Will Libertarianism ever be more than a fringe movement?

[Ruminator]

@MichaelQReilly

If I eat poised meat supplied from the meatpacking monopoly who have conveniently bought off the company that was supposedly testing the meat’s safety, have I not been coerced into eating poisoned meat?

You guys bring up faults of the private sector but always leave out similar examples of government corruption. Is this omission rooted in intellectual dishonesty or naiveté?

Meatpacking company bribes the private company that tests the meat? Yep, that’s bad. What about government agencies? Can they be bribed too?

A few years ago, it was determined that airplanes were not properly maintained. One finding was that the FAA (government) was in too cozy a relationship with the airlines they regulated.

Your school board picks the textbooks (spends your tax dollars) for your children not based on educational content. Instead it’s based on which publishing company can bribe the members with golf games, etc.

There are hundreds of examples of these government failings.

The government is run by imperfect humans and is not immune to all the criticisms of private entities that everyone is so eager to point out. Why does government get a free pass? Why do you blindly trust the government to this extent? Hardcore libertarianism might be bizarre but worship of government is even more bizarre.

By all means, keep bringing to attention all the traps and pitfalls of privatized entities. It should be something that’s well understood. However, I think your argument would be strengthened if you stop and think about comparable government abuses and list them alongside your example.

[wonky]

@MichaelQReilly

[sarcasm] If only we could come up with some agency, which uses the police power that we all thought was such a good idea that we granted it to the government that we the people created, and have it step in and test meat to stop the problem before it happens. Sure it might cost a little bit to fund and might marginally increase the cost of doing business, but surely we can all agree that that is better than being unknowingly poisoned by tainted meat. [/sarcasm]

I don’t know where you come up with your wacky ideas, sirrah.

[Der_Trihs]

@Ruminator

You guys bring up faults of the private sector but always leave out similar examples of government corruption.

Because no one bothers to deny it exists ? No one here is claiming the government is perfect and the solution to all problems. It’s the libertarians who are trying to claim that something, namely the free market is the magic solution to all problems.

And it’s already been pointed out that we have more power over the government than we do over a corporation, including the power to demand and get better service.

@Ruminator

Meatpacking company bribes the private company that tests the meat? Yep, that’s bad. What about government agencies? Can they be bribed too?

With more difficulty; it’s not their job to make money. and what makes you think they’d be separate companies ? The meat seller would test his own meat and declare it safe.

@Ruminator

The government is run by imperfect humans and is not immune to all the criticisms of private entities that everyone is so eager to point out. Why does government get a free pass? Why do you blindly trust the government to this extent? Hardcore libertarianism might be bizarre but worship of government is even more bizarre.

And who’s “worshipping government” ? The only worshippers here are the free market fundies, who would cheerfully sacrifice millions of lives to it if they could.

[Vox_Imperatoris]

@Voyager

Nothing to do with them not reporting the news. I’m sure they would be all over the deaths from unregulated drugs, after they happen. Already the newspapers are cutting back on reporting staffs, and are never going to cover something requiring an expensive investigation which might not yield anything. We have the Times and the Post, for now, but that is pretty limited.

My local rag is now outsourcing its layout to India, with the expected results - such as a headline about the blizzards in Washington State - Midwest covered with snow. :eek: More seriously, they ran a picture of a mushroom on the front page of the living section, calling it a morel. A few days later they said, whoops, it is actually the picture of a poisonous one - I think an amanita, which is a shroom which causes lots of deaths because it looks just like an edible one often picked in Eastern Europe. As the profit motive erodes newspaper staffs, they get less and less useful as a countermeasure to corrupt business (and corrupt government for that matter.)

What do you think newspapers run on now? Fairy dust? And who says that everything in a Libertarian society has to be profit-driven? Wikipedia has no real government aid or restrictions, and it is doing fine; the same goes for countless other freeware products and charities.

@martu

You will have to learn to compromise.

Why is it a shame?

I might have to compromise on policy implementation, but I’m not going to compromise on my core values of what society *should *be like. As Der Trihs himself put it, any compromise I would make would only degrade my own position.

Oh, and I can think of several business models for a privatized fire department that don’t rely on old ladies paying in cash before they’re rescued. The amount of false analogies and strawman arguments in this thread is ridiculous.

Valete,
Vox Imperatoris

[Ruminator]

@Der_Trihs

The only worshippers here are the free market fundies, who would cheerfully sacrifice millions of lives to it if they could.

I’m curious as to the particular economics “-ism” you favor so I know not to kill millions of lives. Will you tell me or is it a big secret?

[Ravenman]

@Ruminator

Meatpacking company bribes the private company that tests the meat?

I believe this particular kind of bribe you’re referring to is called a “contract.”

As in, Shady Meatpacking Tester Company “won a contract” to prove that Nasty Meats, Inc.'s hot dogs are safe for consumption.

[MichaelQReilly]

@Ruminator

You guys bring up faults of the private sector but always leave out similar examples of government corruption. Is this omission rooted in intellectual dishonesty or naiveté?

Meatpacking company bribes the private company that tests the meat? Yep, that’s bad. What about government agencies? Can they be bribed too?

A few years ago, it was determined that airplanes were not properly maintained. One finding was that the FAA (government) was in too cozy a relationship with the airlines they regulated.

Your school board picks the textbooks (spends your tax dollars) for your children not based on educational content. Instead it’s based on which publishing company can bribe the members with golf games, etc.

There are hundreds of examples of these government failings.

The government is run by imperfect humans and is not immune to all the criticisms of private entities that everyone is so eager to point out. Why does government get a free pass? Why do you blindly trust the government to this extent? Hardcore libertarianism might be bizarre but worship of government is even more bizarre.

By all means, keep bringing to attention all the traps and pitfalls of privatized entities. It should be something that’s well understood. However, I think your argument would be strengthened if you stop and think about comparable government abuses and list them alongside your example.

Because history bears out that unregulated, private enterprise WILL generally run amok. Cite: see Gilded Age. Whereas history also bears out that regulatory agencies, despite the occasional pitfall, generally are pretty good at doing what they are supposed to do. Cite: FDA

Libertarians are the ones making the extraordinary claims, so the burden of proof is on them. Please show me some point in human history prior to the last 100 or so years where those who wielded economic power didn’t mercilessly exploit those people under them.

[pancakes3]

@Voyager

You said that Libertarianism doesn’t endorse child labor. Not specifically, no, but if you follow libertarian principles, child labor will follow. And I explained the arguments free marketers made in support of it.

As for me, I believe in regulatory capitalism, with a strict pragmatic streak. Free markets are far superior to controlled markets, but regulated free markets are far superior in the long run to unregulated ones. I’m also a student of behavioral economics, which shows that assumptions made by pure free marketers, libertarians, and communists about the actions of people in a market are incorrect. For whatever reason, people are not wired to make a libertarian society possible, which is why attempts to apply it become disasters.

1 - again, pushing things to an inconceivable extreme. libertarians call for profit at all costs, child enslaving, grandmother roasting policies that are inherently and infallibly evil. Yes, if you took the libertarian philosophy empirically you could come to such a conclusion. However, if you could instead focus on legitimate issues that libertarians are arguing over - fiscal conservatism and social liberalism, and why those policies aren’t feasible it would make your argument a lot more germane to the the topic and will probably win over some libertarians over to your point of view.

2 - i’ll agree that certain regulations are necessary to protect the general public and that there doesn’t exist an economy on earth that’s truly free. However, more free is better than less free, this much has been proven. Just how much regulation is optimal and in what sectors? I’m contending that subsidies, especially ones that keep afloat vestigal industrial sectors such as many farm subsidies and trade tariffs are hurting us more than they’re helping.

3 - behavioral economics don’t just undermine libertarian viewpoints; they undermine the prime economic assumption - people make rational decisions. This is the basis upon which almost every economist in the past 200 years has assumed to be economic dogma. libertarians aren’t just the only kooks who believe that people make rational decisions. However, true, there are biases but I, along with many economists, believe that people act rationally overall with a few discrepancies and that when modelled, rationality can still be assumed.

p.s. bringing in Behavioral Economics really doesn’t make an argument for or against libertarianism. It’s mainly an argument against EHM and the opportunities for arbitrage.

[Ravenman]

@pancakes3

However, more free is better than less free, this much has been proven. Just how much regulation is optimal and in what sectors?

Based on Sam Stone’s criteria suggested on page 2, and my response on page 3, countries with just a little more regulation than the US seem to do better on the Human Development Index.

But I also understand that the point you’re trying to make, that less government is better, isn’t really based on measurable results; it’s simply a philosophical difference that you wish to convince us of.

[Voyager]

@Vox_Imperatoris

What do you think newspapers run on now? Fairy dust? And who says that everything in a Libertarian society has to be profit-driven? Wikipedia has no real government aid or restrictions, and it is doing fine; the same goes for countless other freeware products and charities.

When they deregulated newspaper ownership, so that one company can own a whole bunch, we got fancy buy out deals that left the holding company with tons of debt (see Tribune) and thus cutting like hell. Some of the problem is loss of ad revenue, which would happen anyway, but a lot is from trying to pay off absurd loans. It’s all legal, but it just shows that we had better not put a lot of faith in them going forward.

As for opensource software, if you were in the business you’d know that all successful complex opensource products are funded by big companies. Sure, there is freeware stuff a guy does for fun, but big projects, like Open Office, Linux, and MySQL are done by people paid by companies who have a vested interest in them.
The great thing about the web is that there are tons of sources of information, for free. The great thing about newspapers is that you know what you’re getting. You may trust the Washington Post more than the Washington Times or vice versa, but you should trust either of them more than some random clown’s blog.

[clairobscur]

@Vox_Imperatoris

I’m not saying that the junkyard builder would have to make a report of the harm of the junkyard and submit it to a government organization. I’m saying that someone could sue him, preventing him from building it if a jury of his peers found it unacceptably harmful.

On what basis? Note that in our current society, assessments about the potential risk either are made by a governmental organization that employs specialists on a case per case basis, or, much more often, that determination has been made long ago and enshrined in law.

Now, are you telling me that the “peers” without any expertise can make a sensible assessment of something like industrial risk? Or do you envision that they would have to rely on the expertise of specialized private corporations (after somehow establishing that the corporation is independent, reliable, etc… which in itself is of course extremely easy, I guess) each time such a case is presented to the jury, resulting every time in enormous costs? Who pays for these costs?

Do you realize that either these courts would spend even more than our current governments (presumably pay for by taxes) or that they could only make uninformed and random decisions?

And how comes that you’re confident that a jury randomly selected would be more capable than elected officials to make a determination?

That’s right. If no one cares about old houses and junkyards, then they are not forced to do anything about it. You still have to take the physical harm of a junkyard or something into account, too, of course.

You’re writing vague generalities. But you didn’t answer to any of the very concrete question I asked. I can only assume that you’re unable to give a concrete answer to any issue related to the first random example that is thrown at you.

Again, picking the three main questions I asked :

-What if responsible people pay for risk assessment and prevention and I don’t (since I’m irresponsible)? Am I allowed to be an irresponsible greedy parasite, or I am forced to pay against my will?

-What if thoughtful people realize the potential value of restoring old houses, and I don’t (since I’m an idiot). Am I again allowed to reap the benefits and be a retarded greedy parasite, or am I forced to pay against my will?

-What happens to the uneducated children of people who died from cancer due to the unpredictable or unpredicted pollution caused by the junkyard, when direct redress is impossible because the junkyard owner can’t cover the damages that he caused?

If I were supporting anarchy, then I would say so. In fact, I denounced anarcho-capitalism as foolish, since there can never be true anarchy.

I merely was amused to see you using the same arguments presented by collectivists on the other side of the political spectrum.

[IdahoMauleMan]

@MichaelQReilly

I don’t get libertarians maniacal obsession with “coercion” by the government due to its “monopoly on the legitimate use of force.” Libertarians fail to comprehend that lack of choice can be just as coercive as someone holding a gun to the back of your head.

If I eat poised meat supplied from the meatpacking monopoly who have conveniently bought off the company that was supposedly testing the meat’s safety, have I not been coerced into eating poisoned meat? I certainly didn’t want to eat poisoned meat. I certainly wouldn’t have if I’d know better, but see I had no choice because there is only one meat producer and it was cheaper for them to buy off the tester than to make safe meat. Sounds like coercion to me.

And the thing is, Libertarians will wave this away and say, “yeah but if enough people get poisoned then another meat packing company will spring up who will supply non-poisoned meat. Or that if I survive I can sue the meat packer.” Unfortunately, those things provide me with little solace if I’m dead.

[sarcasm] If only we could come up with some agency, which uses the police power that we all thought was such a good idea that we granted it to the government that we the people created, and have it step in and test meat to stop the problem before it happens. Sure it might cost a little bit to fund and might marginally increase the cost of doing business, but surely we can all agree that that is better than being unknowingly poisoned by tainted meat. [/sarcasm]

Why did you buy meat from a company that was doing business with a tester than had such a poor reputation? Why did you do that?

[Voyager]

@pancakes3

1 - again, pushing things to an inconceivable extreme. libertarians call for profit at all costs, child enslaving, grandmother roasting policies that are inherently and infallibly evil. Yes, if you took the libertarian philosophy empirically you could come to such a conclusion.

My point was that child labor happened before the advent of the regulations that libertarians rant against. We know what libertarianism looks like, and w, as a society, decided we didn’t like it very much.

However, if you could instead focus on legitimate issues that libertarians are arguing over - fiscal conservatism and social liberalism, and why those policies aren’t feasible it would make your argument a lot more germane to the the topic and will probably win over some libertarians over to your point of view.

I might be an extreme libertarian in terms of social issues. But I think libertarianism goes a bit beyond fiscal conservatism. There are plenty of people who are fiscal conservatives who I doubt libertarians would avow. Bush and Reagan both claimed to be fiscal conservatives, how it came out is something else. I don’t think fiscal conservatism is politically feasible, and my challenge to them is to cut the budget before you cut taxes, rather than the other way around. But fiscal conservatism doesn’t imply being against the FDA and consumer protection laws.

2 - i’ll agree that certain regulations are necessary to protect the general public and that there doesn’t exist an economy on earth that’s truly free. However, more free is better than less free, this much has been proven. Just how much regulation is optimal and in what sectors? I’m contending that subsidies, especially ones that keep afloat vestigal industrial sectors such as many farm subsidies and trade tariffs are hurting us more than they’re helping.

I’m not sure I get what tariffs have to do with libertarianism. Supporting necessary regulation does not mean enforcing rules to make certain industries win, or even protecting them. And not all regulation is good. I agree with you about farm subsidies, most of which seems to be corporate welfare these days. But as I said, I’m a pragmatist. I’m not for all regulation, but I don’t have this perfect faith in the market that libertarians seem to have.

3 - behavioral economics don’t just undermine libertarian viewpoints; they undermine the prime economic assumption - people make rational decisions. This is the basis upon which almost every economist in the past 200 years has assumed to be economic dogma. libertarians aren’t just the only kooks who believe that people make rational decisions. However, true, there are biases but I, along with many economists, believe that people act rationally overall with a few discrepancies and that when modelled, rationality can still be assumed.

p.s. bringing in Behavioral Economics really doesn’t make an argument for or against libertarianism. It’s mainly an argument against EHM and the opportunities for arbitrage.

Well, it should at least make model builders reassess the assumptions of their models, but my impression is that it kicks in more at the micro level than the macro level.

Why I think it is more damaging to libertarians should be obvious from their arguments in this thread. Anyone saying that we don’t need the FDA (or a requirement that drugs be approved by the FDA) because consumers will make rational informed choices hasn’t seen any JDM papers. We’ve seen them be shocked, shocked, that poor unschooled borrowers didn’t read and understand 60 page mortgage documents. I visualize the problem as drunks wandering over a plateau with steep cliffs. Regulation is like fences along the edges, to give the drunks as much room as possible, but prevent them from falling. Libertarians don’t want to be fenced in, convince that they get a better view closer to the cliff. When you remove the fences, and people fall off, they cry “we couldn’t have foreseen that!” and “it’s their own fault.” And say that the fences are the equivalent of “government” leashing each drunk and determining exactly where they are allowed to go.

[Ruminator]

@Ravenman

countries with just a little more regulation than the US seem to do better on the Human Development Index.

Based on GDP per capita, the USA is far and away #1.

The Human Development Index handicaps the GDP figure downward by also factoring in education and life expectancy. I don’t know if that type of handicap is supposed to mean something significant (honestly – that’s not a snark). The HDI also doesn’t normalize the figures based on USA’s more generous immigration policy and the fact that it’s a big honkin country with 300 million people. Would that extra normalization matter? Again, I don’t know.

If you create another list where it’s GDP handicapped by technological innovation, then how are countries ranked? Or if you have GDP handicapped by energy wastefulness, then what happens? Or GDP handicapped by marriage divorce rates. So many different ways to make the USA rise to the top or fall to the bottom. Maybe the HDI is the best measurement after all.

[IdahoMauleMan]

@Ravenman

I believe this particular kind of bribe you’re referring to is called a “contract.”

As in, Shady Meatpacking Tester Company “won a contract” to prove that Nasty Meats, Inc.'s hot dogs are safe for consumption.

I’m happy to play along with this line of reasoning for awhile.

So I’ll ask again…why would you buy meat from a company that was employing such a tester? Why would you do that?

[clairobscur]

@Vox_Imperatoris

Oh, and I can think of several business models for a privatized fire department that don’t rely on old ladies paying in cash before they’re rescued. The amount of false analogies and strawman arguments in this thread is ridiculous.

Great again! I already said so, I like real examples. Go ahead and present one of those business models for a privatized fire department. I somehow suspect that I’m going again to find a lot of value in it, in my role of the greedy irresponsible bastard who can’t be compelled into paying for it.

[Duke]

Surprised this thread has gotten to four pages. I can answer the OP’s question in one sentence: “No, because libertarians can’t even agree whether it’s raining or not, let alone agree with each other on how to govern or even run a successful political campaign.”

[IdahoMauleMan]

@Duke

Surprised this thread has gotten to four pages. I can answer the OP’s question in one sentence: “No, because libertarians can’t even agree whether it’s raining or not, let alone agree with each other on how to govern or even run a successful political campaign.”

Agreed. But it’s fun, ain’t it?

[clairobscur]

@pancakes3

However, if you could instead focus on legitimate issues that libertarians are arguing over - fiscal conservatism and social liberalism, and why those policies aren’t feasible it would make your argument a lot more germane to the the topic and will probably win over some libertarians over to your point of view.

2 - i’ll agree that certain regulations are necessary to protect the general public and that there doesn’t exist an economy on earth that’s truly free. However, more free is better than less free, this much has been proven. Just how much regulation is optimal and in what sectors? I’m contending that subsidies, especially ones that keep afloat vestigal industrial sectors such as many farm subsidies and trade tariffs are hurting us more than they’re helping.

But then, we’re talking about mere economic liberalism, not about libertarians. There’s nothing in the issues you mention (fiscal conservatism, opposition to subsidies, etc…) that isn’t addressed by run of the mill liberals (in the European sense of “liberal” : people who favours free market)

[Ravenman]

@Ruminator

Based on GDP per capita, the USA is far and away #1.

Bullshit.

According to the CIA’s numbers, we’re number EIGHT in the world in that category, so you are laboring under a false impression. Luxembourg ranks number 2 in GDP per capita (about 70% higher than the US) , and they’re number 15 on the economic freedom list. Norway ranks number 4 in GDP/capita (about 20% higher than the US), and is 34 on the Heritage list.

And as far as the Human Development Index being the measuring stick, I think measuring wealth, health, and smartness is a fair good, if crude, means of measuring the success of a country.