Posted on 10/09/2009 8:18:11 PM PDT by rabscuttle385
Political analysts frequently consider what it means to be a libertarian. In fact, in 1997, Charles Murray published a short book entitled "What It Means to Be a Libertarian" that does an excellent job of presenting the core principles of libertarian political philosophy. But almost no one ever discusses what it feels like to be a libertarian. How does it actually feel to be someone who holds the principles described in Murray’s book?
I’ll tell you. It feels bad. Being a libertarian means living with an almost unendurable level of frustration. It means being subject to unending scorn and derision despite being inevitably proven correct by events. How does it feel to be a libertarian? Imagine what the internal life of Cassandra must have been and you will have a pretty good idea.
Imagine spending two decades warning that government policy is leading to a major economic collapse, and then, when the collapse comes, watching the world conclude that markets do not work.
Imagine continually explaining that markets function because they have a built in corrective mechanism; that periodic contractions are necessary to weed out unproductive ventures; that continually loosening credit to avoid such corrections just puts off the day of reckoning and inevitably leads to a larger recession; that this is precisely what the government did during the 1920's that led to the great depression; and then, when the recession hits, seeing it offered as proof of the failure of laissez-faire capitalism.
Imagine spending years decrying federal intervention in the home mortgage market; pointing out the dangers associated with legislation such as the Community Reinvestment Act that forces lenders to make more risky loans than they otherwise would; testifying before Congress on the lack of oversight and inevitable insolvency of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to legislators who angrily respond either that one is "exaggerat[ing] a threat of safety and soundness . . . which I do not see" (Barney Frank) or "[I[f it ain’t broke, why do you want to fix it? Have the GSEs [government-sponsored enterprises] ever missed their housing goals" (Maxine Waters) or "[T[he problem that we have and that we are faced with is maybe some individuals who wanted to do away with GSEs in the first place" (Gregory Meeks) or that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are "one of the great success stories of all time" (Christopher Dodd); and arguing that the moral hazard created by the implicit federal backing of such privately-owned government-sponsored enterprises is likely to set off a wave of unjustifiably risky investments, and then, when the housing market implodes under the weight of bad loans, watching the collapse get blamed on the greed and rapaciousness of "Wall Street."
I remember attending a lecture at Georgetown in the mid-1990s given by a member of the libertarian Cato Institute in which he predicted that, unless changed, government policy would trigger an economic crisis by 2006. That prediction was obviously ideologically-motivated alarmism. After all, the crisis did not occur until 2008.
Libertarians spend their lives accurately predicting the future effects of government policy. Their predictions are accurate because they are derived from Hayek’s insights into the limitations of human knowledge, from the recognition that the people who comprise the government respond to incentives just like anyone else and are not magically transformed to selfless agents of the good merely by accepting government employment, from the awareness that for government to provide a benefit to some, it must first take it from others, and from the knowledge that politicians cannot repeal the laws of economics. For the same reason, their predictions are usually negative and utterly inconsistent with the utopian wishful-thinking that lies at the heart of virtually all contemporary political advocacy. And because no one likes to hear that he cannot have his cake and eat it too or be told that his good intentions cannot be translated into reality either by waving a magic wand or by passing legislation, these predictions are greeted not merely with disbelief, but with derision.
It is human nature to want to shoot the messenger bearing unwelcome tidings. And so, for the sin of continually pointing out that the emperor has no clothes, libertarians are attacked as heartless bastards devoid of compassion for the less fortunate, despicable flacks for the rich or for business interests, unthinking dogmatists who place blind faith in the free market, or, at best, members of the lunatic fringe.
Cassandra’s curse was to always tell the truth about the future, but never be believed. If you add to that curse that she would be ridiculed, derided, and shunned for making her predictions, you have a pretty fair approximation of what it feels like to be a libertarian.
If you’d like a taste of what it feels like to be a libertarian, try telling people that the incoming Obama Administration is advocating precisely those aspects of FDR’s New Deal that prolonged the great depression for a decade; that propping up failed and failing ventures with government money in order to save jobs in the present merely shifts resources from relatively more to relatively less productive uses, impedes the corrective process, undermines the economic growth necessary for recovery, and increases unemployment in the long term; and that any "economic" stimulus package will inexorably be made to serve political rather than economic ends, and see what kind of reaction you get. And trust me, it won’t feel any better five or ten years from now when everything you have just said has been proven true and Obama, like FDR, is nonetheless revered as the savior of the country.
“I’ll stick with being a constitutionalist conservative.”
i like that
I know a number of atheist libertarians who are opposed to abortion because it is murder.
I disagree. Primarily the Libertarians. They have practically destroyed conservatism in the GOP. Turned it into a party of idiots. (I used to be one, so I can say that) They have put a silver bullet into capitalism and while this bullet can probably be removed, it is likely the patient is going to be in recovery for a long time.
IMHO, they are far more dangerous than the communists because their insanity has hitched a ride on several good ideas and rather than directly confront those ideas, they just pervert them. I have been fooled myself in the past. I used to think, for example, Phil Gramm was a smart and good person. Yet he, Greenspan, and some Dems have tanked our economy and I doubt we will ever get back to where we were. Maybe that is a good thing.
parsy, who thinks a lot of libertarians are useful idiots and there is hope for them, but you got to slap them around pretty good and wake them up first. I wish I had someone to wake me up back when I was one of those idiots.
I disagree. Primarily the Libertarians. They have practically destroyed conservatism in the GOP. Turned it into a party of idiots...
I stand corrected.
Not much in the way of an actual argument there.
I read your link, and it is the most deceptive, ill-informed, jaw-droppingly bad misrepresentation of libertarianism I’ve ever seen. My head was swimming with all of the errors, economic illiteracy (a lot of what he attacks is not necessarily libertarian politics but basic economic principles which are understood and espoused by economists from all over the political spectrum), misquotes, half-truths, etc. in just the first fifth of the article. He laughably derides libertarians for not sticking to facts, when he himself does not come close to reality. He presents caricatured versions of libertarian principles and then offers flimsy responses. If put in a real debate with somebody like Bryan Caplan, Thomas Sowell, or the late Milton Friedman, he’d wilt like a petunia in a furnace. I’d love to offer a rebuttal to all of its offending points, but I don’t have the time.
Libertarianism is simply classical liberalism, the belief in liberty. It is not anarchism. Anarchy is anarchism. Libertarianism is not. We have to say “libertarian” in America because “liberalism” has come to mean its opposite—a socialistic form of statism.
To understand libertarianism, you must first understand economics. It is essential. Economies for Dummies, Economics in One Lesson, and New Ideas from Dead Economists are all good primers, but I whole-heartedly recommend Basic Economics by Sowell, it’s loaded with real-world examples from throughout history and the world to illustrate and hammer home all of the principles.
From there, Capitalism and Freedom by Friedman and The Road to Serfdom by Hayek (possibly the most important book of the 20th century). Understanding Hayekian price theory will be like having the blinders taken off, you will suddenly see everything with amazing clarity. World events, the economy, business, your life, grocery stores, you’ll see how prices coordinate the world, how they act almost as a second language, a built-in instinct like the need to develop a written language or mathematics. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
I’ve read several of these books. I used to be a republican and was dead set against minwages, and unions, and government. As I got older, I started seeing that this was just way too simplistic.
I believe in capitalism, but to go too far, to laissez faire, just don’t work. There have to be floors and safety nets or the rich just get out of control and everybody ends up suffering.
This latest fiasco is proof. The more gov’t pulled out of regulation, the more the capitalists took it to the limits and have probably bankrupted our country. To ignore that is unreasonable.
As far as the article, I would submit that what has dropped your jaw is confrontation with unpleasant truths. I wish that I had read something that prescient right after Atlas Shrugged and I would have saved ten years or so halfway caught up in the libertarian foolishness.
I hope you will re-read it, with an open mind and ask yourself if it isn’t pretty dead on.
parsy, who has been where you are
Really, you think drug legalization is about encouraging people to take drugs? You can't wrap your head around the concept that government intervention is not the solution to all problems (and that if there must be government intervention far better it be at the local, and not the federal level). There should be no national drug policy, any and all restrictions should be set up at the local level where people have a realistic idea of what's achievable; and they actually have to bear the cost of their own legislation. There may be restrictions, and even drugfree areas - just no nonsensical "war" on any chemical.
By capitalists...do you mean Wall Street...or what?
BTW, I’m not a Republican, and am still “dead set against minwages, and unions, and government.”
Pretty much. I don’t have a problem with capitalism per se, i just think it needs sensible gov’t regulation or it turns into a free-for-all .
parsy, who hopes that answers it
I disagree with both of you.
The limousine, country club Republicans have done a real number on the party.
Well...if you’re talking about Wall Street, that’s a whole ‘nother world compare to other bidnesses.
Wall Street has not been the be all and end all, but they have been the preferred recipient of stimulus/bailout monies.
The rest of our once great country has been stymied, and in fact driven to bankruptcy.
What do you propose?
Anybody who gets away from the basic middle class is subject to forgetting either where they came from or where they are.
parsy
Well, now...that is one post that I can BTTT!
Two entities who are being screwed are the middle class business persons...and their families.
However, there are those who don’t qualify as small businesses, yet they aren’t Wall Street material.
What to do about them?
I read the entirety of your link - it was liberal nonsense.
Of the five principles the author attributes to libertarians, three of them are something no libertarian would say, and the other two are kinda iffy. Then the author goes on to label W as one - despite his increasing social spending and winning two elections by running away from libertarian ideas. It only goes downhill from there. Consistently he misattributes very non-libertarian thinking and policies - most preposterously accusing them of wanting to set up a “utopia”. If those were the type of ideas that you spent years believing in, I’m glad you wised up; but you need to wise up a bit more and stop buying the type of garbage promulgated by that link.
First step, rein in Wall Street. Reinstate ban between depositories and investment banks. Require all derivatives to go thru exchanges. Ban speculation in commodities unless a valid user thereof. End all side bets on economy. Impose a transaction tax on stock market transaction to reduce day trading and speculation. End capital gains preferential treatment and end short term capital loss limitations of $3000. Set leverage requirements. Terminate excessive bank overdraft fees. Hopefully this will take volatility out of market and return it to an investment market, not a casino.
Next, reinstate chapter 7 protections in bankruptcy, and expand it to allow more assets to debtor. Allow cramdowns on assets and renegotiated payments. Extend unemployment benefits. Begin protectionist actions for our country. Institute single payer government option health insurance. Institute national health care standards to protect from defensive medicine BS. Allow importation of foreign pharmaceuticals.
Repeal all cap and trade legislation. Promote national education standards with less education and more vocational training. Raise minimum wages over next several years to a livable standard. Begin requiring public service for all welfare payments with an hour for hour offset for real employment.
Begin massive infrastructure rebuilding. Build a fence along southern border and amnesty in all illegal aliens already here. After that, require jail time for any employer hiring illegal aliens. Ease up on technical person immigration. Reinstate Reagan era tax rates on rich.
Rewrite criminal codes to allow less rights for members of organized gangs on theory that level of activity constitutes an assault on country. Begin dismantling gangs in cities by direct action. (Shoot gang members if necessary) Reinstate chain gangs for prisoners. Make adultery, when children are involved for either participant, a misdemeanor with mandatory fines and possible jail time. Drill drill drill. Invest immediately in natural gas filling stations.
Is that enough of a start.
patsy
You clearly haven’t been where I am. I wouldn’t suddenly turn my back on the economic reality that minimum wage laws, like all forms of price floors, create artificial shortages, that the lowest-skilled and most needy people are shut out of the work force because of it, that unemployment always rises after a rise in the minimum wage, and that this principle holds anywhere minimum wage laws are tried. This isn’t a libertarian position, it’s basic economics, it’s virtually unanimous among the profession. I can quote left-wing economists, advisors to Clinton and Obama, who write forcefully and convincingly about how minimum wage laws merely cause unemployment among teens, blacks, the homeless, ex-cons, and other people who most need to get on the job ladder.
The empirical data is undeniable that unionization also raises unemployment, and for the same reasons. I can quote any number of non-libertarian economists who can tell you the same thing, even ones who consider themselves moderately pro-union.
And I’m hard-pressed to think of libertarians (beyond the anarcho-capitalist fringe, and insignificant minority) who are actually anti-government. Anti-politician, sure. But anti-government? From Adam Smith to Milton Friedman, what serious libertarian economist has denied the role for the government to play in maintaining the rule of law, enforcing contracts, providing for natural monopolies and public goods
Your comment about this recession and deregulation shows that you were never where I am. The financial sector is, an has been, one of the most highly-regulated, if not *the* most highly-regulated industries since the Great Depression. What minor deregulations have occurred over the past few decades are unconnected to this crisis and I have yet to see a single economist explain, with a cause-and-effect analysis, how any minor deregulation (of an enormously, heavily regulated sector of the economy) led to this recession. This recession was caused by excess credit and the mispricing of risk, and all of these are government failures.
The Federal Reserve put too much money into the system, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac served as a dumping ground for toxic assets, and excessive regulation kept the financial sector less competitive and dynamic than it otherwise would have been. A regulated industry is a protected industry, protected from new, smaller competitors. The same market forces that have caused the explosive growth of the computer industry were simply not allowed to function in the financial sector due to literally millions of pages of laws regarding licensing, regulation, etc.
It’s really beyond the scope of a comment to get into what’s wrong with all of the regulations of the financial sector and how they lead to problems, a good place to start is here:
http://arnoldkling.com/econ/macrolectures.html
“Institute single payer government option health insurance.”
No thanks. This was up for a vote in Oregon several years ago. It was shot down 20/80, and those folks pushing it ended up in Mass. Even the libs here don’t want this.
“Raise minimum wages over next several years to a livable standard.”
One reason Oregon is in so much trouble is that we already have one of the highest minwages in the country. Businesses are leaving this state in droves.
“Build a fence along southern border and amnesty in all illegal aliens already here.”
Agree with the former, but disagree on principle with the latter.
“Rewrite criminal codes to allow less rights for members of organized gangs on theory that level of activity constitutes an assault on country.”
Now...that’s an idea I can get behind. However, all of Congress would necessarily be incarcerated. lol
I believe those are the only points of contention that I have with your view.
Thank you for your post.
bttt
Lot of nonsense there, but I’ll take the time to pick just one policy. Ban speculation on commodities unless a valid user.
First, define valid user. How do you make sure only valid users are doing the speculating? How do you make sure non-valid users aren’t hiring a valid user as a dummy speculator? How do you pay for enforcing this law? What other laws will be less-enforced as a result?
Second, you are ignorant. Do you know what speculators do? I’ll tell you, they keep prices stable by keeping supplies stable. It is merely a risk-management technique like insurance. They guarantee to producers to pay a certain price for a given commodity when it comes time to bring that commodity to market. This way, producers will concentrate on maximizing production, and not produce less for fear that the price won’t be worth the extra effort. For somebody who claims to have understood libertarianism (yeah, right, you sound like you were purely ideologically driven by some notion of Randian freedom rather than pragmatic economics), it’s surprising you don’t know this. You apparently know everything about what speculators do from misinformed, alarmist articles that blame speculators for high gas prices.
The reverse is true. If there are no speculators, then there are more volatile market conditions, less supply, and a higher price. Speculators didn’t “add” to the price of gas, that price reflected the supply and demand. Without speculators, prices tend to rise. There is a reason speculators exist, and why farmers and other producers have dealings with them. And half the time they operate at a loss.
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/FuturesandOptionsMarkets.html
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