Posted on 07/06/2016 4:42:52 AM PDT by Kaslin
It took me years to figure out that markets work better than government.
I started out as a typical Ralph Nader-influenced consumer reporter, convinced that companies constantly rip us off. To me and most of my fellow left-leaning reporters, the answer was always: more regulation.
Gradually, I figured out that regulation causes many more problems than the occasional rip-off artist does. Companies that served customers well prospered, while market competition meant cheaters seldom got away with cheating for long.
Regulation, by contrast, lasted forever. It punished innovation, making it harder for good people to offer better alternatives.
How do I spare people the long learning process I went through?
A former producer of mine, Todd Seavey, has written a book called "Libertarianism for Beginners." It lays down a few basic principles that make it easier to understand what a free market is -- and how everything government does interferes with that market.
"Your body, like all your property, should be yours to do with as you please so long as you do not harm the body or property of others without their permission," writes Seavey. That means government can't tell people what to do unless those people threaten harm.
Seavey didn't come up with that idea himself, of course. In the book, he describes the history of philosophers and economists who've urged people to follow that rule for some 200 years.
That rule helped make America the most prosperous and productive country in the world.
Unfortunately, while those libertarian ideas allowed innovation to flourish, government and regulation grew even faster.
A century ago in the U.S., government at all levels took up about 8 percent of the economy. Now it takes up about 40 percent. It regulates everything from the size of beverage containers to what questions must not be asked in job interviews.
How can people be expected to keep up with it all?
Seavey points out that it's backwards to expect them to try. Instead of just looking at the complicated mess government makes, we need to review the basic rules that got us here.
Instead of the rule being "government knows best" or "vote for the best leader," says Seavey, what if the basic legal rules were just: no assault, no theft, no fraud? Then most waste and bureaucracy that we fight about year after year wouldn't exist in the first place.
To most people, it sounds easier to leave big policy decisions -- about complex things like wages, food production and roads -- to government. Having to make our own decisions about everything and trade for everything in the marketplace sounds complicated.
But Seavey argues that the "hands off other people's stuff" rule would feel like second-nature if we were more consistent about enforcing it. "Even chimpanzees are capable of being outraged if other chimpanzees take their food so the basic impulses to defend property and to resist assault," he writes, "no doubt predate human history."
It's when politicians convince people that those simple rules aren't enough that voters decide to let bureaucrats, lawyers and politicians make the decisions instead. Then the public loses track of the complicated rules. Even the full-time media can't keep up with all the trickery.
We can -- and should -- keep reporting on government's broken promises and endless scandals. But to teach people they shouldn't count on government to produce good things in the first place, they need some basic philosophy.
Seavey's book may help, which is why I wrote the foreword to it. I like that the book has cartoons, making it more fun than dull economics textbooks. I hope it provides a model for looking at the world to people confused by stupid things government does.
But Seavey is too much the open-minded intellectual. He writes, "It may turn out that the system of control and redistribution that we thought was working to solve our problems was the real problem all along."
No. There's no "may turn out" about it. Forty-five years of watching government "solutions" go bad has taught me that state control rarely works, and it usually makes problems worse. Government control and redistribution is definitely the real problem.
Liberia and 1990s Cambodia are good examples of libertarian societies.
A person should wonder why there haven’t been any successful libertarian societies.
Whatever happened to the Free State Project?
“Your body, like all your property, should be yours to do with as you please so long as you do not harm the body or property of others without their permission,” writes Seavey.
That’s fine, but he left out the part about taking full responsibility for harm done to one’s own body (or property) while doing as one pleases. In our society, if someone suffers harm from making stupid decisions, property is taken from others without their permission in order to help the poor unfortunate.
That is why genuine libertarianism cannot operate in this society.
A few other liberal basics:
The law does not apply to us.
Apply emotion as the basis for all governmental decisions
Silence the opposition
Destroy the opposition
Create and perpetuate victim classes
Regulate everything
Control the general population because liberals are smarter than them.
Of course libertarianism is not liberalism
He left out some things, such as: Heroin should be legal, the borders should be wide open, homosexual drill sergeants are a good idea, etc.
The biggest prob w/libertarians is the drug legalization.
I put that fight in the same vein as amnesty.
To me, there is absolutely no point in discussing amnesty until the border is controlled.
Per dope, no point in discussing legalization until the end of the welfare state.
Courts have consistently shot down state laws attempting to deny benefits to drug users.
So, I believe legalizing dope would have the effect of putting more folks on the dole, just like amnesty.
What clause in the Constitution allows the federal government to prohibit intoxicants?
Not everyone, or even a majority, is willing to accept responsibility for their own success and are more than willing to mooch a living if they can.
There are always those that will organize the moochers to loot the treasuries of the producers.
It is left as an exercise for you to determine which people and what organizations are:
A) Producers
B) Moochers
C) Looters
Compassion for our fellow man is largely what prevents us from establishing a truly free society where many would literally starve.
None, but I’m not willing to subsidize someone who decides to sit around and be stoned or hung over all day. Hence my opinion.
The constitution DOES allow congress to enact laws. As such drug laws are statutory, not constitutional.
Elaboration via analogy,
There is nothing in the constitution, federal or state, that says I can’t take your property. The constitutions only prevents the government from taking your property without due process.
However, since the constitutions establish a congress that is granted the authority to enact laws, state congresses have made theft illegal.
dead on accurate.
Losertarians.
The exact same clause that allows welfare programs of any sort. Including guaranteed medical care.
You get rid of those and drug addiction regulates itself, by terminating addicts through overdose (Or death when whoever they are robbing shoots them) at an early age. Relive the 1870s.
libertarianism for beginners?
ok, here it is... “legalize everything, especially drugs!”
that’s pretty much it and that’s pretty much why i’m not a libertarian and never will be. i think the legalization of marijuana is a ticking timebomb, and although the war on drugs has been mostly a failure of epic proportions, that’s only because it was waged by a huge and bloated bureaucracy and it was constantly stymied by the courts and the ACLU and other leftwingers who didn’t want it to succeed. it also perversely rewarded and protected LEOs for trampling on our freedoms... but i don’t really want to get into this debate right now. suffice to say, as a Coloradan, i’m exceedingly embarrassed that the rest of the country thinks of my state as a place to vacation to for recreational drug use.
Don’t libertarians produce a parasitic drain on a functioning society by maximizing their selfishness?
That would be covered under "harm to other's property".
Perhaps it isn't explicit in this article, but it's explicit in the Libertarian Party platform:
Individuals own their bodies and have rights over them that other individuals, groups, and governments may not violate. Individuals have the freedom and responsibility to decide what they knowingly and voluntarily consume, and what risks they accept to their own health, finances, safety, or life.
All persons are entitled to keep the fruits of their labor. We call for the repeal of the income tax, the abolishment of the Internal Revenue Service and all federal programs and services not required under the U.S. Constitution. We oppose any legal requirements forcing employers to serve as tax collectors.
But, you are correct: libertarianism is incompatible with "welfare", "Obamacare", and even "Medicare" and "Social Security". So, it would be difficult in today's society, with 47% dependent on one or more of these redistribution programs.
As was the United States prior to 1913-02-03.
From Futurama
“Lets join the Reform Party and buy internet stocks on margin”
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