different set of outcomes.Report
Well yeah, i know you are looking at the wrong outcomes. That is self-evident. ( insert smiley face here).
I think libertarians look at the outcomes that are part of first principles. That isn’t wrong but does tend to leave less room for using more context driven outcomes. I’m not sure that makes much sense and i’m off to the gym soon. So lets see if this helps. As an example i think libertarians would look at freedom as an outcome. It’s a time independent universal. That is fine as far as it goes. A liberal outcome might be universal health care. Uni HC wasn’t even possible a century ago nor would it have been worth much. UHC as a goal is dependent on time ( now its possible and worthwhile) and also dependent, to a degree, on living in a rich enough country ( this is only partially true, some third world countries have UHC)Report
Sure, we could be looking at the wrong outcomes. Certainly from the liberal perspective. The problem for a conversation like this, though, is that there’s no objective way to determine what are the right set of outcomes to measure. So we’re stuck arguing about why yours are better than mine and vice versa. But I don’t think all of ours are first principle driven. Some, sure, but then liberals seem to have a big focus on equality (not strict perfect equality, but on measuring whether it’s increasing or decreasing), which seems to me to be a first principles kind of thing (and not wrong because of that). But for example when we complain about regulatory outcomes that inhibit entry into occupations, we’re not just talking about freedom, but about how the liberal regulatory system keeps hard-working folks poorer. That seems fairly context specific to me.Report
Last point: Can I suggest the term “Pro-Market Liberal” as an alternative to “moderate Libertarian.” Or Maybe just “Market-Liberal.”
Instead of getting attacked as being a Nozickean extremist, when you misleadingly (sorry that sounds rude) describe as a “libertarian”, people will be intrigued to learn what it means to be a “Pro-Market Liberal.”
You catch more flies with honey.Report
Will you call yourself an anti-market libertarian?
I’m sorry, I’m just having a real problem with this, “why don’t you call yourself something that I can feel more comfortable with?” approach. What you’re selling I’m not buying. You’ve got a better chance of selling me a girdle.Report
I’d certainly be willing to call myself a “pro-regulation libertarian.” But when asked, “What is that?” I will say “liberal.” Indeed for the sake of brevity, I will just say “liberal.”
Will you admit that the term “liberal” describes your principles in a less confusing way (to the vast majority of people) than “libertarian,” which signals that you don’t believe in a positive right to an equal playing field and that some violations of economic autonomy are justified?Report
Why can’t we just be friends?
(yes, I’m probably mangling the lyrics).Report
It’s no doubt a failing on my end (perhaps coupled with Reply logistics) but I can’t keep track of sub-threads. Not that I haven’t tried. Y’all are fab. [Channeling Eddie Murphy] Nothin’ but love for ya.
But Sons of Anarchy is happening, and I have my priorities. Ciao.Report
SAMCRO? Hope for you yet.Report
Honestly I’m not even trying to keep up with this thread anymore. But…
I’ll just respond to one more thing here, because it’s come up a lot: I find it very unconvincing when I’m told that libertarians shout the conservative-ish stuff while whispering the liberal-ish stuff.
For several years I’ve been an editor at one of the most important and well-respected libertarian think tanks. This is a group of smart people who understand what, if anything, libertarianism really is. There are disagreements, and some of us do tilt either left or right. But more or less, we’re happy calling ourselves libertarians, and I think we are basically correct to do so.
It’s my job to read Cato publications, and there are only a handful of people on earth who could possibly have read as many as I have. I assure you that we are quite serious about the liberal-ish parts of our program. The biggest problem in that department is not us, it’s our audience.
We’ve managed to connect with a conservative audience for the conservative-ish stuff we publish, and I’m well and truly pleased with that. (I do believe the conservative-ish parts of libertarianism, of course, pretty much as strongly as I believe the liberal-ish parts. I see them as connected, and I see both conservatives and liberals wanting only half of what’s obviously a coherent whole.)
So. We have this audience for our conservative-ish stuff. But we have not been able to grow a similar audience for the liberal-ish stuff. As this thread amply demonstrates, many liberals are almost entirely ignorant of the fact that we often argue like liberals, to liberal conclusions. On things we sincerely care about.
When we point this out, liberals will either deny it, lie about it, minimize it, trivialize it, accuse us of bad faith, propose complex and elaborately choreographed blowback scenarios, insist that liberals have absolutely nothing to learn from us and — when all else fails — they’ll find that one libertarian who thinks, say, that the Kelo decision was wonderful. Suddenly, he’s “libertarianism.” (The rest of us think he’s nuts, mind you.)
It hardly matters what our message is, given an audience like that. Whatever we’re saying, it’s just not going to get across. So here we are, stuck trying to convince the Heritage Foundation and the rest of our conservative audience to legalize pot, allow same-sex marriage, repeal the USA-PATRIOT Act, keep God out of the schools, and refrain from bombing Iran. It’s a noble cause, but a pretty damned lost one.
What do we have to offer liberals? After all, maybe it’s not that much.
It can’t be pleasant when we point out to liberals that they’ve sold out the country’s civil liberties for a second Obama term. We don’t make any friends when we argue that his surveillance programs and medical pot raids are breaking campaign promises. Those promises were really important to just about any libertarian who managed to pull the lever for Obama that first time around. (Did any the second time? Probably not…)
But this points to the bigger, underlying problem — it’s just not true that the liberals themselves are any good on the “liberal”-ish parts of the libertarian program. They’re not.
Granted, the allure of electoral politics can overwhelming. If I were a liberal, the last thing I’d want would be a Romney administration, for every single reason in the book. And I might be inclined, shall we say, to cut a few corners.
That’s fine and even quite understandable. But it ultimately makes the type of dialogue I attempted here pretty foolish.Report
Insofar as Libertarian is an adjective and not a noun, Cato’s not exactly reaching out to Liberals by saying “Liberal Leaders Flunk Math”. That’s just stupid talk, okay? Do have a word with Richard Rahn, tell him I said so.Report
You seem like an honest and upstanding guy, who though we may disagree, has core beliefs that aren’t complete asshattery.
I wish I could say the same about everyone claiming to be a libertarian.
Some of them, I quite honestly hope die in a fire.
I think the world would be a better place for it.Report
Kim, the same thing could be said for people who claim essentially every political philosophy. Asshats are everywhere, so I don’t really see this as a useful critique.
However, liberals overall have gotten a lot better at policing our own asshats, to our advantage, while I’d argue that the conservatives have catered to theirs and are paying the price. Maybe there’s a lesson there for libertarians. 🙂Report
Patrick,
The people I’d like to see die in a fire are funding conservative and libertarian astroturf like the Tea Party.
(You walked in late to the conversation, if you’re feeling confused, it’s quite understandable).Report
Not all asshats are in control of significant monetary resources taht they use to fund Vast RightWing Conspiracies (TM). [Note: I’m really not trying to bring Scaife in as evidence. I just like Hillary’s term for him.]Report
“Some of them, I quite honestly hope die in a fire.”
But only after forgetting to pay the fire department fee, of course.Report
That’s fine and even quite understandable. But it ultimately makes the type of dialogue I attempted here pretty foolish.
Actually, I think we’ve had some pretty useful dialogue here, Jason. Yes, like parts of it have been troll-ful, ugly, and disagreeable, but parts of it have been insightful, interesting, and engaging, too.
And as I said up-thread, the problem libertarians have with engaging with liberals is that you try to talk to them on your terms, not theirs. Suisse Deutsch works well enough when you’re in Germany, but if you’re in France, maybe you should try speaking Suisse Romand.Report
And dear lord, don’t talk Italian to either of them. 🙂Report
Folks, just a warning: The League comment counter cannot turn over once it reaches 1,000 due to a glitch in the software. Unfortunately, the programmers never planned for a 1,000 comment thread. If we go over, it will destroy the site and, possibly, all life as we know it.Report
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More!Report
I’m calling my representative immediately to see if we can get working on a regulation to fix this. Obviously the market isn’t solving this problem. 😉Report
Patrick,
I can’t find the thread, so I am replying down here.
I think you will agree that for some reason or other, Jews and Swedes and many, but not all Asians make more.
My guess is that racism is a factor, though probably not a dominant one. If I was to compare incomes I would want to adjust for age, occupational preference, geography, generations in America, and of course education. Furthermore I would adjust for marital status, family size, hours worked and such forth.
I believe that if we do so, we will find there is very little remaining differential. But of course this just leads back to why are these things different? Why are Jews investing more in school than Hispanics? Why are they graduating more? Why are they avoiding pre marital children more?
The answers I think come down to institutions and culture, and these feed upon each other. I think some sub pops have spiralled into more productive patterns than others, and that some of our institutions are feeding back into this process.Report
If you factor out all of the ways in which discrimination actually effects minorities, for example through reduced educational and occupational opportunity, of course you’ll see little difference. I’m going to just completely disagree with you and leave it at that, or else this will be a 9000 post thread, not a 900 post thread.Report
Nothing much to say, just wanted to be the 900th comment. Good work Jason!Report