Libertarianism.org has picked up the second installment of my series on the socialist calculation debate. And this month’s Cato Unbound is on libertarian-conservative fusionism — in essence, the idea that libertarians fit most naturally on the right. This issue is also the first in our much improved new format.
Jason Kuznicki
Jason Kuznicki is a research fellow at the Cato Institute and contributor of Cato Unbound. He's on twitter as JasonKuznicki. His interests include political theory and history.
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I’ll be sure to check these out, Jason. But first I’ll just say that the new Cato Unbound site looks good.Report
Seconded. The new site design is fantastic, content of Otto’s argument aside.Report
Good Lord, Otto quotes Jonah Goldberg approvingly. Tu quoque or not, I stopped reading right there.Report
“Many religious liberals are actively marketing to religious conservatives (and in many ways winning them over) by appealing to their faith. If libertarians do not pursue fusionism with religious conservatives, we may find in time that liberals have succeeded in branding liberalism as the only religiously acceptable political ideology.
If that is the case, there would be no coalition on the Right. How then will there be enough of us to defend freedom?”
Mistake #1: equating conservatism and libertarianism with freedom or the defense of same.
Mistake #2: declarative statement that liberals are anti-freedom.
If this is what passes for debate where you work, I don’t think I’ll be reading much more of that series.Report
Thanks for pointing out the Otto essay, she’s obviously genuinely interested in libertarian fusionism and passionate about reaching out to religious conservatives. But from the libertarian perspective, I feel like this right/lib fusionist advice is like telling a person locked out of their house that they should form an alliance with the neighborhood burglar because both want to get in! Or, to put it more succinctly, smart people around here often quote the libertarian perspective to “Cut taxes from the bottom up and welfare from the top down”. That perspective seems completely at odds with the modern conservative movement – as I see it – and so any fusionist essay that doesn’t tackle this contradiction will do little to convince me.
If Ott’s point, and the focus of the essay, is that libertarians should pull conservatives into the movement by not being assholes about religion (and maybe toning it down on the “Sky Man & The Evil Snake” mockery) then I’m all for it. But if her goal is, as she says in her last sentence, a “coalition on the Right” then I think she needs to challenge the Right’s priorities more directly.
BTW, this concluding section:
Seems eerily familiar to Rand Paul’s argument against the Civil Rights Act, and completely misses the point that when government is the reason for transgressions against individual rights then we must demand that government – not just individuals – also rectify their transgression. I find it hard to understand how reparations for police brutality or discrimination against black farmers or Japanese-American internment would classify as denying individual responsibility, for example.Report
I will note there is a lot in between those ellipsis in the Otto quote and, being an devout liberal, I read the section with a critical eye so I may very well be misinterpreting her point.Report
If you bristle at accusations of being a conservative pet, or that CATO in general is focused solely on one dimension of liberty (economic), then..well…that fusionism essay doesn’t help.
Also this: “way forward for fusionism is to celebrate the moral superiority of free markets”, requires a lot more heaving lifting than she seemed willing to do, which is fine for preaching to the choir, but that’s why I find discussions about libertarianism in LOoG so much more edifying.Report
If you bristle at accusations of being a conservative pet, or that CATO in general is focused solely on one dimension of liberty (economic), then..well…that fusionism essay doesn’t help.
I fear you may be judging a debate solely on the opening statement of one of its participants.
In my own opinion, which will not be expressed at Cato Unbound this month, libertarianism ought to be its own thing, independent of liberals or conservatives. In that respect, I disagree with Jacque Otto. As editor of a debate journal, I give a fair hearing to people I disagree with. I know that sounds weird, but it’s what I do.
And besides, it would be foolish to entirely ignore and never even consider the attempts, past and present, at forging a right-libertarian alliance. Just as it would be foolish to ignore the (admittedly more tentative) attempts at forging a left-libertarian alliance.
The 20th century libertarians stood rather more with the right. But I think that was owing to 20th century concerns, and the future is for us to be much more independent or even possibly to have a stronger affinity with the left.Report
I’m not seeing any trends that would point to the emergence of a ‘religious left’ as a coherent and viable political movement (and thus power broker).Report
Don’t sleep on the Presbyterians now! I wondered if she might be referring to Catholics, but they’re a blend of both left and right views, which comes out in wash in electoral politics.Report
I think the African-American Churches are rather strong players in the Democratic Party.Report
As are, like Jason M. says, Catholic latinos (and Catholic non-latinos, like the PA Casey family).
But it would be an iffy proposition to say the African American voting patterns are defined by religiosity. (on a macro, national scale. On a micro, local scale, it does matter more). And the proposition that the African American vote is at play in libertarian-conservative fusionism*, or can be made so – well, it would be nice to believe, but that’s not the way the current political map or any near-term iteration is drawn.
*and to be clear, it’s not that the African-american vote is not worth pursuing from any and all parties, it’s just that one is going to have to press for policies – especially libertarian policies – that are not historically hitched to Goldwater-Buckley era conservo-libertarianism. (for starters, both conservatives and libertarians can stop reflexively bashing cities)Report
Also Jews are 80 percent or more solidly Democratic and this drives the Republican Party bonkers.
We might not be religious in the same vein as the Religious Right but we should count….Report
when you want to put aspects of your religion into the political sphere in a way that’s distinguishable from what the secular left wants to do, then you’ll count.Report
Doh! There discounts the Episcopalians, too…Report
Is this why libertarians, largely speaking, don’t count? Because their aspects of their dogma (so much as one exists) have been subsumed into the narrative of the religious right?Report
I doubt it.Report
Insofar as there’s a religious or moral dimension to “libertarian” (scare quotes here) arguments regarding the primacy of free market economics and individualist liberty, they seem to have largely been subsumed and incorporated into the strains of evangelical christianity that make up the core of the religious right.Report
“In the same way that God thinks that you should be allowed to make your own decisions and go to Hell if you want, so do I.”
This doesn’t really take off with Babtists as much as you’d think it should. Of course, I was raised from a strain that saw Presbyterians as heretics (they baptize babies, don’t you know… and worse, they don’t even baptize them, they sprinkle).Report
As noted, my primary argument is that the economic agenda of the religious right has largely incorporated and internalized the message of the free market cultists, not so much the social realms of libertarianism.Report
The religious right doesn’t believe in free markets in drugs, sex, pornography, religion, or labor mobility (I.e., immigration). They’re pretty selective in both free markets and individual liberty. I think “parrot” is a more accurate word than “subsume.”Report
Immigration law is not a signature issue of the ‘religious right’. People agitating for immigration restriction are not distinguished by a particular orientation toward various social questions. There may be a correlation there. However, I believe that Russell Moore of the Southern Baptist public policy staff is currently agitating for amnesty (though I may have confounded him with someone else). The biases of the U.S. Catholic Conference have generally run toward a lax immigration regime as well.
They’re pretty selective in both free markets and individual liberty.
More precisely, the do not define ‘individual liberty’ as the freedom to engage in vice.
I think “parrot” is a more accurate word than “subsume.”
Thanks for your input.Report
More precisely, the do not define ‘individual liberty’ as the freedom to engage in vice.
Which is why they have not subsumed the libertarian view of markets and individual liberty.Report
Art,
except, naturally where the exercise of individual liberty is in the form of “marital rape” or defacto slaveryReport
?Report
Single payer, gun control, and the war on cheesburgers!Report
I think Kohole is on point here. Granted, I see most of this in the Canadian political sphere, but I think similar lessons can be taken.
There are a couple of prominent left wing (non-partisan) political organizations that are religious organizations – Citizens for Public Justice, and KAIROS. KAIROS, particularly, has become a bit of a cause celebre for liberals as it has had some pretty high profile clashes with the current government (which resulted in helping to bring down a cabinet minister). The policies of these groups mesh perfectly with secular liberal views (by and large – there are variations within every political group or coalition), so on the surface there’s nothing about them that would make people think of them as the Religious Left, even though that’s exactly what they are.Report
The problem with this tactic is that you are requiring Jewish theology to be comparable to Christian theology and it simply isn’t.
How are the Christian right different than any secular right-winger/conservative on many issues? Why should it be different for Jews?Report
The religious right is the cart driving the horse on conservative social policy. Can the same be said of the religious left?
The religious right is, in general, far less enthusiastic about capitalism in general. They’re also more likely to be squishy on immigration. And, obviously, they care a whole lot more about certain issues than the party as a whole.
If the religious right left the Republican Party, it would be decidedly different. If the Jewish (or Episcopalians) left the Democratic Party, I’m not sure it would mark as different a change.Report
The Jewish vote is packed enough to sway elections in at least New York and New Jersey. This includes for Congress, Senate, Governors, and the electoral college. The electoral college votes of New York is one of the states that gives the Democratic Party a strong advantage, along with the California.Report
I’m not talking about numbers. I’m talking about whether or not they – as a specific voting block – are an active force in shaping their party the same way that evangelicals are in the Republican Party.
I don’t think they are. I think if the Jewish vote left the party, the platform would remain very similar to what it is now and only altered to the extent that they need to recoup votes.
If Evangelicals left the GOP, you’d see immediate changes. I see a difference here.Report
Less pithily than my first response:
I understand that much of the argument stems from an American centric view of politics, and in this sense I agree that there’s not really a power-broker aspect to liberal evangelicalism or even mainline Catholicism that is in itself distinct from the mainline liberal center in the US. (To some extent I think this is more an internalization of earlier trends such as the Koinonia farms style social justice movements and part of American cultural religiosity, and this itself narrows the scope of discussion about “religious voters” as a particular evangelical protestantism and Catholic fundamentalism in the US)
But one wonders if globally there’s more to the idea of a religious left than people will give it credit for. Catholicism as a social justice movement is particularly strong in Latin America, while Protestants too are also keen on stressing charity and aid over uh individualism. To the extent that free market arguments will continue to remain relevant GLOBALLY, it needs to help address what is still a staggering global inequality.Report
This is a really good comment, too.Report
How about all the social liberty aspects of being a libertarian?
Or is this essay from Cato just another hands up on how social liberty is all a ruse?Report
You err in thinking this is an essay “from Cato.”
“At Cato” would be more accurate. We debate at Cato Unbound. We don’t lay down a party line. We set up a discussion that might be worth having, vigorous dissent most emphatically included.Report
Hell, then, you have nothing in common with conservatives.Report
You could at least have the decency to be a little bit embarrassed over your choice of allies.Report
Also, my other comment to this thread seems to have vanished into the aether.Report
Akismet tagged two of your comments as “likely spam”. It’s a Bayesian filter, so some combination of your word choice, source IP, content, etc., is the likely culprit.
It looks like you’re using TOR, and there have been cases in the past when people have been pushed over the limit in spam scoring by using anonymizing services. If you don’t drop the anonymizer, you’re occasionally going to wind up in the filter.
(This isn’t a demand that you stop using said services, just that if you do, this is an occasional consequence)Report
This is correct. Worth noting is that the use of anonymizing proxy servers is addressed in the Comment Policy.Report
Wait, Rick Perry is associated with Cato? When did this happen?Report
I’m trying to understand this too.
I don’t doubt that if you looked hard enough, you’d find something from Jacque Otto with which I disagree even more vigorously than her Cato Unbound essay.
That would be fair, and not just a random shot.Report
If libertarian/conservative fusion is what you are after, Rick Perry is what you have to fuse with. Like it or not that’s the behavior of the movement you are trying to ally with and the sort of so-called christian morality that Jacqueline Otto argues libertarians are supposed to embrace.
It’s not a random shot.Report
If you were inclined to actually read what Jason wrote and not just look for opportunities to take cheap potshots, you’d see that he is not after libertarian/conservative fusion.Report
I read what he wrote, I’m not taking cheap potshots, and if you’re just going to be a coward who shows up to snipe at me then please just ignore anything I write instead.
You ran away from another discussion while making repeated personal attacks and at this point I believe your only motivation is trolling. You are trying to bait me into some form of response. This is my final request that you stop doing so.Report
Request denied; I will criticize bad arguments whenever I am in the mood. You say you read what Jason wrote. Fine, then quote where he implies that he himself is in favor of a libertarian/conservative fusion.Report
You know, it’s kinda funny that you write posts attacking Jason, and really misrepresenting his position, then whine that someone who criticizes you is trolling. Not very funny, but kinda funny.Report
You ran away from another discussion while making repeated personal attacks and at this point I believe your only motivation is trolling. You are trying to bait me into some form of response. This is my final request that you stop doing so.
Or?
I didn’t see any repeated personal attacks so I have no idea what you’re talking about. Perhaps you can enlighten me.Report
It’s clearly not a random shot. It’s just fired in the wrong direction. By someone who clearly didn’t bother to read anything he/she was responding to.Report
Otto writes:
“While libertarians do not quicken to accept Buckley’s leadership because of his rejection of Ayn Rand’s and Murray Rothbard’s unyieldingness”
That means she is saying libertarians approve of Rand and Rothbard.
I have gotten far more flack from self-described libertarians for saying that libertarians approve of Nozick. I am told that libertarianism shouldn’t be defined by its most extreme voices. But here someone supposedly friendly to libertarianism makes the same point that not accepting extreme voices (like Rand and Rothbard) means you won’t he accepted in the movement of libertarianism, as Buckley isn’t.
How come I get flack and not Otto?Report
Not knowing all the players, I’d guess that Otto has a different perspective on the continuum than you do, and/or that there’s disagreement that all of the above can necessarily be ranked in an ordinal ranking of “libertarian-ness”, let alone a ratio ranking.Report
But she seems to imply that Buckley couldn’t be a libertarian or lead the libertarians precisely because he didn’t agree with the more extreme ideologies of Rand and Rothbard. Buckley has to be something not quite libertarian,
When I say X can’t be a libertarian because X doesn’t agree with the more extremist versions of libertarianism, I get in trouble. Why not her?Report
It’s actually pretty simple and not at all tendentious or ad hoc.
Ask me about Murray Rothbard, I’ll say that he was an extremist with some very important, interesting, and worthwhile ideas.
Ask you about Rothbard, and you’ll say he was a dangerous lunatic.
In that respect, you’re more like William F. Buckley than you realize, because that was precisely his opinion, too.Report
This doesn’t address my point and seems a bit of an attack on my ability to see the value in the work of people I disagree with.
1. If Rothbard wrote the racist Ron Paul newsletter, he is a dangerous lunatic. Surely you agree. But maybe he didn’t write them.
2. I appreciate the value of some of Rothbard’s ideas. Rand’s too. Neither is Robert Nozick (or even Narveson) in intellectual capability. Lesser lights and all that. If I were to call either a lunatic, it would be for Rand’s weirdly cultish personal behavior later in life and Rothbard’s flirtation with racism. Again, surely you agree.
3. My point is that we all agree that Buckley isn’t a libertarian because he doesn’t agree with the extreme points of view of people like Rothbard and Nozick. So why do I get in trouble when I say that if you are too much of a moderate, you aren’t a libertarian? Otto makes the same point as me and gets away with it.Report
we all agree that Buckley isn’t a libertarian because he doesn’t agree with the extreme points of view of people like Rothbard and Nozick.
Do we?
All?Report
I mean all of Otto, Jason, and me.
If Jason doesn’t agree, he can say so. Otto certainly seems to agree with me that you aren’t libertarian if you moderate you Rothbardianism or Nozickeanism with something else. You become a Fusionist (or some other ugly neologism).Report
Are you sure you really want to align yourself with Otto?
And who is letting Otto get away with it? That’s not specified, so I’m not sure to whom or what you are referring.Report
Only on the question of whether Buckley is a libertarian, do I align with her.
Do you think Buckley was a libertarian.Report
3. My point is that we all agree that Buckley isn’t a libertarian because he doesn’t agree with the extreme points of view of people like Rothbard and Nozick.
That’s not why I don’t call William F. Buckley a libertarian.
I don’t call Buckley a libertarian because he was fairly clear about personally rejecting the idea of a stand-alone libertarianism. He insisted that libertarians were basically misidentified conservatives.
This isn’t just about labels, either. I believe Buckley’s politics was motivated by a different set of underlying concerns than most libertarians’. And he signaled those concerns in how he responded to various intellectuals around him, Murray Rothbard definitely included. In one of his infamously vicious obituaries, Buckley compared Rothbard to David Koresh.
My own take on Rothbard is a lot kinder than that. He had some interesting and undoubtedly extreme ideas. And later in life he appears quite possibly to have gone off the deep end. A fact that saddens me, not one I can take any delight in.
(Because I know you’ll ask if I don’t mention it – Rothbard may perhaps have written the racist newsletters, but it seems much more likely to have been Lew Rockwell: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lew_Rockwell)Report
Good.
But you agree that Buckley was not a libertarian because he moderated his libertarianism with other things. It wasn’t a “stand-alone libertarian,” so therefore he wasn’t a libertarian.Report
No. Not good. You’re wrong.
I don’t believe that Buckley “moderated his libertarianism.” I believe he wished that libertarians would moderate their libertarianism. He himself didn’t have any libertarianism to moderate.Report
Jason, do you think there were strains of libertarianism in Buckley’s thinking about politics and governance even tho he eschewed the label for philosophical and even practical reasons?
Consider, for example, this quote from self-identified libertarian Robert Poole of Reason: “Some commentators dubbed Buckley a “libertarian conservative,” and in the broadest sense, I guess that was true.”Report
Not to speak for Jason, but I think there were some strains of libertarian thought in Buckley’s thinking, but not nearly enough to really identify him as a libertarian per se.
For example, he was opposed to same-sex marriage, and argued that of course the majority got to set those rules. He also complained that the Massachusetts judges gave rights to gays that had been designed for “non-gays,” a denial of individual humanity that libertarian thought doesn’t swallow easily.
One could look to his opposition to the war on drugs and call for legalization and think, “yeah, that’s libertarian,” but his entire argument was based on the bad side effects of the war on drugs, and was a purely pragmatic change from his prior opposition to legalization. Good and correct as that was, it wasn’t the clearly more libertarian position that “what I ingest is none of your damn business.” He believed it was government’s business; he just realized that pursuing that business was unprofitable.Report
A Conservative Eisenhower Republican would probably believe in limits on Federal government power/jurisdiction that would, in 2013, map more to, say, the Constitution Party than the Libertarian Party but, eh. Those 3rd Party Types have more in common with each other than they do with the Real ones.Report
Yeah. He was too moderate to be a libertarian is a claim Otto and I agree with, but people get mad at me when I make it )because it implies libertarianism is always extremists of a sort).
My claim is that some people are too moderately in favor of helping the poor to be libertarians, too. Similarly, Buckley is not a libertarian because he is too moderate in different ways.Report
We agree that moderates aren’t libertarians and Buckley was too moderate to be a libertarian.Report
Did Jason claim that Buckley was too moderate? I missed that.Report
Well Buckley isn’t a libertarian, even though he accepts some of the claims that libertarians do, because he doesn’t accept libertarian ideas in their more extreme and unadulterated forms, as Rothbard and Nozick (for example) accept them.Report
Come in Shazbot, that’s really dishonest. That’s not what Jason said. You’re making a really convenient misinterpretation so you can claim he agrees with you, even though he’s expressed disagreement.Report
Buckley wasn’t a libertarian because his main political loyalty was not to the value of liberty, but to the value of tradition.
This being a country with a significant tradition of liberty, you will notice some overlap.
But a libertarian will value tradition only if it enhances liberty. A traditionalist will value liberty only if it’s traditional.
It’s not a mater of moderation, but of different (though sometimes overlapping) goals.Report
No dishonesty.
Everyone can get their views out.
1. Was Buckley a libertarian?
2. Was Otto wrong to imply he wasn’t a libertarian because he wasn’t in line with Rothbard (or Rand) or any other extremist libertarian?
It seems to me that if you answer yes to 1., you can’t answer no to 2. without logical contradiction. (Or vice versa.) Buckley either was or wasn’t a libertarian. He’s not some kind of Schrodinger’s cat ideologically.
It seems to me that James wants to say that Otto was wrong to say he wasn’t a libertarian. That’s fine. (Though I disagree.) Just don’t say she was right to do so and I’m not right to say the same thing.
I’m still not sure if Jason wants to answer “yes” to both questions or “No” to both. But you can’t answer “yes” to “one” and no to the other.
That’s all I’m arguing here. I’ve argued that libertarianism, properly defined, excludes people who hold less extreme views than Rothbard and Nozick. You (James) disagree, IIRC, arguing that how a person self-ascribes as libertarian or not is relevant to whether they are.
(Personally, I think whether you self- ascribe can’t be used as a criterion for determining whether the tern properly applies to you, because that would be circular. “I am a libertarian because I say I am. But should I say I am a libertarian? Well, I do say I am. On and on.)Report
You don’t think Buckley believed in libertarian principles for reasons other than tradition? He didn’t place intrinsic value on free market capitalism?Report
1. I don’t think Buckley was a libertarian.
2. I think Otto was mistaken to imply that his failure to qualify was merely due to his disagreeing with the canonical figures.
I take a larger view of what it means to be a libertarian, but by that standard, I still don’t think he qualifies.Report
Buckley wasn’t in any way a libertarian. He was a staunch capitalist, largely because the alternative was atheistic Communism. If there’d been an American tradition of socially conservative religious communitariansm, he’d have been fine with it.Report
“Examining postwar conservative intellectual history, Kim Phillips-Fein writes: The most influential synthesis of the subject remains George H. Nash’s The Conservative Intellectual Tradition since 1945…. He argued that postwar conservatism brought together three powerful and partially contradictory intellectual currents that previously had largely been independent of each other: libertarianism, traditionalism, and anticommunism. Each particular strain of thought had predecessors earlier in the twentieth (and even nineteenth) centuries, but they were joined in their distinctive postwar formulation through the leadership of William F. Buckley Jr…. Buckley founded National Review in 1955, serving as editor-in-chief until 1990.[37][38] During that time, National Review became the standard-bearer of American Conservatism, promoting the fusion of traditional conservatives and libertarians…. Buckley would distinguish between so-called “lowercase c” and “Capital C” conservatives, the latter being true conservatives: fiscally conservative and socially Conservative/Libertarian or libertarian-leaning.[105][106]”
That’s all from Wikipedia entry on Buckley.
After Rothbard died, Buckley wrote this:
“It was a great pity, but his problem ought not to be thought of as tracing to the seamless integrity of libertarian principles. In Murray’s case, much of what drove him was a contrarian spirit, the deranging scrupulosity that caused him to disdain such as Herbert Hoover, Ronald Reagan, Milton Friedman, and — yes — Newt Gingrich,”
Buckley believed in Fusionism, which accepted laissez-faire markets as necessarily good, i.e. it accepts the libertarian approach to fiscal issues, but accepted violations of libertarianism in the social sphere, especially with respect to abortion. Buckley accepted libertarian principles, but by accepting other principles too, he accepted a modified, more moderate ideology that shouldn’t be called libertarianism.
Again, this acceptance of principles in addition to libertarian principles means that Buckley was not a libertarian. In general, if you accept principles that would modify (and moderate) the more pure, extremist forms of libertarianism (associated with Rothbard and Nozick and others), then you should not be called a libertarian. “Libertarianism” is a form of extremism. (BTW, extremist is not a derisive term. Plato was an extremist. Martin Luther King was an avowed extremist.)
Otto and I agree on this.
If you disagree, Jason, then what criteria do you use to determine who is a libertarian that excludes the libertarian-leaning fusionists and libertarian-leaning liberals, that should be excluded?Report
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/02/conservatives_and_libertarians_1.htmlReport
To complicate matters.
James is always telling me that I should let libertarians decide who is a libertarian and who isn’t.
But Buckley often called himself a libertarian.
From Jacob Sullum at Reason.com:
“As for substance, Buckley often called himself a libertarian; the subtitle of Happy Days Were Here Again, his 1993 collection of columns and articles, was “Reflections of a Libertarian Journalist.”
So he is a libertarian right? Just a moderate one?
It seems to me that he has as much of a claim to being a libertarian as James or Jason. Buckley accepts libertarian principles, but he accepts some exceptions that extremists like Nozick and Rothbard don’t accept. (James accepts that there should be some exceptions to create equality of opportunity, which is not a strictly libertarian principle, IIRC.)
So he is a libertarian, right?Report
George H. Nash’s The Conservative Intellectual Tradition since 1945
It’s an excellent book, though it over-romanticizes conservatism a bit.Report
“If there’d been an American tradition of socially conservative religious communitariansm, he’d have been fine with it.”
Yes, Buckley was a Catholic.Report
It seems to me that James wants to say that Otto was wrong to say he wasn’t a libertarian.
Jesus Fucking Christ, you have one hell of a reading comprehension problem.
I’ve argued that libertarianism, properly defined, excludes people who hold less extreme views than Rothbard and Nozick.
Yes, you have, and it’s the same ridiculous no-true-Scotsman fallacy as the first time you made it.Report
If Buckley isn’t a libertarian, then you aren’t either James.
And enough with the bullying and rhetoric. I’m behaving nicely, not swearing and calling you dishonest, and you should play nice, too.Report
It’s not a true Scotsman fallacy. I’m arguing that the criteria for what determines who is a libertarian a either very narrow and leave out you and Buckley, or they are broad and include him as much as you.
IMO, it is more useful if we could reserve the label “libertarian” for the narrow use to refer only to the Rothbards and Nozicks of the world.Report
It’s not a *TRUE* true scotsman fallacy.Report
Somehow I was so afraid of the double negative of saying its not a no true Scotsman.
Also, dude. I believe the prefered nomenclature is Scottish American.Report
And enough with the bullying and rhetoric. I’m behaving nicely, not swearing and calling you dishonest
No, you are not behaving nicely. You are continually misrepresenting what Jason and I are saying. There’s nothing nice about that at all.
IMO, it is more useful if we could reserve the label “libertarian” for the narrow use to refer only to the Rothbards and Nozicks of the world.
IMO you have never made a remotely logical argument in favor of doing so. It’s just an effort to marginalize. There’s a whole world of people out there who call themselves libertarians and who aren’t that narrow. You can sit around and wish it were otherwise, but there’s not a one of them that’s going to let a self-described liberal define libertarianism for them, especially when that liberal is trying to define them out of their own camp.
You remember those discussions that popped up some months back about who has standing to make what kind if claims? Well, you don’t have standing when it comes to defining libertarianism. So you might as well get clear about the fact that your position is not being taken seriously, and you sound an awful lot like a white guy trying to explain racism to a black guy.
Now you are, of course, free to believe any ridiculous thing you want. But this business of repeatedly misinterpreting people, especially when you follow up the misinterpretation with some variation on, “so you actually agree with me,” needs to stop. It is dishonest, and I have no intention of being anything but rude to and dismissive of you as long as you play that vile game.Report
I’m glad that you admit that you’re being rude and dismissive. Just remember the next time that you get mad at a certain commenter (who hasn’t been around) who you often tangle with, that you are okay with being as rude as he is.
My sin, according to you, stripped away from the angry rhetoric, is that I stated that X has such and such views. Later, I reasserted that he (and you) thi such and such, and must think be committed to accepting such and such, even if you don’t won’t to admit it. This is a common and reasonable thing to do in a debate and doesn’t deserve your admittedly rude and dismissive response. There is no dishonesty in my position. Suppose I say to someone who believes gay people are unintelligent, “You think Turing was unintelligent.” If they want to deny it, they can explain how that is consistent with their other claims. This is how I am arguing. Otto implies Buckley was not a libertarian because he accepted libertarian principles and other principles that moderated his libertarianism. He was less extreme and purist than Rothbard, and so not a libertarian. If you agree with her reasoning, then others are not libertarians either. If you disagree with her reasoning, you should be as hard on her and dismissive of her, as you were with me a long time ago. But Jason is not being as hard on her as if I had used the same reasoning to say he and you were not libertarians. This is hardly an argument that desereves rudeness and insult in response.
—-
Regarding who has standing to define libertarianism, note that Buckley often claimed to be a libertarian, and you and Jason claim he isn’t. So, you agree that the mere fact that someone self-ascribes as a libertarian is not sufficient to show that the person is a libertarian. You also agree that by accepting principles other than libertarian principles (being less pure and extremist than Rothbard) can make you not a libertarian.
So therefore, you must accept that your self-ascription as a libertarian is not sufficient to make you a libertarian. And , you must accept that your accepting of a less principled, less pure form of libertarianism than Rothbard’s raises a serious question as to whether you should count as a libertarian.
The analogy with race is a poor one. Did you know I used to be a libertarian? Thus, I have self-ascribed as libertarian and am just as able as you to talk avout who counts as one.Report
Is dismissing Buckley as not a libertarian despite his respect for libertarian principles, his self-ascription as a libertarian, his desrie to dismantle the entire New Deal and replace it with markets, his position against the war on drugs, bev not a “no true Scotsmen” fallacy, just because Buckley was a.) pro-life, and b.) thought that the were pragmatic, empirical reasons for not overturning traditional institutions too quickly?Report
If I believe in taxing the rich a little more than the poor to pay for equal public school (or subsidized vouchers for the poor), then does that mean I can’t be a libertarian?Report
Simplify that:
If I believe in public school, then does that mean I can’t be a libertarian?
Or even
If I believe in mandatory education, then does that mean I can’t be a libertarian?Report
“However, the differences between libertarians and conservatives are already well defined, and redefining them is not the purpose of this discussion. Instead, what I propose is that the way forward for fusionism is to celebrate the moral superiority of free markets and limited government and do a better job of making those moral arguments to religious conservatives.
This task will not be an easy one, as those who are both religious and libertarian-leaning face strong cultural and ideological headwinds in our religious and political communities.”
I think this task is a lot easier than she does.Report
I think it’s a lot harder than she thinks it is, because I suspect that most of libertarian-leaning folk are regarded largely as captured by the conservatives, so why should they change anything to become more libertarian-leaning on various fronts?
What are the libertarians going to do, defect to the liberals?Report
I mean the task of convincing religious conservatives that whatever a market produces is a moral/just distribution.
That task is largely (though not entirely) complete.
Otto went to Oral Roberts University, the founder of which preached “prosperity theology,” which is pretty popular amongst religious conservatives, IMO.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_gospelReport
ha. Economic survival of the fittest.Report
But… well, this sounds like an inversion. The way you’re framing it suggests that the Libertarians have a long-game plan to converts more of the political Right to “being more Libertarian”.
It appears to me that the political Right is becoming *less* Libertarian, not moreso. Although they’re increasingly hanging the trappings of the free market on themselves.Report
Otto we.nt to Oral Roberts University, the founder of which preached “prosperity theology,” which is pretty popular amongst religious conservatives, IMO.
Um, no. It is favored by a subset of charismatics and pentacostalists. I doubt you would find many fundamentalist or generic evangelicals who trade in this (Jerry Falwell had no time for it) and the whole mess would be regarded as bizarre among Catholics and Orthodox.Report
I’d likely agree with this assumption. I think the Repubs generally think that way, at least the leadership. But Libertarians also share a lot with the “left”-the drug war, etc.
Maybe the conservaties need to be reminded of that.Report
What conservatives share with libertarians is how they think about money. In politics, that’s going to trump social issues every time.Report
The first part is right. I disagree pretty strongly about the second part, though.Report
I want to write more on this, and I hope I get the opportunity to, but I think Otto is pretty off-base here.
As a practical matter, if more religious people shift to the “left”, that leaves more room for people on the “right” who are more economically conservative than socially conservative. Further, religious people who move from the right to left will be taking some of their beliefs with them that will change the dynamics of the left in a way that will make current occupants of the left uncomfortable. That leaves open the potential for the right to recoup some of their losses.
Or not, in which case the libertarian voice will become a stronger voice in a weaker party. This is the primary concern, but I am really uncertain how that is worse than the current state of affairs. At this point they are outnumbered in the ranks of the losing coalition. Drowned out, to some extent. Unable to even make an appeal, except a cynical one by cynical politicians.
I don’t, personally, have a very optimistic view of the libertarian likelihood of success. At this point, though, I think they would more likely to benefit from a significant shift. There are, at least in my cohort, a number of people whose primary allergy to the political right are the religious types that Otto is concerned about losing, and whose primary discomfort with with the political left are precisely the views they would be bringing over with them.
I am not one who believes that we live in an economically conservative but socially liberal nation. I think the opposite is more true, in fact, when social conservatives don’t do the crap that they’ve been doing. However, for libertarianism to be successful at any stage, I need to be proven wrong. Which means that libertarians need a voice that isn’t being drowned out on the political right, as it currently is. I am not sure I can think of a better way for this to happen than loss of some of the right’s religiosity.Report
Oddly, what makes me most suspicious and/or turned of by the right are the many things that do not fit within the traditional mold of right-wing thinking, at least as I was taught it.
I have certain sympathies for “small government”. But small government, to me, means less regulation on the personal decisions people make, included but not limited to drugs and sex. I am open-minded to some right-leaning economic policies though the devil is, at is always seems to be, in the details.
I guess what I’m saying is that if the right wing were more economically conservative than socially conservative, I’d find them much more suitable to my liking. But that is where I tend to see libertarians holding camp, which is why I identify myself as liberal with libertarian leanings because I just can’t get in bed with all the ugliness that I see currently infecting the right.Report
And I call myself libertarian with liberal leanings.
To me — and way before any consideration of economics — small government means (1) fewer wars and (2) fewer people arrested or forced to do time in prison for wholly unnecessary crimes.
From where we stand now, the fastest, easiest ways to move toward a more libertarian society are to drastically scale back our foreign commitments and to end the war on drugs.
Those are both easily doable things. Not pixie dust. No need for a miracle. And they’re my highest priorities, because I am fairly certain that a lot of the civil-liberties-type issues that I deeply care about will also be won in the process, and we will all be freer and in general better off as a result.Report
What I find interesting is that both factions often claim they are the party of “freedom”. And I realize that “freedom” comes in many forms and with many definitions and, sometimes, is zero sum, meaning freedoms come into conflict and the realization of one freedom means restriction on another and sometimes tough decisions need to be made.
But when I think about how they spout off about “freedom”, I want to grab liberals and say, “SO WHY THE HELL WOULD YOU SUPPORT A BIG GULP BAN?!?!”
And when I think about how they spout off about “freedom”, I want to grab conservatives and say, “SO WHY THE HELL DO YOU SUPPORT THE WAR ON DRUGS?!?!”
And then I want to grab both and say, “YOU REALIZE THOSE ARE THE SAME FUCKING THING AND IMPOSE THE SAME GODDAMN RESTRICTIONS ON FREEDOM, RIGHT?!?!”
And that is when I dust off the “libertarian leaning” part of my self-identification.Report
Kaz, I listen to a fair amount of left-leaning talk radio, mostly in the mornings (Alex Bennett and Stephanie Miller), and the consensus from both the hosts and callers seemed to be that the Big Gulp ban was just dumb and pointless. Furthermore, it was more an indication of Bloomberg being an autocratic, authoritarian jerk than anything else.
I’m not sure where you would be getting the notion that liberals, in general, were supportive of that sort of thing. At most, you may have seen some expressions of support that were strictly knee-jerk reactions against the vitriol from the right. Along the lines of “If Rush is agin’ it, I better be for it.”Report
fwiw…in my admittedly quick google on big gulp polling i found this.
http://thehill.com/polls/231963-hill-poll-dems-twice-as-likely-to-back-bloomberg-big-gulp-ban
D’s much more than R’s to support the soda bucket ban, but not even a majority of D’s favored it.Report
Right. And I’ll wager that a lot of that support is just being contrary to Fox and Friends. But even at that it’s pretty anemic.Report
It was mostly perfunctory “you know, he’s got a point” defenses, when I saw them.
But I did see them.Report
I saw more vigorous defenses than that. John Personna over at OTB is still defending it. It’s tough sledding to say that the soda ban is “supported by the left.” But it does appeal to a technocratic, nudgey, anti-corporate, nutrition-virtue mindset* I see far more common on the left than the right. Thankfully, this was a bridge too far even for most liberals.
* – And you know what? I don’t actually completely disagree with them on this. If I thought the nudge would work, I’d actually have supported it to the horror of all my libertarian comrades here.Report
Get your government out of my bladder.Report
Right Will. There is no way to say it had huge or even large support on the liberal side although certainly some libs liked it. Bloom’s Transfat ban was quite bit more popular and never hit a nerve like the soda bucket ban did.Report
Can I believe it was probably a silly idea, but also believe you have no inherent right to buy a soda in whatever size you want? Especially via a law from local government? I mean, isn’t this what libertarians want? A country where wise members of local and state government like Mayor Bloomberg in New York and the legislature in Alabama passing a law banning any soda limiting laws instead of the nasty federal legislature doing silly things like raising taxes or bombing things?Report
oops, that got mangled. “A county where wise members of state and local government like Mayor Bloomberg can pass what he thinks is best for his city and state governments like Alabama can pass a law banning any sort of soda limiting ordinances? Instead of having a powerful federal legislature doing horrible things?”Report
You can believe that I don’t have an inherent right to marry another dude.
Believe whatever you want.
It’s when you start saying “I NEED TO PASS LAWS!” and when it turns out that the laws might not be constitutional that you start saying “I NEED TO PACK THE COURT!” that I am going to question where, if anywhere, your jurisdiction ends.
Where does your jurisdiction end, Jesse? Anywhere? The border? The atmosphere?Report
It ends where you can get five Supreme Court Justices to say, “sorry pal, too far.” And by the way, every appointment in Supreme Court history has been about “packing the court.” It’s just that in the past few decades, both parties have gotten honest about it and more careful with their selections.Report
So you’re a fan of the status quo in the political process, is that fair to say?Report
In the sense that I don’t think the political system in America is illegitimate, sure. I have a problem with the Senate, but even with that, my is more with the filibuster than anything else, which is a rule, not a law.
Remember, we’re a minority. Most people in America have no problem with throwing lots of brown and black people in jail, have no problems with bombing the heck of foreign countries with drones, and want a Scandinavian welfare system on a Texan level of taxes.Report
by the way, every appointment in Supreme Court history has been about “packing the court.”
Not true. Some appointments have been to electorally appeal to particular demographics, like Ike’s appointment of Brennan.Report
Jesse,
The packing the court allegation is not completely true. It is true that most choices are partisan but there have been exceptions. Some notable ones:
1. Eisenhower appointed William Brennan to the Supreme Court because he thought it would appeal to Irish-Catholic Democrats if he appointed an Irish-Catholic Democrat to the Supreme Court. This was right before the 1956 election.
2. Hoover appointed Cardozo to the Supreme Court because he was largely seen as the best judge in the United States at the time. Cardozo was Democratic. According to wiki: Cardozo received universal acclaim for the entire faculty of Chicago, the deans of Harvard, Yale, and Columbia. The only people who opposed Cardozo were hardcore anti-Semites like Justice McRenyolds.
3. FDR appointed Republican Harlan Fiske Stone to Chief Justice instead of a Democratic Judge.Report
OK, let’s call it, 90% of the time, Supreme Court appointments are about nudging the Supreme Court to make things Constitutional you believe in and maybe make things you disagree with unconstitutional.
Unless you think a President Gary Johnson would appoint Janice Rogers Brown or Goodwin Liu to the Supreme Court to grab two widely known by judges standards from both sides of the aisle. No, he’d appoint a libertarian-leaning judge, which would be his right if he could get support for it from the Senate.Report
Jesse,
I’m fine with both 90% as an estimate, and happier within”nudging” in place of packing. I grant packing as rhetoric, but to me at least it has the ring of the unethical–what FDR tried to do–as opposed to just making ideological choices in whatever appointments happen to come one’s way.
But that’s quibbling about word choice for rhetorical purposes, no more. I got your meaning and largely agree.Report
A fair point, Rod. I’m using “Big Gulp ban” as a place holder for other legitimate instances of “nanny-stateism” from the left, which I do think exists. My broader belief is that both sides engage in a certain amount of nanny-stateism, very little of which I support or believe in, and which is what drives my libertarian streak.Report
Then perhaps find an actual instance of “Nanny State-ism” where something was actually banned? I mean, even if Bloomberg destroyed freedom in NYC, you still could’ve bought as much soda you wanted. You just would’ve had to juggle some cups. I mean, an actual, for example, Nanny State thing is banning smoking in private businesses via the power of the state.Report
Transfats? Wait, let me guess. “So your donuts aren’t as good? I don’t see where you have any intrinsic right to good donuts.”Report
You actually don’t. Plus, I buy vegan donuts from a place down the road here. They’re awesome. Again, this is local government. Don’t like the laws? Move to Jersey.Report
And/or, you know, criticize the law. That’s allowed, right?Report
Sure. But if the majority of the people agree by continuing to vote the people who supported such things into office and it’s not against the Constitution as decided by a court, you got three choices. Keep complaining, organize, or if it’s that important, leave. But, even if you’re a crazy anarchist libertarian, there’s more important things in your sphere to complain about than the right to 96oz sodas.Report
Sometimes it’s the little things that piss you off.
(This all leaves aside, of course, that the soda ban did not occur the way you describe and that was one of the reasons it was tossed out.)Report
Jesse,
If you’re someone who loves soda and can afford the 60 ounce but not three 20 ouncers, maybe it is more than just an ideological idea.
And when liberals (ya know, that identifier that is derived from the same root word as liberty) start saying, “Well, you don’t have a right to that,” it seems they’ve conceded the argument of actually being in favor of freedom and liberty.
Which is cool, if they want to do that. But it makes me not want to be a liberal.Report
Kazzy,
I lay no claim to liberalism, so I am a bit removed from the conversation. I will say, though, that from the outside looking in, the typically quick leap to “You don’t have a RIGHT to do that, you know…” that some liberals around here take I genuinely find to be quite problematic.
It’s not that it’s not true. It’s that it’s a lousy place to start the conversation. It sets the default parameters are or “Maybe we should, maybe we shouldn’t” or “Why not?” or, as LWA put it (paraphrasing) “how does allowing this benefit us?” when the default ought to be, in my view, that we shouldn’t unless a particularly strong case can be made.
Jesse has a good procedural argument that “Hey, legally there’s nothing stopping us if we have the votes and the courts don’t step in.” But, while that’s procedurally true, that gets us into the difference between “can” and “should.”Report
However the “you don’t have a right to that” is often made Conservatives also. This is in response often to liberals saying there is a right to some such thing. Claiming rights is apple pie and tube steaks to Americans.
In general claiming something is a right is more a claim to moral high ground. Whether something doesn’t touch on whether it is a good idea or not ( which of course doesn’t affect whether a right is allowed since its a right after all). Rights talk gets in the way of actually making a case which, i would agree, is a better place to argue.Report
True, though I run into fewer conservatives here.Report
Sometimes it’s the little things that piss you off.
That should be a bumper sticker.Report
Again, this is local government. Don’t like the laws? Move to Jersey.
Ethical issues with suggesting that people move to New Jersey aside, I’ve never liked “vote with your feet” arguments. I remember a day in 2005 when people couldn’t even afford to evacuate with their feet in the face of a monster hurricane that ultimately flooded their city. Why the hell should we expect them to be able to move out of a city or state for political reasons? And what’s worse, these are precisely the people who are most likely to be ignored in the process of producing legislation, and as a result most likely to be adversely affected by it.
Voting with your feet as a means of political action or change is an annoying bourgeois conceit.Report
Ineffectual nannies don’t count?
I’m pretty sure that the large cup soda ban qualifies as nanny statism at its most ridiculous.Report
Like I said, I think it’s a dumb policy that probably wouldn’t work all that well, but yeah, I think the gnashing of teeth over on the libertarian side of the aisle over the idea you might have to buy 3 cups of soda instead of one giant cup of soda isn’t the best foot forward if you want to complain about “nanny statism.” A nanny would actually stop you from drinking soda, not make you go back to the kitchen three times instead of one.Report
I take the “gnashing of teeth” as more of actually having something real to rail against instead of deploying the Slippery Slope-a-tron 5000. Not that there aren’t plenty of things for libertarians to complain about, some of which i even agree on. But lots of people who like to scream NannyState tend to say that the big bad gov will be controlling ever part of our lives and making it so darn safe that it will be insufferable. The soda bucket ban gave them a tangible, if laughably ineffectual, target. It was a real thing, granted in one city and it wasn’t spreading out, but it gave validation to oil up the slope.Report
Isn’t it a (now, not to be tested) empirical question as to whether the ban would’ve made an impact on health?
If it had reduced obesity and child obesity even a little (as long as it was measurable) at an imperceptible cost to freedom and well-being, why would that be ridiculous?
I so remember everyone saying that seatbelt laws were ridiculous.Report
The law itself won’t be tested in a real environment, and maybe it would have done some good, but maybe it would have backfired.
If I’d thought it would have worked, and I mean worked more than just a little, I might have supported it. There was very little reason to believe it would work, though, in my mind. More importantly, there was no metric by which success would be judged.
It was much easier to see, even before they required, that seatbelts saved lives.Report
Really,
People drink less soda, take in less soda, and then put on less weight.
Seems to me that has a chance of working to reduce obesity slightly, but measurably. Soda tax too.Report
That assumes people actually do end up drinking less soda. It also assumes that people who drink less soda don’t end up consuming other calories in substitution.
I am skeptical of a soda tax, but could more easily believe that a sugar (HFCS, etc.) tax could have a measurable impact.Report
Shaz- Unless people are trying to cut back on calories or eat better just cutting down on one item will likely lead to them just consuming more of something else. In fact one of the big problems when people are trying to eat better is they don’t realize they are eating more of one crappy thing because they miss some other crappy things. If a person is craving a bucket full of sugar water and they can’t get it, they are likely to take in sugar some other way like in gum, candy, snorting pixie stix, etc.
Trying to figure out whether a soda ban actually had an effect would be super difficult at the best and likely impossible. There are so many confounding variables and measurement problems.
All the effort spent on the ban would have been far better spent on education and nutrition counselling for people that wanted it. The people that want to learn to eat better could and would. Those that don’t want to learn to eat better are going to drink the soda they want regardless of the bucket ban.Report
Greginak,
I’m not sure that’s quite true. It is true that people in general don’t do a good job controlling their calorie count.
But I don’t think that the calories a person takes in is solely determined by what they are psychologically, internally disposed to consume.
IMO, when soft drinks were smaller, not so many decades ago, people didn’t drink as much soda per day. (I read that in the Bronx, people drink on average 1 fountain soda per day from fastfood places, which is crazy.) Thus, the soda seller can cause people to drink more or less soda by how they deliver the soda. And they won’t just take in more calories elsewhere.Report
Hey Will,
Sorry, I didn’t mean to assume that, though it sure looks that way given what I wrote. I meant to say it is plausible that the soda size ban would work and would work better than a soda tax.
There is some minimal research referred to here:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/09/14/why-mike-bloomberg-s-soda-ban-could-actually-work.html
But we’ll never know without a test of the ban.
IMO, we have proven (with some certainty, anyway) that the Bloomberg ban on transfats and the calorie labelling have had positive effects. To test the soda ban, you’d have to follow people’s calorie comsumption where the ban is in place and where it isn’t for control, and check for calorie consumption, adjustng for other confounding factors as well as possible.Report
Shaz,
See my previous link on a study that suggested it would have not only been ineffective, but would have actually backfired.
Calorie substitution is a real thing. Bloomberg’s proposal in particular was problematic because it had more holes in it than Swiss cheese and only applied in limited circumstances. That’s why I don’t think we would have seen anything definitively measurable (sufficient to overcome confounding factors).
Most of the studies I’ve seen on calorie listing have suggested that they don’t work. Which was not what I was expecting at all from a policy I very much supported (and still support, science-be-damned).Report
Its true soda sizes are much larger now and that leads to more consumption. Part of that is food sellers want to sell us 1500 calories of stuff and nobody can eat that without plenty of fluid to lubricate the cake hole. So if you have a small soda and giant meal you are going to reaching for the soda anyway. People have, for the worse, become used to larger size servings. Unless people want less, outside restriction are not likely to add up to much. Educating motivated people is likely to lead to more significant changes.
One of the other bits about restricting soda in NYC is lots of people commute. Limit the soda bucket in NYC and they belly up to the soda bar in NJ or over the city limit.Report
Will,
The paper you cited is showing that soda taxes will just result in causing people to buy other unhealthy food.
The link I cited suggests that it is reasonable to suspect that the large soda ban might not suffer from the same problem.
IMO, the soda tax would have to be a big tax and there would have to be taxes on other really unhealthy foods at the same time to make it work.Report
Shaz,
Yeah, my second link was indeed concerning the soda tax. But it involves that thing that Greg and I are talking about: substitution. That doesn’t go away just because we’re talking about sizes rather than taxes. People do replace lost calories*. The article you link to asserts otherwise, but doesn’t actually make a very strong case.
And then my 9:27 link actually suggests that the big soda ban wouldn’t actually have reduced soft drink consumption anyway. Although that is actually citing a specific study, rather than the theoretical assertions in that opinion piece. (Yes, portion sizes matter, with consistency and over time, but that tells us little about affecting one aspect of a meal only some of the time, if indeed people would even drink less soda to begin with, which we’re not sure about.)
I’m not saying with 100% certainty that a big soda ban wouldn’t work. But I remain highly skeptical that it would produce results that would go beyond confounding factors (it’s such a limited intervention that is so easily circumvented by wandering taste buds). And that was *before* I read the UC study.
* – Which is why I think a sugar tax might be effective where a soda tax I am pretty sure wouldn’t be… because a soda tax would likely shift people towards other sugar-added products. Even a sugar tax is iffy, but I’d give it a greater chance of working than the soda ban.Report
Will,
We disagree about how likely calorie substitution is in the case of regulating portion size at restaurants. IMO,
This paper concludes that large portion sizes at restaurants definitely increase how much we eat when we go out, (of which soda is a part of the problem) and big portion sizes may plausibly be a partial cause of the obesity epidemic:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15044675
I think we agree that a soda tax without a tax on other sugary products is unlikely to be particularly effective.
Also, cigarette taxes are effective because they’re big taxes that really hit the pocket book. I’m not sure how easily we could institute a sugar tax that was large enough to be effective, given political realities.Report
Shaz, I do think that portion sizes are playing a contributing factor. I am less sure removing any specific contributor, though, would actually yield progress. And in this case, it’s only one aspect of portion sizes in some meals (at some places) that’s being altered.
I share some of your skepticism about actually implementing a successful sugar tax. I mostly point to it as something that I think would be effective, when I believe the big soda ban wouldn’t.Report
But larger portion sizes in that one aspect have a ripple effect. The body becomes used to the higher sugar intake and develops cravings when it’s missed. The pattern gets people used to the idea of sitting down to dinner or lunch, having a soda can or bottle, and then going for another one rather than for water or something else less sugary when they’re done.
Unlimited refills and bucket-o-sugar size drinks constituting a dozen servings are a bane to health because of the behavioral training problem.Report
Not in this context, no. For the same reason that soda taxes lead to consumption elsewhere, big soda ban is extremely likely to lead to consumption elsewhere, or later. Making it very easy for them to get their calories elsewhere.
By way of personal example, I used to work at a place (in Deseret) that had a free soda fountain. I drank a lot. I was also heavy. I viewed these things as not-coincidental. I then moved and got another job at another place (in Estacado). No free drinks. 12oz Cans to be purchased. So great, right? Less sugar, less desire for sugar over time, and my body recalibrates! That’s what I was hoping, anyway. In my time in Estacado, I gained ten pounds. Then I moved yet again and got a new job (in Cascadia). No free fountain, but all the canned soft drinks you could want a very short walk away. I lost forty pounds in Cascadia.
I’m not arguing that the free soft drinks were conducive to weight loss, nor that getting cut off from soft drinks caused me to gain weight. Rather, I’m saying that my weight problem was the product of other things going on. A cumulative effect of all that I was consuming, where individual change merely changed the balance, rather than the sheer volume, of that consumption.Report
The two claims are exactly analogous:
1. “You have to use your state-registered car this way (e.g. with a seatbelt)”
and
2. “You have to run your city-registered-restaurant-business this way (e.g by selling soda in cups no bigger than such and such)”
One can argue that seat belts save lives and the cup-policy wouldn’t have. But the only way to know what the cup-policy would do would be to try it out in a single city.
Here’s something I take as obvious. Some things that can be called rights, which maybe are rights, don’t matter much at all in any calculation about which policies are just and moral, e.g. the right to drive children without safety belts, the right to drink soda in larger cups, the right to use plastic bags instead of paper, etc., etc.
Some rights do matter, of course.
Can I easily draw the line between the ones that do matter and the ones that don’t. Well that’s complicated. From behind the Rawlsian veil of ignorance we would create society such and such… The line is blurry, but it’s there.Report
From behind the Rawlsian veil of ignorance we would create society such and such… The line is blurry, but it’s there.
A lot of that blurriness can be attributed to the particular presuppositions an individual brings with them behind the veil, no?Report
Absolutely.
Also, (to a degree) which rights matter will be contingent on contingent matters of fact about what the world is like at a certain time. The right not to have someone steal your intellectual and creative property matters now, but probably didn’t 2000 years ago. “That dude is making money singing my song without my permission!” might matter now, but it didn’t then.Report
It’s very sad to me that being a ‘card-carrying member of the ACLU” no longer evokes liberal pride.
I blame Mike Dukakis; or more precisely, the Roger Ailes campaign agains Dukakis that made such things unfashionable. Part of the smear, the limp-wristing, of liberal policy.
But this liberal, and most others I know, have not left those values behind.
But I heartily disagree with one thing: they are not easy things to change unless you change the access industry has to politics. The powers that be at the top of the prison-industrial complex do not want to end the war on drugs, they seem to be trying to extend that war into schools. And of course the military-industrial complex is old, old news; I remain stunned that nobody’s bothered to actually do a better job of chronicling how it’s lobbying efforts helped tip us into Iraq.
I don’t hold much opinion of Rand Paul; my feminist streak runs too deep, and he doesn’t speak enough to my sense of liberty. But I was quite proud of him during his real-life filibuster on drones.Report
To me — and way before any consideration of economics — small government means (1) fewer wars and (2) fewer people arrested or forced to do time in prison for wholly unnecessary crimes.
Thank-you, Jason. I think if you take an international view–contrast and compare–the parts of our government that are “big” relatively speaking are mostly those beloved by the Right: The Pentagon and our prison industry as well as restrictions on personal liberty of a moralistic nature, like the drug laws, prostitution laws, etc. On the other hand, we have relatively anemic social welfare system, low taxes, weak regulatory climate, etc.
I’m generally talking about the industrialized West here–EU, OECD, et al. And I realize I’m painting with a broad brush and there’s a lot of details in the weeds where you can point to this or that country as being exceptions. But we’re far from being over-run by the Socialist Agenda here.Report
“This task will not be an easy one, as those who are both religious and libertarian-leaning face strong cultural and ideological headwinds in our religious and political communities.
Religious institutions’ opposition to libertarianism is not new. The debate over Ayn Rand in particular, the high priestess of the Church of Mammon, has been relentless within the faith community. Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism is inherently atheistic, and the debate persists over whether her limited-government and free-market beliefs can be extricated from Objectivism as a whole.”
Here’s a serious question.
Which religion?
Catholicism on the death penalty and social justice?
Judaism on abortion?
Or is “religion” a synonym for “evangelicals and right-leaning Catholics who are also either homophobes or pro-lifers” in this paper? I suspect it is.
And what about religious commands on foreign policy? That’s a mess we don’t normally talk about.Report
Otto lost me pretty quickly when she shifted from emphasizing libertarian and conservatives agreement on free markets (correct), and then immediately sliding off to talking about religion, suggesting that we libertarians shouldn’t be atheists. I wouldn’t argue that we should be atheists, but that atheism or belief is disconnected from libertarianism.
This connects to the reason why she is fundamentally wrong to argue that;
the practice of keeping separate encampments for libertarianism and conservatism ignores that we are both camped on the same side of the war of ideas.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. We have one big idea in common–free markets. But libertarians are unlikely to share an encampment with the project of a new American century, and religious libertarians may share religious conservatives moral values, but will not normally share their desire to enact those values into punitive laws.
She also thinks in purely left-right terms, even though she (weirdly) rejects the two-dimension Nolan chart as “too rigid.” But this is necessary so that she can use conservatism as the anchor to which libertarians can be drawn, making it possible for her to ignore the prospect of libertarianism being the anchor toward which conservatism is drawn.
I applaud Jason for hosting this debate, but Otto’s essay is a poor opener. Fish in barrels ain’t in it.Report
We have one big idea in common–free markets.
I’m not even sure that’s true, at least of non-LINO’s. Contemporary conservatives seem much more interested in a kind of Corporatism that nakedly favors the wealthy over the weak.Report
True, true.Report
Jason, I hope as the debate progresses you’ll find a writer to explore the areas where Libertarians and Liberals (as reflected by the modern Democratic Party) share common ground.Report
I believe that subject hasalready been the topic of a Cato Unbound dialogue.Report
In fact the current discussion was prompted by two considerations. First, balancing that earlier issue, which I had the occasion to review during the site redesign. And second, the recent political ascendancy of Rand Paul, which might — or might not — suggest that the days of libertarians pining for the left are over.Report
My own sense was that the libertarian-left alliance, to the extent that there was one, was a product of the political atmosphere under the Bush administration (which made it difficult to be a certain type of libertarian and still vote Republican, in much the same way that it is now difficult to be that type of libertarian and vote Democrat with Obama’s “war on terror” record), and was somewhat limited to what we might call intellectual libertarians. Most of the average Jane or Joe libertarians I’ve known have either been Republicans or have been significantly more critical and skeptical of Democrats than Republicans, and I see no reason to think this will change anytime soon. If Rand Paul and other factors are causing the intellectual and the everyday libertarians to re-converge somewhere to the right of the political center, this seems both inevitable and, from the outside, uninteresting. But I imagine that because of its implications for the intellectual libertarians, it’s a pretty big deal from the inside.Report
And second, the recent political ascendancy of Rand Paul, which might — or might not — suggest that the days of libertarians pining for the left are over.
Careful what you wish for. Seems to me Rand Paul walks a knife edge, and there’s no safety net on either side.
For the GOP, I suspect, it take a very long time for infusion of religious radicalism Carl Rove brought about to simmer down to something stable; what that will look like remains to be seen. But that it might look Libertarian? That has the feel of giving up too much control over social behavior, one of the GOP’s well-honed rallying tools. Would Libertarians be comfortable in a world that offers market freedom at the expense of social freedom?
The mid-ground I see is one of economic-conservatives/social liberals; so I tend to agree with Moulitsas. When we talk about size, we’re talking about the appearance of things, not what actually get’s done. Competency, not size, matters.
Historically, it often seems the victor in a conflict transform into their conquests. Thus the GOP is now a southern party. The Christian calendar is littered with Pagan holidays. Wall Street’s most easily grasped measure of success/failure is based on animal spirits (bull/bear markets). So I rather expect to see the Democratic Party co-opting the libertarian principals they can sit comfortably with (and this may happen because of Rand Paul’s ascendency), just as they’ve co-opted conservative policy.Report
Excellent comment.Report
One of the things that I always thought boded ill for a left-libertarian alliance was the fact that there have always been, on the American left, people who’ve advocated for the sorts of issues on which the libertarians and the left might agree, but these people have rarely had any influence on the mainstream political arm of the left (that is, the Democratic party). What I mean is, there have always been anti-war, anti-police state, anti-drug war, anti-interventionist, folks on the American left, but they’ve had almost no influence (except, perhaps, briefly in the 60s, but that was more of a cultural than a political influence) on the Democratic party. In fact, they are generally treated with contempt by the mainstream American center (center, center, center) left. So I couldn’t help but wondering why libertarians would want any part of that, and even should they decide that they wanted a part of that, why anyone would think that they could have any more influence on the direction of the political arm of the American left than the existing anti-war, anti-police state, etc. members of the left have over the last several decades.
What’s more, the people on the left who are most likely to agree with libertarians on war, police, drugs, etc., tend to be the people who are least likely, and in fact most hostile, to libertarian economic philosophy. This isn’t universally true, of course, as some left anarchists might at least like the anti-government portion of the libertarian economic plan, but they’re left anarchists and not right anarchists because they are going to have radically different ideas about the means of production and the relationship between property and freedom, so again, it’s just hard to see how the differences could be reconciled.Report
Also a great comment.Report
“tend to be the people who are least likely, and in fact most hostile, to libertarian economic philosophy.”
Wow, that was mangled.Report
And I cited it for its clarity!!Report
Chris, I’ve been wondering of late if this is because we’ve moved from negotiating based on what common ground we might have to not-negotiating based upon tribal difference.
For many years, I expected to see the small-farm/home-school Christian Right and the food-left strike a bargain of some sort. I sort of see signs of it here; I’ve been to at-home births by hippie mothers mid-wived by women from far-right Christian sects; numbers of Christian farmers/home-schoolers are primarily supported by folk from the far left. But it’s pockets of individualism, not political will. In our day and age of difference, it seems hard to find the language of common ground even where we have common cause.
And thank you for that link.Report
There was a paper published last year in JPSP (you can read it here that I’ve been meaning to write about (maybe I will now) that I think gets at the heart of this sort of thing. Basically, more than a reflection of actual ideological and practical/political/policy differences, political polarization is a self-reinforcing cycle both behaviorally and cognitively. We see people as different, so we treat them as different, and then project both the perception and the treatment onto them. There are probably good ways to break this cycle, but I personally haven’t been able to think up any.Report
Thank you, again. Will read this evening.
I have one suggestion to break that cycle: women.Report
I’d be interested in your thoughts on how you think women can break the cycle.
Don’t get me wrong, I think the increased involvement of women in our political dialogue would change the substance of that dialogue, because their perspective remains underrepresented, but I’m not sure I see how it could change the polarization cycle, because ultimately I think polarization is a gender-neutral process. But I’m open to possibility that I’m wrong.Report
Political groups do much better at adapting to slow sea change than they do a short duration but massive change in power dynamics.Report
I was thinking of the folk on Wall St. that led us into the economic collapse (late 2007/2008); at the time there was a lot of banter about alpha males, and discussions that if there had been more women amongst the ranks, this might not have happened. Certainly there’s the paltry few examples of women in power to reinforce that notion, Brooksley Born being my favorite example.
And per Patrick’s comment below, I suspect the slow sea change has already been happening; both in terms of our comfort with women as bread winners/leaders and with men shouldering more of the burdens of home and children, the training ground where women traditionally learned how to balance needs and negotiate.
I’ll read the paper and respond in more depth later tonight; for this woman is called to cook dinner for the family.Report
A lot of propaganda fromt he right falls apart when you accept that others are different from you.
see: “The Muslims want to impose Sharia on everyone!”Report
Technically, they do. But Technically, every major evangelical monotheistic faith believes that their faith will ultimately triumph and that the religious laws of their faith will be gleefully adopted as a form of world governing system once all humans Convert and Believe.
What the rightist propaganda fails to consider is that the number of Muslims who wish to force such conversions at the point of a sword are a minority, much as Baptists are a minority of christianity.Report
Libertarianism is internally inconsistent. When I argue with my most libertarian friend on the necessity of a government program, his standard insistence position is that if it were really a good idea a private entity would do it absent government involvement.
The argument falls flat.
Take the incarceration state as opposed to early childhood education and delinquency prevention programs. The state has an interest in NOT spending a lot of money on incarcerating people. At the same time libertarians will argue against government programs to ensure proper nutrition for at-risk kids, ensure better schools for at-risk kids, ensure at-risk kids have access to music and art programs, ensure at-risk kids have access to mentors and parent figures in the community, and ensure that at-risk kids have a better chance of staying out of gangs and away from the early states of criminal behavior.
Most conservatives and libertarians will happily pay for more of the incarceration state even when presented with accurate numbers showing that investing early reduces the overall costs significantly. The belief in “smaller” government obscures the need for more efficient government and properly proactive programs.
Monetarily, a libertarian insists that these programs ought all be funded out of private donations and yet there is a very real financial incentive for the government to have these programs that does not exist for a private enterprise. No private enterprise can ever count “saved tax money” on the balance sheet, but the government not only can but should.Report
Libertarianism is internally inconsistent.
Even should I agree with this, it’s not exactly unpredictable. Is there an internally consistent political theory?
You know… complete, correct, consistent… pick at most two.Report
Most conservatives and libertarians will happily pay for more of the incarceration state even when presented with accurate numbers showing that investing early reduces the overall costs significantly.
I’d like to see those numbers.Report
It is generally my experience that people (even liberals, swear to god), when presented with numbers that do not seem inuitive to them, immediately look for holes in the data. And the more intelligent they are, the more likely they are to find confounding variables and the more likely I am to get a lecture on causation and corellation.Report
I assume—if he’s not simply making stuff up—that he’s talking about random controlled trials, making confounders more or less a non-issue. If the programs literally pay for themselves in present-value-adjusted prison costs, or even just fall a bit short, I’m all for them. My recollection is that interventions short of adoption have been fairly disappointing, though.Report
Hmmm. Seems to me that he’s making a more general “schools, not prisons” statement and a plethora of programs that are hard to measure but in the aggregate where confounding factors would be an issue. But I could be wrong.
If he can point to specific studies that I can’t poke holes in, I’m all ears. I have no attachment to the “incarceration state” at all.
I really think the bigger issue is that it’s difficult to convince people that the numbers are true (against their intuitions), rather than that they look at the numbers and say “Don’t care.”Report
Relatedly (and it involves you!), remember this post a while back? I asked “Let’s assume it could be demonstrated that having really nice and cushy prisons reduced recidivism, and having hard prisons increased it, would you still support hard prisons?”
The overwhelming response was skepticism to the purely imaginary data. Because, it just couldn’t be right. One commenter literally couldn’t imagine, even hypothetically that the data could show such a thing in a way that wasn’t wrong somehow.Report
I miss Bob!Report
Is the commenter who says “In Arpaio’s case, the criminals in his jail are – and let’s be honest here – mostly complete scum.”
1. Someone who know a lot about different prison populations, or
2. Reacting to the fact that a lot of them are Latinos and/or illegals, or
3. Talking about Arpaio and his staff?Report
For Will Truman, here is one paper on the subject. It’s partly a policy paper but also serves very well as an introductory review of the literature in the field of research.
http://www.wsipp.wa.gov/rptfiles/costbenefit.pdfReport
One of the dynamics that I’ve noticed that contributes more to a right/libertarian fusionism than to a left/libertarian fusionism is that there are a number of conversations between the righties and the libertarians that feel like the sides are longing for the other side to convert. I’ve had righties say something to the effect of “You agree with us on this thing… why won’t you agree with us on *THESE*? Here, let’s explain it again…”
To compare, the conversations between the left and the libertarians are more of the form “You people are supposed to like this stuff right? So you should either like this other stuff or you’re a hypocrite or something. Hey, where are you going? FUCK YOU, I’VE GOT MINE!!!”
Any fusionism is as likely to come from the fact that, in the former case, the conversation (though deadlocked), continues.
(Note: I have had other conversations with righties that have taken the form “you people only care about weed and sodomy” and, thus, went about as far as the discussions with the lefties. But I’ve seen more discussions of the form “let’s go over it again” with the righties, by an order of magnitude, than with the lefties.)Report
Jaybird, I wonder if property rights are the big attractor in the scenario you outlined above.Report
I don’t know. I know that the relative lack of the latter type of conversation compared to out in the wild (as in, only about half of them turn into that) is one of those things that makes the LoOG somewhat different than anyplace else I’ve been.Report
To put it another way: the overlap between the right and libertarianism includes more core beliefs than the overlap between libertarianism and the left. Any attraction between the left and libertarians on various policies is overwhelmed by a reciprocally felt repulsion over the central values and core principles. Chris actually said the same thing much more clearly in the second paragraph of this comment.Report
His comment was wonderful and I agree with it wholeheartedly. Perhaps the fact that there is overlap on some of the fundamentals is what allows for the tone to go this way rather than that way more often than not.Report
Does this work?
This is what I often think when I read Jason.Report
I think it’s legitimate to question whether the policies the libertarians advocate could actually result in the stated end the libertarians claim to prefer…Report
Of course it is a legitimate question. I suppose it’s the legitimate question once you’ve agreed on the ends. Has anyone said differently?Report
I just wish libertarians could give a better explanation of how their policies get there. One that didn’t inevitably sound like an IBM commercial.Report
Maybe you should listen to some of the libertarians around here. They’re fond of giving non-pixie dust explanations.
Also, your initials are M.A., are they?Report
I’ll keep reading. I’ve not seen libertarians at other sites able or willing to do so. And to your second question, no.Report
I’ve not seen libertarians at other sites able or willing to do so.
This is such a common response, not just about libertarians, but about pretty much everyone (see, e.g., Damon in this very thread just below) who disagrees with us that I’m beginning to be convinced that most people are capable of actually hearing arguments and explanations with which they disagree, or that the LoOG is just a weird, wholly unique place, or that people are actually seeking out the idiots among their ideological opponents and avoiding the more intelligent among them, or some combination of the three.
Only slightly more seriously, one doesn’t have to look far to find libertarian explanations for their policy choices. A little reading would suffice. I mean, it’s not like the libertarian literature is hidden, or written in some esoteric language that only the initiated can read and understand.Report
Tod, are you quoting Jason there?Report
The issues I’ve always had with statist is their lack of logic.
If abortion is ok because a woman owns her own body and can do with it what she wants (abortion) then why can’t I sell a kidney? It’s my body and I’ll do with it what I want. When they defend the illegality of selling a kidney, I come back to, “why is that different than an abortion” and their usual response is “because”.Report
This can, of course, create feedback loops.Report
You should probably have conversations with smarter people.Report
It’s also a good idea to not carry too many of your earlier conversations in with you as baggage. Something everybody does (including me).Report
Judging by our past conversations, this is exactly what you would say! Harrumph!Report
I always tune out these Chris-Patrick conversations.Report
You know, I was initially inclined to roll my eyes at Damon’s comment, but I think there’s something to it. What if instead of taking the argument for abortion and applying it to kidney sales, we flip it around and apply the argument against kidney sales to abortion, as an ad absurdum?
Why might a poor woman choose to have an abortion? Well, one possible reason is that she can’t afford a child. Having an abortion makes her much better off financially relative to a hypothetical future in which she chooses to bear and raise the child. And taxpayers benefit from her choice to have an abortion. Does that mean that by allowing her to have an abortion, we’re exploiting her?Report
But you’re not arguing for a “lack of logic” on the part of the left. In fact, folks on the left would respond by saying that the two situations you’re talking about are dissimilar enough that the application of gross principles to them is incoherent, so you’re the one being illogical.
That’s not to say you’re wrong – people disagree about these things – but that a “lack of logic” can cut lots of different directions.Report
This liberal’s position: While people generally should be able to do what they want with their own bodies (including abortion), we have some significant concerns about the commodification of bodily integrity. Contracts that do so are against public policy and void. Examples of such contracts include slavery (or any employment contract which pays under minimum wage), the sale of newborns and the sale of body parts.
Why are these contracts against public policy? Mostly a moral sense. In addition to providing a basic safety net for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged members of our society, the state must disallow any contracts that seek to take advantage of those who are so desperate as to be willing to sell off pieces of themselves. While the bright line rule will inevitably be overinclusive, our experience with slavery and economic desperation justifies the overinclusiveness.
Also, there’s nothing to prevent you from donating a kidney and, by happenstance, receiving a $50,000 gift from the recipient. The state just bars you from using the court system if the recipient won’t pony up.Report
“If abortion is ok because a woman owns her own body and can do with it what she wants (abortion) then why can’t I sell a kidney? ”
Allow me to step into a social conservatives shoes for a moment.
For religious people, your question is a nonsequitur, similar to asking “If I can euthanize my dog, why can’t I euthanize my child?”
Because they are two fundamentally different things. One doesn’t follow from the other.
But you touch on why the libertarians worldview is so difficult to reconcile with the religious worldview.
Religious people have as their a priori position, that certain things are sacred or taboo- sacred things like the human body, sacred places, sacred words or rituals.
Libertarians, in my experience, struggle with these ideas. Sacred and taboo things draw invisible boundaries around our liberty, and act to constrain our behavior, even when no harm is evident.Report
I think it’s more “just because you have a taboo doesn’t mean that you get to force other people to act in accordance with it”.
Though I’m sure that the Nannies will continue to get people to stop eating bacon, cheeseburgers, and bacon cheeseburgers.Report
That’s what separates the sacred/ taboo from “something I like/ don’t like”;
Its universally true, binding on everyone.Report
Its universally true, binding on everyone.
Seems like it wouldn’t need a law, then.Report
Ya’ll better not be outlawing my bacon cheeseburgers.Report
Bacon is hip among the upper classes. These laws don’t apply to hip consumption. They apply to things that icky people consume.Report
Maybe we can compromise and just ban low-class bacon cheeseburgers. Ones with soy-fed beef, American cheese, and nitrate-cured bacon.Report
Its universally true, binding on everyone.
Which becomes interesting when it’s “Neither you nor I can consume this thing that I do not want to consume but you do, and that is fair because it applies equally to both of us.”Report
I guess that’s what I’m trying to get at; even speaking as a religiously observant person, there is in fact a streak of intolerance in the very nature of religion; asserting, for instance, that the human body is sacred, or human dignity must always be respected, creates boundaries that apply to even those who object.
This causes discomfort for many people, libertarians most of all. Religious people even amongst themselves struggle with defining sacred/taboo boundaries that are considered reasonable, but “reasonable” depends on a shared framework where a range of behavior can be tolerated.
Any fusion between libertarians and religious will require that this issue be resolved.Report
I the Nannies will continue to get people to stop eating bacon, cheeseburgers, and bacon cheeseburgers
Is “Nannies” what the kids are calling Jews these days?Report
Dude, I was trying to think of a food taboo and that was the only one I could think of.Report
You couldn’t think of Big Gulps?Report
Hindsight is 20/20.Report
I should have chosen stuff like rare burgers, or horse meat, or something.
Instead of having a discussion mocking the slippery slope being employed for something that would never be even suggested by the craziest councilman, we could have patient explanations about how these rules are important to protect people.Report
Is it fair to call proponents and supporters of the drug war “nanny staters”?Report
Or we could accept that stupid things like the soda bucket ban are not actually bringing down hell on earth. They are stupid blips but don’t really say much about the power of food nannies.Report
I don’t necessarily have a “THROW THEM IN JAIL FOR THE REST OF THEIR LIVES (perhaps for doing things similar to things that I did when I was their age)!” vibe from nanny staters, necessarily. I just get a “YOU DON’T NEED THAT AND IT DOES YOU LESS HARM FOR YOU TO NOT BE ABLE TO GET IT THAN YOU’D DO TO YOURSELF IF YOU GOT IT!” from them.
Drug warriors, by contrast, are cool with throwing people in prison for the rest of their lives. Nannies are just busybodies who think they have unlimited jurisdiction by comparison.Report
Maybe we should put together a LOOG certified list of Good and True Labels so we can move these conversations along faster.Report
If you’d like to be in charge of that, Greg. I’ll post it.Report
But Jay, isn’t the criticism of “Nanny staters” that they seek to control people through a misguided sense of knowing what’s best? Or do I misunderstand that critique?Report
I don’t see how what I said contradicts that…Report
Two words for you: raw milk.Report
Drug warriors, by contrast, are cool with throwing people in prison for the rest of their lives.
In New York, the median age of a convict (~34 years) is a good deal older than the median age of a defendant (~19 years, I believe), so it is not as if the parties involved are all that eager to imprison. “For the rest of your life” for a population with this demographic profile would mean a median of around 45 years, depending on the reduction to one’s life expectancy from the fare served, frequent fights, and buggery.
The average duration of a prison sentence in this country is 2.5 years from entry to parole. I think you would have to have an encounter with the prosecutor from hell conjoined to a negligent judge or to have a string of felonies as long as your arm in order to end up serving 45 years.
So which is it, Jaybird? Do you think we over here are all quite content to send people to prison for prosecutors’ kicks or are you content to ignore a couple dozen felonies?Report
Depends on the felony. If the string of felonies is limited to “possession, possession, possession, possession with intent to distribute, possession, possession, public intoxication”, I think I’m okay with not throwing this person in prison for the rest of their life.Report
JB,
I guess what I’m asking is, do you find it contradictory when folks who support the drug war criticize folks as being nanny staters for wanting to institute a soda ban?Report
Perhaps “contradictory” is not the right path to take.
What I mean is that, if the underlying problem with Nanny-stateism is indeed the same problem with the drug war (which I believe it is but I’ve been wrong before which is why I’m asking), and one group tends to favor one and oppose the other and the other group tends to favor the other and oppose the one, maybe we can find common ground by saying, “Hey, ya know how you hate Nanny-stateism/the drug war because you think it imposes on people’s freedom and all that jazz? Did you ever think that the drug war/Nanny-stateism functions much the same way?”
Hopefully, HOPEFULLY, they say, “Ya know, you’re right… the drug war/Nanny-stateism is a problem.”
Though they might just say, “When you put it that way, the drug war/Nanny-stateism doesn’t sound half bad.”
Of course, they’re most likely to say, “You don’t get it. They’re evil. We’re good.”Report
Depends on the felony. If the string of felonies is limited to “possession, possession, possession, possession with intent to distribute, possession, possession, public intoxication”, I think I’m okay with not throwing this person in prison for the rest of their life.
Where is public drunkenness a felony? (It is a class b misdemeanor in New York).
You have a non-recidivist offender, an 18 count indictment each for possession, and a judge sentencing consecutively. Got it.Report
Kazzy, I’d expect people to focus on the differences as to why their preference is better.
For anti-nanny drug warriors, it would be “Look, we want to limit a comparatively few things but just want to come down hard on them. But outside these things, we don’t feel the need to butt in like they do.”
For the anti-WOD nanny-staters, it would be “Look, we may see room for intervention in more behavior, but we’re not willing to ruin lives over it. If you treated drugs like we treat raw milk, that would be real progress.”Report
Kazzy, the problem with the question you are asking is the WOD is a sort of a set of policies that can be lumped together. Nanny Statism is a shallow bit of name calling. The term doesn’t even attempt to address in any sort of fair way what NS means or why people might believe in somethings that are called NS. There would even be things some libertarian/conservatives would agree with that others would call NS.Report
Of course, they’re most likely to say, “You don’t get it. They’re evil. We’re good.”
‘Ere that they might point out that soft drinks are not intoxicants.Report
For some reason, people compartmentalize substances that result in altered consciousness differently. Even the most horrid nannystater might balk from calling child services if they heard that a teenager was taken to a restaurant and said teenager ate a bacon cheeseburger with steak fries and drank a Mountain Dew.
I’m pretty sure that you could find people out there that would be torn on whether they should call child services if they heard that a teenager and his/her parents lit up before enjoying a very pleasant meal involving bacon cheeseburgers and steak fries and Mountain Dew (THIS IS SO GOOD).
There’s more than a distinction here. There’s a difference.
The question of whether the difference is one that ought to result in jailtime is an interesting question and worth exploring.
But altered states change things.Report
Art Deco
Are you arguing that we don’t have an over incarceration problem? Or are you just taking issue with a little hyperbole on Jaybirds part?
If it’s the former I don’t know what to tell you. If it’s the latter I might point you in the direction of Hamerlin v. Michigan (life sentence without parole for more than 650 grams of cocaine, first offense), Rummell v. Estelle (life sentence, with parole if I remember correctly, for third strike of not paying $125), or US v. Marshall (20 years for 10 sheets of acid, and, funny story, the statute as written makes perfectly clear that congress has no idea what they are doing). And those are just the ones I remember.
There is significant segment of the population in this country that both put these laws on the books, and support these types of consequences (luckily the number of such people is shrinking). Throw them in jail for the rest of their lives (or at least until they are almost dead) is precisely why three strikes laws were enactedReport
Deco, I’m going to use Prohibition as an example for why I’m opposed to The War On Drugs: you’re throwing people in jail for things that shouldn’t be crimes.
There are months where I buy a bottle of vino every week. (And drink it!)
This strikes me as something that I shouldn’t be thrown in jail for… and yet, this is something that we, as a country, THREW PEOPLE IN JAIL FOR.
And now you’re aghast that I’m saying we shouldn’t do this for drugs? That’s your perogative… but, seriously, there were people who were aghast that folks wanted to end Prohibition too.
We could probably compare your counter-arguments to those given in the 30’s that said we shouldn’t legalize wine.Report
Those are all fair points. I just think we need to turn the mirror on people who tout themselves as freedom warriors while simultaneously advocating policies that limit freedom. Which isn’t to say an ideologically consistent argument can’t be made for the two positions, but it takes some heavy lifting. And we should make those folks engage in it.
If I say, “I love freedom. But, oh, no, you shouldn’t be allowed to by/do X,” you should respond by saying, “Sounds like you don’t love freedom. Can you rectify those two positions?”Report
Are you arguing that we don’t have an over incarceration problem? Or are you just taking issue with a little hyperbole on Jaybirds part?
It was a great deal of hyperbole on his part.
If it’s the former I don’t know what to tell you. If it’s the latter I might point you in the direction of Hamerlin v. Michigan (life sentence without parole for more than 650 grams of cocaine, first offense), Rummell v. Estelle (life sentence, with parole if I remember correctly, for third strike of not paying $125), or US v. Marshall (20 years for 10 sheets of acid, and, funny story, the statute as written makes perfectly clear that congress has no idea what they are doing). And those are just the ones I remember.
There is significant segment of the population in this country that both put these laws on the books, and support these types of consequences (luckily the number of such people is shrinking). Throw them in jail for the rest of their lives (or at least until they are almost dead) is precisely why three strikes laws were enacted
I think there is a distinction between the way the legal system does its business as a matter of course and odd outlier cases (of the sort which might end up in a court of last resort).
I tend to agree with you that there are too many opportunities for the exercise of discretion by prosecutors and judges (with the proviso that particular cases may carry details that do not get reported but which weighed on both the judge and the prosecutor) and that it is not difficult to find state legislators who manifest a disinclination to think anything through when striking attitudes.
One of the latter with a measure of integrity in the Florida legislature sponsored the repeal of a piece of penal code humbug of which he had been the originator. He began getting a certain amount of static about the results and was most distressed to discover, with the aid of a map and a compass, what the implications of his legislation were. (It prohibited convicted sex offenders from living within x miles of a public school; public schools are sufficiently dense on the ground that paroled sex offenders were living under highway bridges because those were the only places routinely outside the radii).
It is not that difficult to contrive arithmetic formulae and sentencing tables which enhance penalties for recidivists without sledgehammers like three strikes laws, but innumeracy may be as common as imprudence and exhibitionism among the lawyers who get elected to state legislatures.
If my trawling about finds public opinion as is, it is not drug users for whom there is a widespread public hankering for life sentences, but a subset of sex offenders. Extreme distension of statutes of limitations, condemnation on the uncorroborated word of supposed victims years or even decades after the fact, offender registries which make a conduit for people to harass their neighbors, indefinite civil commitment, &c.
Why not fix the sentencing schedule and take some of the prosecutors’ toys away from them ‘ere we give manufacturers the green light to ramp up processing of commercially vended cocaine?Report
Deco, I’m going to use Prohibition as an example for why I’m opposed to The War On Drugs: you’re throwing people in jail for things that shouldn’t be crimes.
The legislation (passed by a supermajority) prohibited the use of a common-and-garden intoxicant which had since antiquity been a part of an ordinary man’s diet consumed daily (depending on the subculture). The people who voted for it had their reasons and it was sufficiently successful at suppressing the liquor trade that per capita consumption did not return to 1916 levels until about 1970.
How many intoxicants does a society need and what are the implications of free trade in those intoxicants? It is not as if controlled access to drugs is something limited to the fun stuff. We know this: a society in which family continued to have a great deal of effective authority over their errant members, a society in which the full force of the labor market hit everyone and the only alternative was squalid institutional care or the charity of family, and a society in which a desire for respectability was intense decided it could no longer tolerate laissez faire in the drug trade.Report
Can you rectify those two positions?
Sure! You have no intrinsic right to X. Therefore, I have an intrinsic right to keep you from X. At the point of a gun.Report
There are months where I buy a bottle of vino every week. (And drink it!)
This strikes me as something that I shouldn’t be thrown in jail for… and yet, this is something that we, as a country, THREW PEOPLE IN JAIL FOR.
I don’t think that’s actually true. Manufacturing and selling, yes. But not personal possession or consumption, as far as I know.Report
lordy the food police have been cracking down hard on the oppressed burgerovians recently. Why there are only about 89 places within a 10 minute drive where i can get a burger now. It’s become so hard on bacon that they are only able to get bacon to the masses by mixing it into milk shakes now.
http://www.dailyfinance.com/on/sonic-peanut-butter-bacon-milkshake/Report
There’s a place in Austin called Bacon. Just Bacon.Report
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anwy2MPT5REReport
Get on over there! It’s for your health:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/07/pearl-cantrell-bacon-105-year-old_n_3230095.htmlReport
She’s 105 and lives in central texas??? meh…she died decades ago and just doesn’t realize she is actually in hell.Report
I bought a package of fancy bacon for friends who were coming over for breakfast, and then of course they cancelled, so I’ve been having bacon and eggs for breakfast once a week or so. It’s OK, but honestly not that big a deal. If my doctor told me to give it up, I’d be fine.Report
The screwiest thing happened to me a few years ago: I stopped liking bacon. I still like it as a condiment, like bacon bits on salad or in soup. But just plain strips of bacon? Meh. I don’t dislike it, but if I had a package of bacon in my refrigerator now, it’d probably go bad before I got around to cooking it.Report
Bacon is nice but i cannot for the life of me see the fuss over it. I don’t make it at home. If i have breakfast at a diner i might have a strip. But really other than some bacon being fattier than others i can’t see any difference between fancy bacon and PBR level bacon.Report
I think bacon is hip for exactly the reason PBR beer is (or was?) hip.Report
I was up in Portland, OR recently (subject of imminent post at NaPP) and saw dozens of hipsters in front of a hipster bar drinking PBR. By the looks of it, they paid premium prices for it.Report
God bless America’s heart.Report
That is certainly part of it, but bacon seems to be a major fad among many groups not just the dreaded hipsters or hipster friendly types. It’s a foodie thing also. I think part of it is that has a bit of danger to it, since it used to be considered a “bad” food.Report
Same basic concept with the foodies, though. People consciously liking something agaimst their grain.Report
WANDO’S BAR
Tuesday Specials
FREE BACON
$1.00 Cans of Coors Light, Miller Lite or PBR
$4.00 Jumbo Rails
It’s worth emphasizing that Wando’s is not a hipster bar. At all. It’s just a straightforward college hook-up bar with dancing on the weekend; mostly a sports/college sports culture the rest of the time.
But then, this is Madison, where our nerds and jocks are hipper than your hipsters. 😉Report
Someone bought that bacon coffin woot had a few months back. (as in, a real coffin, with a bacon drawing on it).Report
I almost never eat bacon, actually, even on burgers. Actually, I sometimes ask for restaurants to leave the bacon off of burgers that ordinarily come with it… which reminds me of a story.
Several years ago, before the bacon craze, I was with my then girlfriend in a fast food restaurant somewhere in the northeast, and she ordered a super special cheeseburger that usually comes with bacon, and asked for them to hold the bacon. The young man behind the register, who had been looking at the screen and not at us as, looked up suddenly and, with a confused and (I swear) slightly wounded look on his face said, “But… [uncomfortably long pause] it’s better with bacon.”
Girlfriend: “Excuse me?”
Cashier: “It’s better with bacon.”
Girlfriend: “I don’t really like bacon on burgers.”
Cashier: “But… it’s better… with bacon.”
Girlfriend: “I understand that you feel that way. I just don’t want bacon on mine.”
Cashier: [Turning around, desperately looking for help with this unprecedented and clearly disturbing situation, which I’m sure he was thinking he was not paid enough to handle on his own]: “Tom [the manager, whose actual name I don’t remember], can you come over here for a minute?”
Manager comes over.
Manager: “How can I help you?”
Cashier: “This nice lady asked for a super special cheeseburger without bacon.”
Manager: “But… it’s better with bacon.”
Girlfriend: “That’s what your cashier said. I just don’t like bacon on burgers, so I would rather have it without bacon.”
Manager: “Trust me, it’s really good with bacon. You’re going to like it. [Turning to cashier] Just put it in regular. She’ll like it.”
Girlfriend (becoming frustrated now… I admit, I was just standing their trying my best not to laugh out loud, and so was absolutely no help): “No! I don’t want bacon on it. If you are going to put bacon on it, I’m not going to order it.”
Manager: “You’re going to be missing out, then. It’s very good with bacon.”
Girlfriend: “Argh! Just let me have a super special chicken sandwich [which also had bacon] instead, please.”
Me: “Do you want the bacon on it?”
Manager: “Oh, that one is better with bacon too.”
Me (no longer able to hold it in): Ahahahahahahahahahahahahaha….Report
OK, I truncated that story because I started to get afraid that no one would believe it, but it’s absolutely true, as is this part. When the manager came over, the woman in the drive through overheard the conversation, and she came over and started telling my girlfriend that it was better with bacon as well. It was surreal. And I thought it was hilarious, but my girlfriend was getting visibly pissed off (she didn’t eat pork at all, not for religious reasons, but because her family was very… old world, and they thought of pigs as “dirty” animals), so I knew it was a very bad idea to show that I was as amused as I was.Report
Zealots are bores, even when they’re right.Report
I am going to start replying to people I disagree with by saying “But… it’s better with bacon.”Report
Of course people treat their political “allies” differently than their “enemies”. I can’t help but wonder if you’ve got the causality reversed, or at least if there’s a feedback loop perpetuating the current situation.Report
I think “feedback loop” is the most likely explanation. With some having causality run more in one direction, others in the other direction.Report
The libertarian-conservative alliance happened because the Reagan Revolution was more about shrinking the size of government’s intervention in economic affairs than it was about the other parts of the conservative triad (though “strong defense” aka spending the Soviet to death was a close second… but in those days defense spending wasn’t seen by libertarians as being as problematic as it is by some of them now; “defense” broadly conceived was seen as a “legitimate” government function, unlike redistributive welfare, etc). The libertarian movement that we now see in the United States was born, in other words, out of reaction to the economic programs of, basically, the Democratic Party of the middle of the last century.* To be sure, they had a broader vision of liberty from the beginning, but these concerns were what spurred the intellectual movement to political action.
This aligned them with the basic aims of the conservative movement on two basic priorities: advancing the causes of free markets and reduced government, and, as a political matter, opposing (tax-and-spend) liberals, aka the Democratic Party. While conservativeas always had other, divergent aims in addition to these, they could be managed and de-emphasized given the strength of the intellectual contributions of libertarians in the areas of agreement just mentioned. The disaster of the drug war and the arrival of the social conservatives as a dominant political force in the conservative tent, both of which began to divide libertarians from conservatives as the eighties turned into the nineties are relatively recent developments and that process is still working itself out. The fight over the military response to terrorism is even more recent, and has accelerated the trend. But the history is not really all that complicated: libertarians opposed the general advance of the social welfare state seen in the twentieth century, and conservatives opposed it as well, and above all those who advanced and implemented it. The things we now think of as dividing the two were simply secondary or concerns at most, if not simply figments of our anachronistic thinking about history.
__________
* This, of course, is not to deny that its intellectual roots are much older and more broadly principled than that. But as a modern movement, I do think that is what its basic institutional impetus stems from.Report
…That’s my impression, anyway. I’m open to some smackdown on this.Report
The libertarian-conservative alliance happened because the Reagan Revolution was more about shrinking the size of government’s intervention in economic affairs than it was about the other parts of the conservative triad (though “strong defense” aka spending the Soviet to death was a close second… but in those days defense spending wasn’t seen by libertarians as being as problematic as it is by some of them now;
No. The libertarian dispensation has never had much of a component in electoral politics. The Paul-bot show is the most vigorous example of popular libertarianism. The Libertarian Party was in 1980 fairly vigorous in Alaska and had some prospects in California. That aside, there was not much of a popular libertarianism at that time either. Economics and business professors are commonly (modally?) libertarianish in their outlook and you had a libertarian opinion journalism and literary stream. With the exception of Ayn Rand and her circle, these people had pleasantly co-operative dealings with the main body of starboard journalism (e.g. Buckley) and had had such dealings since Buckley set up shop in 1955. Mr. Reagan was employed in the public relations apparat at General Electric in 1955; he did not have anything to do with starboard opinion journalism; he was hawking appliances. (Mr. Goldwater was more libertarianish in his inclinations than Mr. Reagan).
As far as I can recall, vociferous libertarians ca. 1984 sorted neatly into those who did not write about the military (e.g. Milton Friedman) and those who were explicit isolationists (e.g. Ted Galen Carpenter).
As for what Mr. Reagan was ‘about’, there was no excess emphasis on any of the major components of his program. In the end, the people who were attracted to the revised military and diplomatic postures got much more of their program than did others.Report
With the exception of Ayn Rand and her circle, these people had pleasantly co-operative dealings with the main body of starboard journalism (e.g. Buckley) and had had such dealings since Buckley set up shop in 1955.
That’s essentially what I’m referring to. The reference to the Reagan Revolution was more confusing than clarifying. By that I just refer to the general political cause of seeking rollback of perceived overextension of the government into economic affairs (especially taxes), and overgenerosity of welfare programs from before Goldwater through the Gingrich revolution and up through the Tea Parties, not the specific moment when it came to fruition in Reagan’s presidency.
If there was a foreign-policy-first wing of libertarians who were never on that ride (and are starting to ascend again now), that’s great, but it’s actually kind of irrelevant to the observed alliance that’s being discussed here. If you see that as significant, it actually goes more to the question of whether there ever really was any libertarian-conservative alliance, not my explanation of why what people have experienced as one happened. And people certainly have the impression that there was one.Report
As far as I can recall, vociferous libertarians ca. 1984 sorted neatly into those who did not write about the military (e.g. Milton Friedman) and those who were explicit isolationists (e.g. Ted Galen Carpenter).
Friedman did more than any one individual to end the military draft and institute the all-volunteer military. Although he didn’t write often on foreign policy, he opposed both of the Iraq wars.Report
Conscription was not an issue after 1973. The only public advocates of conscription were some oddball liberals (of which Charles Peters was one; there was also a nest at Time-Life). Advocacy of an all volunteer military was not by 1973 a signature libertarian cause and draft calls had tanked during the Nixon Administration.
I fail to see what the relevance of Friedman’s (or James Baker’s) views on Iraq in 2003 were to the political discourse twenty or forty years earlier.Report
The libertarian-conservative alliance happened because the Reagan Revolution was more about shrinking the size of government’s intervention in economic affairs
No. The libertarian-conservative alliance is much older than that. As early as the 1950s, getting stronger with the Goldwater campaign, tested severely but ultimately even surviving Vietnam. Reagan was a latecomer.
but in those days defense spending wasn’t seen by libertarians as being as problematic as it is by some of them now;
No. Read some Cato publications from the 1980s. Defense is clearly legitimate, but it’s still possible to overspend on a legitimate thing.Report
On the first, see my explanation to Art Deco of what I meant by the Reagan Revolution: “The reference to the Reagan Revolution was more confusing than clarifying. By that I just refer to the general political cause of seeking rollback of perceived overextension of the government into economic affairs (especially taxes), and overgenerosity of welfare programs from before Goldwater through the Gingrich revolution and up through the Tea Parties, not the specific moment when it came to fruition in Reagan’s presidency.” It was inadequate shorthand and a mistake to use the term the way I did, but what you describe is what I was trying to refer to (which I made clear in a comment before yours was posted).
On the second, I did not claim they did not have that position wrt to defense budgets. I sonly said that they didn’t (as a rule) see it as being as problematic as some do today. The point was that that concern was not enough to derail what for a time was, as Deco says, a productive alliance on economic issues more broadly, and that as a matter of prominence, that view was somewhat downplayed compared to emphasis on both sides on the concurrence over economics. Perhaps that’s a mistake too, but I’m guessing it can be documented (number of Cato articles emphasizing the power of markets, destructive power of taxes, perverse incentives of welfare and related topics in the 80s as compared to number expressing concern over defense budgets). I know you will disagree with this; that’s fine.Report
It seems to me that “fuck you, I’ve got mine” is a not entirely inappropriate description of the libertarian philosophy’s approach to scarcity or access disparities regarding information or wealth accumulation.
It’d be better expressed as the ongoing failure of libertarian thought to account properly for the prisoner’s dilemma aspects of societal dynamics, but I can see where the shorthand makes a better bumper sticker.Report
I draw a blank about why you are referring to game theory at this point.
While we are at it, what is anyone’s ‘approach to scarcity’? You can have voluntary exchange, command distribution, juxtapositions which are messy or unstable. You still have scarcity.
What to you mean by ‘access disparities with regard to wealth accumulation’?Report
Game theory’s appropriate here. We can choose sets of institutions that can fairly be defined as cooperation oriented, producing collective gains, or ones that are fairly defined as defection oriented, producing a suboptimal social outcome.
The dispute is over what types of institutions produce those outcomes.Report
It’d be better expressed as the ongoing failure of libertarian thought to account properly for the prisoner’s dilemma aspects of societal dynamics
Can you expand on that?Report
I’d be happy to.
I have yet to see good libertarian responses that do not amount to special-pleading or other fallacies in response to the following concerns.
Oligarchic tendencies
1. Concentrative effects of inheritance on wealth.
2. Concentrative effects of class separation on wealth through both inheritance and marriage arrangement.
3. Concentrative effects of purported “free association” behavior, such as the creation of non-compete agreements and localized monopoly area agreements or agreements to shut out new entrants into a market.
Unequal access to information as examples
1. The access an average person has to stock market information compared to the “wired in” investment firms or brokerage firms.
2. The access an average person has to make timely trades, as opposed to those firms allowed to run high-frequency-trading software.
3. The access an average person has to legal guidance and counsel and time for court resources, as opposed to the access and man-hours a larger corporation or relatively rich (upper 0.5% or higher) person has.
Exploring the more basic premise: greater access to exercise resources, greater access to properly maintained streets, roadways, parks, greater access to employment locations, access to better educational resources, access to social resources that would help kids not to fall down a path of recursive criminal conviction, all of these things if you asked someone in the abstract they are likely to agree to. And yet when I have spoken to self-professed libertarians on this issue, the responses come in two flavors.
1. “But that is creating more government, we don’t need more government.”
2. “If it was such a good idea some private individual or group will pay for it, why take money from me at the point of a gun?”
It is a shortsighted theory that overlooks the greater aspects and benefits. Less crime would be a benefit. Less “ugly” neighborhoods and more people who could be employed, create businesses, have an education level to be more productive members of society would be a benefit. Ultimately, these programs ought to be at least revenue-neutral. Based on the research I showed for Will Truman above, it’s my belief that an overall program of this nature would be better than revenue neutral: by taking the focus to prevention and raising up the lower end to the point where criminality was not economically efficient or even in some cases the only economic option other than starvation, we could actually reduce the need for taxes spent on criminal enforcement.
And yet I am hard-pressed to convince a libertarian audience to see this point and how it relates to the prisoner’s dilemma. The self-professed libertarians I have spoken at length on this topic continuously choose to put others into the prison traps of poverty and actual incarceration, ignoring the damage done to themselves and society at large in the process, in the name of “smaller government.”Report
And yet I am hard-pressed to convince a libertarian audience to see this point
Do they have equal difficulty in convincing you to see their point? Do you listen to them as carefully and open-mindedly as you would like them to listen to you?Report
Their point does not make sense. Returning to their responses.
1. “But that is creating more government, we don’t need more government.”
The “all things government are automatically bad” perspective doesn’t work. We need government. Government, at its core, is about having the referee in play to handle the instances when one person’s exercise of liberty steps on another person’s toes. This happens a lot more often than most libertarians seem to ever want to admit.
2. “If it was such a good idea some private individual or group will pay for it, why take money from me at the point of a gun?”
Setting aside the whole “taxes = gunpoint theft” inaccuracy, we are left with a person who wants to pay less in taxes than they do right now and simultaneously wants or has incentive to want less crime, less poverty, less societal unrest and societal issues. They are paying a certain amount in taxation to support the police forces and to support the incarceration state as it stands.
When we look at the government books, we can see clear incentives to create these programs. I posted an analysis for Will Truman above and I would encourage you to read it thoroughly if you have the time, it’s here. http://www.wsipp.wa.gov/rptfiles/costbenefit.pdf
Note that some of these programs show a 20:1 investment:return ratio. That’s a great ratio. That’s a slam-dunk argument in favor of the programs. In the same conversation above Brandon Berg says ” If the programs literally pay for themselves in present-value-adjusted prison costs, or even just fall a bit short, I’m all for them.” That means he’s ok with a 1:1 ratio. I’m going to have to assume Mr. Berg isn’t a libertarian until informed otherwise.
But the begged question by libertarians isn’t whether these programs are a good idea by government. Libertarians skip that argument, talking about “expansion of government” in the abstract, and then move to a begged-question assertion that if the programs were really good then the private market would provide even though the benefit comes in the form of societal improvement and potential for more efficient government, with any attempt to provide these programs by the private market relying entirely on donations that write themselves as a negative to any individual or business’s balance sheet.
Simply put, the government can see a clear financial incentive for these programs, but “private markets” don’t because it relies on donations and more of a libertarian marketplace will wind up being free-riders rather than contributing.
I consider 2. “If it was such a good idea some private individual or group will pay for it, why take money from me at the point of a gun?” to be completely invalid as an argument because I have broken it down. The assertion that taxation is theft invalid; the assertion that the incentives for the private market and the government are precisely the same are invalid; and the assertion that the private market would provide “if it was such a good idea” is invalid in the face of the prisoner’s dilemma and free-riderism.Report
So you don’t listen to them as carefully as you’d like them to listen to you?Report
I listen to them very carefully, as carefully as I’d like them to listen to my argument, and I recognize an invalid argument through analysis.
Furthermore, I just wrote for you a response that’s taller than my computer screen in order to analyze their argument point by point and your response accusing me of not listening to them carefully indicates you didn’t even bother to read my response. I find that to be very close to insulting.Report
So the arguments as you described them are presented as a thoughtful libertarian would present them?Report
The arguments are presented as self-professed libertarians have presented them. I have spent plenty of time analyzing them and your response was to accuse me of not listening carefully, indicating to me that you equate “listening carefully” with “agreeing with.”
I do not fall into that trap. An invalid argument, listened carefully to, is still an invalid argument. It should be deconstructed as such and the invalid portions described as I have done.
Will you now be responding to the arguments as I have presented my case? Or shall we simply recurse to the point where I am accused of “not listening carefully” once more and loop ad infinitem?Report
Well, the question I’ve raised is how carefully you listen, so telling me that this us what you heard doesn’t really solve that. Whether what you heard is what was really said is the heart of the matter. But I worded the question poorly, so that’s my bad, not yours.
Let’s try this: Do you think it would be difficult to find libertarians who don’t think you’ve stated their arguments accurately?Report
I offer a counterquestion: are you going to get round to discussing the arguments at some point?Report
I am discussing the arguments, albeit from a different direction than you might prefer.
Can you see where I’m going here?Report
Given your previous insults, I shall simply take this as evidence that you’re not interested in a logical and reasoned conversation.Report
How is it illogical or unreasoned to try to have a conversation about your understanding of libertarian beliefs?Report
Jim,
Because he says so.
Personally, I’d probably run circles around this guy with respect to information asymmetry, so much so that I could take his side of the debate, argue against myself and have a far better conversation.
I don’t care who he says he’s talked to. It’s all gibberish.Report
Rogue E: If you’re wondering why you’re not getting the response you think you should, here are a few hints to help you understand.
1.You can’t just cherry pick comments void of context and expect anyone to consider that a good argument of quite frankly… anything.
2. As a non-Libertarian, your “claims” smack more of self-interest in attacking than listening. Rational discourse recognizes where ideas have similarities rather than just focusing on where you vehemently disagree.
3.You seem to expect the Libertarians here to defend/explain simple pronouncements you claim to have heard not ones that they themselves have made. I am not expected to defend the crap my husband sometimes says, no one should be expected to have to defend comments and opinions made by people they don’t know a lick about.
4. If you actually believe that any type of thought can be deducted into easily dismissed simple phrases doled out as one sentence arguments which can be easily dismantled, than you are obviously only selectively listening.
5. At the point you are willing to defend all the stupid pronouncements that come out of the mouths of some of my self-professed liberal friends on their behalf, you really shouldn’t expect libertarians or any other group here to do the same.Report
“I am not expected to defend the crap my husband sometimes says, no one should be expected to have to defend comments and opinions made by people they don’t know a lick about.”
Except when he’s signed into the site as you. Which I don’t think he’s done in a while. Kudos, James.Report
Heh.Report
Errr, thanks?Report
But that is creating more government, we don’t need more government
Look, I’m not a libertarian, but I don’t need to be one to see where you’ve gone wrong. And I don’t think you need to think like one to see it either. You’re bright enough to see an obvious error. So I’ll simply ask you this: what do you think the libertarian principles and reasons behind a desire for less government are? Do these principles and reasons lead to a reflexive “we don’t need more government” answer, or do they lead to something a bit more nuanced and contextual? Also, do you see all libertarians as anarchists (your description seems to imply that they are anarchists)?
As I said somewhere else in the thread, I think you just need to have conversations with smarter libertarians. It sounds like you’ve been talking to some people who haven’t really thought things through.Report
Which is why it’s the second response that really interests me at least for deconstructive purposes, the one that states “2. “If it was such a good idea some private individual or group will pay for it, why take money from me at the point of a gun?””
This response does not devolve into a simple anarchist mindset. It is invalid on three levels as I indicated above, but at least retains some small amount of consistency as it inaccurately contends that the reason to call for smaller government is to make the private market take on the responsibility.
The errors in judgement are assuming the equation of taxation and theft, assuming that private markets have precisely the same incentives as does government, and neglecting the obvious problems of private market reliance in this arena in the face of the incentives of the prisoner’s dilemma and free-riderism.Report
Your arguments seem just as silly as the other man’s.
Surely, if charity was always such a negative, no corporation would do it?
Even the most hardhearted of corporations does charity work. Sometimes because they are so hardhearted (PR is a good thing, sometimes!)
You seem like you’re arguing for allowing the government to compensate a private organization for the positive externalities of charity. I wonder what a libertarian would say about that? Maybe you might try asking one? There’s plenty about!Report
If charity was such a negative and financial considerations always the 100% concern, no corporation would do it.
Corporations do it when they have leadership that moves beyond the bare financial consideration, or when they find that it can be a positive or at least revenue-neutral form of advertising. As for allowing the government to compensate private organizations for charity, present law already does so with tax deductions for registered charities, many of which fall far below the 1:1 ratio of savings requested by Mr. Berg above.
The problem is relying on a donation model to do things that will need consistent funding and to ensure that the donations move in the direction of the programs efficient enough to be worthwhile. The record of the USA is replete with charities that had worthwhile program ideas but could not sustain the minimum donation levels needed to have long-term impact, while organizations like the Komen Foundation whose inefficiency approaches scam proportions acquire and hoard too high a percentage of the finite charitable resources available in the economy.Report
1) your Komen is not my Komen (which tucked tail and ran from the parent organization, hehe!)
2) Hmm… so the problem is with inconsistent revenue? It would appear that corporations have already solved that issue. Lord knows, biotech companies are nearly never run on a profit.
I’d say the harder problem with charities is the ones that stick around, and vacuum up money into unproductive (read: not problem solving) methods of “taking care” of people.Report
The problems with the charitable model in no specific order are as follows.
#1 – Prisoner’s Dilemma and Free-Rider Problem. Absent other incentives, most of those affected by the need will choose to assume that someone else is taking up the slack. This also may be described through the dynamics of collective Bystander Effect.
#2 – Inconsistency of revenue, especially as relates to programs responding to countercyclical needs. Charitable giving declines at times of economic downturn, which is precisely when many of these programs need to increase expenditures. Charitable organizations are also discouraged actively from saving large amounts of money towards countercyclical need as it becomes viewed as wasteful or inefficient by donators who will insist the charity has “enough” for present need rather than viewing it as a preparatory measure for leaner times.
#3 – The marketplace model fails completely for charity. The best charities move money most efficiently where it is needed to generate a positive ROI for society. The worst charities do the opposite. The largest and longest-existing charities operate in the opposite, generating weak or negative ROI for society and wasting most of the donated monies on expenditures for advertising campaigns and donation-gathering efforts.
#4 – Corollary to #3 is the problem of “greenwashing” and “pinkwashing”, a form of charity fraud in which faux-donations become tied not to real charity but instead into raw corporate advertising. As with problem #3, this is a function of the innate inability of market theory to handle charity correctly and results in waste of charitable funds as a finite resource.Report
Rogue,
I’m agreeing with much of what you say, but a caution:
” Charitable giving declines at times of economic downturn, which is precisely when many of these programs need to increase expenditures. ”
may be heavily dependent on the particular variety of economic downturn. In a downturn where the consumer has enough savings, they may feel much more comfortable still giving to charity (and perhaps giving more).Report
Kimsie, the assumptions you make are testable and not borne out by the research. Donations as a percentage of GDP are unaffected but charities are impacted by higher need at the same time that reduced GDP means a smaller pool of donated resources. The donating behavior fails to be countercyclical and therefore fails to properly address countercyclical need correctly.Report
Rogue, Either you’re not listening, or I’m not explaining well.
The great recession coincided with a 100% of gdp CONSUMER DEBT.
If you’re going to show that other recessions behave similarly, you’d better show other recessions.
Yup, my claim’s falsifiable. But you gotta up your game to actually falsify it.Report
Kimsie, you will find this interesting and enlightening then. http://www.philanthropy.iupui.edu/cop-panel-study
Correlate with the first two graphs of the Stanford study linked earlier.Report
Rog,
that’s not a link to a graph. and, four pages deep into “research” there still doesn’t seem to be anything as simple as a longitudinal study. (not to knock the program).Report
Kimsie,
Unfortunately, longitudinal studies of the wide field of charitable giving are hard to come by. Partly because of the number of charities that start and quickly fold, partly because much of the data that many people would be looking for is pre-internet.Report
Rog,
I’d accept the United Way or the Red Cross as an acceptable proxy, if you’ll do the legwork.
Otherwise I think my case continues to appear strong, based on whatever anecdotal evidence I’ve heard of (operas closing, yadda doom and gloom over the last recession, which I SWEAR i didn’t hear about in 2000-2001)Report
Kimsie,
I’m still looking for long term from either of those groups. It looks like something that hasn’t seen as much attention in previous recessions due to lower severity.
However, counter to your assertion, Red Cross and United Way took direct hits in the form of reduced personal donations due to the recent recession.Report
Rogue,
that’s not counter to my claim. my claim is: Plot consumer debt, then take the recessions (gray them, standard economic jazz), and plot the charitable giving. I claim that as consumer debt rises, recessions hurt charitable giving MORE.
In particular, the amount of consumer debt seen in the last recession, is only comparable to the Great Depression.Report
It is invalid on three levels as I indicated above, but at least retains some small amount of consistency as it inaccurately contends that the reason to call for smaller government is to make the private market take on the responsibility.
You’ll have to do better in your indications if you wish to justify putting the federal Department of Energy in the venture capital business or putting municipal government x in the rental housing business.Report
Regarding municipal governments or government itself in the rental housing business, I give you a positive ROI for taxpayers and a decrease in homelessness and vagrancy.
Will that suffice?Report
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cd7VOz_Wstg
No.Report
You are comparing failed tenement programs of the 1970s and earlier to modern supportive and transitional programs and claiming nothing has changed. Are you sure you want to do that?Report
That study is an exercise in data dredging.Report
Care to elaborate or are you just taking potshots?Report
Care to elaborate or are you just taking potshots?
1. Where is their model delineated?
2. Why all those bivariate tests?
3. Why is this published as a monograph?Report
Your #2 is not a response I’ve seen much, at least not in that form (I’ve seen people say that the market could do it more efficiently, but not that if it were a good idea the market would have thought of it). Could you provide some examples of libertarians saying that? Or saying #1?Report
My reply appears to have been eaten by the spam filter?Report
It’s been rescued now.Report
can you rescue mine over on the oregon post? thx!Report
No, unfortunately, I don’t have access to the back-end of the sub blogs (except The 49th).
Paging Burt or Will! Paging Burt or Will!Report
man, this place is confusing!Report
Hai. I guess I need to put on my libertarian hat for a chance:
Oligarchic Tendencies: erode the free market. Keeping a free market is a full time job. I’ve read my Smith. Sometimes government makes a decent tool for preserving/maintaining/creating a free market. Most of the time it sucks. Yet to find anything better though — am working on it.
Unequal Access to Information:
1) Retail investor is playing a different game than arbitrage. Comparing two different games is silly, and we shouldn’t do it.
2) Yes, the retail investor can’t run those trades. Ought we to allow retail investors the same level of risk that the “big corps” take? (sidequestion, for those in finance: if Wall Street flips the circuit breaker, who loses?)
3) If you don’t mind, I’ll restrict this to civil. (I’m not qualified to talk about criminal anyhow). Most people are idiots including the upper .5%. Seriously, did you consult a lawyer voluntarily before purchasing your house? Real Estate folks are not on your side, the lawyer is paid to be (and you can sue him if he’s not). But nobody hires a lawyer to keep their interests straight. And these are deals that hit sums of money most folks’ll never see in their life.
The cure to 3) is merely better education in game theory. This need not be provided by the government, btw.
MOST libertarians are for ending the drug war, which would solve a lot of problems. Many are for legalizing prostitution, which would eliminate many more.
*taking off my libertarian hat now*
“It is a shortsighted theory that overlooks the greater aspects and benefits. Less crime would be a benefit. Less “ugly” neighborhoods and more people who could be employed, create businesses, have an education level to be more productive members of society would be a benefit. ”
I believe you’re ignoring that considerable numbers of self-professed libertarians would profit in each of these cases that you consider a detriment.Report
Oligarchic tendencies
1. Concentrative effects of inheritance on wealth.
I believe 5 of Joseph P. Kennedy’s 28 grandchildren have demonstrated earnings capacity which is much above that of the average schoolteacher, and two of the five are on air talent in television. Wealth dissipates over time.
2. Concentrative effects of class separation on wealth through both inheritance and marriage arrangement.
See above.
3. Concentrative effects of purported “free association” behavior, such as the creation of non-compete agreements and localized monopoly area agreements or agreements to shut out new entrants into a market.
I have heard of these in and among members of professional guilds. For example, a veterinarian of my acquaintance had to set up a new practice a certain distance from his erstwhile partners. The firm’s client list is an asset. It seems to me this is analogous to intellectual property protection. (The restrictions on his practice were term-limited, as are copyrights).
Unequal access to information as examples
1. The access an average person has to stock market information compared to the “wired in” investment firms or brokerage firms.
Try a mutual fund.
2. The access an average person has to make timely trades, as opposed to those firms allowed to run high-frequency-trading software.
See above.
3. The access an average person has to legal guidance and counsel and time for court resources, as opposed to the access and man-hours a larger corporation or relatively rich (upper 0.5% or higher) person has.
What does an ordinary person need a lawyer for? Criminal charge, divorce, real estate closing, bankruptcy proceeding, conceivably a tort or medical malpractice suit. I was appalled not long ago to hear of a businessman in Florida tried for murdering his wife. He was acquitted, I think in large measure because was quite an implausible case; the man ended up $400,000 in debt to his attorneys. His was an artisanal contracting business, so it is not like he was made of money. I heard of another case in Arkansas almost as implausible where a family had to sell all of its properties (farm and gas station) to defend their son on a murder charge of which he was acquitted. You have these problems in financing legal services. I cannot see that the disjunction between households and corporations matters bar in some tort suits, and these can be financed on contingency.
Exploring the more basic premise: greater access to exercise resources, greater access to properly maintained streets, roadways, parks, greater access to employment locations, access to better educational resources,
The fickle finger of fate saddles you with rusty basketball standards and potholes!
access to social resources that would help kids not to fall down a path of recursive criminal conviction, all of these things if you asked someone in the abstract they are likely to agree to. And yet when I have spoken to self-professed libertarians on this issue, the responses come in two flavors.
Here is a third response: some people reap the rewards of building better families.
It is a shortsighted theory that overlooks the greater aspects and benefits. Less crime would be a benefit. Less “ugly” neighborhoods and more people who could be employed, create businesses, have an education level to be more productive members of society would be a benefit. Ultimately, these programs ought to be at least revenue-neutral. Based on the research I showed for Will Truman above, it’s my belief that an overall program of this nature would be better than revenue neutral: by taking the focus to prevention and raising up the lower end to the point where criminality was not economically efficient or even in some cases the only economic option other than starvation, we could actually reduce the need for taxes spent on criminal enforcement.
I have heard this before. Pretty bog standard in public discussion prior to 1980.Report
Mutual funds are still dumb money. Try again, sir.Report
Responding to many of your assertions with links would undoubtedly trip the spam filtering.
“Wealth dissipates over time. “
Incorrect. “Dynastic wealth, the enemy of a meritocracy, is on the rise. Equality of opportunity has been on the decline. A progressive and meaningful estate tax is needed to curb the movement of a democracy toward plutocracy.”
Warren Buffet – US Senate Finance Committee hearing, November 14,2007
“Try a mutual fund.”
Which does not give you access in the same way that equal access would.
You have these problems in financing legal services. I cannot see that the disjunction between households and corporations matters bar in some tort suits, and these can be financed on contingency.
Which is why when it comes to most corporate malfeasance cases, the result is a class-action suit in which lawyers get rich, the aggrieved customers get “gift certificates” or store credit, and the company gets no more than a slap on the wrist. Individual customers cannot successfully win in the courts due to asymmetry of access and class-action suits as presently neutered constitute a perversion.
The fickle finger of fate saddles you with rusty basketball standards and potholes!
I invite you to look up the research on
urban food deserts
lack of access to exercise facilities in poor areas
lack of maintained public park facilities and “green space” in poor areas
In particular, look to the February 2006 issue of Pediatrics as a starting point. Or to this from 2011: http://diabetes.diabetesjournals.org/content/60/11/2667.full
Here is a third response: some people reap the rewards of building better families.
This is precisely the shortsighted response that I have received. How would you propose to change the cycle in which children born without the aforementioned “better families” become trapped?
I have heard this before. Pretty bog standard in public discussion prior to 1980.
Do you have a response or are you merely being dismissive out-of-hand?
Without malice intended, your response is precisely the sort of response I have received on previous occasions from self-professed libertarians. I invite you to address my points with logic rather than disjoined, dismissive declaratories.Report
Without malice intended, your response is precisely the sort of response I have received on previous occasions from self-professed libertarians.
Boo hoo.Report
Another response eaten by filter. I may have included too many links.Report
Are you still using an anonymizer? If so, I believe they noted the other day that you’re going to have a lot of comments end up in the filter.Report
I’m curious… in all the discussion of “left” and “right” and, per Tod’s recent post, are you (and I guess I mean “everyone”) referring to our current incarnations of the left and the right or the more traditional understandings of these philosophies?Report
I think the idealized (or pessimized) versions in everybodies’ heads are getting in the way.Report
When I talk about them, I usually mean the current conventional senses of the terms. This is why Democrats, socialists, and some anarchists are on the left, whereas any reasonable political spectrum would put them very far from each other (further than Democrats and Republicans, for sure).
To see how strained the conventional American spectrum is, in trying to account for political views outside of, say, a continuum between the religious right and the progressive left, consider that libertarians have to choose between aligning with either the right side of that spectrum or its far left, with little or no real overlap with the center left.Report
Just as it’s become apparent that the political right is likely going to need to compromise on something, that’s what the left had to do after the New Deal Coalition. People think of Clintonism and The Third Way as a trek towards financial responsibility, but there was a huge “don’t look weak” component, affecting the postures on both crime and war in ways inclined to alienate libertarians.
(Thinking aloud here, feel free to rip this notion to sheds.)Report
I’d love to rip that to shreds. Unfortunately, I think it’s spot on. The DLC was aimed at bringing Reagan Democrats back into the fold, so incorporated large amounts of Reaganism.Report
I think if you did a content analysis of their position papers, you would find the Democratic Leadership Council was promoting extant strains of thought within the Democratic Party, not taking their cues from the President, who had a different set of emphases and idioms.Report
The “don’t look weak” shift by the D’s starting in the 80’s and on into the 90’s was a huge influence on teh party. The D’s suffered electorally in the 70’s from looking weak on crime and for not being hawkish enough. Parties adapt to the electorate. It was clear to win on a national level enough people wanted “strength” and tough on crime so that is what the D’s gave them. Parties don’t just seize the center, as Tim might put it, but they are seized, pushed and dragged by what people want.Report
In this particular case, there was the birth of cable news and sudden fame among certain talk-radio personalities to help usher the shift along.Report
No. Talk radio hosts prior to about 1988 tended to have local audiences and were often (not invariably) quite constrained in their controversialism. The repeal of the Fairness Doctrine changed that. One exception was David Brudnoy in Boston. I would tend to doubt he was the sort to emphasize criminal justice in his discussions, but maybe some of his listeners can enlighten us. In any case, Mario Cuomo’s program for expanding the state prison capacity antedated talk radio as a mass and national phenomenon by at least a half-dozen years.Report
Ironically, of course, it was likely largely the hippies at the EPA and the DOTtelling people not to use as much lead with a side helping of Roe vs. Wade and a dollop of advances in police technology that helped lower crime. Not militarizing the police force.Report
The practice of criminal justice ca. 1975 was often stupefying. The people administering that whole mess did not just ‘look’ weak.Report
I found this blog by following the link at Balloon Juice and if this is a Libertarian blog, then I have some questions because I admit that I don’t understand Libertarianism.
I always thought that Libertarianism was you do what you want and I do what I want and that seemed fair to me. But as I’ve heard the Libertarians, including the Tea Party, it seems like the Libertarian motto is freedom for you. Not for me. Libertarians want less government but want the government to bail them out but believe that other people have to fend for themselves or die. I thought Libertarian was secular but it seems like they use the church to make decisions about a woman’s body and gay rights.
I’m serious. I realize that I don’t know what Libertarianism really is but if Ayn Rand, Ron Paul, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz are Libertarians I think that it’s inconsistent.
Thanks.Report
I would dispute the notion that this is a libertarian blog. This blog is about culture. Politics is certainly one facet of that culture, one that a lot of us are interested in and enjoy discussing. To talk politics or to talk philosophy or to talk ideology is to talk about one part of culture.
I’d bet that less than half of the members of our online community self-identify as libertarian. It’s probably the case that many members of the community identify with parts of what libertarians espouse, but this isn’t a libertarian blog any more than it’s a liberal blog or a conservative blog. I would suggest that you take some time to actually read what people argue and you’ll find that a lot of us aren’t so easily stovepiped.
And AFAIC, Ted Cruz is no libertarian. He’s a self-identified Tea Party Republican.Report
I am a libertarian, and I’d be happy to answer some questions — bearing in mind of course that my own answers aren’t necessarily going to be true for all libertarians, just like not all liberals think exactly alike either.
That said, here’s how I would define the philosophy.
The person most fit to run your life is almost always you, rather than anyone else. Take that idea and apply it to politics, and you get libertarianism. Libertarians believe that the government does too many things that might better be done by individuals or by voluntary private groups.
Laws should be few, simple, and equal in their application. Markets are great, and — for exactly the same reasons — special favors for corporations are terrible. Anyone who supports bailing out the big banks isn’t acting on libertarian principles at all.
Some libertarians are religious, and some are secular (I’m an atheist, myself). We all agree that churches shouldn’t be setting public policy for things like gay marriage, pornography/indecency, or birth control. Those should be private decisions.
Abortion is a divisive issue among libertarians. Some argue that the unborn are human beings and therefore deserve full individual rights. Others argue that they aren’t to be considered human beings. Still others argue that whatever their status, the woman’s right to her body is still a higher interest.
We’re split on abortion. Personally, I’m pro-choice, but I don’t consider it an issue where libertarians have a lot of insight to offer.
Libertarians often like Ayn Rand, Ron Paul, and Rand Paul. But none of them personally called themselves libertarian, and there is a lot of room for disagreement here. (Glenn Beck HAS called himself a libertarian, but we mostly wish he hadn’t.)
I’ve been very critical of Ron Paul in the past, and I have very serious disagreements with Ayn Rand’s philosophy. I kinda like Rand Paul; he’s my favorite Republican by far. Ron Wyden is my favorite Democrat. I don’t consider myself to belong to either party, and I have been known to switch my voter registration to vote in the more interesting primary, whichever that one is.
I’m still trying to decide what to think about Ted Cruz; I don’t have enough information to make an informed judgment on him yet.Report
You forgot the “extremists who make love to Ayn Rand blowup dolls by the light of their glowing Murray Rothbard shrines” part. Or Rothbard blowup dolls and Rand shrines. Whichever suits your tastes.Report
So Rand and Rothbard are or aren’t extremists, according to you?Report
Laws should be few, simple, and equal in their application. Markets are great, and — for exactly the same reasons — special favors for corporations are terrible. Anyone who supports bailing out the big banks isn’t acting on libertarian principles at all.
Based on that definition, I agree, the libertarian wing of the GOP does not seem to be very libertarian. I think that less government should be on both ends of the equation. And if someone says that the government should be out of their lives, then they shouldn’t take any money from the government. If you get a subsidy from the government then I think the government should have the right to tell you what to do with that money. If people don’t like it then they shouldn’t take the money.
Some libertarians are religious, and some are secular (I’m an atheist, myself). We all agree that churches shouldn’t be setting public policy for things like gay marriage, pornography/indecency, or birth control. Those should be private decisions.
I don’t agree with you there, at least as I see libertarians in the GOP. From what I’ve seen, they seem very concerned with what the church considers to be moral and want doctors to force decisions and/or lie to women. And indecency/pornography seems arbitrary and subjective to me.
Still others argue that whatever their status, the woman’s right to her body is still a higher interest.
I think that should be a libertarian view. I also think that people should have the right to buy or don’t buy health insurance (Obamacare for example) BUT if they choose not to, they should bear responsibility for that and if they use the emergency room then they should pay that price.Report
If you get a subsidy from the government then I think the government should have the right to tell you what to do with that money. If people don’t like it then they shouldn’t take the money.
WOOOOO! DRUG TESTS FOR PEOPLE ON WELFARE!!!!!Report
Jay,
Two responses:
1.). Do you actually support drug testing for welfare recipients? Or do you bring it up as part of a broader criticism of welfare and/or liberalism?
2.). There is a flaw in your logic. If I receive welfare but smoke crack my friend gives me for free, I’d fail a drug test despite not using the money in a way inconsistent with its stated purpose… Right?Report
1) No, I actually believe that there’s a right to privacy. To the point where you’d probably say something to the effect of “that’s crazy, that’s unworkable”.
2) Time is money. Money is fungible.Report
1.) I’d love to hear it. I can be pretty crazy in that regard, too.
1a.) But then why do you bring it up?
2.) Would that mean any welfare recipient indulging in leisure time should be cut off?Report
If the government doesn’t have a warrant, it doesn’t have the right to know what you’re doing.
This includes income (how, where, why, how much, etc).Report
Do you object to income tax?Report
Is there a distinction between taxes which fund the necessary functions of government and a right to privacy?
I think that’s all Jaybird is really committed to here.Report
Well, “really” isn’t the right word. “Minimally” is better.Report
“Is there a distinction between taxes which fund the necessary functions of government and a right to privacy?”
I don’t understand this question. You’re comparing a tax to a right. Of course there is a distinction. But I’m clearly missing something. Can you elaborate?Report
I’m not comparing them so much as pointing out a distinction between them. It seems entirely consistent to say that government is necessary and requires taxes to function and the government shouldn’t have the authority to violate the individual right to privacy in any of its actions.
On re-reading things once more, tho. I think you’re question is good one given that government collects taxes on the premise that the individual has to disclose all taxable “sources” of income. In that sense, you’re correct in pointing out a tension between the income tax as it’s currently constructed and the right to privacy. So I – like you – await JB’s answer.Report
Yea, I’m curious to see how, practically, one would go about funding the government while also maintaining strong privacy rights. I have a rough idea in my head, but I think it requires a flat tax (which JB might welcome!).Report
Even a flat sales tax requires showing your books to the government. Otherwise you could just lie and say that you didn’t sell anything and the government would have no way to make you pay a flat sales tax.
You could administer a tax where every person pays the same sum. But even then, how would the gov’t force you to pay if they couldn’t demand that you register you address, etc.Report
My idea involves a tax on the employer and I could construct an argument that upon becoming an employer, on agrees to certain stipulations, including disclosing how much money is paid out in income.
I don’t know if it’d be a particularly good argument, but it’d be an argument.Report
Shaz, I think you’re on the trail that leads down the rabbit hole. No matter what mechanism of taxation gummint employs, collection will always require notification. And that conflicts with privacy.Report
Per JB’s insistence on a warrant, make paying tax mandatory but with no enforcement mechanism. If folks don’t voluntarily disclose, issue a warrant to investigate tax evasion.
I don’t like it. But it’d work.Report
Kazzy,
How does the government figure out who should be paying tax? Suppose I change my name and move. The government won’t know my new name. How do they get me to pay taxes. How do they know where I live and that I didn’t pay my taxes.
Suppose I get a job. Does the employer demand to see my statist imposed verification number? Does the government demand that employers document their workers as having such numbers? That’s all a violation of privacy rights.
Having prosecutors go after the people who don’t comply with the rules won’t work until you have some agency figuring out who is and isn’t complying, and that requires some agency that demands that people show their documents. You could call everyone in that agency part of the judicial branch, executing the laws, but they would still be the IRS in fact, if not in name.Report
Okay, guess my idea won’t work. Well constructed counter, Shaz.Report
Kazzy, I think those two issues can’t be reconciled if we take a rigid line on the principles invoked. But I also think that privacy isn’t that big a deal if violations are limited to only actions required to practical or necessary ends, since the cost/benefit ought to be clear. When it isn’t, we reign things in or push them out. We inevatibly disagree about when to push out or reign in. But that dispute takes for granted that certain types of actions are legitimate.
And that’s what we end up disputing on this site and between our friends and within ourownselves. Most of us agree (it seems to me) that there is no hard and fast line demarcating things.
Well, maybe Mike Farmer would disagree …Report
Sorry, crazy day. I have no problem with corporations being taxed. They’re legal fictions, after all. If the argument is that corporations, being legal fictions, have no right to privacy, I’d be down with that.
Heck, I could also be talked into sales taxes that take place in public businesses. (I mean, if you said “Jay, you’ve got a copy of GTA IV you’re not using anymore… I’ll give you five bucks for it!” and we trade, I don’t see that as a sales-tax-worthy exchange… do you? But if I have a business with government-granted limited liability, I could easily see me having to write down that I bought a game for 4.58, and 42 cents tax, and so on.)Report
JB,
I assume that would be coupled with a drastic drawdown in the size and scope of government. I’m not sure our current incarnation(s) would be affordable in such a system.Report
I’m not sure our current incarnation(s) would be affordable in such a system.
To the point where you’d probably say something to the effect of “that’s crazy, that’s unworkable”.Report
I believe in privacy too. But if a state gets money to feed people or help people and they decide to use that money for their pet projects (usually things like tax credits for rich people, unnecessary sports stadiums, etc.) I think the state administration should be penalized for that.
If they want to give welfare recipients drug tests then fine. By the same token, any subsidy anyone gets, no matter what the subsidy, should be tested as well. Welfare recipients are no more likely to take drugs than politicians.
If a state is given money to fund education or fund new voting machines, is it fair if that same money is used to pay for new cars for the state administration’s staff?
If a state gets federal money, is it fair if they exclude people from having civil rights? Is it fair for the state to get federal money if they discriminate against people based on their religion? Or their race? Or their sexual preference?Report
Kazzy, I’m 90% sure he’s responding to the logic put forth by Jaded: That the government has every right to attach strings to the money it gives you.Report
To be perfectly honest, the argument that the government has every right to attach strings to the money it hands out is already pretty much accepted. You just have to not like the people getting the money to make this perfectly plain.
1) Should a person on welfare be allowed to enjoy illegal substances?
2) Should a minister be allowed to endorse a particular politician from the pulpit?
Which example makes you want to yell “TAKE AWAY ALL THAT MONEY WE’RE DUMPING ON THEM!”? Which example makes you want to explain how we, as a society, have had agreements that certain things should be allowed for everybody, even if we disagree with them…Report
Hrrmmmm… neither one really resonates with me.
I must be wrong.
FWIW, I’m okay with there being certain strings attached to money that is received by folks from the government. But I’d put the following criteria in place…
A.) The strings must be known and agreed upon by the recipient before accepting the money. No bait-and-switches.
B.) The strings must be related to the purpose of the money.
So I don’t object to people in the SNAP program being given cards that work exclusively at grocers and the like. But I would object to their being drug tested because the purpose of SNAP is to make sure people are well-fed and the use of drugs, as far as I understand it, does not impact how well-fed they are.
Now, if they’re taking food they purchased with SNAP funds and are trading it for drugs or selling it in order to buy drugs, I’d object. But my hunch is that would violate other, existing terms of the program or some sort of fraud statute.Report
Jaybird,
If the government gives money to a soldier in exchange for that soldier giving up certain legal rights, is that wrong?
IIRC, soldiers get drug tests all the time.
Again (as I said below) the problem with drug tests isn’t that they violate rights, its that they will do no good, and they will harm the dignity and well-being of the worst off in society. Given that the point of welfare is to help the worst off, the drug tests are counterproductive.
By analogy, it might not be an immoral thing to require anyone on Medicaid to see a doctor once every two years (or more or less, depending on age), or else they have to pay a fine or something. It might be an unwise policy or counterproductive, but it is hardly some violation of people’s inalienable rights.
Indeed, I might even be for drug testing of people on welfare iff the test results meant you would get more help, especially medical help, and not the threat of getting kicked off of welfare or thrown into jail. The devil would be in the details, of course, and you’d do a small program to see if it helped with addiction before you scaled it up, but it could work. I sort of doubt it, but it could be tried.Report
I would be willing to entertain the argument that if you’re a federal employee (or government employee at all, for that matter), you should demonstrate compliance with federal drug laws periodically.
If you feel like making it.Report
If we called welfare recipients “employees” and treated them exactly the same as we do now, with the exception of drug testing, and said that the work they were doing was getting drug tests in exchange for money, you would be okay with it? But because they aren’t called “employees,” you aren’t okay with it.
Isn’t that just a distinction without a difference?
I am against drug testing because of its harmful effects. If it helped the poor, and didn’t harm them (either in dignity or health), I’d be all for it.Report
Why not just run HFCS tests on them? We can make one group the control and the other group the experimental.
They can give back to all of us in that way.Report
The problem with drug testing for people on welfare is NOT, NOT, NOT that it demands people do some action X in exchange for getting help from the government. The government can demand that people show that they are actively looking for work, for example, in order to get welfare. This may or not be an effective requirement for welfare, but there is nothing in principle wrong with it.
Indeed, there is no general moral principle that says that the government shouldn’t require you to do X, if you get help from the government Y.
However, there are many reasons why drug testing for welfare recipients is an awful, terrible, cruel, and immoral idea.
1. It won’t work to help cure addiction. Punishing and shaming and threatening addicts doesn’t work. See: Drug War, Failure of the.
2. It will cruelly push many people who need welfare off of welfare for simply making a mistake, many of whom need it to survive. (Jane is clinically depressed and anxious and on welfare. One day she uses drugs and is deeply regretful and didn’t want to do it, and is unlikely to do it again. She has an apartment. She fails a drug test, loses her money, and is now on the street.)
3. The costs of the cruel policy of creating more indigent people will be paid for at emergency rooms, extra medical costs by all of society and by family members who might have to bail out their loved ones thrown off of welfare.
4. It enforces the societal notion that drug abuse is a moral failing and not a medical problem, which makes the problem much, much worse than it should be, because people avoid treatment and the shame of admitting their problem.
5. It will harm the dignity of anyone who takes welfare, which should not be viewed as an undignified thing to do. (IMO, this may be why some people support the policy. They want people on welfare to feel shame.)
In short, the whole point of welfare programs is to help those who need it temporarily or long term, not to harm them and shame them. And drug testing will help almost no one and harm many.Report
You have to speak a language libertarians and conservatives understand, though.
You’ve made some great moral points and some great points about the failure of shaming dynamics and some great points about the mistaken notions that drug use is a moral rather than medical issue. But I think they will understand far better a sixth point.
6. It costs far more to drug-test welfare recipients than we save by kicking those who fail a test off the program. Drug testing for welfare recipients is in the most literal sense a waste of tax dollars.Report
Shaz, I’m pretty sure that the argument for welfare recipients getting drug tests is not “drug tests are worth what we pay for them!” but “I don’t get to sit around on my butt stoned all day. I have to go to work. As such, I’ll be damned if I pay for you to sit around on your butt stoned all day.”
Or, if you’d like a different phrasing: “I don’t see where you have an intrinsic right to not have to prove that you aren’t stoned.”Report
I’ll be damned if I pay for you to sit around on your butt stoned all day.
OK. How about politicians are getting paid by taxpayers to do a job and if they sit on their butts doing nothing all day? I’ll be damned if I pay for that. Or if they promise something when they campaign and they do anything but what they promised? Shouldn’t they be held accountable as well?Report
If you’ll be so kind as to get your torches and pitchforks, I’ll meet you outside with mine.Report
Or the argument from accounting: If you can afford drugs, we’re giving you too much money.Report
BB,
That presumes they bought the drugs, no?Report
After the umpteenth think tank screed about “What the heck are those plebes doing with luxury items like refrigerators, TVs, and cell phones!”, I don’t hold much regard for that sort of accounting.Report
JB,
Is the issue them sitting around? Or them being stoned? Or doing both at the same time?Report
I think it’s the idea that “if I’m going to be paying for your lifestyle, I’m going to be paying for one I approve of!”
Sort of like the whole “if you’re going to use food stamps, you’re going to use it on healthy, but not trendy, foods!”Report
I don’t want people on welfare to feel shame. But maybe if there were drug tests they wouldn’t or their family wouldn’t be denied welfare but might get help that they need, whether it’s rehab or doctors or anything that may help them.
There could also be a reward system. If they had drug problems and graduate from the rehab that the government is paying for, they could get something that would motivate them to stay sober.
When I was laid off due to a reduction in force, my county had something called the PIC program that paid for me to go to computer college to take courses in Lotus (yes it was that long ago) and Word. It was only for a few months but it made all the difference in the world in helping me get a decent paying job. They don’t offer it anymore of course (it was in the 90s). The focus these days seems to be more on the whip more than the carrot.
I think that it’s a better long term plan to give people the education to ensure they have a better life so they can get off of welfare or even just unemployment. Sometimes mothers can’t go to work because they can’t afford the daycare. Then how about the government provide a subsidy towards daycare so they can work and be productive members of society LIKE THEY WANT TO BE.
What I think the real motivation against it is that it would encourage poor mothers to work and some time ago, social conservatives decided women have no business working because every woman who works takes the job away from a man. Of course they don’t want those same mothers getting welfare either but consistency has never been a feature of social conservatism.
Another example of this is how they want to ban abortion but not pay for the children that are born into households that can’t afford to support them. Or ban contraceptive pills with the reasoning being that any egg that does not get implanted is murder but not banning condoms for that same reason.
At one time, our country believed that people shouldn’t starve or die needlessly. We believed in helping our neighbor. Now we seem to believe that kindness is weakness.Report
You have an enormously detailed and accurate grasp of the modern conservative mind.
I’m not a christian but I have to wonder how all the christians calling for the death penalty in Cleveland the past few days might justify their attitude with regard to Romans 12:17-19, Leviticus 19:18, Deuteronomy 32:35, 1 Samuel 26:10, or Proverbs 20:22.Report
More moral lessons from the Flying Spaghetti Monster, please! What does it say about eating rabbits? Please write back soon, this is important.Report
Being neither an atheist, pantheist, or frying-pantheist and not being sure of what reference books they will follow I can’t say.
As an ex-christian who follows a much better spiritual path in my adult life I believe I can speak to the innate hypocrisy of christianity from a perspective of experience.
Now if you have something that is meaningful to add to the discussion, please provide it.Report