Libertarianism doesn’t require that the ‘market’ solve the problem. You’re creating a straw man that you can knock down or sneer at.
This is the way a libertarian would formulate this issue:
- A man owns a business (i.e. voluntarily chose to invest his own resources in the production of something for sale). As part of that business, he is willing to offer a contract to other free people to work for him in exchange for a mutually-agreed upon salary. If both sides agree, the other person goes to work for the businessman. If they don’t, the businessman is free to find someone else, and the prospective employee is free to find another way to make a living.
The nature of that business relationship will be codified in the contract. If the employer can’t find workers at his terms, he’ll have to modify his terms. If his beliefs are so repugnant that no one will work for him, he’ll starve or shut up about his beliefs. If no one will hire the worker at the salary he’s demanding, he’ll have to improve his productivity or lower his demands.
Nothing in the libertarian social contract stops people from organizing into unions. And if an employer can’t find good non-union workers, or can’t withstand the cost of losing his entire workforce to a strike and having to hire-retrain new ones, he’ll have to deal with the union. Or, maybe the union will figure out that the best way to enhance its collective bargaining potential is to make its members more productive and to offer services to the employer that justifies its premium. Either way, BOTH sides are a right to freedom of association, and that means the employment contract must be voluntary.
FULL STOP. Libertarians describe the nature of the relationship between people. You are born a free person, and no one has the right to compel you to do something you choose not to do. However, you are also responsible for supporting yourself and upholding contracts you sign. That may mean you have to do things that you’d rather not do. That’s not coercion, it’s reality.
Libertarians no more have to make the case that ‘markets will fix the problem’ than people against slavery had to make a case that freeing the slaves would leave to higher plantation profits. It doesn’t matter, because slavery is wrong even if it’s economically efficient (which it isn’t).
Again, your last two sentences are a non-sequitur. Libertarianism is about a contract between the people and the government. Businessmen are people too. You are setting up a dichotomy whereby you’re casting the business as an agent of force/power equivalent to government so you can make crazy claims like not being able to find a job while espousing obnoxious views is somehow a violation of your political rights.
Let me ask you - should a Jewish businessman be required to hire an employee who supports terrorism against Jews or who denies the holocaust? Should an abortion clinic be forced to hire a Catholic receptionist who is overtly and vocally hostile to abortion? Does that employee have a right to demand that the clinic stop giving abortions, because she has a ‘right’ to that job on her terms? And if you think so, what have you done to the right of free association that presumably the owner of the abortion clinic or the Jewish shopkeeper also enjoys? Or are political rights only for people who don’t employ others?
What a ridiculous idea. No one is looking for a ‘market solution’ to the problem of hikers wanting to trespass. The only answer needed is, “No. You may not hike across my property.” Likewise, we don’t need a ‘market solution’ to the ‘problem’ of the local gang wanting to take your television and your car. You can just say “Screw off, and the police will arrest you if you try.” You don’t have to provide a good reason to the thieves for why you want to keep your TV and car. Even if you have two and they have none. It’s your property. End of story.
I knew you’d manage to knock down those straw men at some point. Nice job.
What a load of nonsense. Of course there are utopian libertarians, just as there are utopian liberals and conservatives. But the vast majority of them understand that there is no perfection in life, and no simple solutions to complex problems. We may think that on balance libertarianism will lead to a stronger economy or solve other specific problems, just like progressives and conservatives do, but that’s not the point of libertarianism. Libertarians are not utilitarians.
Ask yourself about your belief in, say, the first amendment. Assuming you believe that the people have an absolute right to free speech, is your argument based on the belief that free speech will lead to the end of all conflict? Or that we’ll eventually understand everything about each other and live in peace and harmony? Or do you support it simply because you believe it’s a fundamental human right, even though they are plenty of cases where speech hurts people’s feelings or spreads bad information?
This may be a bad example, since the left seems to have only been champions of free speech when they were the ones on the outside. Now they seem perfectly willing to limit it. So feel free to pick some other human right you feel strongly about, and tell me whether your support of that basic human right is conditional upon being shown that it leads to the best economic outcomes?
As for the primacy of property rights - libertarians generally do believe in the primacy of property rights, but that’s not because they’re a bunch of greedy materialists. Rather, libertarians recognize that without a fundamental right to own property, all other rights are moot because you are beholden to the group for your very survival.
Forcing a citizen into the collective as a matter of survival because you’ve taken away the ability of the citizen to support himself makes a mockery of concept of basic inalienable rights. All rights then flow from the whim of the party in power - and often at the point of a gun.
It is core to the libertarian belief system that if I create something, no one has a right to take it from me for the ‘greater good’. I am a free person, using my own labor and resources. No one else has a right to interfere or to claim the output of my labor for themselves.
And we don’t believe that our participation in society means that somehow we ‘owe’ society a portion of all we create. In a free society, no one is forced to help anyone else, and therefore no one has a claim on anyone else’s stuff. Sure, I moved my goods to market on a road that someone else made. But I assume that by fulfilling my social contract in paying my road taxes and meeting my other contractual obligations I have fulfilled that debt already. And if I wasn’t given a choice, I have no obligation either.
If I make a billion dollars, I don’t ‘owe’ the workers who helped build my product, because they are working for a wage that they voluntarily agreed to. Of course, if profit sharing was part of the contract, I do owe them. But if it wasn’t and I choose to offer them some profit sharing anyway, I do so for my own reasons. Perhaps they are philanthropic, or perhaps I believe it will make my workers work better and faster. But I don’t have to justify that choice to anyone else, because it’s my money and I’ll do with it as I please.
Notice in none of this did I make the claim that this will ‘solve’ any great social problems. Nor did I invoke a magical ‘market’ to fix whatever injustice you seem to think freedom creates. Freedom is an end to itself. Now, it’s totally fair to ask if a system like this would lead to social breakdown or unrest, or be fundamentally unjust in some way. THEN we can talk about libertarian solutions and how they might work,
I think there’s a fundamental difference in how libertarians think that makes it hard for progressives to understand us. Progressives aren’t about fundamental philosophy of government. To them, the government is just another tool. Progressives are about fixing what they see as injustices, prejudices, backwards thinking, and other ‘problems’ of society. They see oppressors and the oppressed. Racists and the victims of racism. Women and oppressors of women. The environment, and its despoilers.
Progressives are on a constant quest to make the world ‘better’ by ridding it of the flaws they see. So when libertarians talk about property rights and freedom, progressives translate that through the progressive filter of employers and abused employees, rich people hoarding stuff that poor people need, etc. And they think that Libertarians believe that libertarianism offers answers to all these perceived problems. Otherwise, what good is it, right?
But liberty is an end to itself. Libertarians would rather live in a free world even if it meant that some ‘problems’ go completely unaddressed. Liberty is not a price they’re willing to pay for ‘progress’.