But do you believe in liberalizing foreign markets for the purposes of free trade?
Phil, I didn’t mean to come across as condescending. You just have to realize that your philosophy is impossibly utopian if it cannot be reasonably extrapolated from the current context. I’m not asking you for a vision of a libertarian society that is exactly like our own–what I am asking is whether or not, given the state of the world as it is right now, a truly libertarian society could plausibly be derived from within the borders of what is, at the moment, the most powerful and influential nation on earth.
Given that, you’re begging the question by asking me to shed my nation-state paradigm. Like it or not, we’re in a nation-state paradigm right now–and if the United States adopts libertarian principles (whether or not those principles cause this nation-state to dissolve), the rest of the world will still be in a nation-state paradigm. You’ve got to deal with that, like it or not, because we don’t just get to start over with the society of our choice. Tell me how to get from here to there.
In my opinion, ill-informed as it probably is, no. Would I prefer it if it could? Yes. Would I prefer even incremental changes over what we have now? Yes. (Sorry, Lib.)
I appreciate your candor. Could you, then–and I’m not being glib–simply substitute, in each of my inquiries on this thread, the phrase “a society moving incrementally towards libertarianism” for “a libertarian society?” I’m still interested in what, to you, would be policy directions or institutional frameworks consistent with libertarian thought.
For example, what do you believe to be the proper place of an increasingly libertarian society in the sphere of world trade? Given the power to do so, should this society work to deregulate foreign markets so that its own markets may more smoothly function? Or can the external imposition of deregulation on an otherwise closed economy be construed as the initiation of force? Do you see value in organizations like the IMF and the WTO, which work in the name of freer trade, or do you believe them to be instruments of regulation themselves?
Please feel free to answer any of the other questions I’ve had about a society moving incrementally towards libertarianism in this vein, as well.
Phil: what “state”? The one you keep saying will punish corecion that takes place within its borders. You tell me what state, if you’re making claims about libertarianism.
And if there is no state, how will a corporation that uses dishonest or coercive means to drive out competition, drive up prices, or drive down wages, be punished?
RTFirefly: If I were dictator for life, there would be no “capital crimes.” I am so strenuously opposed to capital punishment that it isn’t even funny. I find it an affront to human dignity.
As far as “what state” and “its borders,” I’ll ask you the same question I asked Gadarene–Do you want me to answer with respect to a Libertarian society that is not a nation state and does not have a government that claims eminent domain over your property, or do you want me to answer with respect to the United States of America?
As far as corporations, a Libertarian government does not recognize or protect legal fictions like corporations; it protects the rights of people. You will therefore find that Libertarians, or at least I, am in agreement with you that the legal “personhood” of corporations should be eliminated. As such, the owners of the corporations will be the ones held responsible for initiating force and fraud.
No, I am not a Libertarian. I tend to have libertarian beliefs on numerous issues, but I could never join the Libertarian Party, for several reasons (not least of which is the absurdly high whacko percentage in the party).
Bottom line is, I agree with James Madison, who said: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. And if angels were to rule over men, no constraints upon government would be necessary.” But, as Madison understood (and Libertarians don’t), designing a government that can control people without growing too large and too intrusive is tricky!
I happen to believe in the free market, for the most part. But even in a free market, people have to play by the same rules. Without rules, a free market can’t work. Look at Russia today, and you’ll see what happens when the free market is turned loose on a society with no institutions, no rules, no laws, and no authorities equipped to keep things running smoothly.
Who’s going to set those rules and enforce them? Like it or not, it has to be SOME kind of government.
Unless you want a return to the barter system, you need some medium of exchange, and that’s almost CERTAINLY going to be money, provided and backed by a trustworthy, stable central government.
I happen to agree with Irving Kristol, whose greatest book was entitled “Two Cheers for Capitalism.” Not three, two. Because it’s the best of all possible systems, but hardly utopian.
OK, I will do what I can to address some of the myriad issues that are being discussed. First, when I commented about principle not being held in high regard, I was in no way insinuating that I had a low opinion of the American electorate. However, I don’t quite trust them to be able to make decisions for me better than I can.
Personally, I see it as an improvement for the United States to exist as an entity devoted solely to the protection of its citizens from force and fraud. This is what I’m working towards. The eventual transition to separate voluntary entities to do this will hopefully follow. Along the lines of keeping the United States in existence and developing libertarian policies, I offer the following:
Foreign Trade: No restrictions on foreign trade. No tariffs. The United States may use its power to do what it can to decrease restrictions abroad on American products. No money shall be leant to the IMF. The United States shall not be part of any organization that attempts to regulate trade. It shall work on its own to promote free trade.
Immigration: No quotas on immigration. Anyone entering the country for honest reasons is allowed to do so with only a cursory check-in. There shall be no immigration policy, as the government does not have the rght to arbitrarily decree whom it shall allow within its borders.
Capital Punishment: Last I checked, the Libertarian Party favored capital punishment under a few conditions. Personally, I am against it in all cases except for killing police officers. I believe that questions of how exactly the prohibition against force and fraud is applied are the proper role of the government. Thus, the question is up to Congress and the states.
The curious thing about free trade is that we benefit from removing tariffs even if our trading partners won’t lower theirs. I’ve always hated the argument used by nationalists that we need tariffs to defend ourselves against our predatory neighbors. The Buchananesque notion of ‘fair trade’ instead of ‘free trade’ is just a smokescreen used to keep those nasty foreigners out.
Consider foreign trade as a black box: We ship raw steel to Japan, and they sell us cars. If those cars are cheaper or better than what we can make, we benefit just as if Japan was a black box that we put steel into and cars come out the other end.
If Japan ‘dumps’ cars on us by subsidizing their manufacturers, GREAT! They are taxing themselves to provide a benefit to us. If they put tariffs on our steel so that we can’t get as many cars back, it hurts us but we’re still better off than if we didn’t trade with them at all, unless the tariffs are so high that their market essentially closes to us. That would be too bad, but it’s no worse than if Japan didn’t exist at all.
But what about the ‘trade deficit’? Surely that’s a bad thing? Nope. First of all, there can be no overall trade deficit. If we buy more Japanese goods than Japanese buy American goods, we have a trade deficit, but Japan has an American Dollar Glut. They can only two one of three things with those dollars - sell them on the international currency markets, hoard them, or buy U.S. goods, services, or real estate. For a while the Japanese were doing the latter, buying up real estate like crazy in the U.S. Remember all the fearmongering about how the Japanese were taking over? The nationalists were screaming that Japanese were buying up important landmarks, infrastructure, etc.
Well, guess what? There are no free lunches. The Japanese by and large took a BATH on that real estate, in many cases selling it back to U.S. citizens for pennies on the dollar. The U.S. and Canada as a whole made out like bandits on the last round of trade deficits - we traded products for cash, the Japanese used the cash to make bad land deals, and we bought it back at a discount. Yee-haw.
So open up your markets, let your people be free to trade with whoever they want (excepting national security concerns), and you’ll be much wealthier in the end.
Given that you’re a reasonably wealthy country to begin with, of course. Again, I invite y’all to check out Friedrich List–his view of economic nationalism is pretty intriguing. I’ll quote from a previous post I made about List:
List was a 19th century economist who argued for a sort of graduated capitalism for developing countries. He said:
From an article about List by Michael Lind:
Today, the IMF forces indebted, developing countries to develop a neoliberal economic model, striking down protectionist policies so that outside investors can have full access to the countries’ markets (and their labor, and their resources).
waterj2, though you’re against involvement with the IMF, you seem to favor these sorts of policies as pursued by the United States on its own. List would oppose it whole cloth, on the grounds that it isn’t a mutually beneficial transaction; he’d say that poorer countries should be allowed to progress naturally from protectionism to open markets.
Such external intervention is a vicious circle, of course: the debts incurred by these countries invite outside revision of domestic policy, stripping the infrastructure of most services not essential to debt repayment (including education and public works) and converting the economy from high-import to high-export at the expense of surplus subsistence crops. So the debt spirals higher, the country expends all its resources paying off the interest rather than bolstering its own economy, and further outside ‘assistance’ is required. There goes sovereignty, and there goes development.
Basically, it boils down to this: List says (and history seems to corroborate) that sometimes a protectionist economy is necessary in order to foster national development. The IMF–and the push for globalization in general–disallows protectionist economies in indebted countries; therefore, the development of these countries is stunted, to the benefit of outside parties and the institutional elite within the country.
So (bringing it back on topic) not only is it beneficial to remove your own tariffs even if the other guy is keeping his, in certain circumstances it’s beneficial to be the other guy, and operate a relatively closed economy till you’re ready to come out and play.
My take on that is that List is nuts. Free trade benefits the poorest countries even more than it does the richest countries. Our attempts to ‘protect’ poor countries by trying to stop ‘sweatshops’ or prevent cheap goods made in these countries from entering our country do the most damage to the people of those countries.
Free Trade is possibly the area where economists are in almost universal agreement. Even left-wing economists generally agree that free trade improves wealth in all participating countries.
It’s also the most flagrant example of public perception and political rhetoric being completely at odds with economic theory.
Read some David Ricardo, particularly the Theory of Comparative Advantage.
This is exactly what we have been asking for, these last few threads. And no answer. But I am so happy you have decieded to do this, and I eagerly await it.
Remember to include the following: How a new “constitution” is passed, and who gets to “vote” for it. What happens if someone does NOT want to accept the “contract”. Does that noncontractor have any rights at all, including that of protection from “coercion”, ie can any citizen just shoot him down in the street, or make him a slave. Contrariwaise, those who have not signed the contract, and “coerce” others- can you punish them, if you have no authority over them. What form of gov’t, and who decides how laws are passed. Who enforces said laws. How is the national defense done. Who pays for this, and how do you collect. What is done about bad parents who refuse to educate their kids, or can’t afford to, and what is done about those kids once they grow up. Who pays for the roads, the rails, etc, and how are the collections done. What happens about a monopoly of a critical resource. When private charities are not enuf, what is done about those who are starving.
I’ll be waiting over here, making more “straw men”, who, altho straw, still have more substance than a Libertarian Government.
Absolutely untrue, by the way. See my posts near the end of this thread for an explication of how unrestrained economic liberalization often hurts the people of less wealthy countries. I’ll expand on it if you like.
Hell, you might even read some Friedrich List yourself, without dismissing him quite so readily. Here’s a link that will get you started. This is List’s definitive book, on Amazon.com. Here’s another really good link for some of List’s own words.
In short, your post is patently absurd. Try again.
Whoops, hit ‘Submit’ prematurely. I found what looks to be the complete text of List’s book, The National System of Political Economy. It can be found right here.
Okay, I guess some leftists disagree on free trade. Especially esteemed economists like William Grieder, a journalist for Rolling Stone Magazine, Lester Thurow, and those bastions of non-politicized economics like the Economic Policy Institute, the Global Policy Network (a protectionist mouthpiece funded by trade unions), and FAIR. There are a couple of actual economists in there, but it looks like you had to dig pretty deep down into the barrel to find some people that support your viewpoint. The only economist of any stature you found to support your view is Galbraith, and he’s always been an extreme defender of the state in all its forms.
If you’d like, I can provide a nice long list of Nobel Prize-winning economists who flatly disagree with these people.
Let me re-phrase: Almost all classical economists agree on the desirability of Free Trade. Even List did, although he wrapped it around a lot of mumbo-jumbo about monopoly power of developed countries and the need to have a giant pile of regulations to help ‘lift up’ the poorer countries to the point where they can benefit from free trade.
And, if you like, I can give you a “set up”. A billionaire Philanthropist has deceided to give Libertarianism a try. So, he goes to Papua New Guinea, and buys off their rights to the island of Bouganville; population> 156,000, no industry, no infrastructure but a few roads and a power plant, and one big source of income- a copper mine, which is cosidered by many to be an ecological disaster, but is very valuable. An Australian co owns the other half of the mine, “your” gov’t, the other half. There are insurgents in the hills, and the mine is currently shut down because of these. You are also left with an 'army" of some very highly paid mercs, who are very good at what they do, but unpopular. They are paid for one more year (they want some 15 million a year, note). There is also a “militia” and those insurgants. There is a very real possibility of PNG retaking the island some day, after the “bribe” wears off, and the Solomans also would like their hands on it. Not to mention the Aussies, who would like their copper. Or, those mercs, who might decide to take things into their own hands, if not paid.
The good news: tired of all the strife, “your” govt got some 70% of the pop to say “go ahead”, and other than those insurgants, no real internal opposition. You also have a million bucks in the treasury. There is no “tax” system, to speak of, anyway, so you don’t have to dismantle one. Other than a few “govt” building, some roads, a small power plant, and 1/2 a very valuable copper mine (some 15 mill a year, your share) , you have no other assets.
Incidentally, this is based on reality, and could happen. So, you wanna try this on for size? Or do you want to make up another 'ideal" country? Or, just not bother?
Again citing the Friedmans in Free to Choose, Japan was a poor country at the time it was opened to foreign trade. After it was opened, an international treaty set Japan’s tariffs to a maximum of 5%. They don’t get into too much detail, but generally make the case that Japan, like Hong Kong, had very little “protection” with regard to international trade. Both have increased their lot in the world substantially without the help of “protection”.
What country in recent years has become wealthy due to having the sort of protection you advocate? I would say that even the United States would have found its early protectionist tariffs disadvantageous had it not been so blessed with natural resources.
OK, Phil, we agree on that. But where’s there any sort of guarantee that a Libertarian thingummy will take issues of life and death outside the market? There is none.
Answer it any way you like. I don’t expect a libertarian ‘whatever - you tell me’ to do what the USA does now; I figure one of the points of libertarianism is that it wants to be very different. But there’s two claims I hear from libertarianism: (1) that a libertarian thingamabobby will be oh so much better than what we have now, which is why we should change to a libertarian system, and (implicitly) (2) that the libertarian whoozamawhatsis can survive in the real world.
With respect to survivability, there has to be some ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ to a libertarian entity, based on its own claims of minimal intent - an ‘inside’ within which it prevents or punishes coercion between persons or other entities (and just because you don’t believe in corporations, doesn’t mean they’ll go away), and an ‘outside’ that it stands ready to defend against if necessary.
I’ll put the same thing to you that I implicitly did to Lib last winter: if you’re not talking about a nation state, you’ve got to explain how it survives in a world of nation states, and has power to enforce the noncoercion principle. We’re still in a world where government is strongly tied to geography, and if you’re breaking those ties, the burden’s on you to explain the underlying dynamic of this entity’s functioning, and how it can survive, rather than turning into an anarchic mess that gets taken over either by its neighbors or by some warlord-type entity arising from within its midst.
And after that, we can deal with the issue of, if libertarianism will create a better world, not how it will provide the finer things that a Western democracy traditionally does, but how it prevents the most egregious injustices that Western humankind pretty much assumes are inconsistent with any reasonable definition of a place that wouldn’t give us nightmares, or how it will protect basic rights we hold sacred. (E.g. if orphans have to prostitute themselves to survive in Libertaria, then you may convince yourselves that Libertaria will still be paradise, but you’re gonna get few converts. Or ditto if rights we hold sacred, such as freedom of speech or of religion, are dependent on owning land.)
Actually, I never said what you’re agreeing with - that the legal ‘personhood’ of corporations should be eliminated.
I’m not against corporations, believe it or not. I’ll passionately argue against anyone who wants to get rid of them altogether as legal entities. They’re one of the great meta-creations of the Western world - the limitation of liability that they provide (with respect to money, at least) is responsible for tremendous quantities of innovation, risk-taking, and wealth creation that otherwise wouldn’t have happened.
What I’ve been arguing lately in various threads is that corporations’ place needs to be clearly spelled out as different from and subservient to human personhood. And, most specifically, the protections of the Bill of Rights have no business applying to them.
If some sort of limited-liability arrangement isn’t set up in a hypothetical Libertaria, it may not qualify as stealing by your definition of the noncoercion principle, but the good citizens of Libertaria will feel stolen from if it’s not there. I haven’t followed all the links that people throw up on these threads, but I’d be extremely surprised if, say, Milton Friedman was comfortable with the prospects of an economy that did away with the limited-liability corporation.
And what’s the big deal about land ownership in a Libertarian gazooga? Are we moving back to the feudal system here, or what? In an era where the connection between posession of real estate and holding of basic rights and/or political power has long since been severed, and where the connection between private land ownership and wealth creation is less than it’s ever been, WTF is the big deal about land, and what’s to be said (other than ‘gawd, how totally moronic’) about a system that makes land ownership a virtual necessity for having rights and/or power?
It’s not exactly the best time in humankind’s history to be turning land into some sort of mega-currency, effectively making it into a far more scarce commodity than it is now. It’s kinda like if we required money to be backed by gold, only worse: there wouldn’t be enough gold to go around, and every gram would be extremely valuable, but at least it wouldn’t harm the gold. The consequences to the environment of land posession being the basis of all rights would be absolutely disastrous. All in order to give landownership a completely backward and artificial role in the affairs of humankind.
Makes me think of the old guy in Love and Death, carrying a chunk of turf around in his hands and intoning, “This land is not for sale.” At least Woody Allen was being funny.
