19 Tough Questions for Libertarians

I'm not even sure (at this point) of the story behind this list, including its context, purpose, or even accuracy. But seeing the infamous Stefan Molyneux take a swing at it earlier this morning, I figured that I could give it a rough go and see what happens. The following is a list of "19 Tough Questions for Libertarians" supposedly laid out recently by Jon Stewart. While I'm not particularly a fan of Stewart or his show, he's certainly a smart and funny guy. Considering the respect and attention that his show commands on the political entertainment front, it's certainly worth putting forth at least some type of coherent response. I don't promise to do the questions or the answers to them any real justice (there are plenty of libertarians better-suited to grapple with them), but I figured I'd put my own spin on things as I see them. In the interest of innocent readers I'll attempt to provide short, concise, and possibly open-ended (Socratic?) responses to these.

Before going forward, it's worth noting that there are many, many stripes of libertarian out there. So I don't pretend to speak for the majority nor any particular sub-set therein. My views are roughly Anarcho-Capitalist; and other Anarcho-Capitalists can feel free to disown me at any point in my responses.

1. Is government the antithesis of liberty?

It depends on what you mean by "government". Government (as we know it) has three interlocking mechanisms; one by which they offer (or in some cases force upon us) certain public goods and services, one by which they preclude competitors from offering some of those goods and services, and one by which they forcibly collect payment for the provision of those public goods and services. The last two mechanisms seem (at least to some degree) antithetical to liberty. Simply providing those goods and services are not necessarily antithetical to liberty.

2. One of the things that enhances freedoms are roads. Infrastructure enhances freedom. A social safety net enhances freedom.

I would say that these things enhance your ability to take advantage of your "freedom" - more explicitly, your rights. But so does having a car, or a boat, or shoes, or food, or shelter, or even a pen and paper. They are all means which enhance the extent to which one may utilize their freedom. And they are all things that we may produce and trade with one another to our collective benefit. A libertarian's task is to ask, in return, exactly why we should feel comfortable with a world in which government does not have a monopoly over shoes and yet we should scoff at a world in which government would not have a monopoly over roads.

3. What should we do with the losers that are picked by the free market?

Routine decimation is my best guess.

But my second-best guess would rely on the sense in which "losers" is being employed here. If we're using "losers" in a relative way - meaning the bottom X% of population X in geopolitical territory X - then I think the question is nonsensical. By that measure, even if we were all countless magnitudes richer than we are today, "losers" of this type would still exist.

If, however, we mean the truly impoverished, the sick, the disabled, etc., then I would think we'd rely on the same popular sense of charity that entrusts democracies to institute such safety nets in the first place. Unless the true "losers" under such a system make up a super-majority of the populace, it would seem as though any serious criticisms of fraternal charity as an alternate approach would undermine the very reasons we'd believe social democracy could provide such things to begin with. If a solid plurality of voters would endorse forced charity, and subsequently an even larger portion of the population would still support charity more generally, it's not particularly clear why the right hand of the general populace need assault its left hand to shake the money loose.

4. Do we live in a society or don't we? Are we a collective? Everybody's success is predicated on the hard work of all of us; nobody gets there on their own. Why should it be that the people who lose are hung out to dry? For a group that doesn't believe in evolution, it's awfully Darwinian.

Right, because, if anything describes libertarianism, it's religiously dogmatic denial of evolution. I think Ayn Rand might be rolling in her (sexy) smoke-filled grave.

It's lines of questioning like this that make me feel like either libertarians have somehow done themselves a great disservice in their explanations over the years or that non-libertarians have been simply sticking their fingers in their ears the entire time. My guess is that it's been a little of both.

Of course we are a society. To think that libertarians believe otherwise is to buy into the atomistic-individualist-caricature that libertarians are too often painted with. Yes, we are indeed islands unto ourselves! We shun social interaction - which is why we talk so little about open trade, open immigration, social acceptance, the perils of war, freedom of association, respecting the rights and choices of individuals (even the poor!), etc. Libertarians, as far as I can tell, aren't against helping people, or against forming institutions to help people, or even against shunning those who refuse to help people. What we are against, more generally, is putting your boot to the throat of sovereign individuals in the name of compassion on your behalf.

5. In a representative democracy, we are the government. We have work to do, and we have a business to run, and we have children to raise.. We elect you as our representatives to look after our interests within a democratic system.

Yes, at least that's the idea at any rate. Outside of the rhetoric the breakdown becomes more complicated. Let's start by assuming away all of the familiar public choice and regulatory capture issues that dominate actual policy today. I'm starting you at the 90-yard-line of our hundred-yard dash here. Who is "we" when we say "we are the government." Is it you? Is it me? Is it both of us? What if our views diverge? What if those with my general view only carry %10 of the vote in every election? Am I still the government, distant as I am from the views of my supposed "representative", and small as the voice I have with that representative as a constituent?

No, the government is certainly not simply "us." At the very best, the government is a representation of a simple plurality of the people - a plurality whose interests may be selfish, wrong-headed, prejudiced, and generally nonsensical. We could debate that at any given time. What we can't debate is that having a simple democratic majority is the sole measure of what should or shouldn't be done in any meaningful sense. And our country certainly has a history of repression in regards to electoral minorities of all sorts - or at least enough to give any intelligent person pause before they wave off the idea of something being pulled out of the hands of such a government.

6. Is government inherently evil?

I suppose this depends on whether we're talking about government as in the people who constitute it, or simply the personification of the abstract entity itself at some level. I'd have a hard time labeling people as purely evil. My guess is that, like other normal people, many in government are basically decent people who have some particular threshold for the malevolent. Most that I've known have had good intentions. But many people with good intentions do bad things ("The road to hell is paved with good intentions", etc.).

If we're talking about the more abstract idea of government itself, it's a somewhat different question. Calling it "inherently evil" is to say something different than what I think most libertarians are claiming. Our claim is that much (if not all) of what government does is predicated upon coercion and aggression - with regards to at least one of the three mechanisms mentioned earlier. As such, it's not an issue of intention (generally). It's about a systemic aggression upon innocent people.

7. Sometimes to protect the greater liberty you have to do things like form an army, or gather a group together to build a wall or levy.

Sure. Absolutely. And there's no part of libertarianism that would stop you from doing such - on a voluntary basis. Libertarians believe (strongly) in society. Society is not government. Until non-libertarians begin to understand that distinction, conversations are going to prove difficult if not confusing. The leftist Bastiat penned in the mid 19th century:

"Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all.

We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain."

8. As soon as you've built an army, you've now said government isn't always inherently evil because we need it to help us sometimes, so now.. it's that old joke: Would you sleep with me for a million dollars? How about a dollar? -Who do you think I am?- We already decided who you are, now we're just negotiating.

I guess this subsequent question is predicated on the idea that us "right-wing-extremists" love us some government-funded walls and armies.....to oppress the darkies I guess. You might want to consult the minarchy-lite rendition of libertarianism as it pertains to neo-libertarians or libertarian-leaning conservatives. You'll have to venture somewhere else for that one. Do not pass GO. Do not collect $200.

9. You say: government which governs least governments best. But that were the Articles of Confederation. We tried that for 8 years, it didn't work, and went to the Constitution.

Well, I know this may be a shock for people who happen to endorse a Whig view of history, but there are some people who believe (yes, in the 21st century) that the Articles of Confederation were actually superior to the present constitution. Earth-shattering, I know. There are also people who believe that the loose way in which the powers of the central government were granted in our second constitution led the way to (gasp!) a federal government with incredible sweeping powers fueled by massive debt born onto its people. And, believe it or not, many people who helped write the new constitution had the same worries (did anyone else read the Federalist Papers?).

It's shocking to think about, but it's possible that a handful of wealthy white guys convening to centralize power between the colonies in a last-ditch effort to overthrow the most powerful imperial force in the world (lest they be hanged for treason at that point), may have been a little hasty in constructing such an authority properly - for the long term. Of course, arguably, this is the reason an amendment process was implemented. In either case, however, the drafting of a new constitution was not proof that the previous one didn't or couldn't work; nor is it proof that either of them didn't suffer from significant flaws...which they did.

10. You give money to the IRS because you think they're gonna hire a bunch of people, that if your house catches on fire, will come there with water.

I'm pretty sure the IRS doesn't have much to do with my local fire protection. But, skipping over that slight oversight, would the same argument be made to justify the government's monopolistic production and provision of shoes if we deemed it to be a public venture? If I said that shoes could be provided privately on the market, and that, at the very most, if you were concerned about people who couldn't afford it you could simply credit them for the purchase, would you snap back that we cough over money to the IRS so that we can have shoes on our feet? If the "shoes on your feet" response seems silly to you, replace it with "fire protection" and you'll see why that seems silly to us.

11. Why is it that libertarians trust a corporation, in certain matters, more than they trust representatives that are accountable to voters? The idea that I would give up my liberty to an insurance company, as opposed to my representative, seems insane.

I don't know many libertarians who inherently trust corporations, or even businesses generally. Businesses have to earn my respect and trust to garner continued patronage on my behalf. In fact, one of the chief reasons that libertarians oppose government intervention is the extent to which large companies are able to influence even seemingly restrictive policies to their advantage, extracting additional profits and rents that would likely not be possible without such subsidies and barriers to competition. As to why libertarians might view government in an even-more-dim light, it would probably have to do with the fact that businesses don't generally walk around forcing consumers to purchase their products or services at gunpoint. I'm pretty sure that's an important distinction...that whole freedom of association thing.

12. Why is it that with competition, we have such difficulty with our health care system? ..and there are choices within the educational system.

I suppose you could say that there's competition in the health care system...probably to about the same extent to which you could say it's socialized. But I'm actually struggling to think of a market more burdened by regulation and oligopoly. Working for a third-party company in the medical billing industry, I happen to see a larger extent of government's reach into the industry than a lot of people. Government is not only the largest single payor but over half of all receipts are from government as well. Think about the kind of power that any single entity would yield as half of the entire customer base (by dollar amount). Think about all the government regulations and mandates that encourage excess consumption of health care, or impede real competition all the way from zoning laws to federal medical regulations to AMA restrictive licensing policies. If we want to have a discussion about how market mechanisms have been hampered or destroyed, my first three industries to use as examples are health, education, and housing - in that order. I'm not saying there couldn't be any viable points about why government should be involved in these industries, etc., but if you're going to have a discussion about free-market failures I would think you'd want to start by looking at industries that aren't the epitome of over-regulation and government control.

13. Would you go back to 1890?

You mean, like, if I had a DeLorean and a flux capacitor? Sure.

If you're asking whether I'd personally rather live in 1890, I'd say decidedly not. We have such incredible wealth available to us thanks to technological advancement that you'd have to draw up shorter time windows to get me to want to live in the past. But all that would tell you is that I'd rather live in incredible comfort with the government control we have now than what my lack of productivity could afford me then. Of course, I'd rather have had both a smaller government and the comfort current technology affords us. In fact, I'd think my comfort now might be even greater had government not been growing in the ways it has. But that's speculation. In either case, I wouldn't make that decision on anyone else's behalf.

14. If we didn't have government, we'd all be in hovercrafts, and nobody would have cancer, and broccoli would be ice-cream?

Maybe.

There's some methodological pretense with which I don't feel comfortable answering in the affirmative on any particular counterfactual. I do feel comfortable with saying that government (as we know it) has a detrimental effect on progress to some extent. I couldn't tell you that cancer would be cured right now. I feel pretty confident in telling you we'd be closer to curing cancer if we hadn't already though.

15. Unregulated markets have been tried. The 80's and the 90's were the robber baron age. These regulations didn't come out of an interest in restricting liberty. What they did is came out of an interest in helping those that had been victimized by a system that they couldn't fight back against.

As far back as I can go, in our country, unregulated markets have never existed. And surely not in the 80's or 90's - unless I'm just hallucinating the hundreds of thousands of regulations at the federal level alone. I think it's pretty easy to point to any particular regulation that has been taken away or added as the culprit in any number of unwanted outcomes. Digging deeper, the truth is a little more complicated. You come to find that there are countless regulations predicated on other countless regulations - regulations often created by inept legislators and/or lobbyists or industry consultants. So what you get seems much more like a giant pile of Jenga blocks which we are constantly taking away from and adding to.

The more broad political problem that this creates is the illusion of any one block alone making or breaking the system, when in reality it's actually a good deal of the blocks together which are uniformly determining the temporary feasibility of the structure. Take out a single block and watch it tumble down. Tell yourself it was the pulled block. But don't pretend as if the blocks above and below it had nothing to do with the collapse. The point is simply this - people, the consumers, have a much more powerful voice at the end of a transaction than they do in entrusting legislators to build mile-high Jenga towers without knocking them down or making them impossible for actors (many of which have nothing but piles of money and interest in keeping it) to skillfully evade and navigate.

16. Why do you think workers that worked in the mines unionized?

Because, although possibly better than the alternative, they were still horrible working conditions. I think that's pretty obvious - even for us evil libertarians.

17. Without the government there are no labor unions, because they would be smashed by Pinkerton agencies or people hired, or even sometimes the government.

So an important part in your defense of government is to point out how they failed to protect the individual rights of workers' to associate freely...and that sometimes the government even directly helped violate their rights? Say what you will about Pinkertons or mining companies - that doesn't exactly sound like a shining endorsement of government either. Like many of the services that government provides, I think that protection from physical harm is something that's going to be high on the list for most people. The question is who provides these services and how. I wonder if the government of the Gilded Age worked to protect or subsidize any corporate interests at the expense of workers and consumers as it often does today...hmmm. I think the coal-mining example might be something that both big-government and small-government types might not want to throw out there too hastily.

18. Would the free market have desegregated restaurants in the South, or would the free market have done away with miscegenation, if it had been allowed to? Would Marten Luther King have been less effective than the free market? Those laws sprung up out of a majority sense of, in that time, that blacks should not.. The free market there would not have supported integrated lunch counters.

In all honesty, I think there would be a mix of both in a world of voluntary interaction. We expect and demand free association in almost all related facets of life, but our cultural struggle against racism and prejudice is so tightly wound into the disavowal of that freedom in that one aspect that we've seemed to lose all the connecting dots. Should a man have the right to not work in service of another man, or not let him make use of his property? I'd think so. But I'm told I'm wrong (and possibly racist). I believe that people should be allowed to associate exclusively with any particular race, gender, or creed of people - whether I find that to be rooted in prejudice or not. I can't force you to befriend a person of another religion. I can't force you to date someone of the opposite sex. I can't force you to allow people of a different race onto your property....Oh, that's right! Except for when you're selling something on your property.....which apparently makes "corrective" force on my part completely different from a moral or philosophical standpoint. It's interesting that we'd be so concerned for the economic livelihood of an individual that we'd make businesses serve people of all stripes and yet consumers are not forced to patron business-owners/workers of all stripes. Somehow withholding the purchase of your services because of prejudice doesn't sanction force but withholding my labor from a consumer does.

However, and perhaps more importantly, what people should be allowed to do is different than the question of what people should do, or even what would have happened if they had been allowed to do it. I think prejudice in the form of stereotypical generalization as a backdrop for preconceived judgment of any individual is a testament to the stupidity of humans in groups. There's an awful lot of it still around, in case you haven't noticed....on both sides of the political aisle. My personal favorite is nationalism, which drives Conservatives to blow up brown people around the world and Liberals to protect "poor" Americans from the horrid possibility of other Americans employing people outside our borders. Needless to say, I'm not a fan of prejudice in almost any sense. But, like free speech more generally, people should be allowed to talk, think, and associate in stupid and shitty ways.

As to which method would effectively combat prejudice better, it's hard to say. I do think that, culturally, we were heading in this direction in either case - after all, how would democratic support for such institutional change be garnered otherwise? My guess is that the primary differences would be that, at this point, you'd still have some above-table racism, marginally, with free markets. As to whether that's better than the subdued culture of racism that's been reinforced by the curtailment of individual liberties in the name of protecting "civil liberties", well, your guess is as good as mine there.

19. Government is necessary but must be held accountable for its decisions.

Well, that's not in the form of a question, but it's certainly begging the question. I really don't think that government (again, as described by an organization laying hold to the three mechanisms I outlined earlier) is necessary. I believe that society is necessary. I believe that law is necessary. I believe that freedom is necessary. And I don't believe that any of those require the type of government we've been discussing.

In fact, I'd proffer that the second and third mechanisms of modern government are linchpins for systemic error - errors which cannot be remedied with platitudes about regulation and "accountability" because of their systemic nature. Proponents of government intervention and oversight seem to be keen on believing that selecting the proper inputs will yield the correct outputs. And no matter how many ways it can be shown to them that this is not what happens in reality, that this structure of human interaction is not only flawed ethically but practically as well, they don't seem to be willing to give way to pause for even the briefest of moments. They become apologists for the state and its actions, excusing any and every outcome. So to these nineteen cleverly aimed questions I'll retort with a simple, open-ended question to those that endorse state-based solutions:

Even if it were to be ceded that the state is not inherently responsible for countless atrocities over human history, that it facilitates compassion, reason, and understanding amongst the governed, that it keeps humanity (socially) on some kind of vague, upward trajectory - are you so wed to state-authority that it is impossible for you to even imagine more superior, compassionate, social constructs through which we could solve problems?

Homo Economicus and Conflationism

Perusing satellite-radio this morning I stumbled across an interview of sorts with Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker. Most of the conversation centered around psychological phenomena bordering on the mystical (which I gather relates to a good deal of his professional work). While discussing "herd mentality" a caller asked for the Dr.'s thoughts on the seemingly unconscious but unified push that highlights the protests as of late, peppering the general inquiry with observations about how humans have been "conditioned" to be consumers and workers and how they seem to be "waking up."

The Dr. seemed sympathetic to the idea and began to parlay his musings into a general criticism of economics. Specifically he seemed to take issue with the idea that everything is determined by money or wealth more generally and contended that economics can't explain, for instance, someone leaving a tip for a waiter in a town he'd never visit again. He said that some economists are so misguided that they've even come up with a term for the general concept of a strictly self-interested man; Homo Economicus.

Immediately I felt an urge to defend a subject that I've found quite enlightening over the years. It seemed like such a grave misunderstanding regarding the nature of economics. Even without a deep grasp of various economic minutia, this didn't seem to fit with my own understanding at the very least. Of course, I'm aware of Homo Economicus (what I would consider a caricature) , but I couldn't imagine many modern economists really pushing it as a realistic model for rational agents. So I researched a little bit regarding the origins and usage of the term. It revealed an underlying problem with the popular conception of economics; a problem that seemed to mimic a more general political issue which isn't completely unrelated.

It looks like John Stuart Mill was the first to use any version of the phrase. And, indeed, the classicals seemed to use it (perhaps, and hopefully) at an explanatory level as a model for rational actors; generally "self-interested" and, more narrowly, self-interested in the sense of pushing to acquire the most wealth or services for the least amount of effort. Given other economic concepts that prevailed at the time (the Labor Theory of Value, for instance) I can't say it's that shocking to hear such an oversimplification. Large players in the marginal revolution would cement the idea of marginal utility and lay waste to many of the classical assumptions regarding empirical derivations of preference and value. However, the (academically) successful endeavors of several notable macro-economists in the 20th century brought econometric methodologies back to the table and more generally revived the prospect of positivism as a definitive benchmark in social-scientific analysis.

When I originally began digging into economics I found the empirical approach of the Monetarists enticing. But the further inward I pushed I began to gain an appreciation for the Austrian school - specifically for the controversial methodological stances therein. It didn't immediately occur to me this morning, as I balked at the concept of Homo Economicus, that it was largely my more Austrian understanding of economics that made the criticism seem silly.

The whole of economic theory, in the Austrian tradition, is built from simple a priori truth(s) about human action - that they are the convergence of preference (ends) and capability (means). This is what constitutes "rational action" (a term Mises sees as redundant) in this framework. An action which aims at particular end(s) is "rational" in the strictest sense that the actor, subjectively, is attempting to utilize available means to achieve a certain end. In this way, it doesn't matter if the actor is correct in his thinking that said action will achieve his preferred goal or even whether such a goal is sensible to anyone else. An actor's preferences are purely subjective (in an explanatory sense) and only revealed or constituted through action itself. Thus, while we can observe the past actions of agents to see their revealed preference in specific instances in the past, we can never really know the preferences of these actors in the future or real-time without action.

It's this basic foundation of understanding which met the musings of a Harvard psychologist with dismissal this morning. All action, aside from reflexes of sorts, is both "rational" and "self-interested" in that you, by definition, are acting in a means-ends framework towards a subjectively valued preference. It doesn't matter whether you decide to steal a multi-million dollar diamond today or give all your savings away to the homeless - both are rational and self-interested actions. It's certainly not the job of the economist to explain why a person might have the subjective evaluations that they do. While an economist might assume specific means and ends to illustrate important economic foundations, his general specialty is the framework through which said means and ends interact (action) and the trade-offs actors make at the margin to act upon or amend their ordinal preferences.

So, in a basic sense, economists have no particular insight into the subjective evaluations of actors. They might apply, hypothetically, economic concepts to actors based on assumptions about the preferences of those actors. But whether an actor's desires are aimed at the material or the ethereal it does not change basic economic precepts and our understanding of human action. The framework applies regardless of preference, stated or otherwise. Understanding this, it's silly to think that any serious talk of economics includes assumptions about incredibly "selfish" (in the moral sense) desires. It doesn't - or rather it shouldn't.

The insights I've gained, explicitly, from the Austrian tradition pushed me in the direction of such a reaction to the concept of Homo Economicus. "What about someone choosing to be 'selfish' or 'charitable' dismisses the basic tenants of economics!?", I thought. I wondered if any serious conversation of the concept had survived the marginal revolution. Then I thought that if it had, Mises surely would have commented on it at some point. A quick search and there it was - on page 62 of Human Action, Mises speaks on the idea of Homo Economicus:

"According to this doctrine traditional or orthodox economics does not deal with the behavior of man as he really is and acts, but with a fictitious or hypothetical image. It pictures a being driven exclusively by "economic" motives, i.e., solely by the intention of making the greatest possible material or monetary profit. Such a being does not have and never did have a counterpart in reality; it is a phantom of a spurious arm-chair philosophy."

I also read that Mises had, I suppose mockingly to some degree, described the ideal hypothetical model of man as Homo Agens (Acting Man) instead, to drive home the point about economics being, ultimately, the study of human action.

The more I thought about all of this, the more I thought about the general methodological rivalry between the Austrians and the Neo-Classicals (including Keynesians) of the 20th century. Austrians have a contentious view of their empirical approach and feel, generally, that many of the models that lead to particular policy prescriptions assume too much about the world, and often to dismal ends. In that way, maybe, loosely speaking, the contentions of the psychologist weren't completely incorrect. Even though most Neo-Classicals would say that, while empirical analysis is scientifically sufficient, it isn't perfectly accurate - it still seems as though they are all-too-often oversimplifying if not completely looking over some things that are very important, analytically.

Looking at things this way, maybe the criticism rubbed me the wrong way because it was misdirected. Maybe, much in the same way that people conflate massively regulated markets with free markets, the doctor simply conflated Neo-Classicial economics (clearly the dominant view today) with the whole study of economics in general. In fact, maybe a lot of the arguments I get into with people who are generally disinterested with regards to economics revolve around similar contentions. Have I been roping myself into defending people and views that have little to do with me or my own views? This is why ambiguity and generalizations are so confounding and dangerous. More on this at a future date.

Anti-Market Rage: A Medical Analogy

I haven't divulged too much of my feelings on the OWS movement other than some of my basic observations, concerns, and frustrations. This isn't without reason. While I'm very skeptical of the movement as a whole, if you can address something seemingly directionless as a "movement", there's certainly a part of me that wants to sympathize with a general sense of anger and bewilderment regarding the political goings-on of the last few years. In a lot of ways I think that it's really important just to have people really standing up and saying that they're witnessing something that doesn't seem quite right. I'll never not have respect for what's taking place in that sense.

On the other hand, there's certainly part of me that feels a bit of repulsion to the populist/democratic nature of a lot of what I've seen as well. The "we are the 99%" meme may end up serving them well, rhetorically - but my view (even of history more generally) does not give a lot of credence to the concept of proving your "rightness" on any given issue by appealing to popularity. There's been an awful lot of things that have been both pretty popular and terrifyingly evil in my book. Such a contention is probably water under the bridge at this point but it's important to remind people that being part of the angry mob - while maybe giving you the power to carry forth with X - certainly does not make X right or even virtuous.

Of course, having my own niche views, there are parts of any movement or creed I'm probably not going to like. I'm trying to lend this political "happening" as much rhetorical rope as possible in my own mind before I completely dismiss them. But the single-most aggrevating thing to me, I think, so far is their seeming inability to really understand the underlying complex set of political relationships leading to the problems they are trying to address (or at least a subset of the problems that they address).

They are keen on identifying real problems, as well as real actors, but a lot of times they focus on one particular group of actors as being "evil" or "greedy" - instead of realizing, I think more realistically, that all actors are generally self-interested...and yet markets, usually, have mechanisms that work to the advantage of those who consume their services. So instead of asking what makes such a dynamic different for certain things (particularly over the last few years), you get this kind of general screed against whole categories of actors in the economy, or even less convincingly "greed" - as if those making the claim can't understand why McDonalds can't/won't charge $500 for a hamburger...even though they'd very much want to.

In other words, it's a frustratingly shitty place to start an argument for anyone who really believes in the real strength(s) of free markets. I have family members and friends who post a lot of these OWS-related videos and articles on Facebook. Most of the time I don't bother to comment (as some of the people aren't entirely receptive to arguments that might rock the emotional boat on this issue), but I do at least try to look at some of it. This morning, in particular, I saw a link to a supposed "Anonymous" video floating around (I wonder if supporters of OWS know what "Anonymous" actually is or isn't) which claimed we knew the real problem underlying all of this; it was a single word - bankers.

Not "this particular group of bankers involved in regulatory capture" or "this cartelized banking system that's outlawed competitors."

Just bankers. Period.

When you continue to hear people make general accusations like that there's a certain sense of uselessness that washes over you. You start to think that there's no way to move the goal posts with anyone. You start wanting to lock yourself in a room with those people for a week with a dry-erase board (made by greedy people) and build the whole world of economics from the ground up for them while holding their hand the entire time. Unfortunately we don't have that kind of time or pull with people. And if we did, I'm sure I wouldn't find myself so frustrated as often as I do.

But seeing this particular video about "bankers" made me think of a really simple medical analogy that kind of underpins the frustration of free-marketers with the contentions of the OWS masses:

Blaming "bankers" or "banks" generally for the issues plaguing the financial system is like blaming your arm for an infection you have on it. Yes, your arm is the part of your body that's hurting at the moment - and you might even feel like you want to cut it off. But if you walk around telling people that what the real problem is (in regards to pain) are "arms" - in general - then I think it's a safe bet to say you haven't thought through all the implications of the problems at hand.

So it seems to be with a large part of the OWS movement and the political and economic problems that lie before us. A lot of the responses seem much more about satiating populist feelings than helping the "patient" actually get better. Let's hope all the "doctors" pushing for the pre-mature amputation of limbs give a little more pause before throwing those prescriptions on the table in earnest.

Angels and Demons

In making my usual rounds at the blogs I so dearly admire, I'm always enamored of some of the general commentary directed at libertarians or libertarianism. Some of the criticism is polite and well-reasoned. At the other end of the spectrum there is quite a bit of it that is hateful and often poorly written. I get a kick out of reading both kinds. What's odd is that the posts that are actually frustrating are the ones that fall most squarely in between the two, often a comment which seems well-intentioned but poorly reasoned.

I saw one such comment on Marginal Revolution recently, a criticism that I've seen and heard countless times but one that seems to miss the whole thrust of libertarianism in the midst of critiquing it. It's a claim that comes up in discussions about the libertarian view of the government and/or its role, in general. It goes something like this; A libertarian excoriates government and wants to reduce or eliminate it in some capacity - a critic responds that this is Utopian nonsense, that libertarians foolishly believe in the good-hearted nature of man and rely on that to keep people in check.

It's really just a re-hashing of Madison from Federalist #51:

"If men were angels, no government would be necessary."

It may be true that libertarians, generally speaking, place more faith in the basic social institutions of man than some. They don't believe that everyone would simply abandon their normative prescriptions without a coercive monopoly to enforce them - after all, is it not those underlying moral constructs that inform our building and maintenance of such an institution as it already exists? It certainly would seem that way. The deontological claim from libertarians is that such social institutions ought not impede liberty. But, of course, this isn't the only argument libertarians make. They also, more often than not, make consequentialist arguments for why free-floating social institutions (as opposed to their self-imposed monopolist versions) actually work out better, as per their intended function, in the end.

In the political sphere, a large part of the libertarian argument against government isn't that people are simply angels and that since this is self-evident then we need no such institutions. Rather the argument is actually almost the entire opposite. Men are, indeed, not angels. They are agents that, even in supposed public capacity, are more than capable of acting as self-interested agents (there's a whole field dedicated to this idea). So our view is actually something like:

If men were angels we wouldn't need institutions of justice. And since they aren't, we can't allow a single group of actors to obtain the right to exclusively shape and administer justice.

In other words, yes - if men were angels we wouldn't need "government." But if men were angels, we wouldn't have to worry about an exclusive governing by a single group of men over other men. If there is any common theme in libertarianism it's the upholding of property rights and a general thrust for decentralization of power - concepts which evolve from the general notion that men are not perfect, and therefore must have coherent social conventions through which largely peaceful interaction is possible. I think I speak for all libertarians when I say, "If you think libertarianism isn't borne out of a heavy consideration for the malevolent capabilities of man, then you don't understand much about libertarianism."

The Libertarian Black Box

Yesterday I was browsing over a piece linked by Brad DeLong about "Libertarian Ponies". Needless to say, I wasn't exactly expecting it to be commentary that was sympathetic to any of my views. But something struck me about halfway through it, and it's something that hits me reading the vast majority of criticism lobbed at libertarians; the overwhelming impression that such critics are being purposefully obtuse regarding the arguments libertarians actually make.

It's obviously more prevalent as the shade of libertarianism being critiqued deepens. This particular piece seems to extend its reach to the most radical libertarian elements (which is fine). But in almost every case it seems like even the most intelligent critics completely ignore or invert the general framework of libertarian reasoning. I don't like to generalize, but at least most of the more radical libertarians I know make a point to actually understand the ideas and contentions of their political opponents. Why is it that conservatives and (especially) liberals can't seem to make the same effort? Again, people like Brad DeLong are not stupid...not even close. Is it a terrible thing to demand that your detractors actually understand the arguments you make before they dismiss them?

I don't mind having political disagreements, all the way from base ethics to pragmatic application. But the will of many to ignore, evade, or twist the arguments being made (and sometimes not being made) is staggering and almost systemic in presence. How many times can you throw your hands up and ask, "WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT!?!?" in reading a piece before you give up? When you have to do that at the end of almost every sentence I would say that's a sign of a serious disconnect and that it's time to re-evaluate exactly what is going on.

After some quiet thought and reflection, I've boiled my hypothesis down to a mental bosium-strip of sorts:

The Libertarian Black Box

In any kind of basic systems-analysis you can boil complex processes down a simple definition of functionality - the proverbial "black box." The "black box" is simply a way to look at the behavior of a system (by looking at inputs and outputs) without necessarily getting caught up in the why's and how's of the system. So we can view this as the way(s) libertarian arguments seem to be received or interpreted by non-libertarians.

From my experience, the psychological artifact of non-libertarians (at large) that I call the "Libertarian Black Box" has two primary functions.

Function 1: Read in a refutation of means as a refutation of premise or ends

This has to be the most prevalent form of obfuscation or confusion a libertarian will run into when talking to non-libertarians. When libertarians raise consequentialist or deontological objections to a given method to achieve a given goal, often the person in question will reply as if the libertarian doesn't see the initial problem or that they don't support any solution to it...both of which are usually unequivocally false. In trying to lay rhetorical waste to the Anarcho-Capitalist notion that market mechanisms will better direct and produce law enforcement and protection, the author of DeLong's linked piece sarcastically exclaims:

"Now wish that people should, despite that lack of any restraint on their actions such as might be formed by policemen, functioning law courts, the SEC, and so on, not spend all their time screwing each other in predictable ways ranging from ordinary rape, through the selling of fraudulent stocks in non-existent ventures, up to the wholesale dumping of mercury in the public water supplies."

Admittedly, it would be a pretty slamming argument...if radical libertarians didn't believe in rights or their rightful enforcement. But that's not the stance libertarians make. In fact, the whole consequentialist side of their argument demands better provision of these services, and further goes to explain why pseudo-monopolistic institutions, such as the ones we have, are predisposed to providing these services inadequately and poorly. Libertarians, generally, do not pretend these problems don't exist - they simply believe they have a better way, both economically and morally, to handle these problems.

To understand this point a little better, imagine that government claimed a monopoly on the production of TVs. No one else would have a right to compete with the government in this particular industry. Granted, we could choose new managers for this government-run enterprise every few years, but what would the problems be from a developmental and distributional standpoint? What are the well-known downsides to monopolistic control of any industry? How does competition alter incentives and ultimately the path of industry, the emergent relationship between consumer and producer? If we wouldn't expect affordable, quality products from a monopoly what can we expect from a monopoly on the institution of law?

David Friedman writes, in The Machinery of Freedom (p. 132):

"Imagine buying cars the way we buy governments. Ten thousand people would get together and agree to vote, each for the car he preferred. Whichever car won, each of the ten thousand would have to buy it. It would not pay any of us to make any serious effort to find out which car is best; whatever I decide, my car is being picked for me by the other members of the group. Under such institutions, the quality of cars would quickly decline."

At this point I should point out that it's more than acceptable to disagree with Friedman's conclusion here. What's not acceptable is to act as if his contention with the hypothetical production and distribution of cars in his example meant that he didn't want cars to be produced. It's worse than a non sequitur; it's simply dishonest or ignorant.

Unfortunately, the contrarian view of libertarians regarding government purview over all kinds of institutions has been suffering this argumentative fate for quite a while. The classical liberal writer Bastiat makes a clear and concise acknowledgment of similar frustrations in The Law (A Confusion of Terms):

"Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all.

We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain."

Function 2: Make a critical claim about a perceived weakness in the proposed system that applies just as much if not more so to the system you defend

This function is often tangential to, or a part of, the first. Although, from personal experience, it's often much more blatant and exasperating. This occurs when non-libertarians are on the offensive, scoffing at and excoriating the simple folly of libertarianism; when, all too often, their criticism applies even more aptly to the system they so vociferously defend. The author of DeLong's linked piece takes the Anarcho-Capitalist notion of private protection to task:

"Now, everyone close your eyes and try to imagine a private, profit-making rights-enforcement organization which does not resemble the mafia, a street gang, those pesky fire-fighters/arsonists/looters who used to provide such "services" in old New York and Tokyo, medieval tax-farmers, or a Lendu militia...Nothing's happening but a buzzing noise, right?"

There are several things to point out with, particularly, the "profit-making" incentive(s) being brought up, in accord to the not-so-free-market nature of many supposed "laissez faire" fire-fighting failures (or even the failures of the quite public providers of such services). An actual discussion of how public vs. private frameworks for such provisions might develop never occurs. Instead we're left with the presumption that failure doesn't or can't happen in the public sphere. Just look at how talk of private protection or the rendering of civil disputes turns to the allusions of thieves and private gangs...the point of which, of course, is to provoke fear of "private crime" emanating from such institutions. We can ignore, for the sake of discussion, the quite private (and often efficient) arbitration and security in the employ of much of modern society already. Does the author truly believe that government and it's monopolistic control of such services is devoid of similar applicable worries and criticisms?

What is a street gang, or the mafia? We think of them more loosely as criminals. But what do they do? They lie to, cheat, rob and murder the innocent, shake people down for protection money, favor some individuals and businesses while suppressing others, extract what amounts to rent payments for land they do not own, and engage in bloody conflict with other such institutions over territory and procedure. Exactly which one of those features, again, does not describe the actions of government as well? In fact, the largest difference between the two conceptions seem to be consent of a democratic plurality and the pretense of legitimacy and just monopoly. If we're going to have a race regarding which group is worse on the scales of theft, murder, detention and/or abuse of the innocent, lying, fortune-building, cronyism, violence, and the generally unilateral prohibition of peaceful, voluntary interaction and movement I'm putting all my money on the state-sanctioned horse.

It's bad enough that someone isn't able to see how the supposedly "legitimate" institution is worse than the ones they've ostensibly pushed into the hands of criminals, but do they really not understand that there is no environment BUT the criminal one for such competitive institutions to exist under the current system? Is it possible to imagine that an actual freely competitive system for such services would produce different results than what we have now? Have we really not learned anything from the "War on Drugs"? Does anyone take seriously the notion that re-legalizing alcohol after prohibition did or would have legitimized the criminal providers who supplied said product in light of the U.S. government's prohibitive policies towards it? Even if we couldn't imagine that competition in protection would develop as easily and peacefully as post-prohibition alcohol production and distribution, does that settle the contentions over whether competition for such protection services produce better or worse results than a monopoly on those services?

Surely we can disagree regarding the conclusion. But are supporters of the state really under the delusion that governments (monopolies on law and protection) aren't responsible for countless grievous atrocities throughout history? Is it a stretch to think private crime, as bad as it is, pales in comparison to such state-sanctioned indiscretions? I don't think it's a crazy notion to consider. And the complete obliviousness towards the actions and nature of government implies some kind of ethical veil on the state; one through which immoral acts committed by the state are not immoral; that somehow the individual with a badge or uniform is not to be held to the same moral standards as the rest of us. As Murray Rothbard correctly notes in "For a New Liberty (Chapter 3: The State)":

"The State! Always and ever the government and its rulers and operators have been considered above the general moral law... Service to the State is supposed to excuse all actions that would be considered immoral or criminal if committed by "private" citizens. The distinctive feature of libertarians is that they coolly and uncompromisingly apply the general moral law to people acting in their roles as members of the State apparatus. Libertarians make no exceptions. For centuries, the State (or more strictly, individuals acting in their roles as "members of the government") has cloaked its criminal activity in high-sounding rhetoric. For centuries the State has committed mass murder and called it "war"; then ennobled the mass slaughter that "war" involves. For centuries the State has enslaved people into its armed battalions and called it "conscription" in the "national service." For centuries the State has robbed people at bayonet point and called it "taxation." In fact, if you wish to know how libertarians regard the State and any of its acts, simply think of the State as a criminal band, and all of the libertarian attitudes will logically fall into place."

Occupation and Understanding

The last few weeks I've been peppered with news articles and videos regarding the various "Occupations" occurring around the country; namely Occupy Wall Street and Occupy DC. Of course, according to supporters, these events aren't being covered at all by major media outlets...which moves me to question my own sanity. Perhaps the clips and articles I've seen were really intricate mental fabrications I've unconsciously integrated in order to deceive myself. It's not out of the question. A lot of people think that's also a plausible explanation for libertarianism as well.

At any rate, there's a contingency within that fragmented hallucination (libertarianism) who have, for various reasons, attempted to attach themselves to the "Occupation" movement in different respects. Some are simply latching as an attempt to re-direct the movement to engage what they perceive to be the true source of injustice (government), while others seemed to be under the impression that the larger movement is, in essence, already a movement running counter to government reach and power. Slowly but surely I believe the latter group are finally becoming disillusioned.

I'd like to think that there was some sudden swell of rationality in the American zeitgeist, but the literature, signage, and interviews of "Occupation" participants have proven quite otherwise. While there are plenty (and I mean plenty) of arguments to be made about how government unjustly tilts the economic game in favor of all kinds of special interests, not the least of which would be those on Wall Street, it seems instead the protesters have been focused on vintage Progressive talking-points; namely inequality of wealth...without regard to the nature of such acquisitions. Nothing new under the sun. From calls to behead the wealthy to pleas to have others embrace the cost of student-debt, it appears that participants have no moral qualms with tossing aside the rights of others to achieve their desired ends. Of course, the tragic irony is that their "protestations" are not towards the end of thwarting the truly unjust actions of government or its beneficiaries but rather to strengthen the resolve and general support for the very institution responsible for much of the plight the "protesters" evidence.

And all of this is happening, perhaps not so coincidentally, at the same time that supporters of the current administration are fending off claims of class-warfare generated from recent debate over tax-policy. For me, in both regards to tax-policy and the recent "protests", the class-warfare aspect is painfully visible if not revolting. A simple acknowledgment of general moral sympathies is more than enough to understand the socialization of compassion and charity that evolve, I would estimate, very naturally...and possibly even particularly in more reasoned post-Enlightenment societies in the Western World. But how we reconcile those very real moral sympathies with (at least some of) our predisposition to actually demonize the relatively wealthy is another question altogether.

I say "relatively" because there is no absolute definition of poverty. If we expand the (perhaps even selfish) concern for only American citizens to, say, the entire world, then a new definition of relative poverty begins to emerge. Suddenly even the very poor, by American, first world, standards, suddenly seem...wealthy. Compared to the squalor, dire famine, and impoverishment of the third world, the American poor live in relative comfort. This, of course, is not to dismiss the troubles that burden the lower class in America...or even the middle class in America. But it does make one question the aims of the supposed compassionate among us who demand, in the name love and humanity, that we tithe not to the truly poor and suffering in the world (by truly rational and relative definitions) but to those much higher in the wealth strata.

Or what of relative poverty from an inter-temporal perspective? Does anyone doubt that many of the people today in the lower rungs of income in the U.S. enjoy much vaster riches than kings and queens of past? Perhaps not in terms of mere leisure time, although we certainly enjoy more leisure time than the working classes of the past. But even just looking at the absolute marvels available to us - cars, TV, computers, cell phones, wireless internet, plumbing, air conditioning, refrigeration, heating, supermarkets - it's easy to see that even things we may consider basic necessities in the U.S. today, things that even most of the domestic "poor" have access to, were far out of the reach of the upper echelons of society mere decades ago. We can push the argument back even further. Does anyone really think the poverty of the industrial revolution (circa 1880) was the same as the poverty that existed at the turn of the 19th century? In a hundred years could poor people who have a much higher quality of life than the upper-middle class of today also be considered poor? By what standard(s) of need and want do we define poverty?

My fear, judging from the words and actions of the supporters of these recent "protests" is that poverty has no standards except relative ones. And if it is indeed the case that poverty rests not in some standard of comfort from need and want but rather in protestation of the over-productive by the less productive then I fear libertarians have a long, arduous road ahead of us. It's seven pitches of black above maddening and below disheartening to try to openly engage the people who have such predispositions. My own personal experience is that you can work their beliefs into knots and yet they'll evade, ignore, or simply dismiss your contentions. My friends, the cards are not in our favor.

If libertarians truly want to roll over the institutions of old they are going to have to start at the very bottom. No presidential race under the sun will move the ideological goal-posts for people who think that prosperity and peace can be bought with coercion and theft. So, while I have my doubts regarding many of the libertarian-minded civil disobedients out there trying to win the hearts and minds of such people, I have nothing but praise for their effort. Such attempts may seem futile in the short run, but we know what we're up against. Vassals of the state, of all stripes, will hold the comparative advantage in coercion and force. Our weapons, first and foremost, must always be love, patience, and understanding. We may never live to see its fruition, but this is how we free the ensnared. This is our part in the revolution. Reach out to them. Embrace them. Help them.

Save a Slave - Subdue the Free

Today President Obama unveiled a new deficit-reduction strategy aimed at resolving roughly $3 trillion in debt-cycle spending. Apparently he promises to veto any bill that doesn't ask that the rich pay their "fair share"...whatever that dubious phrase actually means in any explicit context. He further added,

We are not going to have a one-sided deal that hurts the folks who are most vulnerable...

Now, to the average voter (whether they agree or not in terms of policy prescription), this statement doesn't sound completely outlandish. And, indeed, it's certainly not something that's exactly new in the realm of political rhetoric. But, for the libertarian, there's something awfully distressing regarding the language surrounding the policy-push. If you view the government as having a legitimate claim on the ownership of your labor - or even if you think they have no true ownership thereof, but that taxation is still an unfortunate necessity - then there's nothing particularly disheartening about the statement in question. After all, you're merely a serf living at the privilege of the state. But if you don't cede, conceptually, to the idea that other people (in this case, the state) own you or your work then it sounds like a very vile thing to say indeed.

Walk with me through a hypothetical...

Let us say that, several hundred years ago, you and many people in your town were taken into bondage by foreign invaders. These subjegators now administer every moment of your waking life and that of your family and friends. A small group of people among your town have somehow, through various means, managed to secure their own freedom with regards to their would-be captors - or at least a larger degree of freedom than they would otherwise have. Several seasons pass, and at some point our overlords decide they need us to produce more resources for them so they pressure us accordingly. In the coming months we are addled, bruised, beaten, whipped, and starved into working the fields and quarries of the surrounding area. We quite understandably resent this. Going through much hardship, a contingency among our people begin to form - a contingency that envies the freedom of our freed brothers and sisters. They demand that these brothers and sisters "pay their fair share."

What are we to say ethically or morally about this? Well, obviously the phrase "fair share" is coined in such a way as to pack the premise of "rightness" into the notion at the outset. But is it truly righteous? Well, we have to look at the interaction between moral agents to determine what, in this situation, is righteous and what is not. Regarding taxes, we have a group of people paying different amounts, at different rates, for different services, of which people amongst that group consume differently. It does seem that, prima facie, if there is a group that, say, is contributing nothing but then consuming from this bundle of services then there is something that seems morally questionable if the other participants do not approve of such. If that is the standard of "fair share" then one must produce an in-depth analysis of producers and consumers to find out who is not pulling their weight. And even then you might expect to find that some individuals who have a much lighter burden produce much more for the group, as well as you'd expect to find some who are part of a larger group that is nominally burdened in greater ways who consume quite a bit more than they produce. So while it may seem fair on the surface to point out the privilege of some at the expense of others, a simple class-analysis of any complex human system of interaction would seem wildly incomplete or inconclusive. At the very least it wouldn't warrant wielding derision and hatred upon whole classes of people. And, perhaps importantly, such analysis would ignore intent and moral culpability, as many have little to nothing to do with their level of "burden" as such.

But, at least the above would resemble some kind of moral argument; all things being equal. Unfortunately, in both the concept of taxation as well as our hypothetical, we've already established, as a matter of premise, that these groups aren't interacting voluntarily. They are being physically coerced into participating. If such coercion is morally wrong, and, more to the point, if such coercion violates morally enforceable rights of would-be-victims (in this case, the people of the town in question), then it would seem that people would have every right to remove themselves of such unjust obligations. If one of every twenty people in our town, for whatever reason, managed to shed the yoke of slavery, it would seem very odd, morally, to demand that they be likewise enslaved for the sake of "fairness" or "equality." If we see someone beaten we don't demand that everyone be beaten along with them. Or if someones' son or daughter is killed by a murderer, we don't demand that the remaining siblings be killed to "share" the illegitimate burden placed on that family. These things seem not only odd, but morally repugnant. So why all the (successful) rhetoric about those who manage to escape taxation turning around and handing over what they manage to escape with?

The answer is simple but unfortunate. People have been so brainwashed into believing that our personal moral code doesn't apply to those in government that they don't recognize taxation as theft. And that isn't even to say that they recognize it as such but think that it's necessary - no. They really, really don't see property forcibly taken from them as theft if done by the hand of government. Apparently all you need is democratic support or a badge to turn morality inside out. You'll find more of the same on almost every other issue; from taxes to war to interactions between consenting adults. If someone off the street interfered with us in this way, we'd call those actions crimes. When a group of people with silly outfits and badges do it, we call it governing.

Make no mistake, idiocy abounds in that group we call government. But I will give them this much; how they manage to hoodwink so many people who claim to love and care for the disenfranchised masses into believing that moral principles stop at the feet of a few very powerful, rich men is beyond me. I have a very bad feeling that such dispositions are going to be dominant for a long time to come. The leveraging of technology is beginning to give us traction that we otherwise wouldn't have. But it is still a very long steep climb ahead. This is how it starts.