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Hippiekinkster -> Why Libertarianism Wouldn't Work (1/23/2011 9:08:15 PM)
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"For all the talk about casting off government shackles, libertarianism is still considered the crazy uncle of American politics: loud and cocky and occasionally profound but always a bit unhinged...
LIBERTARIANISM IS A LONG, CLUNKY WORD FOR A SIMPLE, ELEGANT IDEA: THAT GOVERNMENT SHOULD DO AS LITTLE AS POSSIBLE. IN LIBERTARIANISM: A PRIMER, CATO INSTITUTE EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT DAVID BOAZ DEFINES IT AS “THE VIEW THAT EACH PERSON HAS THE RIGHT TO LIVE HIS LIFE IN ANY WAY HE CHOOSES SO LONG AS HE RESPECTS THE EQUAL RIGHTS OF OTHERS.”...
The traditional libertarian line is that government should be responsible for a standing army, local security, and a courts system, and that’s it - a system called minarchy. But everyone has his own idea of how to get there...“They all want to shoot each other in the face over who gets to be the real libertarian,” says Matt Welch, editor of Reason. At the very least, they all agree they should be allowed to acquire the weapon with which to do so...
About one in ten Americans self-identifies as libertarian, and even fewer consider themselves “movement” libertarians...
But many are libertarians without knowing it. That is, they identify as economically conservative and socially liberal...
Libertarianism is far from synonymous with the Tea Party, but the tea party is the closest thing to a mass libertarian movement in recent memory. Tea-partyers surveyed by Cato split down the middle between social conservatives and social liberals, making half of them traditional Republicans and half libertarians...
Libertarianism gets marginalized in American politics because it doesn’t fit into the two-party paradigm. Libertarians want less state intrusion into the market, which aligns them with Republicans, but also less interference in social choices, which aligns them with Democrats...
LIBERTARIANISM CAN BE ESPECIALLY ATTRACTIVE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE. “WHEN I WAS 19, LIBERTARIANISM WAS AN ARGUMENT FOR BEING AWESOME,” SAYS WILL WILKINSON, A FORMER CATO SCHOLAR WHO NOW BLOGS AT THE ECONOMIST. IT’S ABOUT FLOUTING CONVENTION AND REJECTING AUTHORITY - THE POLITICAL EQUIVALENT OF GETTING AN EYEBROW RING. IT’S ALSO AN EXCUSE TO INDULGE YOUR MOST SELFISH INSTINCTS. BUT YOU DON’T HAVE TO CALL IT “SELFISHNESS.”
Glenn Beck touted The Road to Serfdom on his show, wondering out loud if it might be “the road we’re on.” The irony is that Hayek, it's author, believed in a role for the state. “In no system that could be rationally defended would the state just do nothing,” he wrote. He favored government intervention in the markets, for example, and supported environmental regulation. When he warned against “socialism,” he meant actual socialism.
Wilkinson still identifies as a libertarian but distances himself from the doomsaying. “Part of my political maturation was realizing there’s really not that much at stake,” he says. “That our culture isn’t on the road to serfdom, we’re not one step away from drifting into Fascism or totalitarian socialism or anything like that.” It’s a realization many politicians have yet to make.
REPUBLICANS SPEAK THE LANGUAGE OF LIBERTARIANISM. THEY TALK ABOUT SHRINKING GOVERNMENT AND CUTTING THE DEFICIT. BUT WHEN ONE OF THEM TURNS WORDS INTO ACTION, HE GETS SHUNNED...
THAT’S HOW CONSERVATIVE POLITICS IS PLAYED - TALK SHRINKAGE, DO GROWTH. EVEN RIGHT-WING GODHEAD RONALD REAGAN EXPANDED THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, BAILED OUT SOCIAL SECURITY, AND SIGNED OFF ON TAX HIKES. BUSH 43 WAS ONLY THE LATEST IN A LONG LINE OF REPUBLICAN SPENDERS.
It’s this hypocrisy that makes some libertarians stray outside the two-party monolith. Some gravitate toward the Libertarian Party, which calls itself the third-largest political party in the country. But few of its candidates are ever elected. Infighting can also be a turnoff. “THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT LIBERTARIANS WHERE WORKING AS A TEAM IS INCONSISTENT WITH THE WHOLE CONCEPT OF BEING A LIBERTARIAN,” says Warren Redlich, the 2010 Libertarian candidate for governor of New York, who was sued by one of his opponents for the nomination...
LIBERTARIAN MINARCHY IS AN ELEGANT IDEA IN THE ABSTRACT. BUT THE MOMENT YOU GET SPECIFIC, THE FOUNDATION STARTS TO CRUMBLE. Say we started from scratch and created a society in which government covered only the bare essentials of an army, police, and a courts system. I’m a farmer, and I want to sell my crops. In Libertopia, I can sell them in exchange for money. Where does the money come from? Easy, a private bank. Who prints the money? Well, for that we’d need a central bank - otherwise you’d have a thousand banks with a thousand different types of currency. (Some libertarians advocate this.) Okay, fine, we’ll create a central bank. But there’s another problem: Some people don’t have jobs. So we create charities to feed and clothe them. What if there isn’t enough charity money to help them? Well, we don’t want them to start stealing, so we’d better create a welfare system to cover their basic necessities. We’d need education, of course, so a few entrepreneurs would start private schools. Some would be excellent. Others would be mediocre. The poorest students would receive vouchers that allowed them to attend school. Where would those vouchers come from? Charity. Again, what if that doesn’t suffice? Perhaps the government would have to set up a school or two after all.
And so on. THERE ARE REASONS OUR CURRENT SOCIETY EVOLVED OUT OF A LIBERTARIAN DOCUMENT LIKE THE CONSTITUTION. The Federal Reserve was created after the panic of 1907 to help the government reduce economic uncertainty. The Civil Rights Act was necessary because “states’ rights” had become a cover for unconstitutional practices. The welfare system evolved because private charity didn’t suffice. Challenges to the libertopian vision yield two responses: One is that an economy free from regulation will grow so quickly that it will lift everyone out of poverty. The second is that if somehow a poor person is still poor, charity will take care of them. If there is not enough charity, their families will take care of them. If they have no families to take care of them – WELL, WE’LL CROSS THAT BRIDGE WHEN WE GET THERE.
OF COURSE, WE’LL NEVER GET THERE. AND THAT’S THE POINT. LIBERTARIANS CAN ESPOUSE MINARCHY ALL THEY WANT, SINCE THEY’LL NEVER HAVE TO PROVE IT WORKS.
There are all sorts of situations the private market isn’t good at managing, such as asymmetrical information (I know my doctor is qualified to treat me because he has a government license) and public goods (it makes sense for the government to cover vaccines, which benefit everyone, not just the consumer). There’s also a consistency problem: Why should the government be responsible for a public good like national defense but not air-quality protection?...
THERE’S ALWAYS TENSION BETWEEN FREEDOM AND FAIRNESS. WE WANT LESS GOVERNMENT REGULATION, BUT NOT WHEN IT MEANS FIRMS CAN HIRE CHEAP CHILD LABOR. WE WANT A FREE MARKET, BUT NOT SO BANKERS CAN DECEIVE INVESTORS. LIBERTARIANISM, IN PROMOTING FREEDOM ABOVE ALL ELSE, PRETENDS THE TENSION DOESN’T EXIST.
Consider the social side of Libertopia. It’s no coincidence that most libertarians discover the philosophy as teenagers. At best, libertarianism means pursuing your own self-interest, as long as you don’t hurt anyone else. At worst, as in Ayn Rand’s teachings, it’s an explicit celebration of narcissism. “Man’s first duty is to himself,” says the young architect Howard Roark in his climactic speech in The Fountainhead. “His moral obligation is to do what he wishes.” Roark utters these words after dynamiting his own project, since his vision for the structure had been altered without his permission.
THE MESSAGE: NEVER COMPROMISE. IF YOU DON’T GET YOUR WAY, BLOW THINGS UP. AND THERE’S THE PROBLEM. IF EVERYONE REFUSED TO COMPROMISE HIS VISION, THERE WOULD BE NO COOPERATION. THERE WOULD BE NO COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY. THE RESULT WOULDN’T BE A CITY ON A HILL. IT WOULD BE A PORT TOWN IN SOMALIA. IN A WORLD OF SCARCE RESOURCES, EVERYONE PURSUING THEIR OWN SELF-INTEREST WOULD YIELD NOT ATLAS SHRUGGED BUT LORD OF THE FLIES. AND EVEN IF YOU DID SOMEHOW ACHIEVE LIBERTOPIA, YOU’D BE SURROUNDED BY ASSHOLES.
http://nymag.com/news/politics/70282/index5.html (The CAPITALIZED PARAGRAPHS are the comments of a poster on a Politics Forum)"
I dabbled in the LP. I even red "How I Found Freedom In An Unfree World" before many of you were born.
Then, as I grew older, I came to realize that much of the Libertarian philosophy wasn't for me.
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