A defense of libertarianism

[billydkid]

http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/1997/09/6864

[Darat]

"... The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are libertarian documents..."

Absolute nonsense - they are, in political ideology terms, liberal documents.

[quixotecoyote]

Some critiques of libertarianism

[Skeptic Guy]

I wonder how he would view it today after all the recent economic unpleasantness.

[ImaginalDisc]

Normally, I'd never repost something from a different thread, but I can't think of another way to compose my short list of ways in which libertarianism is. . .poorly thought out.

Originally Posted by ImaginalDisc

OK, I thought I might itemize a list of where and how libertarianism fails.

1) Education. A public educational system where everyone gets a basic education provides us with a workforce more able to enter productive adult life than a society without public education. We all benefit from a society with more educated people. There are too many children of poor and disadvantaged parents - or even orphans, to build a system of for-profit education that educates every child. We all benefit from spending money educating children. For a small investment, we all reap rewards.

2) Common defense, law enforcement, and fire protection. These three areas all exhibit the same problems for a privatized model. They problem is that they're common goods. You cannot have a city where some people benefit from fire protection, and others don't - it's been tried and it's always a disaster.

In the historical district of Charleston, South Carolina, the buildings all have bronze plaques denoting which of half a dozen different fire companies protected them. If you weren't protected, or were late with your bill, they'd let your home burn to the ground, even when that uncontrolled fire threatened the rest of the city. A society where homes can burn freely, some people are denied protection under the law, and some places can be freely invaded makes us all less secure from these threats. You can't deny these services to any part of society without endangering the whole. If you protect everyone, but only have some people pay, you run into a free rider problem and reach a tragedy of the commons.

3) Product safety, pollution control, and environmental protection. These areas have a big problem if you try to identify property rights as the only way to achieve corrective measures here. Deaths from particulate air pollution, smoking, industrial effluent, unsafe medication, and many other sources are impossible to definitively attribute to a specific source.

Let's say I fish in the Everglades, eat my catch daily, and die of mercury poisoning. It's medically impossible to figure out which source of mercury killed me. Was it the coal power plant upwind? Was it the unsafe metal refinery? Was it illegal dumping? There is no way to tell conclusively in my individual case. If the only recourse my family has is "property rights' then they could never have satisfaction, and there's no way to prevent future deaths. The same problem arises when I die of a side effect of a new heart medication, because you usually can't prove someone definitely died of a side effect of a drug, only that users of that drug have a much higher rate of death than the general population.

There's also no way for people centuries from now to sue us today for destroying vital natural resources. If we warm the planet and Miami is inundated, who could we sue, ourselves? Libertarianism provides no way to redress damage caused in the distant past by people who are now dead and, more crucially, no motive to prevent it.

Libertarianism is entirely unable to address many problems societies always face.

ETA: Here's a specific scenario where property rights fail to protect natural resources. Let's say I give you many acres of forest. It's a wise business move, and good stewardship, to log or exploit a fraction of it and protect the rest in perpetuity, or for later limited exploitation. It sounds like a stable balance between environmental protection and profit can be attained, right? However, the rate of return on responsible logging is very low - lower than the interest rates banks offer. You could easily profit more from clear cutting a forest and sticking the money in a bank than being a logger/forestry manager for the rest of your life. In this case, if property rights and profit motive rule you could make the "rational" choice to destroy the entire forest, because there's no incentive to do otherwise.

If you're going to live in a society, there are social problems which arise and require group effort, and/or group sacrifices.

[drkitten]

Originally Posted by ImaginalDisc

Normally, I'd never repost something from a different thread, but I can't think of another way to compose my short list of ways in which libertarianism is. . .poorly thought out.

The fundamental problem with libertarianism is one shared with many, if not most, single-issue voters. There seems to be a natural human tendency to take something that is good in itself, and raise it to the heights of a supreme good that trumps all other considerations.

The NRA, for example, does this with gun right.

Many civil rights groups do this with affirmative action.

Ecotopians do this with the natural environment.

... and, of course, libertarians do this with "liberty."

Of course we all want freedom, but sensible people recognize that freedom must be balanced with responsibility, and that in many cases, we want freedom from other people's freedom. Your "freedom" to play music loudly ends when I can no longer sleep at night. Sensible people recognize this, which is why courts accept that content-neutral time/place/manner rules are acceptable under the (US) First Amendment. Your "freedom" to control your property as you see fit ends when you create a danger to the public.

The problem with libertarianism isn't where it stops, but where it ends. What people like McCullagh fail to recognize is that the "freedom" they cherish creates significant problems for other people. The government doesn't pass laws or establish policy for the hell of it; every "abuse" of government authority he cites -- every SINGLE one, and indeed every abuse of government authority that ever happened -- happened because someone was concerned enough about the issue and the problems it created to expend time, energy, political capital, and outright money to address the issue through the medium of government.

In other words, because other people weren't "responsible" enough in how they handled the freedoms they had. We can argue about which group was right -- about whether, for example, Jews must be "responsible" in how they exercise their freedom not to attend Church on Sunday or about how blacks must be "responsible" in how they exercise their freedom to drink. But I don't think it's arguable that if you piss people off, then they're going to push back, and that MY rights include the right to be proactively protected from identifiably stupid stuff people do.

Libertarianism is all about freedom-without-responsibility. I've seen a lot of libertarians, for example, complain about laws against drunk driving, on the grounds that it prevents "responsible people" from driving drunk. I've seen a lot of libertarians against mandatory gun safety courses on the grounds that it unduly burdens "responsible gun owners."

[drkitten]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Guy

I wonder how he would view it today after all the recent economic unpleasantness.

If he's like most libertarians, he would blame the recent economic unpleasantness on government intervention. After all, if the government hadn't forced banks to misleadingly sell loans, then they would never have gone for the quick buck, right?

Greenspan more or less admitted as much in his recent testimony on the Hill. Libertarian theory sates that banks will never act against the industry's collective interests in pursuit of short-term gains, because that would be irrational. This was, literally, a cornerstone of his policies -- and he was stunned to find out that it wasn't true.

Game theorists have laughed at this idea for fifty years.

[paximperium]

Quote:

In Defense of Libertarianism
Declan McCullagh , Solveig Singleton 09.12.97

Still a bad argument 11 years after it was written.

[CaptainManacles]

Originally Posted by drkitten

Of course we all want freedom, but sensible people recognize that freedom must be balanced with responsibility, and that in many cases, we want freedom from other people's freedom. Your "freedom" to play music loudly ends when I can no longer sleep at night. Sensible people recognize this, which is why courts accept that content-neutral time/place/manner rules are acceptable under the (US) First Amendment. Your "freedom" to control your property as you see fit ends when you create a danger to the public.

I consider myself a pretty hard core libertarian, but I wouldn't disagree with that at all. There's probably some that would, but there are also "libertarians" who think ending segregation was a bad move, so, you know.....

I also think we need military, police, and courts, not even Ayn Rand thought otherwise. Environment is another tricky issue, but I am generally of the opinion that you can't dump lethal poison into the groundwater for the same reason you can't shoot me in the head. I'm also not terribly opposed to some industrial regulation for environmental protection for the same reason you can't put a gun to someone's head, at some point people have a right not to let others risk their health, even if that risk isn't 100%.

But that's different from say, if someone's selling bottled water, demanding to be able to regulate their plant for the safety of the water their selling. I have a right to tell someone else not to pollute my water, but if I think it's too risky to drink someone else's, then I can feel free not to deal with them.

Of course, this doesn't mean that I think society should work with people running blind madly through life, never sure if the next teddybear they buy their kid is going to be filled with broken glass. I just think private enterprise can run such things better.

Education is another one I think could run better privatized. Honestly, I *don't* think it's true that someone needs to study humanities for 13 years before they become a janitor, and I think the public nature of education has absolutely destroyed it. Now no one gets a decent education, and especially the brightest in our society are dragged into the dregs. Private charity could pick up a lot of the slack in a privatized system too.

[Francesca R]

Originally Posted by drkitten

Libertarian theory sates that banks will never act against the industry's collective interests in pursuit of short-term gains, because that would be irrational. [ . . . ] Game theorists have laughed at this idea for fifty years.

Quite. The book on that was published in 1965, not that it couldn't have been worked out a few thousand years earlier.

[Darat]

Originally Posted by CaptainManacles

...snip...

But that's different from say, if someone's selling bottled water, demanding to be able to regulate their plant for the safety of the water their selling. I have a right to tell someone else not to pollute my water, but if I think it's too risky to drink someone else's, then I can feel free not to deal with them.

...snip...

And I think this is where your ideology gets in the way of your rationality. You accept that polluting the groundwater is something that should be prevented but not the polluting of water directly sold to people. That really isn't a consistent and rational approach.

[Francesca R]

Originally Posted by Darat

And I think this is where your ideology gets in the way of your rationality. You accept that polluting the groundwater is something that should be prevented but not the polluting of water directly sold to people. That really isn't a consistent and rational approach.

Ah, to be precise there is a distinction--groundwater is a public good, bottled water isn't.

Although, libertarian ideology is rather extreme in its denial of the existence of public goods (outside defence of borders, contracts, property ownership and against physical force). Many would not think that a state authority had any business keeping groundwater unpolluted . . . the market would decide whether it should be polluted or not.

[paximperium]

Originally Posted by CaptainManacles

But that's different from say, if someone's selling bottled water, demanding to be able to regulate their plant for the safety of the water their selling. I have a right to tell someone else not to pollute my water, but if I think it's too risky to drink someone else's, then I can feel free not to deal with them.

How would you know?
"X-Water, 100% super duper pure spring water from the Alps and blessed by the Pope!!"
How would you know that it was tap water, bottled in New Jersey?
What would prevent them from closing shop once you find out about the lie and making Z-Water?

Quote:

Of course, this doesn't mean that I think society should work with people running blind madly through life, never sure if the next teddybear they buy their kid is going to be filled with broken glass. I just think private enterprise can run such things better.

Really? Maybe glass filled teddy bears are the cheapest? Maybe asbestos filled bears are the best?
What would prevent private enterprise from doing anything? Consumer choice? How do you have any choice if you don't have any labelling laws?

Consumer Advocacy groups? GM could buy a few dozen "independent" groups with no repercussions.

Quote:

Education is another one I think could run better privatized. Honestly, I *don't* think it's true that someone needs to study humanities for 13 years before they become a janitor, and I think the public nature of education has absolutely destroyed it. Now no one gets a decent education, and especially the brightest in our society are dragged into the dregs. Private charity could pick up a lot of the slack in a privatized system too.

So...the fix to the current problem is the abolish and replace it with...what exactly?

Back to the good old 1800s? The rich can buy a good tutor or go to an elite school and the poor can...do what exactly? Have charities teach them things? Home school? Work in a factory with dad to pay for middle school? How does that help a bright but poor student?

[Darat]

Originally Posted by Francesca R

Ah, to be precise there is a distinction--groundwater is a public good, bottled water isn't.

...snip...

If as you say you accept that "public goods" exist, and most of the libertarians on here argue they don't or not in the way the term is commonly used anyway.

I remember we had one libertarian here that argued that in principle there was nothing wrong with him damming a river that flowed through land he acquired through "homesteading" and the land I owned further downstream - even if damming destroyed the value of my land. That was just hard luck and I could always move. (And in an extreme example of this he argued that even if it resulted in me dying directly from a lack of water that was sad but hard luck.)

[Francesca R]

I am not sure you breathed sufficiently during that post because it appears deserving of an edit. I admire multi-taskers usually.

[jimtron]

Quote:

Honestly, I *don't* think it's true that someone needs to study humanities for 13 years before they become a janitor...

So how do you determine which schools don't get humanities and are for future janitors and such?

Quote:

and I think the public nature of education has absolutely destroyed it.

How would privatizing schools help?

Quote:

Now no one gets a decent education, and especially the brightest in our society are dragged into the dregs.

So what should we do about the less bright students?

Quote:

Private charity could pick up a lot of the slack in a privatized system too.

How would that work--picking up "a lot of the slack" would require quite a bit of money, no?

What about private colleges and universities? They are quite expensive these days. Is higher education and good careers only for the wealthy?

[Bikewer]

I have listened to a number of Libertarian types go on about the wonders of the private sector and how everything would be better, cheaper, and more efficient were government not involved.

While government has it's (many....) problems, I wonder if the private sector fans have bothered to look at a newspaper at any time over the last few years. We did not need the current real-estate related meltdown to show us that an under-regulated private sector is fully as capable of fraud, greed, corruption, monopoly, etc, etc, as the most corrupt government.
There is a very long history of abuse by the private sector, from the local butcher putting his thumb on the scale to huge corporations or "Robber Barons" engaging in the various activities we know of from history.

[Skeptic Guy]

Originally Posted by drkitten

If he's like most libertarians, he would blame the recent economic unpleasantness on government intervention. After all, if the government hadn't forced banks to misleadingly sell loans, then they would never have gone for the quick buck, right?

Greenspan more or less admitted as much in his recent testimony on the Hill. Libertarian theory sates that banks will never act against the industry's collective interests in pursuit of short-term gains, because that would be irrational. This was, literally, a cornerstone of his policies -- and he was stunned to find out that it wasn't true.

Game theorists have laughed at this idea for fifty years.

That's the crux of my critisism with Libertarianism. There's this base belief that those with the power will always act in the interest of the common good. Time and again, that is proven not to be the case. As you say, Greenspan was shocked that the banks did not behave responsibly and chose greater profits and higher risks.

Originally Posted by CaptainManacles

I consider myself a pretty hard core libertarian, but I wouldn't disagree with that at all. There's probably some that would, but there are also "libertarians" who think ending segregation was a bad move, so, you know.....

I also think we need military, police, and courts, not even Ayn Rand thought otherwise. Environment is another tricky issue, but I am generally of the opinion that you can't dump lethal poison into the groundwater for the same reason you can't shoot me in the head. I'm also not terribly opposed to some industrial regulation for environmental protection for the same reason you can't put a gun to someone's head, at some point people have a right not to let others risk their health, even if that risk isn't 100%.

But that's different from say, if someone's selling bottled water, demanding to be able to regulate their plant for the safety of the water their selling. I have a right to tell someone else not to pollute my water, but if I think it's too risky to drink someone else's, then I can feel free not to deal with them.

Of course, this doesn't mean that I think society should work with people running blind madly through life, never sure if the next teddybear they buy their kid is going to be filled with broken glass. I just think private enterprise can run such things better.

Education is another one I think could run better privatized. Honestly, I *don't* think it's true that someone needs to study humanities for 13 years before they become a janitor, and I think the public nature of education has absolutely destroyed it. Now no one gets a decent education, and especially the brightest in our society are dragged into the dregs. Private charity could pick up a lot of the slack in a privatized system too.

But do you think that the company that is selling the unsafe bottled water is going to market it as such? The advertisement could read that every bottle contains a "daily allowance of mercury and lead".

I don't think so. And I don't think the average citizen is going to do that much research into whether something that is being sold to them is safe or not. I look to the government to do that.

[ponderingturtle]

Originally Posted by CaptainManacles

Education is another one I think could run better privatized. Honestly, I *don't* think it's true that someone needs to study humanities for 13 years before they become a janitor, and I think the public nature of education has absolutely destroyed it. Now no one gets a decent education, and especially the brightest in our society are dragged into the dregs. Private charity could pick up a lot of the slack in a privatized system too.

So at 5 you decide what someones future prospects are?

And you want people with no education voting?

[drkitten]

Originally Posted by CaptainManacles

I also think we need military, police, and courts, not even Ayn Rand thought otherwise. Environment is another tricky issue, but I am generally of the opinion that you can't dump lethal poison into the groundwater for the same reason you can't shoot me in the head.

But that's different from say, if someone's selling bottled water, demanding to be able to regulate their plant for the safety of the water their selling.

I'm afraid I don't see the difference. You have a choice not to drink my unsafe bottled water, but you also have a choice not to drink the groundwater (and instead to drink someone else's bottled water). It's all about choices, right?

There's a concept in law -- the "implicit" warranties of "merchandisability" and "fitness of purpose," if I have the terminology correct -- that basically says if you offer something for sale, it MUST work for the purpose you sell it. If you're selling drinking water that is unfit to drink, then you're violating the implicit warranty of drinking water. And under any sensible rule of law, you would be liable for the consequences.

One of the major problems with libertarianism is that they seem not to believe in prevention of negative events. If someone is hit by a drunk driver, they can simply sue the driver to recover "damages." Which I'm sure will make them feel much better, since the courts are SO good at allowing the lame to walk, the blind to see, and the dead to rise again. Sensible people -- a group from which I explicitly exclude libertarians -- recognize that risky behavior can be regulated on the simple grounds that it is risky, and that "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." I choose to regulate your plant for unsafe levels of lead, because there is no way that you can restore life to my child who dies of lead poisoning after the fact, but there is a way to prevent her from dying in the first place.

Quote:

Education is another one I think could run better privatized. Honestly, I *don't* think it's true that someone needs to study humanities for 13 years before they become a janitor, and I think the public nature of education has absolutely destroyed it.

Well, that's certainly an opinion, and it's possible for rational people -- Republicans and Democrats, for example -- to discuss it and to achieve an appropriate compromise. Perhaps 13 years of study is more than people should be required to get, but even janitors need to know enough to read the safety instructions on the chemicals they use and to know not to mix ammonia and bleach. Or perhaps it's unfair to sentence people to a life as a janitor at the age of twelve.

The problem with libertarians is that they raise their "liberty" to the point of an unassailable highest Good and remove it from the realm of compromise. Which is why no one bothers to compromise with the libertarians; they simply ignore them and move on (and you'll notice that the libertarian candidate got 0% of the vote.

But to continue :

Quote:

Now no one gets a decent education,

No one? I'm a product of the US public schools, thank you, and a research scientist with an international reputation and more publications than I can quickly count.

Quote:

and especially the brightest in our society are dragged into the dregs.

Really? I don't think that I'm in "the dregs" right now.

Quote:

Private charity could pick up a lot of the slack in a privatized system too.

It could, in theory. The problem is that we've done most of those experiments -- and the results are not pleasant. Privatized education tends not to work in any developed country; in fact, most countries are moving to a MORE strongly public system precisely because it works better for the country as a whole.

And, in fact, most of the developed countries are pushing for MORE mandatory education on the grounds that 13 years isn't enough for the janitors.....

While I agree there are aspects of the US educational system that could be tweaked, I think the baby to bathwater ratio of your proposal is way too high.

[Darat]

Originally Posted by drkitten

...snip...

No one? I'm a product of the US public schools, thank you, and a research scientist with an international reputation and more publications than I can quickly count.

...snip....

I think you've just proved his point - I mean if you can't even count quickly..... (from experience I find it helps if I take my shoes and socks of first of all, that way I can count much quicker, at least up to....... ETA 20)

[drkitten]

Originally Posted by Darat

I think you've just proved his point - I mean if you can't even count quickly..... (from experience I find it helps if I take my shoes and socks of first of all, that way I can count much quicker, at least up to....... ETA 20)

I suppose that might work, except I run out of shoes and socks. That's the problem with living in "the dregs," I guess. Insufficient footwear.

[Undesired Walrus]

My main problem with the philosophy is the fact that had Johnson been a libertarian, there would be no civil rights act in the United States.

[UNLoVedRebel]

Libertarianism is armchair governance. A Western nation needs to set its standards high. Libertarianism would send the West back to the dark ages.

[paximperium]

Originally Posted by UNLoVedRebel

Libertarianism is armchair governance. A Western nation needs to set its standards high. Libertarianism would send the West back to the dark ages.

It is one step beyond an Anarchistic belief system tainted with a major dash of selfishness.

No. Not just Western nations, any nation has higher standards than to allow Libertarian woo into their governance.

[Cavemonster]

In terms of education, I've always wondered if there was a single example of a large population with no public education, a broad socio-economic range and better results than our current system. Even a large town would do the trick.

Show me that and we can talk about how the private sector can handle education better, until then it's hard for me to take seriously the idea of scrapping public education.

[volatile]

Originally Posted by UNLoVedRebel

Libertarianism is armchair governance. A Western nation needs to set its standards high. Libertarianism would send the West back to the dark ages.

Maybe not the dark ages. The 19th century, perhaps.

If anyone doubts this is the case, read page 9 of the other thread on libertarianism. Seems they really do think that work place safety and child labour laws are unjust impositions of government, and that if they were removed, companies would magically choose to work safely and not employ children anyway.

[Cain]

drkitten and others raise well-considered objections to "libertarianism." I dispute the name used to describe the ideology itself, which had long been associated with communist anarchists, and still is used to some extent in "old Europe." The core problem with "libertarianism", in my view, is not that it cherishes liberty too much, but that it confuses freedom with property rights. A better term has always been "propertarianism." Indeed, a distinction between two strands in the movement, "royal libertarianism" and "geo-libertarianism," deals specifically with land acquisition. After establishing property rights, the libertarian contends a system of "free exchange" should be allowed to flourish. Problems emerge from this hierarchy of values, problems that undermine the "libertarian's" (alleged) commitment to competition, meritocracy, and, most importantly, self-authorship.

A "pure 'libertarian'", for example, would not only oppose public education as we know it, but would also oppose a voucher system on the grounds that even vouchers involve the "forced" redistribution of wealth. Apart from the liberty-threatening idea that underprivileged children should not be allowed an education (because of choices presumably made by their parents), and those who do receive an education face less competition for the most desirable jobs in a society. This notion that we should allow charity to fill in the gaps, usually said with casual disregard for the underclass, does not value self-shaping behavior -- a life determined by personal choices rather than uncontrollable circumstances.

[ImaginalDisc]

Originally Posted by Cavemonster

In terms of education, I've always wondered if there was a single example of a large population with no public education, a broad socio-economic range and better results than our current system. Even a large town would do the trick.

Show me that and we can talk about how the private sector can handle education better, until then it's hard for me to take seriously the idea of scrapping public education.

There's no doubt that private schools can be better, but only for select students. Only public education embraces the task of educating all children until they're 16, or 18, or whatever your country's standards might be. Children with special needs can be extremely expensive to teach.