# Libertarian solutions to poverty: do they make sense? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 29, 2017, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarian-solutions-to-poverty-do-they-make-sense/805546 "2017-12-29T23:17:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2018, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarian-solutions-to-poverty-do-they-make-sense/805546/121 "2018-01-02T15:51:19Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > An unbiased source, eh? > > Try [this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_the_United_States) > Sowell’s point on growth is pretty worthless. It is clearly simpler for someone in the bottom 20% to increase income (from getting a job, say) than someone making $5 million a year. And no doubt those sitting at 1% fall down to 1.5% or something. Hardly becoming poor. > None of which supports your assertion that rich people fall out of being rich in substantial numbers. And especially not competent ones. > > I’ve been retired for a year and a half. I haven’t chosen to get Social Security yet. I’m not anywhere near the 1%, but we have lived quite comfortably in this time and we have more money in our account than when we started. Staying well to do is not hard - not if you get that way. > > BTW, also note that the decrease in mobility started in 1980. Hmm, wonder what happened that year. If that was Sowell’s point, it would have been worthless. Unfortunately I’ll have to repeat it for you: “Most working Americans who were initially in the bottom 20 percent of income-earners, rise out of that bottom 20 percent. More of them end up in the top 20 percent than remain in the bottom 20 percent” Your summary of this point as saying lower income people are more likely to increase incomes is a bizarre spin. Let’s call the bottom quintile poor and the top quintile high income. If you were to tell your average Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump supporter that people who start out poor are more likely to become high income than remain poor, they’d call you a liar. This is an unbelievable fact that is unmatched in the history of he world. We aren’t even talking about inter generational movement. We are talking about individuals rising up from poverty within their own lifetimes. So no, your summary needs some serious rewriting. ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2018, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarian-solutions-to-poverty-do-they-make-sense/805546/122 "2018-01-02T15:58:01Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > Of all the people killed by governments in the 20th century, most were killed under 3 governments. The Nazis in Germany, the communists under Stalin and the communists in China under Mao. Take those 3 out and the number of government deaths drops in half at least. There have been hundreds of governments in the 20th century, but only a few were total bloodbaths. > > According to [this](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/10/19/pollution-kills-9-million-people-each-year-new-study-finds/?utm_term=.33ba53232d4e), pollution kills 9 million a year. However part of those deaths are from people burning dung and wood for fuel indoors, which you can’t blame on corporations. However industrial pollution you can. I’m all for corporations, but I’m also for adding regulations to increase safety and sustainability even if it increases prices. > > I don’t know how many people are killed by governments each year, but government backed conflict probably kills a few hundred thousand. According to [this](http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Healthday/story?id=5207645&page=1), the period 1985-1994 saw about 378,000 deaths a year due to warfare. The world is less warlike now than in the past, so the number now is hopefully lower. > > Either way, pollution probably kills 20-30x more people than war, if not more. War seems to be by far the major cause of government sponsored death. Executions aren’t that common globally and probably only number in the thousands each year. Most of those pollution deaths are in places where the government has carved out “acceptable” levels of pollution, below which no suit can be brought against the polluters. The government fails to protect property rights and liberty is to blame? Nice try, bud. ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2018, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarian-solutions-to-poverty-do-they-make-sense/805546/123 "2018-01-02T16:00:51Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Today governments do kill more than corporations, particularly if there is a war on. In the libertarian utopia of the 1880s and 1890s I suspect corporations killed a lot more - due to sweatshops, pollution, selling poison as medicine, etc. You can thank those horrid regulations for it not being true today. > > As for stealing, it depends on how you define stealing. If you define taxation as stealing, sure - but that would be asinine. Otherwise we have corporate theft programs like Trump U. Probably more of those than real government theft. Trump U? Lol try asset forfeiture and eminent domain if calling taxes theft is too scary for you. Or have liberals taken to defending asset forfeiture under Trump’s fascist regime? ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2018, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarian-solutions-to-poverty-do-they-make-sense/805546/124 "2018-01-02T16:04:33Z")
> [@Ramira](#): > > I have a reasonable reading in the actual real economic study of the economic mobility and the challenges limited data available to make conclusions about the real transmission of the wealth, and in particular the problems of knowing the degree of the social retransmission. > > But since I have learned the data based economics and not the extreme ideology pretending to be an economics, but in reality a social philosophy, I avoid the black-and-white conclusions asserted without good data to support. > > My clients would be amused I think, since they are not the americain libertarians, but they are irrelevant to this in all ways. > > You make simplistic claims based on a collosal amount of asserted ideas without foundation in the actual evidence and with huge confusions between the cause and the effect… > > I cited the instance of the utter amoral rapacity of the corporation outside of the government framework - as an illustration of the extreme naïveté of your proposition, which packed in so many extreme assumptions … well it is boring and time consuming to unpack these. > Indeed - in the real world where there is not a government, there are fine examples of the direct corproate control (the infamous company towns outside of effective government contorl, the Belgian Congo before its nationalization and the extreme abuses that even managed to shock the racist European powers of the 1890s [although nicely profitable to the shareholders before the nationalization]). > He imagines due to his a priori conclusions based on his ideology that the corporation will behave in the same fashion as if there was the state to restrain it or them. > > It is entirely unexamined what is the restraint, it is simply asserted. All the bad done by government is ascribed to the abstract entity “government” due to the ideological understanding that the entity itself is bad, not that the badness is indeed coming from the human being and the seeking of the power and the monopoly of the resources. > > See the Belgian Congo. > > The hands get cut off… I have been waiting with bated breath for your data-filled posts to change my mind. Alas… ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2018, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarian-solutions-to-poverty-do-they-make-sense/805546/125 "2018-01-02T16:07:31Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > It would help us understand if the Farnaby-style libertarians flesh out their Utopia a little better. Are police forces and courts of law also privatised? How are judges selected? They need not be if the goal is to witness more economic mobility in the backwater states of Europe. Privatization would be an end goal of liberalization. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2018, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarian-solutions-to-poverty-do-they-make-sense/805546/126 "2018-01-02T16:47:44Z")
I keep trying to parse the above post and it continues to lack coherency. What the hell are you talking about? ---
**Author:** ![D\_Anconia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@D\_Anconia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/D_Anconia)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2018, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarian-solutions-to-poverty-do-they-make-sense/805546/127 "2018-01-02T16:50:43Z")
> [@running\_coach](#): > > Do you actually pay per day or per semester/quarter? Per semester. ---
**Author:** ![D\_Anconia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@D\_Anconia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/D_Anconia)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2018, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarian-solutions-to-poverty-do-they-make-sense/805546/128 "2018-01-02T16:53:05Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > Do you feel that your experience is universal? No, of course not. But neither is the claim the food costs force college students to go into debt. ---
**Author:** ![Ramira](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ramira/32/344_2.png) [@Ramira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramira)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2018, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarian-solutions-to-poverty-do-they-make-sense/805546/129 "2018-01-02T17:44:03Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > I have been waiting with bated breath for your data-filled posts to change my mind. Alas… Since we have the track record with you ignoring data and bizarre distortions via your ideology, I have the better things to waste time on, like perhaps a pedicure. Of course anyone writing “’ backwater states of europe” is not worth any time of serious information. you can try providing any data for your variuous assertions like on wealth transmission. Data, not ideologue assertions. ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2018, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarian-solutions-to-poverty-do-they-make-sense/805546/130 "2018-01-02T18:28:55Z")
> [@D\_Anconia](#): > > Per semester. Then it’s not really “$10 a day”. It’s a meaningless average as it has to be paid in one lump sum. Is it a separate fee or is it part of a housing plan? ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2018, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarian-solutions-to-poverty-do-they-make-sense/805546/131 "2018-01-02T18:45:53Z")
> [@SamuelA](#): > > Voyager, I know you feel comfortable. But in absolute dollar amounts, does it bother you a little that out of the value you created during your working career, you basically were cheated? That’s what the wage : productivity gap really _means_. We have managed to make our economy a whole bunch more productive, and yet we are sharing all the benefits of that increased productivity with basically only 1% of the population. I did okay - but that doesn’t invalidate your point that productivity increases haven’t been shared in general. I’m all for higher income taxes on those who have, including me, in order to distribute money when businesses won’t. But my point was that if you start with money you don’t have to be very smart to keep it and grow it. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2018, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarian-solutions-to-poverty-do-they-make-sense/805546/132 "2018-01-02T18:47:52Z")
> [@D\_Anconia](#): > > Eating has nothing to do with college debt. I suspect loans cover room and board as well as tuition. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2018, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarian-solutions-to-poverty-do-they-make-sense/805546/133 "2018-01-02T18:54:02Z")
> [@D\_Anconia](#): > > And if one didn’t go to college for whatever reason, he’d still have to eat. Eating is completely separate from college debt. When I was in college I more or less illegally cooked in my dorm rather than taking the food plan - and my costs went down a lot. (And time spent on it went up.) Maybe you can enlighten us on how college debt is behavioral, since Farnaby obviously cannot. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2018, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarian-solutions-to-poverty-do-they-make-sense/805546/134 "2018-01-02T18:57:35Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > If that was Sowell’s point, it would have been worthless. Unfortunately I’ll have to repeat it for you: > > “Most working Americans who were initially in the bottom 20 percent of income-earners, rise out of that bottom 20 percent. More of them end up in the top 20 percent than remain in the bottom 20 percent” > > Your summary of this point as saying lower income people are more likely to increase incomes is a bizarre spin. > > Let’s call the bottom quintile poor and the top quintile high income. > > If you were to tell your average Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump supporter that people who start out poor are more likely to become high income than remain poor, they’d call you a liar. This is an unbelievable fact that is unmatched in the history of he world. We aren’t even talking about inter generational movement. We are talking about individuals rising up from poverty within their own lifetimes. > > So no, your summary needs some serious rewriting. I see no data backing up his claims. Now, certainly someone right out of school may be low and may raise in position due to regular raises and promotions. But, more to the point, he never says anything about people falling out of the top 1%, which is your claim. Why don’t you try to find evidence for that absurd statement. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2018, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarian-solutions-to-poverty-do-they-make-sense/805546/135 "2018-01-02T18:59:47Z")
> [@D\_Anconia](#): > > No, of course not. But neither is the claim the food costs force college students to go into debt. That was not my claim. I know what college and meal plans cost - I paid for my kids college. Saying that paying for food plans in college is not “behavioral” in no way says that tuition doesn’t cost more. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2018, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarian-solutions-to-poverty-do-they-make-sense/805546/136 "2018-01-02T19:04:34Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > Trump U? Lol try asset forfeiture and eminent domain if calling taxes theft is too scary for you. Or have liberals taken to defending asset forfeiture under Trump’s fascist regime? Thieves don’t usually pay their victims, so eminent domain doesn’t count as theft, whether or not specific instances are justified. I haven’t heard of a lot of liberal support for asset forfeiture - I think that was more of a law and order thing. Now, do you agree that Trump was ripping off his “students” or not. Note he paid them back when sued. Sum up all the ripoffs, and I suspect you get a lot more than asset forfeiture applied to the innocent. Taking back ill-gotten gains should not count as theft. ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2018, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarian-solutions-to-poverty-do-they-make-sense/805546/137 "2018-01-02T19:11:58Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > When I was in college I more or less illegally cooked in my dorm rather than taking the food plan - and my costs went down a lot. (And time spent on it went up.) > Maybe you can enlighten us on how college debt is behavioral, since Farnaby obviously cannot. Technically, not everyone who goes to college gets the best deal they can. The ‘best deal’ as it were is to only go to an expensive college if you determine the benefit exceeds the cost. For example, if you go do premed at Harvard, the immense tuition costs are offset by the fact that your odds of getting into medical school were (though I heard recently they put a quota on how many As) much higher. But if you go major in women’s studies and a teaching certificate, at Harvard…you can see how your immense debt:income ratio is a little bit your fault. But there’s been mostly out of control inflation of education costs. The chief reason being that the Federal government will give you loans, no matter what the number is, so people go into as much debt as it takes. The other reason is that State governments have stopped subsidizing schools in their states, spending the money on extra prisons instead. (yes. Most state governments are on a tight budget and they’ve had to build more and more prisons over the last few decades) So the government actually _is_ responsible for out of control inflation of education and medical costs (the medical costs are for a different reason). But the solution to these problems is not “government abdicates”. The solution requires the government’s policies to be changed. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2018, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarian-solutions-to-poverty-do-they-make-sense/805546/138 "2018-01-02T19:27:25Z")
I suspect that Libertarians and Objectivists don’t really care about finding a “solution to poverty”. Their belief is based on a concept that the system is most fair when people keep the fruits of their labor and can trade with each other, unencumbered by interference from Big Government or Special Interests distorting value based on political agendas. Enterprising poor people will find ways to get ahead. The ones that won’t or can’t, well, they will just have to stay poor. It’s a nonsensical belief for many of the reasons stated in previous posts, and one that has been disproven through history: - Privatizing certain public services, such as police, fire, military, prisons, even health care have demonstrated conflicts of interest that are not in the best interest of society. - While regulation does incur a cost to business, often those are costs that have been externalized to the rest of society, such as disposing of waste and toxic byproducts, maintaining safety standards, disproportionate wear and tear on public infrastructure, even fraud or criminal activities. -There is little to no empirical evidence that reducing taxes on the wealthy or corporations “trickles down” to everyone else. It’s not clear why anyone would think that is a good system to begin with. -Society has to incur the costs of extreme poverty anyway - in the form of more security, more police, more prisons, more insurance against crime and vandalism. -A system based on laissez faire free markets without any checks or regulation is inherently amoral. That is to say, it doesn’t care how a dollar is made, so long as it is made. Libertarians might argue that people will ultimately decide the morality of an enterprise through voting with their dollars instead of through their legislators. But historically, people don’t seem to give a shit where their T-shirts, iPods and food come from or how it’s made, so long as it’s cheap. Of course, the counter argument by Libertarians is always to equate any regulation with Stalinist Communism. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2018, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarian-solutions-to-poverty-do-they-make-sense/805546/139 "2018-01-02T21:18:16Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > Most of those pollution deaths are in places where the government has carved out “acceptable” levels of pollution, below which no suit can be brought against the polluters. The government fails to protect property rights and liberty is to blame? Nice try, bud. The government fails to regulate polluters, causing an increase in death and disability. What are you basing your statement on? ---
**Author:** ![D\_Anconia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@D\_Anconia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/D_Anconia)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2018, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarian-solutions-to-poverty-do-they-make-sense/805546/140 "2018-01-02T21:33:16Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > That was not my claim. I know what college and meal plans cost - I paid for my kids college. Saying that paying for food plans in college is not “behavioral” in no way says that tuition doesn’t cost more. A rational person doesn’t take out a loan to pay for necessities, such as food. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarian-solutions-to-poverty-do-they-make-sense/805546.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarian-solutions-to-poverty-do-they-make-sense/805546.md?page=8)