Join me on a trip into... The Libertarian Zone!

Great Debates
1

Okay, so here’s the deal. Forget about the ideal Libertarian world. It’s a bum rap to force Libertarians to take you from HERE to THERE instantly. And not all Libertarians agree where THERE is, as Stoid’s thread has so ably shown.

So let’s try a thought experiment: I have just been elected benevolent dictator, and I want to move the country in that direction. So I’m the conductor on the train to Libertaria. Everyone hop on, and at each stop something about the current government will change. If it’s changed enough for you, hop off and say why.

I’m going to start with what I think are either the most egregious abuses of government, and/or the easist things to change today. As we move along, more and more government will be left beside the tracks. Let’s see what happens:

STOP 1 - Victimless Crimes

At this stop, we are dumping laws against consensual sex acts between adults, laws against private drug use (driving while intoxicated, operating heavy machinery around others while intoxicated, etc. would still be a crime). But there is just no room on this train for drug warriors and their civil-rights-busting goon squads. Buh-bye.

STOP 2 - Government Pork

This is a practical first step towards smaller government. THe first thing to get rid of is pork. And there is a LOT of it. This year, Congress will budget 289 billion dollars for ‘unrequested earmarks’. That’s almost the size of the U.S. Military budget. That’s about 20 times the size of NASA’s budget.

For those that don’t know, an unrequested earmark is funding added into the budgetary process by a politician, rather than being requested by a federal agency like NASA, OSHA, etc. It’s pure pork. Send the money home, and get re-elected. I’m sure some of this money is used reasonably well, but the people the money came from would have used it better.

Now, there will be some things in there that you personally would like to have. Sure, a nice new expressway that cuts my commute would be nice. So would cheap milk, or a new monument in my back yard. But we’re actually going to try to be civically responsible here, and recognize that every bit of pork, no matter how ridiculous, is someone’s favorite program. If you want to take away theirs, you have to give a little too.

BTW, this is an issue ripe for attack, and is completely non-ideological. Both Republicans and Democrats do this stuff. There is wide public support for ending much of it (until you start talking about removing THEIR OWN pork.)

But politicians never bring it up, because it’s their private campaign slush fund. You wanna talk campaign finance reform? Getting $100 grand for your re-election is a pittance. How about sending ten billion dollars home to your voters to build them a new park, or to subsidize their milk? THAT’S the real graft.

Stop 3 - A freeze on the size of the Federal Register

We have enough laws. More than enough. WAY more than enough. Most people agree on that, at least to some extent. They just may not agree on which ones are good or not. So here’s the deal: The number of laws on the books can not increase. You want a new law making it illegal to be a six-fingered saxophone player? Fine. Your bill MUST include a current law or regulation in the register that must be grandfathered out.

Stop 4 - Shrink the size of the Regulatory Government

After a couple of years of this, we’re going to demand that the size of the register be shrunk by 50% in the next ten years. If you’ve ever had a look in the federal register, I think you’d agree that this is possible without removing our basic protections. There are a LOT of turkeys in there. But I’m flexible - we’ll establish a review panel first, and then perhaps we’ll only require a shrinkage of 20%. But maybe we’ll find so many turkeys that we’ll demand a shrinkage of 70%. We’ll see.

Okay, that’s enough stops for now. Still with me?

We’re on our way there, and already the train feels lighter, and without all those damned drug warriors along there’s bound to be a party or two somewhere. So I’m putting the train on autopilot and heading back for a brewski. More later.

2

Wow this is a pretty damn good thread.

This may be too early for this, but I say get rid of the trade embargo with Cuba. Free trade should not be hindered.

3
  1. Non-violent Felons retain the right to own firearms.
  2. Felons retain the right to vote after completely fulfilling the obligations of their sentence (already the case in some states IIRC).
  3. Obligatory Hi Opal! though I know not why.
  4. Severly limit search and seizure laws. (Eliminate the “If you won’t let me search your car then you must be hiding something so now I have probable cause so I’m going to search your car” type of thing.)
4

Goodbye asset forfeiture laws.

5

Okay, it looks like the game is changing slightly. Rather than just responding to my dictatorship, people are going off on their own and coming up with new things. Jeez, what do you think this is, a Libertarian society or something? I’m a DICTATOR.

But sure, okay. Feel free to add new things, but you MUST specify what stop they should be dropped off at. The idea here is that the first stop along the way is the stuff that actually has a chance of being an electable issue. For example, Marijuana legalization. But until we get to the later stops, please don’t start listing things like privatizing the police, because that’s exactly what I’m trying to avoid with this thread. I want it to progress from the things that most people can agree on, and slowly get more radical as the ‘easy stuff’ gets done and we have to start really digging into the meat of government. Then we’ll see just how far people are really willing to go.

So far, the things Waterj2 and OpenGrave mentioned fit well at stop 1, so we’re dropping them all right there.

STOP 1: Victimless crimes, Asset Forfeiture laws, and in general civil libertarian issues that will probably get us some support from the left as well as the libertarians on the right (Jesse Helms can go screw himself).

At stop 2 are the first funding issues. There may not be a consensus here, but one could easily be built with some advertising, the bully pulpit, and some time.

Stops 3 and 4 start picking away at government regulation, in a way that prevents explicitly attacking sacred cows. This is politically do-able. Reagan put a freeze on the Federal Register when he first came to power.

6

In stop 4, get rid of the federal Education Department and send power back to the states. The ed department is supposed to equalize educational opportunities across the country, but it clearly isn’t doing its job. So getting rid of it would save money and reduce at least some of the red tape that teachers and local administrators have to go through.

Also in stop 4, eventually privatize the interstate highway system. Each individual stretch of highway is owned by a private company that can charge tolls on it. Thanks to new technologies, it is getting easier to collect tolls. In fact, there are now scanners that can read stickers on cars without the cars even stopping (I believe it’s being tested in New York). So at the end of the month, you get your highway bill along with all your other bills. The big advantage here is that when a highway repair becomes necessary, the company that owns the highway has a motivation to get it done quickly and without inconvenience to drivers.

7

Okay. I’m a Left-Liberal, scoring 100% on Personal Self-Government, and 40% on Economic Self-Government. So, let’s see how y’all are doing so far in selling this stuff to someone who is Not From Among You, but is not totally unsympathetic to your ideas.

Sam Stone’s Stop 1 (eliminating victimless crimes): Totally on board with that.

Stop 2 (eliminating “unrequested earmarks” AKA “pork barrel spending”): Ehh, someone could probably make some sort of case for that (economic stimulus, helping out poor regions, thereby promoting national unity, blah blah blah). T’hell with it, though. Kill all the little piggies! (And I’m tired of politicians whining about it when the Pentagon decides to close down a base or move some bombers to a different state–it’s utterly obvious their concerns have jack-all to do with defending the United States and its national interests, and that’s what the Department of Defense is there for, not a jobs program for south Georgia.) Of course, this is as much a good government goo-goo issue as it is a specifically libertarian one.

Stops 3 and 4 (freezing and then shrinking federal regulations): Wellll–saying there are “too many laws” is sort of meaningless. Are they good laws or bad laws? I mean, yeah, you could make a case that if there are just such a large number of laws, people can’t keep up with them, even if each one is, by itself, just and prudent, and therefore a major principle of law (that it be made known to the citizens) is lost. But, by and large, focusing on the number of laws strikes me as gimmicky at best. And, while some kind of comprehensive review of all the regulations sounds nice, be advised that you’re really going to get into the political fire now. One man’s “excessive government meddling” is another man’s “vital and necessary protection of the environment or worker’s rights or the public welfare.”

TexasSpur: I’m not really enamored of the “economics first, let’s trade with the sleazy dictatorships because it will magically make them into civilized free countries” school of foreign policy. That said, the embargo on Cuba is counterproductive, stupid, and hypocritical, and I would say chuck it.

OpenGrave: 1. Hmmm…well, having eliminated all drug laws, we should have greatly reduced the number of non-violent felons. But, okay, I don’t guess someone who commits income tax fraud should necessarily be stripped of his firearms as a result. 2. I don’t see why not; if someone’s done their time and paid their debt to society, let them rejoin civilization. (I guess a murderer who gets 20 to life and gets paroled after 20 years is theoretically on parole forever, right? So conceivably they might not ever be able to vote. Then again, we’re talking about murderers, here.) 3. If you really don’t know, the full story is here. 4. To be honest, I’m not a lawyer, so I’m not really up on the nitty-gritty of actual search and seizure laws. But, as a card-carrying ACLU member, the idea of limiting them sounds good to me.

waterj2: Yeah, I don’t like asset forfeiture laws much either. Maybe in certain cases–say someone’s mansion and cars and jewelry all come from their participation in an organized-crime syndicate (which would have to be something like a murder-for-hire or extortion ring, since we’ve eliminated all victimless crimes). But generally, they seem awfully abused.

ITR Champion: Truthfully, I’m not that enamored of the sacred “local control of education”. A lot of nitwittery goes on in local school boards and state departments of education. National educational standards and national testing might help to curb a lot of that. (Say, a nice national standardized test in the biological sciences…) And, um, privatizing highways? Not really going to fly. First off, like it or not, we taxpayers built the things, using the old and non-libertarian idea of “pay your taxes or else, and the money goes for Big Public Works Projects”. Granted, these companies would have to shell out money to maintain the highways, but it still seems like private interests getting to appropriate part of the public commons to me. Also, this is getting scarily close to the “privatize all roads” thing, which leads to all those weird quasi-feudal scenarios whereby you have to pay umpteen tolls to get to the grocery store to buy a gallon of milk, and what if a white supremacist buys up all the roads in your neighborhood? which frankly tend to turn people off of libertarianism (or at least Libertarianism-with-a-capital-L) in the first place.

8

Whoot whoo!

Sam, regardless of our differences in the past, count me a member on this train.

–Tim

9

I have to swallow hard and agree with MEBuckner on this…it is kind of a gimmick. What I would rather see is all existing laws given an “expiration date”…it would be a thorough housecleaning, then they can repass the laws they really want, although doing that would require more than a majority.

10

Oops…forgot to say, I totally agree with the first two…but heck, who doesn’t?

11

Well, evidently quite a lot of people don’t agree with Stop 1, seeing as how we’re still stuck with this idiot War on Drugs (not to mention the War on Video Poker and the War on Prostitution and, in some states, the War on Oral Sex–well, okay, even in really backwards places, that last one especially is sort of a sitzkrieg.)

And agreeing with me should be an honor, don’t you think?

12

The reason I don’t think it’s a gimmick to set a fixed size on the Federal Register is that it FORCES politicians to deal with the issue. See, if you attack the regulations one at a time, you’ll never get them removed. Because the politicians who benefit from it gain great benefit, but the overall one cost to the country of that one little program is small. So it’s hard to work up public opposition. And that translates into that thing staying alive through typical dealmaking (I’ll vote for your farm pork if you vote for my new soccer stadium).

It’s kind of like what Bush just did with the budget, or what the balanced budget amendment was supposed to do - put the congress in a position where they HAVE to be responsible. 'Cause if you leave it up to them on each item, it ain’t gonna happen. Hell, they can’t get rid of the National Helium Reserve and the Wool and Mohair Subsidy! Both of those were obsolete and unnecessary before WWII.

Ok, so I don’t think we have a quorum on the private roads, so they’re gone. We’re keeping the public roads, and heading on to stop 5:

Stop 5 - Wherein we dismantle government agencies

Okay, it’s time we admitted that some government agencies are just a collossal waste of time and resources. But at this stop we’re still trying to focus on things that could actually happen in the real world, so we’re not going to abolish the IRS or get rid of the FDA. But there are some really poor agencies that just haven’t been effective, or have been counter-productive. Feel free to add to the list.

First, the Dept. of Education has got to go. So does OSHA, the Rural Electrification Administration, And the NEA. What other agencies are ripe for picking?

13

Okay, the country seems pretty satisfactorily electrified, so REA goes. We’ve already kicked around the Dept. of Ed., but I suppose you could argue that, given our national mania for the “local is better” mantra in education, it’s pretty marginal anyway. The NEA is hugely controversial, and maybe art’s not really something that should be funded “at the point of a gun”, to put it in Libertarian-speak.

But OSHA? Have you ever heard of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire?

14

Jumping on WAL’s stop…
I’ve always wanted EVERY law to have an expiration date. I think ten years is more than long enough.

Laws like murder and rape would just sail right through with an automatic ten year extension, while more controversial laws could have shorter life spans.

At the very least we would have all the shitty racist and anti-homosexual laws off the books by now.

It would force a showdown on drugs and abortion every so often. Plus, it would keep those frellin politicians busy enough that they wouldn’t start piling on NEW laws.

BTW…

I’m riding this train until it rides out of government subsidized track:)

15

Ahhhh…
Take us home, Sam. I ain’t getting off on the first four stops.

16

Ahhhh…
Take us home, Sam. I ain’t getting off on the first four stops.

Stop 5 though. The department of Education… can’t agree.

[watches the train roll on, and waves sadly]

17

Who is going to appoint to this “review panel”? How? Will their hearings be public? Subject to due process? What will their budget be and who will provide it? What will ensure that they cut the right regulations? How will you ensure that they cut regulations that have a bad effect, rather than an effect on existing interests? How will you ensure abolished regulations are not enforced by stealth as broader bureaucratic interpretations of regulatatory ambit? How will you ensure that cosy regulations that favour existing interests are not protected by lobbying this committee?

How, in short – apart from magically supposing that you can get rid of the parasite without injuring the host – is this a reform proposal rather than a fantasy even if you’ve been elected benevolent dictator?

18

I better get a sleeper berth, because I’m going to be on this train for a long time . . .

19

This is one train ride I would love to take IRL. If carefully thought out so masses do not panick, this would be a very nice trip. Step by step, toward a more sane Government.

‘Victimless Crimes’ should be a slam dunk, if the WOD stops today, it’ll be twenty years too late.

I would like to Cut The Pork, and I’ll start with my back yard. I’ll be the first to volunteer for less Federal funding for my district, but the taxes they do collect (at all levels of Gvmt.) must actually be used for the purposes they are meant for - if you’re taxing gasoline build the damn roads!

Take the same steps to cut at all levels of Government, 'cause our state is fairly fat too. I’m not even going to start on S.F. City budget…

That brings up one more idea - can we have one government entity to replace Fed/State/County/City/whateverelse, but maintain the same independance for the same georgaphical areas we have today. So we do not have the redundancies, but we still have people voting on the same levels for the same types of things we vote for today. I can vote for my representative for Congress, and for the California Assembly, but the “Government” is one entity, and can be run much more efficiently. I would want ot maintain all the checks and balances that we have, but remove the administrative overhead. Any thoughts?

20

Can we keep OSHA as a voluntary standards-setting body (much smaller, of course)?

And I don’t think my own pet agency, the Patent and Trademark Office, is opposed by the Libertarians, so I assume it stays.