Hyper-Libertarians Say the Darndest Things

Sorry if the term “Hyper-Libertarian” causes confusion. Only one of my three examples seemed actually “hyper” in the ordinary sense of “needs his dosages adjusted.” Anyway, a better taxonomy is needed for the various strains of libertarian. Farnaby certainly seems extreme (see note 1), but by failing to embrace Wall St’s “casino-ization” (by which I think he means excessive derivative trading, etc.) I think many relatively moderate Libertarians would want to kick him out of their Party.

One longs for the good old days before YouTube made every High School Sophomore an economics expert. In those days “I am a libertarian” just meant “I like to smoke dope and I don’t like taxes.”

Note 1. If you draw a line connecting the trough of the Bush-41 recession to the trough of the Bush-43 recession, you’ll find the Clinton boom was huge even with the bust in the early Bush-43 years factored in. Or, to paraphrase Alan Greenspan, “It is better to have boomed and busted than never to have boomed at all.” For this reason, I think Farnaby’s contention that the slight over-investment in 1999 is reason to abolish the FRB and let money creation and bank regulation be completely privatised while condemning the practice of mandatory vaccinations which give only trivial “irrelevant” benefits like the eradication of smallpox certainly qualifies Farnaby as Hyper-Something, even if the Pro-Casino Libertarians disown him.