I don't think they are bad.

I just like the convenience of using a bank with ATMs across the country.

Buying local can be good in many contexts but sometimes a national or global business can be good as well.

Probably unfairly, a lot of liberals tend to view libertarians as Republicans who like to smoke pot.

This is not completely true of course. I admire Randy Balko's journalism and work for civil liberties and against police brutailty. However, there are lots of libertarians that seem to have the basic adolescent "Let's annoy the liberals" that some or many Republicans have. There was a libertarian law professor (not anyone at the Vololkh conspiracy" who once wrote on the comment section of his blog that he favored a policy "because it annoyed liberals." Nothing about whether said policy was good or not, just a kind of 12 year old adolescent boy whose reason of existence is to piss off perceived authority figures. The whole nanny state troop is tiring but I prefer the freedom of minorities to fully participate in civil society than the freedom of bigots to act on their prejudices. I don't profess the ability to change hearts and minds but there is the ability to prohibit discrimatory action.

I found your response to Kazzy below to be very sincere and thoughtful at expressing limits to the Libertarian philosophy. Tim Lee is also good now and then at finding places where liberalism works best like funding the construction of subways. However, many libertarians seem to have very glib responses to every liberal concern.

Though I will point out that my cynicism tends to be an equal-opportunity annoyer.

I also often annoy my liberal friends by wondering about the sustainability or workability of stuff like etsy, kickstarter, the current DIY movement*, and large aspects of OWS**.

*I like a lot of the products from the DIY movement but as New York Magazine wrote "people who make 10 dollar jars of jam are not the people who buy 10 dollar jars of jam." There is an unsustainable/utopian aspect of the DIY movement that wants to turn everyone into artisan-yeoman who barter and trade for goods instead of using cash. This will not work.

There is a likewise anti-realist aspect to OWS. I sympathize with there feelings and believe in more regulation for the financial industry but their pleas to transfer to "noble" credit unions are deaf to my ears. Also the grad school language they use sometimes is quite stupid. They have a similar barter and trade, commune utopianism that I find to be unworkable.

I'm not sure what this says about my economics or political views except I perceive myself to be a realist. Whether others do or not is not for me to say. I've been told my views often come across as too cynical and pessimistic.

I meant that but no a bigger scale. Pharma company puts a drug on the market for pregnant women. Said drug causes birth defects in children born to mothers who took the drug. Pharma company needs to pay up for the injuries caused.

It isn't so much that I mind the technological advances but I think tech-creators do not understand the changes wrought.

Tech change is inevitable. I am not a luddite. But we need to be realistic about the fact that does currently seem to be producing wage staggnation, if not suppression, and more unemployment.

There needs to be a solution and if that solution is the welfare state, so be it.

Once again, I hit the wrong button and my new comment is a reply.

I suppose my own cynicism about some aspects of human nature make me cynical towards libertarianism. I do see it as a utopian scheme and am firmly anti-utopian.

I know a lot of tech-utopians. They think of all technological innovations as being inherently good and leading to happy shiny rainbow land. They love to talk about how automation and other stuff will free us from the soul-crushing nature of work and all humans will move on to loftier pursuits than figuring out where the rent is coming from. Amazon and the end of retail will lead to much better uses for land than retail stores, the free-for-all aspect of information on the Internet will lead to less taboo, etc.

This is all bullshit. Automation is not bad per se but it does not always lead towards a life of leisure for everyone. Now I think we are seeing technological process make a lot of jobs redundant without new jobs being created. This is not leading to lofty pursuits but stagnant wages and a lot of Calvinist moralizing from the "Masters of the Universe". I think that local shopping creates a viable sense of community and goods/services tailored towards the immediate needs and wants of the community instead of whatever the big box store has. The free-for-all information aspect of the Internet has not lead to tolerance, rather it has lead to more tribalism and a return of the stock and pillory.

This is where my liberalism sounds suspiciously like conservatism. I think that economics is important, capitalism is good(ish) but needs to be backed with a healthy welfare state to make sure people do not live in misery, and people have a right to privacy,

I am on the anti-trust side. Note I currently work in anti-trust.

I don't think you see the old-fashioned trusts that you saw in the late 19th century but there is still plenty of firmly anti-competitive behavior and it can be one industry fixing prices against another industry. There are also market share issues.

Suppose businesses in Industry X need widgets to make their product. Say that there are 6 companies around the world that make 75 percent of the world's widgets. It is incredibly hard and expensive to break into the widget making industry because a widget factory costs hundreds of millions of dollars to produce and takes years to build. Very few people have the power to raise that kind of money or wait that long to make a factory. Those six companies or even two or three of them can engage in a lot of unscrupulous practices without and hurt the free market but not be a pure monopoly.

I suppose my fall out with libertarians is that I am highly suspect of the idea that the market cures all or that market failure does not deserve correction by action. I've never been a fan of the wait and let things work out for themselves approach to things.

As to your joke, I can't give direct examples because of confidentiality rules but I have seen examples of blatant price-fixing among alleged competitors.

Fair enough. I should have said low-income people in general are usually the ones who suffer from the War on Drugs.

There are exceptions but they tend to be few and far between and always have a show feel to them. The sentences are often much lighter as well. The most recent examples I can think of are the busting of the Columbia University Cocaine ring (most of the arrested dealers were upper-middle class suburban kids) and a woman who recently wrote a memoir about her year in prison because she inadvertently helped out with an international drug ring after she graduated from a college like Smith. She had a post-college rebellious year and dated a woman. Then she went back to normal life but got caught somehow and plead for a year in minimum security. Said woman went back to her job as being an executive at a high-profile non-profit.

What are libertarian stances on:

1. Antitrust law.

2. Tort law.

In my view, both should be fully supported by Libertarians. Antitrust law protects that free market and competitive process by creating civil and criminal penalties for business practices that can amount to "unreasonable restraint on trade" such as horizontal price fixing and do not compete agreements.

Tort Law also seems justifiable by a libertarian standards. Place a product on the market but if it injures people, be prepared to suffer the consequences.

Yet many self-proclaimed libertarians seem to echo Republican talking points on antitrust and tort reform law. Is the free market to be protected or the ability of business to do as they please? These are not always compatible in my view.

Likewise, I often hear many libertarians proclaiming the benefits of freedom of contract when it benefits the employer but they go quiet when the contract being broken is a pension fund with the employees.

I was going to make that joke but was wondering how much disagreement it would generate.

My parents told me the Drug War was a croc and that it only created Forbidden Fruit syndrome when I was in the 4th grade.

When I was sixteen and going away to a university summer program, my mom had my older brother teach me to use condoms.

The best policy is to be realistic: expect teenage drinking and experimentation. Tell them to always call instead of driving drunk or getting with a drunk driver, etc. Tell them that marijuana is okay but meth and heroin can be pure poison, etc.

Teenagers have always experimented with stuff and always will.

Or you can just get them to be heavily into Dungeons and Dragons. That seems to be a reasonable way to still prevent people from experimenting with drugs.

I wrote about this below.

Upper-middle class white adults can smoke Marijuana without impunity. They might make the odd noise towards legalization now and then but their liberty is not being threatened so why bother too much.

You are right that these people would be horrified to see their friends being prosecuted but their friends are not being prosecuted. Poor minorities are being prosecuted and even if that is not okay, it is not too much of a concern to someone in the suburbs. Perhaps, unconsciously, they think it is good.

I don't think that the parties view Marijuana as creepy, countercultural stuff completely. Rather Marijuana and other drugs reveal the greatest hypocrisies and moral failures of American life.

There are plenty of Democratic voters who smoke Marijuana and do other drugs on a regular basis.

There are plenty of Republican voters who smoke Marijuana and do other drugs on a regular basis.

What these two groups have in common is that they are white and middle class or above. They partake from the safety of the suburban subdivision. The DEA is not staging raids at 2 in the morning in these neighborhoods.

There might be some Democratic politicians who still fear being tarred for being soft on crime or a dirty hippie for supporting reform and legalization but that is changing. Perhaps the Republicans still have a large base that has never smoked Marijuana and would bring back prohibition if they could, aren't a lot of counties still dry in the South?

The fact is that the status quo is quite evil and even pro-legalization people do not feel the need to do much because most of them are white and upper-middle class and can smoke Marijuana without fear of punishment.

I think determining how and why people choose who they vote for is a Sisyphean task.

I have never been a fan of the Thomas Frank school that yells at people for voting against their self-interest. A person's self-interest is entirely subjective and it becomes highly offensive to tell people they are voting against it. The reverse happens with Jews. Jewish-Americans still vote overwhelmingly for the Democratic Party. This causes a lot of rage every two to four years about why Jews vote Democratic even though they tend to be top income earners and the Republican Party is allegedly more pro-Israel.

For me, there are other concerns. The social politics of the GOP is frightening and my stance on the Zionism of Christian Fundamentalists is "with friends like that, the Jews don't need enemies" I am firm Zionist but also exist in the real world and believe that the Palestinians need and deserve their own state. A poll done several months ago still shows that Jews feel strongly about economic justice. The primary concerns for Jewish voters were not taxes or Israel but economic fairness and welfare. Though the poll used rather antiquated language. The exact line was "Caring for the widow and the orphan" I believe.

As to the people don't want to lose all the time. Are you sure? At least on the left, I think there is a certain kind of "noble loser". They probably exist on the right as well. These are purists who are always willing to let the perfect be the enemy of the good and would rather see the opposition win than bring themselves to vote for someone they see as less than pure. There was a recent spat when a Harvard Law professor said that Obama needs to lose for not being liberal enough and Gary Willis railed against said professor in the New York Review of Books.

I am not fully happy with the Democratic party all the time but I do find their stances much, much more agreeable than the Republican Party or Libertarian stances. I'm also a pragmatist this way. I will always vote for the Democratic candidate over the Republican one even if the Democratic candidate is a party hack. Mavericks vote with their parties more often than not even when being frustrating like Ben Johnson of Nebraska. Plus they add to getting the majority.

Call me a yellow dog if you will but if someone can be a rock-ribbed Republican with pride, it is perfectly acceptable for me to be a Yellow Dog Democrat with pride. I'm a liberal and Democratic. I will not apologize for these things.

Dear Fabrice,

I believe this is what the French call, the politics of resentiment and I think it is very real.

The latest "I can't believe what Rush said" story illustrates this perfectly. I think the story is roughly that he talked about how the Batman villain Bane is really one-big Hollywood conspiracy against Romney. All my liberal friends hear stuff like this and then spend hours (or at least I spend a while) wondering whether Rush sincerely believes this or is merely selling snake oil. However, a lot of his listeners might enjoy the kind of rage.

I've noticed that both political sides often spend a lot of time in the politics of rage or umbrage and this depresses me. A lot of political fundraising seems to boil down to finding the most offensive members of the opposition and turning them into cartoon bad guys, complete with twirling mustache.

On your fourth paragraph, I grew up in the opposite household. My family entirely consists of straight-down Democrats who believe that the Democratic party is the party of the working man, civil rights, etc. The Republicans were always the party of the bankers and the rich in my family. Not these mythic straight shooters for the average Joe. Again, the Jewish angle plays in here.

There has only been one Republican vote cast by anyone in my family and that is when my mom voted to reelect a local judge who married her (he would probably get chased out of the GOP today). My maternal grandparents were so strongly Democratic that they were upset when Adlai Stevenson lost to Eisenhower, twice!* They were also upset when a local park was renamed Eisenhower park. It was very lonely being a Democrat in Nassau County in the 1950s and 60s. Now it is much more blue.

*I am okay with Adlai Stevenson losing twice if only because it gave us Chief Justice Warren and Justice Brennan.

From what I understand, a lot of the debt that Bain took in the name of the company just went back to pay BAIN. NPR's Planet Money did some shows on how BAIN worked several months ago.

BlaiseP,

Tikkun Olam is a brilliant concept.

I am as secular as secular can be. I believe that humans wrote the Torah (along with all other holy books) and am a firm agnostic when it comes to the existence of a deity or not. Unlike the Dawkins set, I don't treat this as bad. Torah and Talmud can be treated like philosophy. Some is highly relevant and worth following. Other parts, not so much.

Though what does carry with me is the material nature of Judaism. I am not concerned with pre-determination and salvation like Calvinist based Protestantism. Judaism is concerned with the here and no and does not believe in fate. Too much of the Republican party platform is wrapped up in Calvinist notions that I disagree with and find disturbing.

I think Foccault once called Derrida a "Linguistic Terrorist". He wrote in absolutetly unreadable prose but bashed anyone who brought that up as a moron.

How would Hayek explain Canada, Sweden and other welfare states that not devolved into dictatorships?

The Road to Serfdom seems to be another variant of Malthaus. A great thing for doomsayers to always be wrong about but never give up.

I think Obama is talking about more than social infanstructure. He is talking about law. We have laws in this country that help set-up businesses. You can sue someone for breach of contract and recover. Bill Gates mentions Rule of Law a lot in terms of Microsoft's success. Now I'm sure he did not like the DOJ's antitrust suit but he still acknowledges the importance of a functioning legal system and other parts of the government.

Perhaps this is my Litvak blood speaking, or the fact that I have mainly lived close to or in very large and diverse cities with multiple cultures that do not naturally get along well but need to live in close proximity; but I never got the notion of Rugged Individualism. Rugged Individualism always seems like a myth to me. Yes people come up with ideas for businesses but as someone said above, we are also a part of society. Humans by nature are social animals. We form groups (both familial and larger) to survive and thrive.

You can walk from one end to another in San Francisco. I've done it. Sometimes the hills are painful though. The city is only 7 x 7 square miles.

You are making a mistake that a lot of people do, including myself, and this is confusing today for tomorrow.

Understandably we do all need to live in the moment and I think the anxiety felt by many people is perfectly reasonable but there is still decades left to life for most people and things changed. There was an article a while ago in the New Republic about a woman with a Masters from Yale who was working as a waitress because of a recession. Her recession was in the early 1980s. She is now in charge of a respectable non-profit.

I imagine that most arts and humanities programs do not have much in terms of grant money. I received a small scholarship for my MFA program of about 7,000 dollars a year or 3500 per semester. A nice little deduction but not enough to cover the cost of the program. Even with everyone paying rather hefty tuitions, my MFA program was still run on a shoestring budget.

I have never seen one. As a New Yorker (who might or might not go back), I still tend to see San Francisco as a kinder and gentler version of New York.

It really is.

Though my New York* self is still having a hard time adopting to Californicus Flakius even though I've lived here for four years in August.

*We aren't rude. We are direct. Direct in a way that San Franciscans usually dislike.