Why is there no Libertarian Party outside the United States?

Great Debates
61

I’ve read some of Ayn Rand, and watched the movie. IMHO they’re melodramatic, unconvincing, boring, and bad enough to be interesting. Objectivists seem to like them though.

By analogy, Dostoevsky and Pushkin are names that an educated person in North America would recognize, but few would read their works. The same would be true of “Ulysses” by Joyce, and most of the works of Shakespeare (and seeing the movie does not mean you’ve understood Shakespeare).

I conclude that there are at least two cultural divides: the first is between North Americans who find Rand/Libertarianism credible and the majority of the population; and the second is between North Americans and the rest of the world.

My own limited experience is that I’ve never known a Libertarian who was relaxed and fun to be with. They seem very earnest, intense, and rather obsessed with their philosophy. These are not attributes that win converts.

62

Answering part of the OP, I notice that no mention of ACT has been made. From here, New Zealand’s most nearly Libertarian party says:

New Zealand has a minority government at the moment, with actually seven different parties represented, but it would be fairly accurate to say that there exists a ‘Libertarian-like’ influence within Parliament in this country, albeit a small one as ACT only maintains about 7% of the seats in Parliament.

63

**

This is an intriguing point which relates to the OP. (Great OP by the way.) I’d like to know more… it seems like an oxymoron in America to say an anarchist with socialist tendencies, since here it’s assumed that socialism requires totalitarian control over the people to prevent cheating.

Also, I’d like an explanation of the “use of private property to control others” and how that relates to the ideas of libertarians in other countries.

-k

64

True: I can remember the first time seeing a Lib on a talk show on TV and thinking “Well I agree with a lot of what he’s saying, but what a freakin’ nerd that guy is.”

65

I’ve just started a new GD thread, inspired by this one – “What is the difference between libertarianism and anarchism?” Anyone interested in this thread might want to check out that one. (Sorry, I haven’t figured out how to embed intra-board links.)

66

Popular libertarianism in the United States appears to be heavily infected with what I can only term “folk economics.”

Insofar as they are infected with the superstition that there is something inherently better about gold and silver as stores of value versus other stores – essentially economics by folk superstition – there is the a priori and somewhat messianic belief that a return to the gold & silver standard will somehow cure perceived woes. It appears to be entirely derived from the mere fact that gold and silver were traditional stores of value and in their superstitious world view, it should always be so.

In gross, economic illiteracy coupled with a fairly nationalistic and superstititous understanding of ‘free markets.’ Of course you can see that here in this thread.

67

Actually, in American politics there have been several different strains of “folk economics” concerned one way or another with the value of the currency. Andrew Jackson vetoed the renewal of the Second Bank of the United States; not sure why, I think there was a just democratic-populist feeling that a central bank should not have so much power. The late-19th-century Populists backed “free silver” on the grounds that unlimited coinage of silver, which was mined out West, at an artificially high valuation relative to gold, would inflate the currency, therefore benefit the farmers by reducing the real value of their mortgage debts, and take power and control away from those bankers back East. Some strains of the “militia” and “common-law courts” movements deny our present United States currency is valid; they interpret the Constitution as authorizing only the coinage of silver and gold. (I think their belief that the banking industry is run by Jews might have something to do with this attitude.) In all these cases there is or was a populist mistrust of the elite.

And then there are the Libertarians. I’ve never heard why they support gold coinage, but my guess would be, because it provides currency with a value that is independent of government sanction and relatively immune to government manipulation.

68

The 19th century movements had some economic meaning insofar as given the standard of the time, silver and gold, policy relating to coinage had a real economic impact.

And gross economic illiteracy.

As I noted, it appears to be based on a superstitious understanding of markets.

As to bullion based monies being “relatively immune” to government manipulation, the history of such (debasements etc.) refute that belief on its face.

All bullion based monetary systems do is create a barrier to rational monetary policy and a superstitious facade over the essential reality that any store of value is entirely dependent on human judgement and does not have any objective standard (other than its relationship to supply and demand, itself human judgment of need versus supply).

In the end, either a government is policed by citizens and follows a rational economic policy or it does not. Bullion is absolutely no guarantee and is merely an instance of superstitious belief in the inherent power of the symbol or token of value.

69

Out of curiosity, I did some searching on the Libertarian web site. I couldn’t find a position on the gold standard, but did find this blurb, which I think shows that a return to the gold standard is not and official position of the Libs:

As can be seen, the Libs don’t want any standard set by the gov’t.

70

I must disagree with those that suggest the Libertarian party exists in large part due to Ayn Rand. I have never read Ayn Rand, no one I’ve known IRL who knows something about Ayn Rand has thought much of the books, philosophy, etc. Yet, I have strong libertarian tendencies. I think one reason the US has stronger libertarian tendencies than Europe is our society’s assumption about what government is for.

Let me try some parables. Suppose my neighbor wanted to rent a room, and a gay couple expressed interest, but the neighbor did not want a gay couple living in his house.

Democrats: This is discrimination. Pass a law making my neighbor’s act illegal. I.e., use the government to solve the problem.

Religious Conservative Republicans: Gay acts are immoral. Pass a law making homosexual acts illegal. I.e., use the government to solve a problem.

Libertarians and other Republicans: The free market can solve this “problem”. Someone else will rent to the couple, because there is money to be made. I.e., it is not the governement’s role to solve the problem.

A major U.S. corporation is going bankrupt. Incompetence is to blame, but maybe also some shady dealings.

Democrats: The workers have been shafted. Pass legislation preventing the acts that led to the downfall.

Republicans: The shareholders have been shafted, bail out the company.

Libertarians: Well, that’s too damn bad. I guess some other company will be selling whatever they sold now.

To my understanding, libertarians believe the government exists to ensure everyone’s rights are protected in a Lockeian fashion. A government that can take your property violates the very reason for having a government. Democrats believe the government exists to solve problems, while Republicans believe the government exists to maintain a system that “works”. On some topics Republicans are nearly Libertarian (economy), while on other topics Democrats are (weed), but all three are motivated differently. (In my mind, that is why Democrats were presidents for most of the 20th century US wars. The military is a branch of the government.)

Debating specific Libertarian policies does not answer why Europeans do not seem to have many libertarians. Is it because most European governments came into existence in their society’s attempts to solve internal problems - monarchial government, etc, and the US government came into existence to solve an external problem? Certainly Locke and his brethern had much to do with the history of the English government. Did libertarian philosophy wither with the advent of democracy? Or is it so deeply enmeshed in the society that there is no point for such a party?

71

If possible, the following is even worse.

I am not sure what to make of this statement.

Certainly inflationary pressures in the economy, as deflationary pressures arise from non-governmental economic actors, to assert baldly like this is… well typical of the folk economics these clowns pimp.

emphasis added.

Sure seems like they have an obsession with gold coins to me, although the weight denomination bit puzzles me, must be some strange attachment to the idea of gold having some ‘inherent’ value.

Yes, let us reduce a well ordered financial system to incoherence.

Sign me right up for this program.

Again emphasis added.

So, they want only things with ‘real’ worth I guess. I.e. they are attached rather to a folk understanding of money. Eliminating fiat money…

And equally a superstitious belief in free markets as a kind of JuJu medicine, rather than any kind of rational approach. Just what we need an unregulated supply of money to achieve fiscal stability.

This is such a stupid idea it’s really boggling (never mind the issue of printing and minting money is terribly 19th century).

Super. No comment.

What I can see is that they’re a bunch of ideological cranks every bit as bad as the Marxists.

72

It’s worth remembering that, to a large extent, Europe’s relatively generous social welfare programs were NOT put into place by what Americans would call “bleeding heart liberals.” Germany’s welfare programs were largely initiated by Bismarck, after all, and many of England’s first welfare programs were set up by Disraeli.

Were Bismarck and Disraeli motivated by idealism and desire to help their fellow man? Perhaps, in some small part. But they were also motivated by the revolutions that had rocked Europe during the first half of the 19th century. Even conservative leaders in Europe could grasp that a large, impoverished urban population was dangerous. Social welfare programs were expensive, but they seemed like a prudent investment in staving off social unrest.

The United States, however, never experienced anything worth calling a revolution in the 19th century. Perhaps that’s because the Western frontier provided someplace new for the poor to go. Perhaps it’s because enough poor Americans pulled themselves up by their bootstraps that other poor Americans never sank completely into despair. Regardless, until the Great Depression hit, the U.S. never faced a real possibility of revolution, and so it never saw a need to shell out money for social services in order to avert a revolution.

73

I think you are confusing “having libertarian tendancies” with “belonging to the Libertarian Party”. My assertion is the Lib Party has had it’s ranks filled, to a large degree, due to people having read AR and found the Lib Party to be consistent with that philosophy. And that any European Lib party, to the extant that there are any, does not have that factor to swell it’s ranks as AR is not as popular in Europe as she is in the US. So I don’t think your anecdotal evidence is a sufficient counter argument to that assertion.

Coll:

I think you also have to remember that the Lib’s apparent obsession with gold and gold coins might be a reaction to the time in the US when only the gov’t could determine the price of gold. You probably know more about this than I do, but there were quite a few decades in the last century when the US gov’t fixed the price of gold at something like $35/ounce.

74

Now if we could just get the Libertarians to grasp that…

75

Susanann wrote:

I’m saying the founding fathers learned from past mistakes, a trick libertarians haven’t mastered.

The founding fathers, finding that a weak federal government wasn’t working, wen’t back and made it stronger. Since then, we’ve had 200 years of history (most of which libertarians tend to ignore) which exposed additional failings of a weak federal government. Those failings have been corrected through the elected representatives of the people by such things as anti-trust laws, pure food and drug laws, child labor laws, etc.

We have experience the founding fathers did not. Experience which I’m sure would have convinced most of the founding fathers (they being reasonable men) of the failings of libertarianism.

76

Well, actually, that IS the “gold standard”. Basicly, instead of “fiat money”, you have gold coins, or notes backed by gold coins. Or, at least I hope they include “notes back by gold”, becuase if they don’t, buying something like a nice Silicon valley house with two hundred pounds of gold might be a bit inconvient.

Of course, it bothers some that their currency might be devalued by a government’s policies- bad or good- or the vagarices of the international money market. Of course now- good old GOLD wouldn’t be effected by such thing like that- nope, it’s price and the value of your money would be effected by the policies of gold mining nations and the vagracies of the International Gold market . Gold goes up & down more than the dollar does. It would be so fun for some Libertarian to have that million$ 200# gold brick as his life savings devalued enormously becuase of a huge gold strike, or South Africa releasing it’s gold reserves upon the market.

(If DeBeers dumped it’s diamond reserves, the value of diamonds would not be much higher than CZ- as a guess).

No, a “return to the Gold standard” is one of those litmus tests one can use for the economically illiterate, like the old “flat tax where I’ll pay just 10% in taxes”. Only those who truly are clueless about economics would accept either.

77

No it’s not. Gold coins are mentioned as one option. You forget that it from 1933 to 1974 it was illegal to own gold in the form of bullion w/o a special licenses. I think this is the historical reason the Libs have included all that stuff about gold in their postion paper. The Libs don’t want the gov’t to have any control over money. Only a gov’t could set a monetary standard.

My bolding added. You’d have to lump Milton Friedman, a Nobel laureate in Economics, in the “clueless” bunch as he has been a long time advocate of a flat income tax. I think you are confusing “cluelessness” with “doesn’t agree with my politics”. A flat income tax is a reasonable option for debate. To dismiss it out of hand is not what I would consider an acceptable debating tactic.

78

  1. Well, it sure seems that way to me, I’lllet someone better versed in that form of economics explain how much it resembles the gold standard.

  2. Note the rest of the quote “… where I’ll pay just 10% in taxes”. Sure, a “flat tax” could work, but it would have to be something like 20%+ to be revenue neutral. I’ll bet you a nickle that Freidman isn’t going to try & tell dudes they would pay that little. Sure, a “flat tax” can be seriously debated, but again, it wouldn’t be close to 10%, and in every plan I have seen, the average wage-earner would pay higher taxes under it. It’s not a belief in the concept of “flat taxes” which is clueless; it is a beleif that somehow by making taxes flat- everyones tax bill would be cut in half or more- which is clueless. And- dudes have come here, and started a thread based upon just that- and they WERE clueless, like it or no. I will “dismiss out of hand” anyone who thinks that a “flat tax” is some sort of magic happy land where everyones taxes gets cut in half.

79

I think you’d be surprised if you had a chat with “Uncle Milty”. He’s a big supporter of a flat tax and an even bigger supporter of a scaled back gov’t. If you look at Dick Army’s flat tax proposal, he proposes a 17% flat tax with a healthy personal expemption. He claims that would be “revenue neutral” and I’m sure that’s debateable, but it does give a starting point. Friedman would call for a considerably smaller gov’t and so would call for a considerably smaller tax rate. I don’t have a cite, but I would not be at all surprised if he advocated a 10% tax rate, or something very closed to it.

So there are two things going on here: 1)What is the best tax system? and 2) How big should the gov’t be.

Not to mindlessly defend the “clueless”, but perhaps they are talking about #2 as well as #1. I would agree with you if they advocated a 10% flat tax and didn’t also undersatand that gov’t spending would have to be scaled back considerably.

80

On Ayn Rand-- she isn’t read much overseas because there is not a very big demand there for the type of immoral, utter selfishness she spouts (Thank God).

Sadly, here in the USA there are still a lot of people who want to build up a high, thick wall between themselves and everyone else-- people who believe that the government is made up of “someone else” rather than “of the people, by the people, for the people” as is clearly stated in our boilerplating.

Europe, on the other hand, is a far older and more developed society. One that has learned many hard lessons over the centuries. In these lessons, much blood and treasure was utterly wasted along the way until eventually, cooperation and mutual aid among strangers (as opposed to animosity and distrust) became the norm.

Libertarianism is like an adolescent dream of running away from home, being completely free to do anything one likes and not having to answer to others. European governments, on the other hand, reject this immaturity and hold a more adult view of human social and political realities.

We can only hope that one day, if we don’t kill ourselves (and everyone else) first, the USA may finally grow up and live as the more advanced cultures do now.