Why do Libertarians do Poorly in General Elections?

Great Debates
101

RTFirefly:

The punishment of criminals is a legitimate function of government; such a function would not be privatized, as it were. In an ideal libertarian system, in which it was the free choice of citizens to submit to the authority of a government or not, I would not be governed by a government which used capital punishment. In our current system, I actively let my representatives know that I am opposed to it, and I vote against them if they support it.

That is the best answer I am capable of giving.

I never said this. I said people would be more free to make choices than they are now.

See my earlier response to Gadarene–in the “real world,” people want government to take care of them and solve their problems. Working from that assumption, more freedom is the last thing people want. Ergo, in our real world, yes, it’s probably undoable. Which, AFAIC, is sad.

I am not a sophisticated enough political thinker to explain any such thing, so this will probably be my last post on the topic. I know when I am out of my element. I also know I value more freedom rather than less, and a libertarian ethic is more free than others.

Of course not. Do you own your own body? Do you have the right to do what you want with your body, provided you don’t harm or infringe on the rights of others?

That’s a more accurate summary of what I’m saying.

Oh, people can enter into whatever agreements they want with each other, but a libertarian government would exist to protect the rights of human beings, not buildings and account ledgers. Somewhere down the chain of responsibility there has to be a person, or group of persons. If Joe Smith goes to the government in Libertaria and wants them to protect his rights, they will; if JSmithco Inc. does the same, they will not. JSmithco Inc. isn’t a person. They will, however, protect Joe Smith, president of JSmithco Inc.'s right to make decisions with respect to his property.

Well, considering that the question was, “How many furriners are we gonna let on this piece of land?” I’d say the question of who owns the land is paramount to who decided how many people get to live on it. If I own it, you don’t get to decide how many people live on it, and where they can be from, do you? The question was about land, and who gets to decide what people are allowed on it. Now be nice, or I’ll make you listen to bad radio stations. :slight_smile:

It doesn’t, and nobody has said it does. The system, or context protects people’s rights to make decisions with respect to their property–any property. Their bodies, their minds, their land, whatever. Personally, I think the first two are more important than the third.

Nobody’s proposing any such thing. Nobody on this thread, anyway.

Thank heaven nobody here wants that. In a hypothetical Libertaria, the fact that Ted Turner owns more stuff than you do doesn’t mean he has more rights than you do. It means he gets to decide what to do with his stuff, and you get to decide what to do with your stuff.

Oh, sure, quote from the only other Woody Allen movie I like! :smiley:

102

I had to dig pretty deep?? Those were just the first few I came up with off the top of my head! Acknowledging faults in unrestrained globalization, by the way, has nothing to do with being a “defender of the state.” Ask Joseph Stiglitz, former head of the World Bank, who’s critiqued the IMF for all the same reasons as those horrible statists mentioned above.

And by the way, every single one of the people I listed in my post is a left-wing economist. Have you ever read William Greider? Take a look at his books on David Stockman and the Federal Reserve sometime. The board of the EPI, too, includes two former secretaries of labor.

It’s hardly controversial to acknowledge the problems with external liberalization of markets; it’s even less debatable that such a school of thought exists among learned people. But you’re acting as if every right-thinking, educated man all feels the same way on the issue. Propaganda much?

Who flatly disagree with these people? Even the IMF website, as I quoted in the other thread, acknowledges that their policies ask indebted countries “in a spirit of enlightened self-interest, to relinquish some measure of national sovereignty by abjuring practices injurious to the economic well-being of their fellow member nations.” So find me Nobel prize-winners who disagree with that. Like I said before, for every Milton Friedman there’s a John Maynard Keynes. Look at Bretton Woods itself, for Chrissake!

Bottom line (and I’m quoting myself here): Structural reforms which liberalize markets, weaken unions, and facilitate foreign capital investment are invariably conditions of IMF loans. And the impulsive capital flow brought about by forced market liberalization can be extremely deleterious, forcing a nation deeper into recession while leaving their economic structure at the mercy of outside forces…The opening of developing nations’ markets to global speculation can lead to wholesale destabilization and political conflict, exactly the sorts of situations the IMF is ostensibly trying to prevent. And the resultant capital flight after a nation has destabilized (see Mexico, Brazil, Russia) leaves the country destitute, reeling, and often in more dire straits than before. And the kicker: As long as a country is a perceived credit risk, there’s always the threat of capital flight and no way to truly stimulate investment. So the countries are forced to comply with IMF loan conditions, as those loans are the only relief–however short-lived and self-perpetuating–that the countries are likely to get.

Neither List nor I nor most of the gentlemen I’ve named are saying that free trade is a priori a bad thing; it’s forced liberalization that we’ve got a problem with. Developed countries should liberalize their own markets to their heart’s content–as you pointed out, it benefits them even if others aren’t liberalized. But when a country is already unstable and economically in arrears, a sudden influx of skittish foreign money (money invested for short-term profit, to be yanked away if the situation isn’t stabilizing quickly enough–as in Brazil) ain’t the best medicine. To say nothing of the imposed structural conditions which can debilitate a country’s development.

And? Are you arguing that developed countries and their investors don’t exert power over developing countries? List’s main idea wasn’t regulations to “lift up” the poorer countries; he advocated leaving them to pursue their trade policies and develop their infrastructure until they were ready to be liberalized. Right now the liberalization is pretty much willy-nilly. Helter-skelter, even.

waterj2: Something you learn when studying comparative politics, and especially development theory, is that you never, ever use the United States as a representative example. Geographic, social, and historical conditions conspired to make its path of development pretty much unparalleled.

103

Hate to poke in in the middle of a raging debate, but I wonder if the Libertarian posters can anwer this question.

Do you guys acknowledge that many elements of your platform are interdependent, and that adopting one without the others can lead to incongrous results? As an example, Lib mentioned earlier that free immigration was a libertarian position. Would that be so only if the US embraced the entire Libertarian philosophy, or would you have free immigration even if that was the only libertarian position adopted?

I have not folowed this discussion too intently, and I apologize if this question has been asked before. If so, direct me to that location.

104

Gadarene - since you’re talking about forced liberalization, we have no argument. My message specifically mentioned the value of opening trade even if your trading partners won’t. That’s what I was referring to. Libertarians would be against the use of force to demand that people sell things them.

In a more Libertarian world, we wouldn’t have powerful states using levers like the IMF to bludgeon other states anyway. If the state has no control over the trade of its citizens, it’s in no position to withold that trade in exchange for concessions. The state loses much of its power in that regard.

My argument with many of your sources is that they are not just leftist economists, but that they are leftists economists with ties to special interests. The Global Policy Institute, as I already mentioned, is an organization funded by trade unions, with a mandate to lobby for laws that benefit trade unions.

As an analogy, would you not treat a scientific paper challenging the risks of cigarette smokers, if you discovered that the scientist in question was in the employ of RJR Reynolds?

I suggest we move this discussion away from this theoretical stuff and move it towards practical, real world libertarian solutions to current problems.

Start with immigration - the last poster is right. You can’t open your borders and make anyone a citizen as long as you give citizens a zillion free benefits. Doing so would just turn the country into a huge charity. So what would a libertarian do today to change immigration?

First, I’d eliminate quotas and immigration barriers that are designed to protect local jobs. Sorry, you don’t have a ‘right’ to my job just because you live down the street. If I can find a better-qualified person who currently lives in India, and he wants to move here, I’ll hire him. Opening labor markets in this way has the same benefits as free trade - a local citizen may lose out on getting that job, but if the new person is more valuable, then my company will be more efficient and I’ll eventually be able to create even more jobs, or make more widgets (which creates more jobs elsewhere), etc.

Second, I’d offer a new class of visa - anyone can come to my country and look for work as long as they post a bond equal in value to a ticket home. They will not qualify for any social benefits until they have paid taxes for five years. They can leave and go home at any time, but while they are here they have a work permit that allows them to apply for and work any job without red tape.

I have no problem putting qualifiers on that visa saying that any conviction for any crime in those five years will result in a one-way flight home, and we can disallow this visa for anyone who currently has a criminal record.

Protectionism is a bad thing, whether it is protection of local jobs, or tariffs on imported products. Let the market flow to the most efficient resources, and society as a whole will be better off.

105

One question, before I go to lunch: Why is Sam Stone referring to things that dhanson posted as if they were written by him, and referring to the discussion dhanson and I are having as if it was between him and me? Could someone alleviate my confusion?

106

Sure - cause I’m the same person. ‘Sam Stone’ is my lunch-hour work account. ‘dhanson’ is my home computer. I thought that was obvious, but maybe not…

107

[Moderator Hat ON]

I hate to be nitpicky, but the rules are one poster==one screen name, no exceptions (not to mention it’s obviously somewhat confusing). Contact Tubadiva and tell her which name you’d prefer to keep, and we’ll kill off the other one. You don’t need to have one name to use from home and one to use from work; once you have logged in as “Sam Stone” once from home, the cookies will keep track of you from there, too. Thanks!

[Moderator Hat OFF]

108

Oh, okay. It’s just that I didn’t think that kind of thing was…allowed.

Sorry for my confusion; I’ll respond to your post soon.

109

I’d disagree with that, too - and have given examples as to why earlier in this thread.

[QUOTE]

See my earlier response to Gadarene–in the “real world,” people want government to take care of them and solve their problems. Working from that assumption, more freedom is the last thing people want. Ergo, in our real world, yes, it’s probably undoable. Which, AFAIC, is sad.

[QUOTE]

I apologize for any confusion: I meant survival in the basic military sense of being able to guard against armies and pillaging mobs from without or within. I’m still looking for a hypothetical model under which it can do this.

So do I, and while the libertarian ethic may be more free, I doubt its application would result in more freedom, except for a few.

Would I, in a libertarian gorgonzola? (OK, so I’m running out of nonsense words, and must resort to throwing cheese. :)) Might going into debt that I can’t repay be construed as infringing on the rights of others, causing me to lose the right to my own body? Again, tell me.

110

Or, why you’d be far less free in Libertaria than in the USA.

The problem is that, as far as I can see, you’re proposing it whether you mean to or not. Let me elaborate.

Here in the USA as we know it, we have rights guaranteed under the Constitution, particularly by the Bill of Rights. However, we don’t have those rights everywhere. I have the right to free speech or free exercise of religion on the Mall, but not at Springfield Mall (the closest indoor shopping mall to Phil’s place, in case anyone’s wondering), on the sidewalk in front of your business, but not on your front lawn, and so forth.

The breakdown is that I have rights on public property and rights-of-way, on my own property, and on private property that the owners are willing to let me use for that purpose. Since in the USA, as is true pretty much everywhere, there’s a fair quantity of public property, and public rights-of-way that go on forever, neither property of our own, nor the kindness of property owners, is needed for us to exercise the rights we take for granted.

The abundance of public property and rights-of-way make it seem to us as if our Constitutional rights are in effect everywhere, even though it’s not true. It’s just that we have sufficient public property to maintain that illusion, and to turn the larger quantity of private property into at most a minor obstacle to exercising those rights.

But in Libertaria, there is no public property. There would no sea of public lands and rights-of-way to which one’s private property, if any, is a mere tributary. Want to hold a public protest? There’s no public place to do so; not even the streets and sidewalks, if any, are public. If you want to protest a particular business’ actions, for instance, in sight of their doors, you’d have to either own land nearby, or convince or pay someone who did to let you use their property.

In other words, in Libertaria, your rights (in practical terms, regardless of what the laws may say) start at zero; by buying property, or buying or begging the right to use it, you buy the right to exercise your de jure rights that you start off with for free in the USA and in most developed countries (and in many not-so-developed countries, as well).

This is what would make land a mega-currency in Libertaria. And it’s one of a number of reasons why, by all practical standards, all but few would have far less rights in a Libertarian whatchamadoogy than in your typical highly taxed, highly regulated Western social democracy.

111

Which is the point I was trying to make. Thank you for dismissing the United States as a counter-example to my contention that countries do not benefit from protectionism. The United States has adopted protectionist tariffs from the outset. That this method actually worked, in my opinion, has more to do with what you said than any benefits to protectionism.

I believe that it would be in the best interest of any country to adopt a policy of free trade with others. I also feel that putting an agency such as the IMF in a position to dictate the manner in which this shall happen. As I see it, every nation should be free of initiated force.

112

I agree with the first paragraph of your post, though I feel that graduated protectionism can and does benefit developing countries.

I admit, though, that I’m not sure what this sentence means:

Could you clarify it for me?

113

Ooops. Add “is wrong” to the end of that sentence.

114

Also, waterj2, I dare say that most modern countries were protectionist at their inception, to the extent that their economic policy was autonomous from the dictates of outside forces (unlike, for example, the post-colonial African nations). After all, mercantilism is basically a form of protectionism–import as little as possible while exporting as much as you can–and that served the various empires of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries rather well. Finally, I’ll invoke again the Bretton Woods Conference: while definitely not protectionist in its prescriptions, the conference laid ground for a system of capital controls and fixed exchange rates that more closely acknowledges the need for international economic oversight than does the dominant laissez-faire globalist philosophy of today.

115

No, seriously. I’ve made what I think is a pretty good argument that the absence of private property in a hypothetical Libertarian entity would effectively deprive most people of exactly the kinds of rights libertarians tend to care most passionately about.

The argument may be as good as I think it is, or I may have overlooked some telling point that would kick it into the wastebasket. Either way, I want to know. So if any libertarians amongst my fellow Dopers care to respond, no matter how scathingly, I’d appreciate it.

116

Objections such as the one you brought up are the reason I personally don’t favor the adoption of absolute libertarianism any time soon. I believe that given time to adjust, society will figure out a way around this. Look at the Internet. It represents incredible possibilities for freedom of expression, yet all the websites out there are owned by someone.

117

I’ll take a stab at it, RTFirefly, although like waterj2, I’m not an absolutist libertarian who doesn’t believe in public property. (Public roads are just too useful to abandon.) I think I see your point as this: to do what you want on someone’s private property, you need their permission; you don’t have rights on that property. On public property, you have rights (to protest, etc.) But don’t you in fact need the permission of the “owners” (the public) to excercise any rights? Those owners, through their lawmakers, tell you exactly what you can and can’t do on that “public” property. Yes, they give you the right to protest, but not the right to do it nudely (not everywhere, I know). Or the right to live on it, if you are homeless. Or smoke, in some places. So the public has control over what you can do on its property, same as private property owners. However, I do see the difference, that since everyone is a member of the public, everyone at least has a say in the matter, something they don’t have on private property.

I’m not sure what you mean when you say we already have some rights “for free”. Certainly not in the money sense, since we pay taxes. Not in the sense of no effort was expended to gain and maintain them. Do you just mean, we already have them?

118

Thanks for taking a stab at this, Gilligan - I appreciate it. :slight_smile:

What I’m thinking of is that, here in the USA, we’ve got the Bill of Rights that has been interpreted by the Supreme Court to mean, in practical terms, that controversial groups should encounter no significant barriers to organizing demonstrations and marches on public roads, parks, etc. And similarly for other rights.

So, modulo a little help from the Supremes, the Founding Fathers have given permission in perpetuity for such activity; the current owners - we, the people - would have a very difficult time repealing that permission.

I mean, in the sense that one doesn’t have to have any money or standing to exercise them. If I were eighteen and penniless, I would still have the right to free public speech, to free exercise of religion, and so forth. And I could still find a way to exercise those rights.

And in a sense, such rights indeed come free, in the sense that a society like ours but less tolerant of such freedoms would probably be no cheaper to run. We pay taxes for the services government provides; there’s no line item in the budget for the First Amendment, for instance, and it’s hard to see how it adds any costs to any particular line.

Now the outcome of the debates that the First Amendment allows, that adds and subtracts a great deal, but that’s not what we’re talking about, here.

I agree with you guys on that point. From the very first, I’ve had two problems with Lib’s extreme sort of libertarianism, in terms of sheer workability: (1) the necessity of a network of public roads, including the governmental power of eminent domain to determine the course of new ones where necessary, and (2) the problem of ‘secession in place’, which is my personal shorthand for the notion that individual landowners wouldn’t have to go anywhere to leave a country; they could simply declare their private lands to be independent.

An otherwise libertarian state could survive, IMO, if it had both public roads and the territorial integrity implied by the absence of the right to secession in place. (At least for long enough to take care of some other fairly basic obstacles, like translating the noncoercion principle into an intelligible set of laws, so that people wouldn’t have to perpetually figure out from first principles what’s legal and what isn’t.)

Then it strictly becomes a debate over what system ought to be preferable, which is someone else’s debate if we’re talking about purely hypothetical countries, as opposed to the one I reside in.

With that, I think I’ll thank you all for the pleasant debate, and go see what’s happening back in the ‘real world’ for a few hours. :slight_smile:

119

RTFirefly said: *We pay taxes for the services government provides; there’s no line item in the budget for the First Amendment, for instance, and it’s hard to see how it adds any costs to any particular line. *

Not sure I entirely agree with you on this one RTF, which at least varies the monotony of my fervent support of practically every other point you’ve made in the course of this thread. Judicial-branch operations are paid for by taxes, and I think there’s no question that the numerous lawsuits about First Amendment issues cost some money. If there were no Constitutional right to freedom of speech then laws, corporate policies, and individual threats could restrict speech all they wanted and we wouldn’t have to tie up the courts dealing with it. Mind you, I don’t claim that failing to protect speech would end up being better or cheaper for society as a whole in the long run, I just think that it would indeed save a buck or two in the short term.

120

Actually, I do advocate the absolutist goal, I just think that society as a whole has become dependant upon government coercion to such an extent that the removal of it would create anarchy, and lead to a worse situation than before. I believe in increasing the amount of freedom retained by individuals at the fastest rate possible without causing the breakdown of society. As a rough, off the top of my head, WAG, I’d estimate that it would take society 1-2 generations for mankind to make the adjustment from a statist to an absolute libertarian society. This is, of course, assuming that society tomorrow decides that it wants to follow this route.

In regards to RT’s example, I don’t believe that public property is nececessary per se for freedom of expression, but that abolishing it at the present would severly limit the individual’s ability to express himself freely. The next generation, having become accustomed to limited public property, would not have its individual rights be dependant upon the continuation of the establishment of public property.