# Michael Lind vs. the Libertarians **URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-lind-vs-the-libertarians/663863 **Category:** Great Debates **Created:** [July 18, 2013, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-lind-vs-the-libertarians/663863 "2013-07-18T17:06:54Z") **Posts on this page:** 20 **Page:** 1
### Author: ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton) #### Post date: [July 18, 2013, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-lind-vs-the-libertarians/663863/1 "2013-07-18T17:06:54Z")
For some reason only Free Men can understand there has been a proliferation of Objectivist- and Libertarian-related threads on the Dope recently . . . So I thought I’d recap this little global-thermonuclear kerfuffle that het up the Intertubes last month. Commentator [Michael Lind](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Lind) – former _National Review_ editor, known as an apostate from the conservative movement, now works for the [New America Foundation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_America_Foundation) – fired the [opening salvo](http://www.salon.com/2013/06/04/the_question_libertarians_just_cant_answer/): > [@](#): > > Tuesday, Jun 4, 2013 12:17 PM EDT > > **The question libertarians just can’t answer > If your approach is so great, why hasn’t any country anywhere in the world ever tried it?** > > By Michael Lind > > Why are there no libertarian countries? If libertarians are correct in claiming that they understand how best to organize a modern society, how is it that not a single country in the world in the early twenty-first century is organized along libertarian lines? > > It’s not as though there were a shortage of countries to experiment with libertarianism. There are 193 sovereign state members of the United Nations—195, if you count the Vatican and Palestine, which have been granted observer status by the world organization. If libertarianism was a good idea, wouldn’t at least one country have tried it? Wouldn’t there be at least one country, out of nearly two hundred, with minimal government, free trade, open borders, decriminalized drugs, no welfare state and no public education system? > > When you ask libertarians if they can point to a libertarian country, you are likely to get a baffled look, followed, in a few moments, by something like this reply: While there is no purely libertarian country, there are countries which have pursued policies of which libertarians would approve: Chile, with its experiment in privatized Social Security, for example, and Sweden, a big-government nation which, however, gives a role to vouchers in schooling. > > But this isn’t an adequate response. Libertarian theorists have the luxury of mixing and matching policies to create an imaginary utopia. A real country must function simultaneously in different realms—defense and the economy, law enforcement and some kind of system of support for the poor. Being able to point to one truly libertarian country would provide at least some evidence that libertarianism can work in the real world. > > Some political philosophies pass this test. For much of the global center-left, the ideal for several generations has been Nordic social democracy—what the late liberal economist Robert Heilbroner described as “a slightly idealized Sweden.” Other political philosophies pass the test, even if their exemplars flunk other tests. Until a few decades ago, supporters of communism in the West could point to the Soviet Union and other Marxist-Leninist dictatorships as examples of “really-existing socialism.” They argued that, while communist regimes fell short in the areas of democracy and civil rights, they proved that socialism can succeed in a large-scale modern industrial society. > > While the liberal welfare-state left, with its Scandinavian role models, remains a vital force in world politics, the pro-communist left has been discredited by the failure of the Marxist-Leninist countries it held up as imperfect but genuine models. Libertarians have often proclaimed that the economic failure of Marxism-Leninism discredits not only all forms of socialism but also moderate social-democratic liberalism. > > But think about this for a moment. If socialism is discredited by the failure of communist regimes in the real world, why isn’t libertarianism discredited by the absence of any libertarian regimes in the real world? Communism was tried and failed. Libertarianism has never even been tried on the scale of a modern nation-state, even a small one, anywhere in the world. The publication of which apparently was the political-intellectual equivalent of dropping a bacon-greased cat into a dog show. One response from [Reason.com](http://reason.com/archives/2013/06/07/michael-linds-obtuse-attack-on-liberty-a): > [@](#): > > One can imagine a bewigged intellectual ancestor of Lind discussing politics in a London coffeehouse, perhaps after enjoying a new performance of Wycherley’s bawdy comedy The Country Wife. This 17th-century Lind would inveigh against the presumptuous Earl of Shaftesbury for his “A Letter from a Person of Quality” opposing the divine right of kings to absolute rule. “Thank God that good King Charles II has been restored to the throne!” he would say. “Look across the world. History manifestly teaches that there have been no truly successful countries that were not ruled by absolute monarchs.” From [_The Economist_](http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2013/06/libertarianism-and-experiment): > [@](#): > > IF WOMEN’S suffrage is such a great idea, why hasn’t anyone tried it? If the Westphalian nation-state is so brilliant, why don’t we see any amidst all these empires and principalities? If social insurance is so damn smart, why didn’t anyone think of it before? Obviously, this is a silly, fallacious pattern of argument. Every good idea was at one point untried. . . . > > \ > > One doesn’t have to be fond of libertarianism to imagine perfectly sound answers. When I was a libertarian, I might have said that there are no libertarian countries because too few people have been persuaded to become libertarians, just as at one point in our history too few men had been persuaded to support women’s suffrage. When enough have been persuaded, it will be tried. But there are many other reasonable answers. How about: all habitable terrestrial real estate is already controlled by entrenched modern nation-states, the interests of which are directly threatened by the principles of libertarian government. If a colonisable “frontier” existed, libertarian government would be tried. Something like this is the thinking behind the movement to build artificial islands, or “seasteads”, upon which to try libertarianism and other experiments in political organisation. > > \ > > Now, it’s interesting to note that many political philosophers argue that the point of political philosophy is to articulate a theoretical ideal, an abstract lodestar by which to steer deliberation and reform. To advocates of so-called “ideal theory”, questions of empirical feasibility are of limited relevance. The late G.A. Cohen famously argued that socialism is “intrinsically desirable”, which we discover through philosophical reflection, even if we find that it is empirically infeasible. The impracticability of the ideal simply means we shouldn’t try to realise it in its pure form. Of course, an ideal-theorising libertarian can go the same route and argue that the examination of thought experiments reveals the intrinsic desirability of libertarianism, empiricism be damned. Ultimately, this sort of theorising produces nothing but dogmatic table-pounding and sometimes amusing expressions of incredulity. We should leave this sort of thing to the schoolmen and the benighted apprentices. And from [Ben Domenech at RealClearPolitics:](http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/06/06/three_challenges_to_libertarian_populism_118709.html) > [@](#): > > And then there is the issue of terminology. I’d like to quote from a reaction to this by one of the key figures writing along these lines, Robert Tracinski (if you view Thomas Sowell as the id of libertarian populism, Tracinski is the superego). “I agree that asking, “So what is your plan to run this giant, bloated big government apparatus?” misses the point. It reminds me of an odd challenge from Michael Lind at Salon, who argues that libertarianism is not a credible political philosophy because we can’t name any countries that have adopted it. It is a challenge that is not quite honest (Lind rejects on ad hoc grounds a number of examples of countries with much smaller governments) and also astonishingly ignorant of history. The libertarian utopia, or the closest we’ve come to it, is America itself, up to about 100 years ago. It was a country with no income tax and no central bank. (It was on the gold standard, for crying out loud. You can’t get more libertarian than that.) It had few economic regulations and was still in the Lochner era, when such regulations were routinely struck down by the Supreme Court. There was no federal welfare state, no Social Security, no Medicare.” [Lind’s rejoinder:](http://www.salon.com/2013/06/11/libertarians_still_a_cult/) > [@](#): > > Tuesday, Jun 11, 2013 03:57 PM EDT > > \*\*Libertarians: Still a cult > Simply note libertarianism’s fatal flaw and you’ll get an enraged, hysterical response. They still don’t get it \*\* > > By Michael Lind > > My previous Salon essay, in which I asked why there are not any libertarian countries, if libertarianism is a sound political philosophy, has infuriated members of the tiny but noisy libertarian sect, as criticisms of cults by outsiders usually do. The weak logic and bad scholarship that suffuse libertarian responses to my article tend to reinforce me in my view that, if they were not paid so well to churn out anti-government propaganda by plutocrats like the Koch brothers and various self-interested corporations, libertarians would play no greater role in public debate than do the followers of Lyndon LaRouche or L. Ron Hubbard. > > An unscientific survey of the blogosphere turns up a number of libertarians claiming in response to my essay that, because libertarianism is anti-statist, to ask for an example of a real-world libertarian state shows a failure to understand libertarianism. **But if the libertarian ideal is a stateless society, then libertarianism is merely a different name for utopian anarchism and deserves to be similarly ignored.** > > \ > > For its part, the U.S. between Lincoln and FDR was hardly laissez-faire. Ever since colonial times, states had engaged in public poor relief and sometimes created public hospitals and asylums. Tracinski to the contrary, there were also two massive federal welfare programs before the New Deal: the Homestead Act, a colossal redistribution of government land to farmers, and generous pension benefits for Union veterans of the Civil War and their families. Much earlier, the 1798 act that taxed sailors to fund a small system of government-run sailors’ hospitals was supported by Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton alike. > > \ > > Calvin Coolidge, the subject of a hero-worshiping new biography by the libertarian conservative Amity Shlaes, defended both high tariffs and restrictive immigration. Here is an excerpt from President Coolidge’s second annual address in 1924: > > > [@](#): > > > > Two very important policies have been adopted by this country which, while extending their benefits also in other directions, have been of the utmost importance to the wage earners. One of these is the protective tariff, which enables our people to live according to a better standard and receive a better rate of compensation than any people, any time, anywhere on earth, ever enjoyed. This saves the American market for the products of the American workmen. The other is a policy of more recent origin and seeks to shield our wage earners from the disastrous competition of a great influx of foreign peoples. This has been done by the restrictive immigration law. This saves the American job for the American workmen. > > In 1921 then vice-president Coolidge wrote an article entitled “Whose Country is This?” in Good Housekeeping, in which he declared: > > > [@](#): > > > > “Biological laws tell us that certain divergent people will not mix or blend. The Nordics propagate themselves successfully. With other races, the outcome shows deterioration on both sides.” (Amity Shlaes’s hero evidently believed racist pseudoscience about dangerous and inferior “half-breeds”). > > Protectionist, nativist paleoconservatives of the Patrick Buchanan school might have reason to idealize the U.S. as it existed between 1865 and 1932. But libertarians who want to prove that a country based on libertarian ideology can exist in the real world cannot point to the United States at any period in its history from the Founding to the present. [RealClearPolitics responded to the above](http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/06/12/michael_linds_revisionist_libertarian_smear_118787.html) but the piece focuses entirely on defending Coolidge. [Lind again:](http://www.salon.com/2013/06/13/grow_up_libertarians/) > [@](#): > > Thursday, Jun 13, 2013 11:06 AM EDT > > **Grow up, Libertarians! > Your philosophy is superficial, juvenile nonsense. Here’s what you should focus on instead > By Michael Lind** > > \ > > Wilkinson [writing in _The Economist,_ above] is confusing policies and systems. In my essay, I took care to distinguish the two. I pointed out that particular useful policies favored by libertarians can be adopted by modern countries, without fundamentally altering the dominant mixed-economy model that blends markets, government and the nonprofit sector in a compound that will always be too “statist” for libertarians. > > American progressives in the tradition of the two Roosevelts have never been doctrinaire “statists” or “socialists” and have no objection to promoting markets, where that serves the public interest. A progressive can favor privatizing the Post Office and expanding Social Security at the same time. Or vice versa (progressive arguments against Social Security privatization are based on its practical problems). I recently co-authored a proposal to use vouchers for eldercare in the U.S., without thereby becoming any less a sinister statist enemy of human freedom, from the perspective of the libertarian cult. > > You never find similar pragmatism among libertarians. They are always against any public option and always for a real or imagined private option. Libertarianism is dogmatic, not experimental. Any maverick libertarian who suggested a deviation from orthodoxy — say, expanding Medicaid, on efficiency grounds — would be expelled from the cult as a “statist” heretic. > > Bailey and Wilkinson accuse me of discouraging potentially useful social experimentation. But it’s not an experiment if you know the result in advance. Libertarians, like utopian socialists and utopian anarchists, think they already know the desirable end state of human social evolution, even if they are content to move toward that utopia incrementally. > > Most liberals would approve of the philosopher Karl Popper’s distinction between “piecemeal social engineering” and “utopian social engineering,” symbolized by the lethal attempts of Jacobins, fascists and communists to remake whole societies from scratch on the basis of this or that theory. In _The Open Society and Its Enemies,_ Popper wrote that “the piecemeal engineer will adopt the method of searching for, and fighting against, the greatest and most urgent evil of society, rather than searching for, and fighting for, its greatest ultimate good.” In some cases, fighting urgent evils requires the expansion of particular liberties, like abolishing slavery and segregation and securing the right to vote. In other cases, it requires limiting particular liberties, like the freedom of employers to buy and sell slaves, use child labor or pollute the environment. > > Libertarianism poses as a comprehensive public philosophy promoting the “greatest ultimate good” of individual freedom, not just a list of particular policies, like private toll roads instead of public highways or vouchers for schools. So it is not enough for libertarians to point to discrete measures that have been adopted by systems based on other principles, like social democratic progressivism or conservative welfare capitalism. Libertarianism as a system will be hard to take seriously until there are at least a few functioning, systematically libertarian countries in the world. So . . . which side comes off better in all this? ---
### Author: ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion) #### Post date: [July 18, 2013, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-lind-vs-the-libertarians/663863/2 "2013-07-18T17:24:28Z")
I read Lind’s essay when it was originally published and “superficial, juvenile nonsense” seems to me like a pretty good characterization of it. I don’t have time to read every rebuttal to it and every rebuttal to the rebuttals and every rebuttal to the rebuttals of rebuttals. If you want a good response to the central question that Lind poses, read Milton Friedman’s book _Free to Choose_. But for those who don’t have time to read the book, let me offer a brief explanation. Lind’s question is this: if a much smaller, less intrusive government is what’s best for the people generally, then why don’t the people vote for politicians who will give them such a thing? Why, for example, is it possible for people to get lengthy prison sentences for possessing or dealing fairly small amounts of marijuana? Is it because that’s what the people want? I’ve never seen any evidence that American’s are beating down the doors of Congress and demanding these ridiculous sentences for pot smokers. Polls show that about half the country wants pot smoking to be legal. I’d wager that among the other half, most would agree that the sentencing laws are too strict and should be reduced. And yet Congress isn’t showing any inclination to give the American people the reduced government that they want in this area. Why? Because the 535 members of Congress have no motivation to care about that. There’s an enormous amount of business that passes before Congress, an enormous number of issues that the voters cast votes based on. As a result, there are few, if any, voters who make their decision based solely on the issue of marijuana laws. As a result, Congress has virtually no motivation to reform our ridiculous marijuana laws. The “War on Drugs” grinds on, imprisoning hundreds of thousands of people for non-violent “crimes”, and nobody real cares. Now: Does Mr. Lind think that this is a good thing? We haven’t, in the past few generations, tried making marijuana legal? Does it logically follow that wanting it to be legal is “superficial, juvenile nonsense”? ---
### Author: ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton) #### Post date: [July 18, 2013, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-lind-vs-the-libertarians/663863/3 "2013-07-18T17:28:35Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Now: Does Mr. Lind think that this is a good thing? We haven’t, in the past few generations, tried making marijuana legal? Does it logically follow that wanting it to be legal is “superficial, juvenile nonsense”? What a fatuous nonsequitur! Lind himself is famously open-minded to social/political experiments, but that’s “piecemeal reform” – read for comprehension! ---
### Author: ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion) #### Post date: [July 18, 2013, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-lind-vs-the-libertarians/663863/4 "2013-07-18T17:39:58Z")
> [@](#): > > What a fatuous nonsequitur! Lind himself is famously open-minded to social/political experiments, but that’s “piecemeal reform” But I don’t see any Congressmen who want to give us this “piecemeal reform”. We currently have a government that’s so big and unresponsive that on most issues, we can’t even get extremely piecemeal reform. We’ve just given up on getting any reform at all. Obviously the issue of marijuana laws is only one of a great many possible examples. Do the American people actually want a law saying that gasoline must include corn ethanol? Do the American people actually want tariffs on countless agricultural items which make food prices much higher? Do the American people actually want military pork projects that spends countless billions on artillery items, airplanes, submarines and so forth that will never actually be used in any military action? Or do we continue getting these things because the government has grown so large that controlling it through the democratic process is impossible? If Lind’s argument is based solely on the claim that “Libertarianism is dogmatic, not experimental” then he’s wrong. I’m a libertarian, and I’ll take whatever movement towards a smaller and less intrusive government I can get. I am happy that some states have legalized medical marijuana and a few have even legalized it generally. However, the big federal government that Lind favors is doing whatever it can to squish such “experiments”. This is an example of how, once you have a massive and uncontrollable federal government, “experiment” becomes impossible, or at least extremely difficult. ---
### Author: ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton) #### Post date: [July 18, 2013, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-lind-vs-the-libertarians/663863/5 "2013-07-18T17:42:47Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > However, the big federal government that Lind favors is doing whatever it can to squish such “experiments”. This is an example of how, once you have a massive and uncontrollable federal government, “experiment” becomes impossible, or at least extremely difficult. Or perhaps the big federal government ain’t doin’ nuttin’ to squish nuttin’, and the lack of action on matters of concern to you is attributable to the lack of any real on-the-ground political pressure for change in a libertarian direction. I.e., perhaps your POV simply is not as popular as you think it is, and your movement is not oppressed or suppressed or outwitted or outspent but simply irrelevant, like the Communists. ---
### Author: ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion) #### Post date: [July 18, 2013, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-lind-vs-the-libertarians/663863/6 "2013-07-18T17:47:44Z")
When people are asked in polls, or in state level referendums, whether they want less intrusive marijuana laws, they almost always say yes. We know what the American people want. The federal government simply doesn’t give them what they want because the federal government is not responsive to what the people want. If you say that the federal government isn’t giving us the marijuana laws that we want because of “the lack of any real on-the-ground political pressure for change in a libertarian direction”, that would be in total agreement with what I wrote in my first post. By the way, do you have any sympathy for the huge number of people whose lives have been ruined by marijuana laws? ---
### Author: ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman) #### Post date: [July 18, 2013, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-lind-vs-the-libertarians/663863/7 "2013-07-18T17:49:52Z")
I agree on Lind’s conclusion, but his opening salvo is poorly argued. It’s a classic rhetorical fallacy to say, “If things would be better if we had “x,” then we would have had “x” already.” The more salient and convincing points are that the United States once had many features of a libertarian state, and it resulted in a whole raft of bad things happening; now that the country is less libertarian, we’re way better off. (Of course, that argument relies on facts and objective measurements of how the country is better now, and robs libertarians of their most powerful argument: which is the romanticized idea that we can all be rich, attractive, well-armed, low-taxed, freedom lovin’ cowboys if it weren’t for them darn statists.) ---
### Author: ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton) #### Post date: [July 18, 2013, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-lind-vs-the-libertarians/663863/8 "2013-07-18T17:54:38Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > When people are asked in polls, or in state level referendums, whether they want less intrusive marijuana laws, they almost always say yes. And yet it’s almost always **close.** Remember that the referendum in CA failed before it passed, and both times against some pretty zealous opposition, I understand. And the burden of movement is always on those who would change the status quo. > [@ITR\_champion](#): > > By the way, do you have any sympathy for the huge number of people whose lives have been ruined by marijuana laws? Absolutely, but a case for this or that item on the Libertarian agend is no case for Libertarianism as such or in general. ---
### Author: ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian) #### Post date: [July 18, 2013, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-lind-vs-the-libertarians/663863/9 "2013-07-18T18:12:45Z")
I sympathize with Lind. Libertarians are a pain in the ass target, because almost no matter what argument you throw at them, they find a way to dodge and say some combination of: [ol] [li]“No Libertarian I know believes that.”[/li][li]“Real Libertarians don’t think that way.”[/li][li]“Nope, that’s not it.”[/li][li]“You’re just hating on Libertarians.”[/li][/ol] They never, ever, ever give a straight and fact-founded answer to a straight question. At best they reply in sweeping vagueness or code words you’re supposed to agree with; if you press for supporting answers, you’re back to square one. I didn’t start out anti-Libertarian. I got my 'tude one brushstroke at a time. My professional field for many years was a-swim with Libs and libertarian sentiments, about which I had only vague and not-unpositive feelings. My closest long-time colleague, whose specific political leanings are still murky to me, has attended formal Libertarian organization meetings once a week for decades. I many times attempted to have a rational conversation with him or any of the other big-L’s in the crowd. My politics are pragmatic; I don’t care as much about the underlying ideology as how a given system will deal with real-world issues. So instead of arguing lofty political theology against lofty political idealism in some sort of isolated vacuum in a universe free of human taint, I’d ask mean questions about how a Libertarian government would handle… garbage collection. Or public roads. Or public schools. Or any other topic then in the news as being problematic and not being handled well by our present government. If I ever got a clear, complete answer that stood firmly in Libertarian beliefs and addressed the question and presented a workable alternative… I don’t recall it. Not in some 25 years or more. It was always vague idealistic sweeps, or cryptic code words, or some form of blow-off. Not only that, but I can’t think of a self-designated Libertarian (including some very long-time acquaintances and friends) whose politics I have the slightest respect for; they seem to have constructed their notions from equal parts selfishness, ignorance and willful determination to ignore reality. So I wade in to the perpetual discussions from time to time, hoping to pin a self-designated Libertarian down on a single concrete answer to a common issue, and after a while the tears of boredom assert themselves and I move back to important topics for a while. ---
### Author: ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton) #### Post date: [July 18, 2013, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-lind-vs-the-libertarians/663863/10 "2013-07-18T18:16:20Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > The more salient and convincing points are that the United States once had many features of a libertarian state, and it resulted in a whole raft of bad things happening; now that the country is less libertarian, we’re way better off. Lind does address that; and part of his argument is that pre-New-Deal or pre-Fed America actually was **not** so libertarian as Libertarians insist it was, never since the beginning. (And another part is your argument, that insofar as it was libertarian it was in many ways not admirable/successful.) ---
### Author: ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty) #### Post date: [July 18, 2013, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-lind-vs-the-libertarians/663863/11 "2013-07-18T18:20:39Z")
Once again, people distort the facts about what libertarians is and then present mostly invalid arguments against it. In short, they are strawman arguments. Libertarianism is a political philosophy first and foremost. It only has two central, simple tenets that people still manage to get completely wrong much of the time. They are: 1. Maximum freedom at the individual level is a goal that should be pursued for its own sake. 2. Individuals should be able to exercise those freedoms without coercion. Libertarians are not anarchists. In fact, libertarians believe in a strong government but one that is limited in its roles. Libertarianism does not dictate any particular economic system and it isn’t philosophically associated with any particular form. People would be free to form their own communes in a libertarian society if they wanted to for example. Addressing the referenced article, the author misses the point completely. Libertarianism is a philosophical _ideal_ and an axis on the political spectrum. It’s opposite is authoritarianism. We don’t have countries that call themselves ‘libertarian’ for the same reason that we don’t have any that call themselves ‘Authoritarian’ as a title. You can only have a tendency in one direction or the other. There isn’t a way for an honest country to declare itself ‘Libertarian!’ because it is an ideal that can never be fully achieved. That doesn’t mean that some countries are not a lot more libertarian than others however. The U.S. for example would rank moderately overall on general libertarian measures while North Korea would measure almost completely authoritarian. A few other countries like Ireland and Switzerland would probably rank higher than the U.S. on libertarian measures overall. Libertarians as individuals simply want to move towards a general tendency of more individual freedoms over time. There is almost never any talk of having a libertarian revolution to create a Libertopia like its detractors like to throw out as another invalid assumption. It is quite different in other philosophies like Communism that people sometimes like to compare it to. Communism is technically a general philosophy but it also represents an entire social and economic structure plus specific predictions about what it will lead to. Libertarianism is none of that. Maximizing individual freedom is itself the goal and it makes no specific predictions about what that will lead to economically or even socially. ---
### Author: ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton) #### Post date: [July 18, 2013, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-lind-vs-the-libertarians/663863/12 "2013-07-18T18:37:30Z")
> [@Shagnasty](#): > > Addressing the referenced article, the author misses the point completely. Libertarianism is a philosophical _ideal_ and an axis on the political spectrum. No, sir, it is a **movement,** one purporting to have an actual policy-agenda. ---
### Author: ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm) #### Post date: [July 18, 2013, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-lind-vs-the-libertarians/663863/13 "2013-07-18T18:42:21Z")
> [@Shagnasty](#): > > It only has two central, simple tenets that people still manage to get completely wrong much of the time. > > They are: > > 1. Maximum freedom at the individual level is a goal that should be pursued for its own sake. > 2. Individuals should be able to exercise those freedoms without coercion. And without comprehensive definitions of, and knowledgeable research for the words “Freedom” and “Coercion” those two tenets can mean anything you want them to mean. It is when non-libertarians try to get to the heart of the matter that things get fuzzy. ---
### Author: ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty) #### Post date: [July 18, 2013, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-lind-vs-the-libertarians/663863/14 "2013-07-18T18:44:25Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > No, sir, it is a **movement,** one purporting to have an actual policy-agenda. No, there is a political party called the ‘Libertarian’ party but it has been around for decades and consist mostly of a bunch of nut jobs who are at the fringes. The general philosophy is just small-l libertarian and has a whole lot more adherents. > **[The Political Compass](https://www.politicalcompass.org/)** > > A typology of political opinions plotted on 2 dimensions: economic and social. One real reason why you won’t see any large scale, rapid libertarian reforms is that libertarians do not organize among themsleves easily almost by definition. It is an individual focused philosophy rather than a collectivist one and that is a big disadvantage in large-scale political battles. ---
### Author: ![Werekoala](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/7993a0/32.png) [@Werekoala](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Werekoala) #### Post date: [July 18, 2013, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-lind-vs-the-libertarians/663863/15 "2013-07-18T18:47:57Z")
Why hasn’t any country adopted Libertarianism? Simple - the people in charge of (pick a country) would stand to lose the most if they did. Short of a coup (which Libertarians would for the most part be against on principal), I can’t think of any other form of government that would willingly divest itself of power. Wait, was I supposed to be frothing at the mouth when I said that? Sorry. ---
### Author: ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty) #### Post date: [July 18, 2013, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-lind-vs-the-libertarians/663863/16 "2013-07-18T18:53:16Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > And without comprehensive definitions of, and knowledgeable research for the words “Freedom” and “Coercion” those two tenets can mean anything you want them to mean. It is when non-libertarians try to get to the heart of the matter that things get fuzzy. I realize that there are competing definitions of freedom and coercion among different political philosophies and that is probably a big reason people with other philosophies get frustrated and misunderstand so much. They are using the same words but different definitions. I am using the libertarian ones. We will probably hijack this thread if we try to nail down those definitions here but there is a specific framework for them in libertarian terms. I think this communication issue is similar to a Christian talking to a Buddhist or even a Jew for the first time. They use some common themes and terms but it will be an exercise in frustration if they try to discuss the details without recognizing that their whole conceptual framework isn’t the same at all. ---
### Author: ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast) #### Post date: [July 18, 2013, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-lind-vs-the-libertarians/663863/17 "2013-07-18T18:59:02Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > My politics are pragmatic; I don’t care as much about the underlying ideology as how a given system will deal with real-world issues. So instead of arguing lofty political theology against lofty political idealism in some sort of isolated vacuum in a universe free of human taint, I’d ask mean questions about how a Libertarian government would handle… garbage collection. Or public roads. Or public schools. Or any other topic then in the news as being problematic and not being handled well by our present government. This is the best approach and I wish more people took it. Unfortunately, most people seem to take the labels “conservative”, “liberal”, “libertarian”, “Republican”, “Democratic”, etc as tribal flags to rally for or against. I don’t care whose side someone is on, I care about how they’ll try to solve a particular problem. ---
### Author: ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole) #### Post date: [July 18, 2013, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-lind-vs-the-libertarians/663863/18 "2013-07-18T19:12:31Z")
> [@Shagnasty](#): > > I realize that there are competing definitions of freedom and coercion among different political philosophies and that is probably a big reason people with other philosophies get frustrated and misunderstand so much. They are using the same words but different definitions. I am using the libertarian ones. I do not think the libertarians have one. Therein lies the frustration felt by **Amateur Barbarian** and me when trying to get a handle on what a self proclaimed libertarian is proposing. It is why when you do try to get them to stake a claim you tend to get the vagueness and code words and stuff that they “just know is true”. One I just got today, “Do you want to spend your money or the government to spend it for you?” Err… Libertarianism is attractive to so many because most people have been thwarted to some degree or another by government bureaucracy. The problem is it is different for everyone. One libertarian might be mad that they can’t get zoning on their land to open a nightly carnival because his neighbors object. It is HIS land to do as HE pleases with it and government is getting in his way! Somewhere else someone might be mad that their neighbor did get zoning to have a nightly carnival on their land and now their property value has gone in the crapper. Society is a balancing of rights between people and so “maximizing” freedom is a slippery if impossible target to aim for. Is “maximum” freedom when you can fire your employees for any reason whatsoever or is it “maximum” freedom for employees to be protected from arbitrary (or discriminatory) employers? When you apply a libertarian mindset to government but have 350 million people with different opinions on what is needed you get something that looks a lot like what we have today. In short Libertopia is a fantasy. A pipe dream. It does not exist because it cannot exist on anything like a large scale. If someone built Libertopia today it would quickly slide away from anything approaching libertarian ideals. ---
### Author: ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton) #### Post date: [July 18, 2013, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-lind-vs-the-libertarians/663863/19 "2013-07-18T19:38:18Z")
Of course, a lot depends on the [type](http://www.tradersnarrative.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/24%20types%20of%20libertarians.gif). ---
### Author: ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton) #### Post date: [July 18, 2013, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-lind-vs-the-libertarians/663863/20 "2013-07-18T19:41:08Z")
> [@Shagnasty](#): > > One real reason why you won’t see any large scale, rapid libertarian reforms is that libertarians do not organize among themsleves easily almost by definition. No, no, no, you are thinking of anarchists. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/michael-lind-vs-the-libertarians/663863.md?page=2)