A question for readers: in many lines of commerce, large firms often enjoy significant cost and/or revenue advantages relative to smaller players. Over time, these industries tend to evolve to a format where many of the most successful enterprises are very large organizations. These firms typically wield considerable power relative to players smaller than they are, such as employees, suppliers, and customers, and often seek to influence governments. Moreover, many fields of enterprise have considerable barriers to entry, which further entrenches the position of powerful incumbents.
How do libertarians propose to respond to the power of large enterprises?
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Large organizations often are ensconced within a web of legal fences that cement their powerful positions. Dismantling those fences can undo their power. Of course they would fight tooth and nail to prevent this happening.
For example the big banks can be undone by revising the legal framework within which they operate. That is an obvious one. Standard oil was undone by antitrust law. I guess that was quite an aggressive move against a large corporate entity. Microsoft has had similar action against it. Anyway tinkering with the law surrounding these organizations can radically effect how they operate.
The answer to your question depends entirely on what version of libertarianism (aka neoliberalism) is operative.
If you check out Henry Simons’ “Economic Policy for a Free Society,” originally published in 1948 and currently out of print, you will see an instinctive libertarian proposal that calls for breaking the kind of power of which you speak. Simons was ecommunicated from the neoliberal church for distrusting all concentrations of power. See Brad DeLong’s discussion of Simons and this book (link below).
If you check out “The Road from Mont Pelerin,” you will discover that the instinctive libertarian proposal was replaced with the assertion that monopolies are okay. That they pose no long term danger to democracy or economies. Of course, these conclusions were paid for by people with particular interests.
Links:
“Free Society”
http://www.amazon.com/Economic-Policy-Society-Henry-Simons/dp/0226758915/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1282975480&sr=1-1
DeLong’s discussion of Simons:
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/1990/03/j_bradford_delo.html
For a free preview of “The Road from Mont Perelin” (go to Chapter 6 on page 204, “Reinventing Monopoly and the Role of Corporations”)
http://books.google.com/books?id=kSyzcrfecuwC&printsec=frontcover&dq=The+Road+to+Mont+Pelerin&source=bl&ots=SiJlDMWnzy&sig=flLi7pdlwqloSkVdcA2Fx8He-9o&hl=en&ei=saZ4TKStCsijnQeQj_CVCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CCYQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=The%20Road%20to%20Mont%20Pelerin&f=false
To Purchase “The Road from Mont Pelerin”
http://www.amazon.com/Road-Mont-Pelerin-Neoliberal-Collective/dp/0674033183
A quick follow-up.
The tagline of your book captures the hallmark of neoliberalism (aka modern libertarianism of the mises.org type), which is “unenlightened self interest.”
The fact is that the founders of neoliberalism wrapped the concept of liberty around rentierism to mask the bitterness of the pill. Most neoliberals (aka self-identifying libertarians) are earnest followers so enamored of the rhetoric that they don’t understand the reality any more than Lenin’s followers did. This should come as no surprise in view of the fact that Rothbard urged adopting Leninist propaganda techniques to create true believers to form the core of the neoliberal movement. (Google “Rothbard Confidential Memo Volcker Fund.”)
What you will hear from these true believers, who I call Pavlov’s serfs because they salivate whenever their liberty bell is rung, is that monopolies can never arise in a free market economy but for the intervention of the state, and that monopolies cannot survive but for continued state intervention. (This is what Rothbard and Greenspan said, at least.) In my experience in business, I cannot agree with either point. Historically, monopolies arose within a pure laissez-faire environment. And please explain Intel and Microsoft. Once a monopoly becomes entrenched, they can stamp out all competition through anti-competitive means because their monopolist profits can mask losses in other lines of business.
«The answer to your question depends entirely on what version of libertarianism (aka neoliberalism) is operative.»
Indeed, and to put it another way, which is quite important.
Most libertarianism can be interpreted on two levels.
The first is that libertarianism is about PRINCIPLES not outcomes. If libertarian principles result in «the power of large enterprises» then the answer is “So?”. Because what matters is liberty of contract, and if liberty of contract results in the power of large enterprises, or 99% starving and 1% being obscenely rich, or whatever else, that is irrelevant, liberty is an absolute good in itself, and consequences are irrelevant.
The second level is that libertarianism is really not about principles, but about about SOCIAL DARWINISM, and the principles have been chosen because “liberty of contract” favours WINNERS and punishes LOSERS. Therefore if the result is «the power of large enterprises» that is actually very desirable for libertarians, as long the large enterprises are run in the interests of the strong and against the interests of the weak, which they usually are. Indeed many libertarians are against those voluntary exchanges which create organizations such as governments that may occasionally be run in the interests of the weak and against the interests of the strong.
@Blissex,
Thanks. Your additional insights are very helpful.
I was on the side of at&t, ibm and msft during their antitrust suits. The rubicon was crossed when corporatism changed the nature of large business. power can be tolerated within free market open rules. When congress decides the winners there is too much power
Antitrust suits are brought by the executive, not congress.
The power imbalance was initially created by Reagan and his policy of avoiding any real oversight of business combinations. This led to the concentration of monopolistic power.
To be fair, nobody after Reagan, Democrat or Republican, reversed his policy.
Only after the monopolistic power was created did it have the opportunity to influence the congress to make laws to perpetuate it.
Even if power can be tolerated within free market open rules (I think it can be tolerated only to the point at which it does not retard competition), it cannot be tolerated if it perverts our representative democracy. The neoliberal vision of “free markets” is completely at odds with the U.S. Constitution and the American way of life.
I did not mean that congress chose to breakup large companies, as you state the justice dept made those choices. My beef is that Congress chose to help Wall street and GM. We now have a new situation.
Choose your poison: we accept corporatism (which goes to Yves question of when Libertarians think there is too much power in a corporation), we view these industries as utilities (albeit with regulatory capture), we accept an extremely contorted sense of trickle down theory (bailing out the rich and the unions during crisis eventually helps all), or we use democracy to try and change course. I am in camp #4.
Thanks for your comments, Tao
Robert Nozick would have said that ‘their position of power is historically based, so we have no right as a society to intervene, as that would be an assault upon their liberties’ (esp. relevant if you call corps ‘persons’)
The lesson to draw being that libertarians have no useful answer to abuse of power; as most will also believe in the courts system, and thus argue that ‘he with the most lawyers/who gives the most campaign contributions’ wins.
Ah, there’s a question calculated to measure the level of insanity and/or cowardly lying among these persons.
The basic response is likely to be either denial that corporate tyanny exists or is bad at all, or else one or another version “let them eat cake” idiocy.
An ideological whore like Robert Nozick would sit there with a straight face and say in a world with “no government” (meaning direct dictatorship of big corporations), shrimp fisherman would get together and “negotiate” a mutually beneficial “solution” with BP.
To give a better idea of what Nozick really wanted, he also wanted to replace the police (in theory at least accountable to the public) with corporate death squads like Blackwater. He claimed to think if a town hired a death squad and it responded with oppression and running a protection racket, the town would simply not renew the contract and hire a different death squad (who would presumably be more conscientious about the “liberty” of the unarmed, untrained people who hired it) while the first meekly accepted its fate as an ex-contractor and peacefully moved along.
No amount of experience of history, no amount of evidence, will ever move the economic “libertarian” from this fraudulent position. Just as no amount of evidence will ever get him to admit that the criminal who was born on third did not hit a triple.
That’s because he’s either a kind of flat-earther, or more commonly libertarianism, including in its social and anti-police varieties, is a stalking horse for plutocracy and the direct dictatorship of big corporations.
Of course it’s incoherent on its face to be opposed, on grounds of liberty, to excessive power in governmental structures but not in private structures. The libertarian really seems to be saying that if corporate goons rape and enslave him, it’s not as bad as if government goons do. (And never mind that whatever today’s government does is done in the service of corporate power.)
And then there’s the incoherency of claiming to want only voluntaristic actions, which implies great decentralization of all power, wealth, and political and economic infrastructure, while still wanting massively concentrated endeavors which by definition can never be done on a non-coercive basis.
In the previous thread here I pointed out the example of how Stalinesque gigantist projects like offshore drilling seem impossible to do without coercing lots of capital and externalized risk. I said that in principle it can’t be done according to the premise of “libertarianism”. As I expected, the responses to that were incoherent. (To be fair, that’s one point on which many anarchists seem also to be weak, since they too seem prone to self-contradictory urges toward big techno-projects.)
The real freedom-seeker knows there can never be freedom where crime is allowed to run rampant, and there can never be freedom where any kind of organization (including any large individual wealth hoard), government or private, is allowed to attain large size and concentration of power and wealth. These things are existential assaults on freedom. Not just threats, but assaults. Once you have one such power concentration the best you can do is try to set up a countervailing one. Thus the good civics type says government, which in theory is accountable to the public, can perform the valuable service of restraining corporate power, which is by definition sociopathic.
It’s true, this can sometimes be a stage of the war of attrition corporations wage against the people. But in the end it will always end up the same way, kleptocracy.
The only solution is for the people to use public power to wipe out private tyranny toward the goal of true human freedom. Once we don’t need the government as a counterweight then it too can be tremendously devolved, since the only real rationale for big government in the first place was to protect the people against private gangsters.
So anyone who truly wants small government has to want relocalized government in a world purged of corporate tyranny. Anyone who claims otherwise really wants us all to be the slaves of these corporations.
Yes.
As I listened to Ron Paul on the radio yesterday talk about how government has no right to take money that people earn, and that people should always “get to keep their money”, I was struck by the simplistic and utterly one-sided nature of this belief.
I, personally, do not want the hassle of providing my own police force, firefighters, school building, road work, and other public services. That is why I pay taxes: to have others do these things FOR ME. At the logical end of all this “keeping my money” and doling it out only as I see fit – when would anyone have time to actually MAKE any money, if they had to fuss over every detail in their lives that is now being taken care of by “the government”?
This is where I think most Libertarians cannot think beyond the end of their noses: what about the Rest of Us, who are voluntarily paying “the government” to provide services, and when government fails to do so, we get involved and change things. Oh sure, we’re all “enslaved” and “sefs” and so forth, but really, isn’t that the same sort of completely non-pragmatic issue that the Purity Testers are always raising, no matter what system we are discussing?
What about our rights as members of society? I would never begrudge a Libertarian who wants to go all Unabomber and live in the woods, totally self-sufficient and outside of society, so why do they begrudge my beliefs and desires to have a functioning society with services provided?
I would never begrudge a Libertarian who wants to go all Unabomber and live in the woods, totally self-sufficient and outside of society, so why do they begrudge my beliefs and desires to have a functioning society with services provided?
That’s the funniest and most loathesome thing about the Randian childishness. They say they want to go away and be left alone, but first they want to steal everything that belongs to others (that others actually worked to build) and take it with them. (And in the most bizarre contradiction they still want government and courts to ratify their robbery and police and soldiers to defend it, and indeed to help them rob.)
I’d happily send them to the outlaw wasteland they claim to want. But they sure have no right to lay a finger on what civilized human beings have wrought.
They’re just incorrigible thieves and vandals.
This is probably why I believe we should cut off access to modern medicine from people that want to force the nonsense of creationism onto children in schools. They are perfectly fine with utilizing the benefits of medicine but completely unwilling to deal with the theoretical framework behind much of it. It is that ability to hold completely contradictory views that is the hallmark of much of the conservative movement. I suggest the authoritarians as a analysis of the psychology behind it.
http://members.shaw.ca/jeanaltemeyer/drbob/TheAuthoritarians.pdf
Most of them are willing to get on an airplane; I always wonder how they think a plane works, if they lack “belief” in the science that went into building it.
Do they think invisible fairies actually take hold of the wings and carry the plane through the air?
Of course, this manner of “thinking” is hardly a monopoly of conservatives, as we see with the still large number of Obama cultists and Democratic Party faithists (liberal teabaggers, as I call them) who, in direct defiance of the overwhelming evidence, still believe Obama “means well” by the people and that the Democrats seek the public interest.
This kind of Obama fundamentalism is every bit as cognitively deranged and contrary to one’s rational economic interest as any other variety.
“That’s the funniest and most loathesome thing about the Randian childishness. They say they want to go away and be left alone, but first they want to steal everything that belongs to others (that others actually worked to build) and take it with them.”
And what exactly, pray tell, do the Libertarians want to “steal”? The Libertarians I know actually pay for things, and don’t want handouts or to steal. Casting aspersions with no basis in fact is funny and loathesome.
To give one obvious example, the finance sector steals every cent it extracts. My understanding is many among that crowd define themselves as libertarians, and they certainly operate according to the Randian spirit.
(Why are Rand’s heroes always architects or some such whose dreams require lots of other people’s money, and particularly tremendous social wealth, to realize? Why aren’t they poets happy to be penniless but free, who face censorship, or something?
The reason is clear to those who understand the totalitarian code: When you say “self-reliant” but show total reliance on the production of others, what you really mean is, “Organize to steal from others. You’re entitled because you’re superior.”
That’s clearly the true Rand/”liberatarian” message.)
… and a lot of other stuff, essentially sowers of confusion sold a “pricniple”.
I’m glad Yves is posing these questions… much more useful (IMO) then narrow econ stuff that’s been up lately. Look at volume of comments generated… most of ’em well ferreting out the large essential functioning of current US everything which paints a much more persausive picture of our dysfunction then little snapshots of what derivatives are moving what sector of this or that (etc etc).
…
Thing about all this is, seems to me it widens the perception of a few here & there of the real problems, while doing little to alter the momentum of problems being discussed. I mean, Beck’s absurd rally yesterday to “recapture civil rights”, Rand Paul leading in polling w/whats here name from Nevada even w/Reid…
Across the landscape, momentum seems to me headed towards return to liars through Bush years that accellerated this steep slide, as opposed to current dems who seem able only to hold current decline steady.
Somehow, someway, some type of critical mass of people eliciting real principles and telling the truth… if there isn’t an intercession somewhere before too long, that cliff is getting closer and closer.
We all know what’s wrong. What are we going to do about it?
That’s the real question.
“I, personally, do not want the hassle of providing my own police force, firefighters, school building, road work, and other public services. That is why I pay taxes: to have others do these things FOR ME.”
I agree. I also don’t want to haul away my own garbage, grow my own food, make my own lattes, and build my own laptops. Bring on the government!
You aren’t voluntarily paying government; you are doing it because you are forced to.
Bob Goodwin’s got a really good answer.
Libertarians LIKE a free market. If one firm reaches a monopolistic position and that monopoly persists, you won’t have a free market. They are not necessarily corporatists.
It’s a common misconception that Libertarians are in favor of things (free market) as well as those all of those things’ possible negative consequences (monopoly).
A Democrat created the Welfare system. It’s a well intentioned thing designed to help people. There are also abusers. Republicans often make the mistake of assuming that all Democrats -like- this.
Many Republicans backed one or two wars started by Bush. A number of Democrats actually believe that all of those supporters are quite pleased that atrocities have occurred, or friendly fire events, or that so many innocents have lost their lives.
Libertarians get off a lot easier (it’s usually economic and not related to death), but it’s the same thing. (They also have an added burden: that whatever nutball thing that any ONE of them believes, Democrats and Republicans think ALL of them believe it.)
“They also have an added burden: that whatever nutball thing that any ONE of them believes, Democrats and Republicans think ALL of them believe it.”
“It’s a common misconception that Libertarians are in favor of things (free market) as well as those all of those things’ possible negative consequences (monopoly).”
So, you can or cannot speak for the collective known as “libertarian”? How does one get permission? Who determines who the nutballs are?
If you are the arbiter of nutball, what happens if you become nutball?
It’s the “no true Scotsman” argument.
Have a look at Galbraiths theory of countervailing power.
This is very much like asking sex-advice from the pope.
There are no corporations that behave in an inappropriate way in the true libertarian world. Because then these corporations wouldn’t be truly libertarian, you see?
Problem solved.
Corporartions are of course a purely artificial creation of big, aggressive government, and could never exist at all other than to the extent big aggressive government is there to act as their thug and bagman.
So a true libertarian, if he really opposed all aggressive manifestations of government power, would agree that incorporation shouldn’t exist, at least not in anything remotely like the form it became starting in the 19th century.
“Corporartions are of course a purely artificial creation of big, aggressive government, and could never exist at all other than to the extent big aggressive government is there to act as their thug and bagman.”
Corporations are NOT the creation of big aggressive government.
Corporations are a result of greedy, elite, and unfaithful groups of people forsaking their alliance to a government they have outwardly committed to uphold as member citizens, and then co-opting and using the institutions of that same government that they have forsaken for their own private gain. It is a ‘hijacking of government’ process not a ‘created by government’ process.
The private sector vs government sector argument is a four D creation of Mr. Global Propaganda — it is a Deflective, Decoy, Divisive, Deception. It is just another bullshit scam.
‘Big’ government is not the problem, aggregate generational corruption of government is the problem, and it is a global problem. The Libertarian vs other isms is also a now formula four D — Deflective, Decoy, Divisive, Deception — energy dissipating scam.
Government is an alliance of all citizens. Its size is not as important as its fairness in balancing the needs of the individual with the needs of the group. Self interest includes group interest, group interest includes individual interest.
Those that selfishly destroy the alliance of the group and the health of the total group organism (through whatever scam) by being elite, deceptive, selfish, and taking too much income and controlling too much asset wealth should be severely punished in proportion to the depth of their crimes.
Deception is the strongest political force on the planet.
“So a true libertarian … would agree that incorporation shouldn’t exist, at least not in anything remotely like the form it became starting in the 19th century.”
Indeed, the endowment of personhood (and non-liability) on a soulless, for-profit collective is an extreme violation of the principle of individual libert-y. No true libertarian could possibly support such a travesty without suffering head-exploding dissonance. The inevitable result, like the immutable law of gravity, is the inexorable capture of government (executive (regulatory), legislative, and judicial, plus media) and, ultimately the death of democracy.
With SCOTUS’ unprecedented dispensation of unfettered electioneering on these “persons”, the coup is now complete. And thus, Libertarians are hoist by their own petard, and the final tyranny of laissez-faire dooms the objectivists’ utopia.
It’s time for a Third Way.
What is the proper caveman’s response to jet aircraft? What is the proper ant’s response to a man’s shoe?
Libertarianism seeks a world in which the people cannot limit the economic activities of private actors, a world in which capitalism is free to operate essentially without rules. This assumes an historical, interim step in the development of capitalism—the natural first step (division of labor) but not the natural second step (concentration of the means of production in firms that grow to rise above competition and realize economies of scale). When certain private actors gain power as the result of concentration and can dictate rules to the rest of the private sector, libertarianism is impaled upon its own contradictions (we seek “freedom” from the “tyranny” of the people in order to succumb to the tyranny of certain people). When concentrated corporate power exists, libertarianism has been superseded.
Please remind me – are there ANY isms that don’t require people not to be people for their fundamental tenets to work?
Evolutionism ?
Too bad no libertarians came by to answer this question.
Well, some libertarians are obviously pro large corporations. Others see corporations as a dangerous (but unstable) concentrations of power, whose best method of survival is to devote their energies to capturing and exploiting the coercive power of the State. Without that co-opting of state power, they would be much more vulnerable to competitive pressure. I guess the key point here is that theybwould disagree with your assertion that a monopoly can continue to make windfall profits before somebody starts working out ways to bypass (or redirect) those additional costs to obtain a more efficient product. Markets never exist on their own
So, historically, for instance, companies that attempt to use their monopolistic power like Standard Oil end up growing too large, and the inefficiencies of scale (which do kick in eventually) begin to eat away at their profits, allowing smaller competitors to enter their market – unless that market is “stabilized” in some way by regulatory oversight (which libertarians would argue is always captured by those same corporate interests).
The best description of this counterintuitive idea for readers unsympathetic to the modern rightist presentation of libertarian ideas may be in left historian Gabriel Kalko’s Triumph of Conservatism, which investigates how early corporate regulation in the progressive era, both “pro business” and “anti”, ended up locking in the very large combines it sort to dismantle (that’s where I found the Standard Oil example). The modern equivalent more familiar to Naked Capitalism readers would be in the financial sector, where large bailouts preserve the very corporations whose overweening power caused the market problems in the first place.
reject capitalism.
Cool loved it.
I think the main issue we need to face is that Capitalism and free markets are not synonymous. A market needs a medium of exchange. If that medium is run by private entities, for private entities, those entities control the rest of the market.
Political power started as private enterprise, what we would call warlords today and eventually gentrified into monarchy. When monarchs lost sight of the fact that their purpose was to guide their people, as opposed to simply exploiting them, they tended to be overthrown and eventually the whole system of hierarchal power was replaced by political power as a public trust. Democracy works by pushing power down to the level it is responsive. If we were to make banking a public function, it would also be bottom up. Local credit unions would use local deposits to loan to local enterprises and use the profits to fund local needs. They would then form regional banks for broader investments.
In a debt based system, it is ultimately the desire of the borrower to accept the interest rate proffered which creates money. Three hundred years ago this was a pretty smart idea, since there were few economic measures to determine the money supply and debt grows at roughly the same rate as productivity. The problem is that production must increase to pay off debt and debt must increase to finance productivity. If this feedback loop gets jammed, debts are not paid off and value evaporates. Since those with accumulated assets do not like this to happen, the legal deck is stacked against borrowers. Unfortunately that does not change the fact that it is the borrowers who are the economic engine which utilizes the assets of those with money to lend. The demand side supports the supply side. Over the course of the last thirty years, this softening of demand for capital, relative to supply, has been masked by increasing government borrowing, lowered loan standards and the creation of enormous circulation bubbles that are really no more than complex forms of wagering. The existence of these speculative forms of demand have also enabled an enormous increase in the supply of capital, borrowed into existence because the interest rates charged are lower than the asset bubbles are appreciating. This is a financial bubble of nuclear proportions. Capitalism is drowning in capital, thanks to the liquidity providers.
Since money is drawing rights to productivity, the question is how to formulate a viable and healthy production based currency system. Money serves as a store of value and a medium of exchange. As a store of value, it is private property, but as a medium of exchange, it is a public utility. As property, there is the desire to accumulate as much as possible, but as a medium of exchange, more money than production degrades the value of the money. Money isn’t really a form of property, though, as we don’t own the copyrights and its value is controlled by whomever issues it. Consider the value to the banks and government though, if the belief is encouraged that it was a form of private property. As a form of trust and value, it becomes incorporated into every aspect of our economic transactions and interpersonal relationships. Which makes our lives that much more taxable. Money should only be treated as a public utility. In that way, it would be similar to a road system. You own your car, house, business, etc. but not the roads connecting them and no one seriously cries socialism over that. Treating money as form of public commons would make people very careful what value they would take from social relations and environmental resources to convert into currency in the first place. This would be healthy for society, the environment and the monetary system. Of course, it would create a slower, but more sustainable economy. We all like having roads, but there is little inclination to pave more than we need. If we applied the same principle to money, life would be in better shape. Instead of valuing ourselves by how big our bank accounts are, our sense of worth would be on how strong our community is and how healthy our environment is. A smaller money supply would go a long way to limiting the size of the government and the banking system.
The financial system has not simply bought off the politicians. It controls the system in which they function. Consider the process of government financing: The system is designed to overspend by buying votes with pork barrel spending, for enormous bills that can only be passed or vetoed. This serves to create debt in order to store capital, as government debt is the primary investment vehicle. So the reason our government seems to increase in size so dramatically under Republicans, who preach financial conservatism, is not so hard to understand, when you consider the extent to which this increased debt is bought by their benefactors. Should the government ever declare bankruptcy, it’s safe to say they would then feel legally empowered to asset strip public properties. It’s the old bankster ploy of extending credit, withholding it and then using the money they control to buy up assets at distressed prices.
As any child on an allowance knows, budgeting is to list ones needs and desires, then only buy what one has the money to spend. In the spirit of actual budgeting, a possible method for the government would be to break the spending bills down to their constituent items and have every legislator assign a percentage value to each item and then re-assemble them in order of preference. The president would draw the line at what would be funded. This would divide responsibility, allowing the legislature to prioritize, while giving the president final authority over total spending. Since making the cut would be graded on a curve, there would be much less incentive to trade favors and the percentage system would allow legislators to fine tune their granting of favors to other legislators and lobbyists. As the particular items on the line would have a far smaller constituency than those being asked to fund them, there would be limited political motivation to overspend. A local public banking system would cover much of the lost federal funding of local projects.
Interesting post
I agree with much of your analysis but I disagree with at least one of your prescriptions, a smaller money supply.
I think a larger money supply is needed.
It is in concentrations of wealth and savings, and the belief that these savings are entitled to some predetermined rate of return, that we are stumbling, I think. The efforts of those today must be greater and greater in order to keep the returns to those “forgoers of consumption” from yesterday. Those who decide not to buy something today should not expect that that which they decide not to buy will be available tomorrow, more to the point, the amount of money (cost) saved should in no way be guaranteed to be equivalent to afford a future purchase of the forgone good or basket of goods. We simply must realize that nothing in this universe retains its original value. If you dont buy it today, you may not get it, for the same cost anyway.
So, the way forward on this is to tell people who want to consume presently, Here is the money you need to do so. This will erode the value of the savers (hoarders) because they will no longer feel secure that they will have all they want later (which is a completely irrational belief anyway). Then we can get down to determining how present consumption gets divided. And we can start being concerned with real savings, savings of resources.
If you want to save fine, but dont expect a pat on the back and praise. In addition dont expect everyone else to work harder down the road to assure the return on your savings.
Lets make accumulation more of a vice than a virtue.
Greg,
you are arguing in favor of a smaller money supply! The reason lots of excess capital accumulates is because people like to save it and hope it retains, if not increases in value. What gets overlooked is that investing money involves loaning it to someone with the ability to use it to increase their own productivity sufficiently enough to warrant borrowing capital at interest. The fact is that there are serious limits on how much production can be increased, so ultimately it is the demand for capital which limits it viable supply. We have spent the last thirty years creating an illusion of wealth by using any means possible to increase the demand for capital, such as eliminating loan standards and creating enormous circulation bubbles that have no real investment purposes, but just keep it moving. It’s impossible to actually invest in viable production now. It’s simply a matter of guessing where the next speculative bubble will blow up.
So what we need to do is limit savings to what the economy can effectively absorb. This will mean that there would have to be limits on individual accounts. In a national banking system, this would be next to impossible, since the level of bureaucracy and state power would overwhelm any possible efficiencies and the political will to do it would never develop. The fact is though, that our national banking system is going to break down when their books can no longer be fudged and this will likely be replaced, in large part, by state banking systems, since the one run by North Dakota is getting a lot of favorable attention lately. I think that state banks will find it to their advantage to build up systems of local banks, under the supervision and ownership of local communities, for both political and economic reasons.
In this situation, where everyone is investing in the same local institutions, the possibility of a few people gaining control of much of the investing potential would be politically destabilizing. If people want to save, it doesn’t have to be money. There are certainly any number of forms of assets. The advantage is that they generally require maintenance, protection, etc. and this literally makes people work for their savings.
Hmmmmm you are making me think about my position but I think where you see money I see credit. We do need way less credit based money and start putting real money (not gold btw) in the hands of people who will use it, spend it, circulate it…..what ever. SO maybe I’m simply arguing for a larger amount of one type of money and less of another.
Will the total stock of money be decreased in the end? I have no idea. I simply know that too many people who would gladly spend and stimulate are being denied access to money because those who rely on interest rate for their income have accumulated way too much and want a larger risk free return. They are working OT trying to convince us that to save the world we need for them to have to work less and make more.
Put a lot of debt free money in the hands of the people and let the bond vigilantes weep!!
Greg,
I agree money and credit are opposite sides of the same coin today. To the extent there can be a monetary system which is based on total productivity and not just a particular commodity, be it gold or oil, it has to be recognized this total production is the output of the entire society, so any currency legitimately based on it would have to be viewed as a form of public commons. Of course, if some people don’t want to participate, they can form their own currencies with those willing to join them, but this just serves to point up the nature of what a currency is in the first place. It’s not an entity, it’s a network. I think the first goal would be to start a conversation about just what currency is, because it is obvious most people have very limited understanding of it and the powers that be would like to keep it that way.
I first started questioning economics by trying to figure out how Paul Volcker cured inflation by raising interest rates. Inflation is caused by loose money, but higher rates and a tighter money supply benefits those with money to lend, while hurting those wishing to borrow it. So how did he cure an oversupply by harming demand? The first time he eased off, in ’80, inflation came back, but in ’82, it was cured. It just so happened that by 1982, Reagan’s voodoo economics had pushed the deficit up to 200 billion and that was real money in those days. So what is the difference between the Fed selling debt it is holding and the Treasury issuing fresh debt? The Fed simply retires the money it collects and pays those holding the bonds interest for the privilege, while the Treasury spends its money back into the economy in ways that usually support further private sector investment, so the demand effect is multiplied.
Now the story we were fed at the time was that inflation was caused by workers and manufacturers constantly wanting more money, but by the Fed’s own logic, it would seem a surplus of money in the economy is in the hands of those with a surplus of wealth. Not a point which got much attention.
As my father used to say, you can’t starve a profit. Simply draining value out of the larger economy to line the pockets of those with more than they know what to do with destroys the entire economy eventually. It’s one thing if someone is making money and investing back into their own business, but those with more money than they have use for, have to accept it is the fact that the rest of the economy imparts the value that stored wealth holds.
Insightful and thought provoking commentary, but I disagree with a couple of points.
The warlords didn’t gentrify into monarchy, but into feudal lords or aristocracy. With the advent of the monarchy, there was a tension that developed between the monarch and the feudal lords. The monarchs would eventually prevail, and thus the birth of the nation-state.
The commoners eventually got a place at the table, as did the new guys on the block (beginning in the 16th century), the new business class or bourgeoisie.
So four poles of power were eventually to develop: the monarch, the aristocracy, the commoners and the bourgeoisie. Each vied and competed with the other three in various power sharing relationships and arrangements.
Inherent in capitalism is the utopian vision that political power can somehow be divorced from economic power. The comments of Blissex (see comment above) illustrate just how nonsensical this notion is. One school of libertarians, he says, stresses the “liberty of contract.” But of what value is a contract without the coercive power of the government to enforce it? And yet this school of libertarians can argue, and with a straight face, that this regime is coercion and violence free, that it is the ultimate manifestation of “liberty.” But liberty for who? Quite the contrary, it is the coercive power of government enlisted in the service of one faction of society.
Blissex then goes on to say that “liberty of contract” favours WINNERS and punishes LOSERS. If only the world were so simple. Who is a “winner” and who is a “loser” is in large part determined by who possesses political power. Of course in the make-believe world of the libertarian, the power of the state plays no role. It’s a utopian fantasy that exists only in the mind of the libertarian.
Up until a few years ago the government had quite a bit of control over the creation of debt. However, with the advent of the shadow banking system, much of that control has been lost to the private sector. I think the concept of making money strictly a “medium of exchange” has its merits. I also believe that “making banking a public function” has its merits. But in order to achieve either of these it would entail the government flexing its muscle to regain control over the debt creation business, something that is antithetical to the libertarian credo. So your argument sidesteps the conflict that exists between those who favor more government control and the libertarians.
That’s why I refuse to call them “Libertarians.” The core of their belief system is the sacred nature of property rights, thus: Propertarians.
A Propertarian has no trouble with state power when it’s used to enforce property rights. The objection comes if state power is used to restrict those property rights.
Some Propertarians like to call themselves Minarchists. That’s a little more honest for they would minimize the state’s role to enshrining their Holy of Holies, but it’s fun to push them on this. If they’re opposed to state power, why not go all the way and get rid of centralized power in the form of corporations as well? Go read Proudhon, Bakunin and Goldman. Go with anarchism instead, eliminate accumulation of power and its cousin, money, and maximize accountability and real liberty.
Yes. And as I read on another blog, many of them don’t actually believe in human rights, such as those enumerated in the DofI or the Constitution. They really only believe in property rights, which they confuse with freedom.
Propertarians. I’m stealing that.
For a discussion like this I like to dislcose that I consider myself to be a responsible anarchist. Upon that disclosure I’m generally met with a rejoinder that reads like: So, are you a little or a lot pregnant?
I don’t buy free market capitalism and the I believe that the reality is that neither do most people. For those who harp on the beauty of free markets, they have my condolences. They shall never see one and if they did they wouldn’t like it one bit.
What free market advocates want is fair markets and up to the repeal of Glass-Steagell we had a little bit of fairness. I don’t think we’ve ever had fair markets. It’s not that we didn’t try, it’s that the human propensity to cheat and steal is so great.
For a libertarian, there is no proper response in that what the libertarians seem to want is some form of utopia, Eden reclaimed. Not gonna happen. If we could have a world with no police, a world in which no one stole, no one lied, no one violated any of the ten commandments, and every one honored all contracts, oral, written and implied; what a lovely world we would have.
As to the concentration of economic/financial power. Reflect on Sherman Antitrust. For example, there was a time when the the Treasury/Federal ‘primary’ dealer banks numbered more than forty. Today there are fewer than twenty. That’s a movement from monopolistic competition to a cartel/oligopoly and in that oligarchy.
So I say, hey libertarian, what say we exercise police power, seize and fractionate these abusers of power. Lets bring them to heel. Please join with us dear libertarians, pull your oar and lets right our ship of state.
A powerful appeal for collectivism (gasp!). It just might work following the much greater cataclysm now looming.
DownSouth,
There are philosophical issues of what what prevails, bottom up processes, or top down structures, but monarchs tended to be those lines of lords best able to develop governing coalitions among other lords and defeat the rest.
As society and the economy grew ever more complex, different power centers evolved, banking being one of the central ones.
Everyone likes to present arguments in favor of their own interests, but there is a spectrum from complete government control, to complete lack of it. Currently these two poles are mostly clearly exemplified by North Korea on the side of absolute control and Somalia on the side of complete lack of control. It’s safe to say there is no viable economy in either situation, so we need to keep steering a middle course.
I realize this isn’t exactly a libertarian argument, but it’s fundamentally contradictory to desire unlimited amounts of capital wealth, while at the same time eliminating the structure which supports and guarantees the value of that capital. The banks pulled a fast one, with the creation of the FEderal Reserve system, in that it makes the government responsible for guaranteeing the value of the money, while they maintain the profits of managing it, but since they have completely gone to economic war with the rest of society, then either we go back to banks issuing their own currency and failing individually, or we continue on the path they started and make banking a public function.
I think few of us would want to go back to the days when the policing and court functions belonged to the king, so I think we will eventually realize the market medium has to be a public function as well.
John,
In the USA the court and police functions do still belong to the king– the people of the United States. If you look at the governing structure of the US, where the British system has a sovereign as the monarch, the founders of the US replaced the monarch with “the People.” That’s why we don’t have a Crown prosecutor. Rather, the district attorney brings the case on behalf of “the People of the State of XX.”
Patriot,
That’s the point. The problem is that the Fed is not directly answerable to the people. Fortunately this is no longer a secret.
Blissex then goes on to say that “liberty of contract” favours WINNERS and punishes LOSERS. If only the world were so simple. Who is a “winner” and who is a “loser” is in large part determined by who possesses political power.
Yes, and implicit in all the drivel about “contracts” is how the voluntary participants are supposed to unload as much of the risk and cost of the transaction as possible onto unwilling third parties. That’s why when I hear the word “contract” I reach for my revolver. It’s a code word for crime.
Ever notice the critiques of corporate execs (we had a few here just the other day, although I’m not accusing those particular posts) which represent the shareholders as being the main if not only victims?
Implicit in that line of argument is that execs and shareholders should still work in a mutually beneficial way to inflict their risks and costs upon victims outside the corporation, who aren’t considered victims as all, but simply unpersons.
Money serves as a store of value and a medium of exchange. As a store of value, it is private property, but as a medium of exchange, it is a public utility. As property, there is the desire to accumulate as much as possible, but as a medium of exchange, more money than production degrades the value of the money.
What we need is to recognize the illegitimacy of the “store of value” notion, which represents unproductive, parasitic hoarding of the public resource. Resources must be productively used in order to confer legitimacy of possession upon the possessor. One is a participant in the economy to the extent he is an agent of the velocity of useful,constructive activity (not mere “velocity of money”). One who’s not such a participant has no valid claim on society’s resources. That includes all rentier parasites.
But hoarded “property” is just stagnation, rot.
This is implicit in MMT, which is one of the things I find interesting about it.
attempter,
Think of it as fat cells. The body needs some, but just not excessive amounts.
If communities recycled their savings back into local industries and kept some balance of investment opportunities, people could save for their retirement, emergencies, education, etc. It requires transparency and this is best on a local level, where there is some sense of community, rather than having it all feed through some enormous, faceless bureaucracy.
Relocalization all the way.
All economic and political power to the directly democratic councils.
Principles-based, rigorously enforced campaign and political finance reform! Many (e.g. Fox) wouldnt even be here if they hadnt engineered the rules to ensure that playing by them would be minimally risky! imho.
The government backed banking cartel is the key to abusive corporate power. Without cheap loans from the counterfeiting cartel, corporations would be forced to issue new stock to purchase assets and labor. Thus we could retain the advantages of economies of scale while avoiding unhealthy wealth and power concentration. We would no longer be so concerned about corporations since most of us would be co-owners of the corporations.
While not a practicing Libertarian, I find much to admire in their ideology. With regard to concentrated corporate power, there simply would be none because true libertarians would not allow corporations to exist at all.
“Liberty for wolves is death to the lambs.”
Libertarian…is like halloween candy with a razor blade inserted in side. It promises sweet rewards…till you bite into it and find its true potential…individualism for the sake of it…with out regards to the commons…till it ravages it and the commons decide to bite back…then it cries foul…other telling it how it must behave.
Skippy…in the military we called them buddy Fk’ers…always looking out for them selves and not the team.
i on the ball, Five Star, Ten Diamond, Extra Pithy, Right Effing On, comment award to you!
Deception is the strongest political force on the planet.
Ditto ditto.
End Too Big To Fail, and reduce the scope of government to reduce the ability to give more favored market position to the already powerful.
Then let big business compete on a level playing field. Google and Amazon and Wal-Mart seem to be doing a pretty good job.
—
How do libertarians propose to respond to the power of large enterprises?
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They plan on submitting resumes.
“How do libertarians propose to respond to the power of large enterprises?
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They plan on submitting resumes.”
OUTSTANDING comment!
A.Men. That one made me snicker out loud.
Either that, or make The Sign Of The Dollar.
[cue portentous soundtrack]
Not being able to immediately recall previous posts of yours I’m not 100% sure how you meant this comment.
It could be taken (as I did) as a recognition that, likely, these “seekers of individual liberty”, when faced with a monopolist situation, would simply acquiesce and try to get their piece of the corporate pie, becoming just a sheep they so roundly denounce on the message boards.
It could also be taken as an affirmation that putting in your resume and competing with the others for “the job” is the American thing to do, so dont knock it.
Your first take was more in alignment with my intent.
Libertarians aspire to exercising the corporate whip as opposed to suffering its application.
“Libertarians aspire to exercising the corporate whip as opposed to suffering its application.”
AGREED ……………….AGAIN!
Well, I would think the first libertarian response should be that the powers of government should be so limited and constrained that there is no point to lobbying for influence or legislation because the government lacks the ability to do anything to help you. That takes care of part of the problem (e.g. banks and the financial collapse handouts). Whether such a limited government is practically achievable for more than 100 years or so is another issue — probably not, it doesn’t seem like people want that.
Secondly, I think die-hard libertarians would say that natural quasi-monopolies are fine (but they would be bitterly opposed to government-sanctioned ones). There doesn’t need to be a legal mechanism to break them up; they won’t last forever. Standard Oil was brought up several times here. Their status would have been greatly diminished in 10 years after the breakup anyway after the discovery of massive East Texas oilfields, over which Standard (and their child companies) had no control, not to mention increasing Caspian and Dutch East Indies output and so on. Freedom of contract is freedom of contract; it may have some consequences but it is a deontological good in and of itself.
The underlying question is what is the origin of that concentration. The origin is generally NOT because of scale or efficiency and such. Big concentrated companies are generally as bureaucratic and inefficient and customer-hostile as government. In general, the concentration occurs because:
1. someone is given a monopoly (land, patents, regulatory loophole, mineral rights, zoning rights, “primary dealer rights”, etc) by government without paying the competitive cost for them. And they can then extract rent from others in the market without consequence.
2. the financial cartel (primary dealers) use their monopoly access to free money/credit and their ownership/knowledge of the Fed open market operation to decide which of their clients in an industry will be the one to dominate it. Those are the ones who get access to the M&A money that is used to take over (and thus quash) competition before it becomes serious and threatens profits.
3. big business uses the mechanism of government regulation to impose disproportionate costs on smaller competitors. One of the first examples is “federal meat inspection” – which was driven by large meat exporters who were looking to eliminate local abbatoirs and municipal meat inspections. A combo of federal meat inspection requirements (“required” by European importers) and – golly – underfunding of federal meat inspections (so that only existing meat exporters could be inspected) at the same time. Local abattoirs/butchers went out of business and feedlots/ranches had to deal with the “Meat Trust”. Eh voila – concentration.
Those are all big government forces that have driven the free markets towards concentration. It is deceitful to then blame that concentration on “libertarian” ideas — and to put the burden only on libertarians for “coming up with solutions”.
For now I’m just responding to your whole Meat producer argument. What you fail to realize is that regulation creates markets. People would fear buying meat and that constant fear would show through their pocketbooks being a little more full than normal. Look at developing countries like iran for an example of this. There are no government regulations there at all. Because of this, everyone relies on word of mouth and other rumors to know if a product they are buying is truly a good product or not. In other words, without regulation the economy is always at lower than full capacity. This equals unemployment.
Excellent example of enlightened self-interest favoring prudent regulation. The same is true in so many spheres: urban planning and zoning raises collective property values and protects property rights; consumer product safety boosts consumerism; the SEC diligently ensures transparency and prosecutes fraud, ensuring fair markets, broad participation and productive investment … whoops … something’s wrong here!
Doug…
Listen pal, I realize the problems of lack of proper regulation, but let’s not go into the theory of public choice bit(where government is captured by industry). Trust me, I’ve been to Iran and I know the crap the people have to go through there: they can’t know what’s good and not good. How can they trust a new business that is selling new widgets? It’s a complete free for all and legit businesses are hurt AND bad businesses benefit.
Sorry, you lost me. I agree with your take on basic regulation as a good foundation for business; I don’t follow your dismissal of regulatory capture as irrelevant or not a key problem. IMO, it goes to the heart of what’s wrong with the oxymoron of free market captialism, which is where I believe Libertarianism necessarily leads.
Regulatory capture has no empirical legs to stand on really, though I do believe in it myself to SOME extent. Some of us extend capture to simply government being captured when IDEAS matter too and the whole society and thus the government is caught in an ideological capture, which is what I really believe happened than to say government bureaucrats were DIRECTLY in the pockets of those they were regulating.
If you want a complete analysis, read this, it’s worth your time reading it:
http://www.satvathealthcare.com/uploads/2/6/3/3/2633830/public_choice__a_critical_reassessment.pdf
You’re babbling.
Iran has no regulations?!?!?! Where did you pull that out of?
Your unemployment argument is pure bogosity. Regulations do not create employment. They raise the cost of hiring employees and raise the cost of growing a business. That reduces employment. Always. Even if you don’t see it. The unemployment rate in 1904 (before meat inspection act) was 5.4% Today the equivalent number is 20% — and it hasn’t been 5.4% except for possibly a couple of months in the last 40 years.
And re the meat inspection stuff. Here’s Gabriel Kolko — a Marxist historian (but at least one who actually gathered facts/evidence before interpreting them ideologically – unlike Zinn or other idjits) on the meat inspection act – http://us.history.wisc.edu/hist102/readings/kolko_meatinspection.pdf
And here’s the 1894 US Dept of Agriculture Yearbook (11 years BEFORE Upton Sinclair wrote his book) – http://naldr.nal.usda.gov/Exe/ZyNET.exe/YOA189400670067.PDF – with the federal meat inspectors ranting on about how they want to eliminate their own competition – municipal meat inspection systems – and how they see all sorts of “efficiencies” via centrally planned slaughterhouses (inspected by federal meat inspectors of course). Makes for a handy alliance between them and the big meat exporters eh?
I’ll repeat it for you again: regulation creates markets. There is simply little to no empirical evidence of the public choice theory that you continue to espouse…even if the articles you link to the meat inspection regulations are true in saying what you say they say. There are further problems with it, but I’ll leave that for another day. Read on fool, I had more comments for you below.
there is a mountain of evidence that government subsidize and support “the big”. You admitted it yourself when you said that that’s exactly what Europe does.
But when someone else points out the same damn thing and calls it by its real name – regulatory capture – then you stick your fingers in your ear and yell NaNaNaNa I can’t hear you
http://www.satvathealthcare.com/uploads/2/6/3/3/2633830/public_choice__a_critical_reassessment.pdf
There’s something for you to ponder
The proper Libertarian response is three cheers,
group think, and the search for confirmation biases. Libertarianism is corporatism wrapped in disingenuous anti-statist, pro-individualist rhetoric.
Consider accepting the premise that the mega-corporation is an outcome of simple rationalism. What could be more rational than a entity that is large enough to reliably weather downturns? than distribution and production networks made elegant by the simplicity of dominance? Or what could be a more rational investment opportunity than the safely resilient and obvious mega-corps? Or what is more rational than a manager expanding the scale of his firm in response to another firm’s expansion?
The libertarian cannot have a rational response to the centralizing trend any more than the liberal-democrat or the Marxist. Opposition to something so rational as centralization cannot also be rational, can it? So the classic theories of political-economy must rely on some form of irrational hope -like an idealization of the past or some sort of magically-appearing movement or class.
“Rational,” of course, requires a criterion. Two things can be incompatible, equally rational but toward opposing ends.
An interesting question and many thought provoking comments. To some degree, libertarians get caught on the horns of a dilemma. On the one hand, as others have noted the “propertarian” impulse – the free exercise of economic rights – leaves little basis for a critique of concentrated corporate power, especially if it’s viewed as “rational.” On the other hand, concentrations of economic power are ultimately dangerous to the exercise of political rights. Whether they were federalist or anti-federalist, almost all of the founding generation defined independence in economic terms. They believed that economic independence was the basis for political independence. If I rented my land, then my landlord could tell me how to vote. It’s why Jefferson reified the yeoman farmer.
It’s also why all the former colonies immediately passed laws banning primogeniture and entail – to break up large landed estates, at the time land being the primary source of wealth, and to prevent the rise of a landed aristocracy in America. As the North Carolina legislature wrote at the time, the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few were “inimical” to the survival of a republic. From a political perspective, then, libertarians in the American (really anti-Federalist) tradition should be not only anti-government, they should be anti-corporation as well. But as individuals, we’re too weak economically and politically to take on the political power of corporations. Group action (i.e. government in Teddy Roosevelt’s formulation) is unpalatable, leaving libertarians no options to confront the very concentration of power quietly robbing them of their political rights.
It is not libertarians who are “caught on the horns of a dilemma”.
Statists of whatever ilk are the ones who have quite deliberately created the forces of concentration. And they simply REFUSE to accept or acknowledge that they have done so. That the resulting concentration is a DIRECT CONSEQUENCE of their incessant efforts to have government “do something” and interfere and create a particular outcome.
Perhaps because that is an unintended consequence (for the “do-gooders” that is probably the case – because they are basically stupid). More often because statists post-facto rationalize such concentration and wrap it up in semi-Marxist historical determinist hoohaa (well it is “rational” and “rational” is inevitable progress blahblahblah).
No it is not rational. Big concentrated entities suck. They do not deliver for customers. They do not deliver for shareowners. They only survive via government efforts/activities that keep them afloat.
To wit — the five biggest American corporations of 1964 were General Motors, Exxon, Ford, General Electric, and US Steel. Proponents of “rational” would argue that these concentrated behemoths were truly “blue-chip” investments. Rational symbols of progress. Why it would have been insane for someone to just put a 1964 silver quarter in their piggybank and expect it to outperform an investment in these blue-chips over time.
Well 45 years later, only ONE of those “blue chips” has returned more than that silver quarter sitting in a piggybank (though GE is close).
And the only reason Exxon has done so is because of M&A money ($74 billion merger with Mobil in 1999 when oil prices were at the lowest point in history). That merger was not so much an “oil company merger” as it was an agreement between two of the financial cartel (JP Morgan repping Exxon and Goldman Sachs repping Mobil) about how much capital (ie government bond-based debt money) they were willing to allocate to the oil industry itself — and regulatory/FTC submission to the financial cartel’s assessment of the impact on “the market” – and the government’s fear that state-owned (nb — state-owned) foreign oil entities would buy both Exxon and Mobil if they remained separate.
These big concentrations are, almost inevitably, colossally destructive of real capital, free markets, wealth creation, etc. They do not survive because of “libertarian” ideas. They survive because statists continually keep them propped up — and then rail on about “concentration” and use that as an excuse for yet more intervention/propping/subsidy/distortion by government.
There is nothing “rational” about this at all.
Unintended consequences happen when libertarians force decisions that would solve the problem to be comprised…in the form of compromise.
For you to sit there and tell me that we as a THINKING PEOPLE are unable to know the problems and solve them is completely ridiculous. In your fantasy world only you and others who are anti-statists can see the real truth. Those that study the problems and want to solve them are to always, always making them worse. That is as libertarian as a philosophy as there could possibly be, and really a damn shame as you add nothing to the conversation and indeed make it worse as you prevent real solutions from coming forward.
So let me be more clear: it doesn’t matter that you may be right about unintended consequences in the past(in some respects I’ll admit you are). What makes you so completely, utterly wrong is that you refuse to consider that we can learn from our mistakes. The fact of the matter is that when we do new things, unforeseen things can happen…but those unforeseen things, in any problem solving mind, can be learned from for next time. Your arguments against regulation are old and tired, from the times of George Stigler.
Deus-DJ:>>“For you to sit there and tell me that we as a THINKING PEOPLE are unable to know the problems and solve them is completely ridiculous. In your fantasy world only you and others who are anti-statists can see the real truth. Those that study the problems and want to solve them are to always, always making them worse”.
I would suggest that you read Hayek’s Use of Knowledge in Society – http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw1.html
That essay is not “Hayek as libertarian” — it is “Hayek as creator of the model of neural networks” which happens to be the origin of modern cognitive neuroscience.
It is NOT that you know all the answers or that I know all the answers. But that NO ONE knows all the answers and NO ONE EVER CAN and the knowledge itself CANNOT be gathered into one place anyway — and if you ever believe you can know everything or can gather all knowledge in one place; then that is hubris and/or ignorance speaking. And it is also profoundly destructive of both freedom and democracy.
The “central planning calculation” problem was resolved 80 years ago. The notion of “regulatory capture” is agreed to by every single thinking person on the planet. Hell Woodrow Wilson (hardly a libertarian and the creator of the mindset of “progressive regulation”) said — “If the government is to tell big business men how to run their business, then don’t you see that big business men have to get closer to the government even than they are now? Don’t you see that they must capture the government, in order not to be restrained too much by it? Must capture the government? They have already captured it”
Persisting in these beliefs — in the face of mounds of evidence to the contrary – is precisely the definition of “superstition”.
Deus-DJ:>>“So let me be more clear: it doesn’t matter that you may be right about unintended consequences in the past(in some respects I’ll admit you are). What makes you so completely, utterly wrong is that you refuse to consider that we can learn from our mistakes. The fact of the matter is that when we do new things, unforeseen things can happen…but those unforeseen things, in any problem solving mind, can be learned from for next time. Your arguments against regulation are old and tired, from the times of George Stigler.”
It doesn’t matter whether “we can learn from your mistakes” — if knowledge/values themself remain diffuse and contradictory.
Little quote – “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design” — Hayek from The Fatal Conceit
Very little quote. Plan of action? Do nothing, don’t attempt to measure, don’t attempt to think, just sit back and allow faith in a bad ideology, bought and paid for by the powers that be, to propagate. We just haven’t given it enough time yet.
Listen: I don’t honesty give a shit what Hayek had to say. What he and those of the likes of George Stigler who advanced the theory of regulation(called public choice theory, in the form of regulatory capture) have absolutely no empirical proof to justify their claims. Indeed, the entire edifice of your argument falls on it’s face for two reasons: 1)If the public choice theory of regulation is not true, then nothing you say is valid; 2)IF you want to go with what Hayek said, then you honestly can’t go wrong either way. Thus, your arguments against regulation is simply a personal choice for you…it is by no means the final answer, but I would argue that it’s completely the wrong choice as it is the antithesis of human behavior to notice problems and solve them. Thus, your solutions make things worse by restricting the real free market: that of the mind. This is why I find those like you to be complete fools.
Even in the recent failures of the banking industry it’s hard to call what happened “regulatory capture”. In this sense, even Yves and those like Nouriel Roubini are wrong and are confusing different things. They were not captured by the industries but by a complete societal shift in the philosophy of markets and government. We are rightly trying to shift the arguments the other way, to instead look at the benefits of government rather than always focusing in on it’s faults.
“Those that study the problems and want to solve them are to always, always making them worse. That is as libertarian as a philosophy as there could possibly be, and really a damn shame as you add nothing to the conversation and indeed make it worse as you prevent real solutions from coming forward.”
This is it. Great thoughts.
The only thing that can solve any problem is faith in the free market. Attempting to find out what is really going on, or what the knock on effects or unforeseen consequences may be is second guessing the free market, and this makes the free market mad.
emphasis
http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/222627
Libertarian response: denial.
In theory, a government can be accountable to society, both winners and losers.
Corporations, on the other hand, are accountable only to the winners. Externalities are for losers – this being a Feature.
Libertarians are certain they will be among the winners, even in the face of all evidence to the contrary.
Government: society power. Corporation: sociopath power.
Denial.
A strong patent system coupled with an equitable legal system so as to encourage small inventors again will do much to foster better allocation of capital. In this system where anyone can sue anybody for any and no reason, works two ways. One often hears about the woman who sued McDonalds for spilling coffee on herself, or the patent troll. What goes unnoticed is that wealth and large corporations can and do pursue litigation as a business strategy. In this system, anyone with a valuable asset, such as a patent, but no money to protect it, will attract flies like @#$$. A judge will let any and all cases into court, at taxpayer expense, and the losing party, no matter how frivolous, does not have to pay. The expectation is that the financially weaker prey will settle and sell their patents or other business for a song. I know a small inventor who was actually put under gag order for asking a corporation to pay money owed. Likewise, contracts between two parties cannot be enforced without a ton of money, because all states except Massachusetts have over ruled arbitration clauses to various extents.
Americans are masters of reinvention.
Libertarianism basically is Nietzschean philosophy with some Marxist-style tweaks. Ann Rand works were in essence a plagiat.
Like Robert Locke observed
If “pure” Marxism is the delusion that one can run society purely on altruism and collectivism, then libertarianism is the mirror-image delusion that one can run it purely on greed, selfishness and individualism.
It should probably be more properly called anarcho-capitalism. Like anarchism in general, libertarianism is the last refuge of small businesses who on one hand are sucked dry by banks and landlords and on the other want cheap labor without any obligation in order to be able to survive. In other words libertarian freedom is the wet dream of small businesses to be able to do business while paying minimum or no taxes, with no government bureaucracy intervention, and be able maximally exploit labor.
In other words when libertarians talk about freedom they implicitly mean freedom to use cheap labor without any restrictions on wages, age, environmental and safety conditions. In this sense they would be happy to turn the US into Bangladesh.
Here critics of large corporations like myself should stop and do some introspection. As bad as large corporations are for external actors (especially in the destruction of environment), they more often then small businesses provide safe and reasonably well paid work environment for work force. In a way they are more socialist or at least used to be before this crazy outsourcing wave that drowned the US workers. That’s an interesting paradox.
Like Marxism, libertarianism is similar to pervert religious cult which try to reduced social life to economics (with “freedom of contract” as the deity) and offers an illusion de grandeur of some coherent theory without any serious empirical justification or research.
But it does have a huge social base and as such should not be completely dismissed. For example, some ideas of Ron Paul and his anti-war stance present a nice contrast with jingoistic positions of Democratic and Republican Parties.
Also it was Ron Paul who pushed the bill to investigate FEDs.
Great commentary. “…when libertarians talk about freedom they implicitly mean freedom to use cheap labor without any restrictions on wages, age, environmental and safety conditions. In this sense they would be happy to turn the US into Bangladesh.”
“If “pure” Marxism is the delusion that one can run society purely on altruism and collectivism, then libertarianism is the mirror-image delusion that one can run it purely on greed, selfishness and individualism”
Accepting your premise here, I’ll suggest that the real differences are at the meta level and result from thinking selfishness and altruism are separate. Many dont realize that altruism might be the way organisms look out for them selves.
Looking at selfishness the way those who study biological systems do, one can conclude that altruism is what results form a form of super selfishness. Everything is looking out for itself, on every scale in the universe. Usually with no consciousness of others. When life forms emerged out of the universe, they emerged as a result of cooperation on every level. Atoms cooperating with other atoms, molecules cooperating with other molecules, compounds with other compounds and finally cells with other cells. This cooperation required giving up self.
Our problem, as I see it, is a mislabeling problem. We dont realize that the best way to be selfish is to be altruistic. It seems counterintuitive. I’m using selfish as a term to describe making things as good for my self as they can be. So really it becomes a very simple math problem in a sense. What is the best way to maximize your own well being, by having only you looking out for it or by having EVERYONE ELSE looking out for it?
Greed is a form of extreme inward looking that is like a cancer and usually results from a lack of trust in others.
So in your example I would say Libertarians lack trust while Marxists misunderstand selfishness.
I recommend reading this book:
Is the American Dream Killing You?: How “the Market” Rules Our Lives
Paul Stiles (Author)
Also, B. Fuller figured out that our country was broke and
“legally robbed” by the “capitalistic robber barons” decades ago
(70s or 80s?).
I highly recommend visiting Israel to see how a tiny country can
have nationalized medical insurance based on about 5% of the
salary of the family – I am not sure of the exact
formulation, but something like that. I think they just added dental
for kids. Go to Israel or other places, such as Hawaii to see how
we can have freshly grown produce and good eggs, instead of having
food shipped thousands of miles, needlessly, at least PART of the year
(I realize cold climates are not good for growing produce much of the
year!).
As long as we keep shipping out our jobs to the lowest bidder and
forgot how are very inexpensive college education system (i..e
Calif. colleges were nearly free to attend at one time) helped spur
innovation and improve our economy dramatically during the 60s,
we are doomed to failure.
As someone posted: do we really want our country to become
like the pure capitalistic Bangladesh where most people live in
poverty? Not because they are lazy, but because the system is
rigged against them. There is a youtube video about a 15 year old
kid who supports his family collecting empty containers. He could
not go to school since school costs too much. In a pure
capitalistic society, we would have privitized schools.
Did you know that people used to pay individual fire stations to
be on call for their particular neighborhoods? There was not
government supplied fire fighters. What about free roads? Could
you imagine having to pay tolls to every road you drive on?
And then you would need your own police force or better yet,
just give everyone a shotgun….
I have heard from a U.S./Chinese
citizen in the past and from a friend who has visited China
several times and the air is hopelessly polluted there. I did hear
something that the Chinese gov. is trying to reduce air pollution,
so maybe there is some hope…
And while trade with countries is great, why do we have a
capitalistic system that encourages cheap krappy goods to be
solid from China (i.e. tennis shoes) at Walmart, keeping Americans
from producing better goods at more expensive prices, but
why is cheaper always better, even if the product sucks much of
the time? Do we really want a country where
people shuffle money from one account to another and can’t
find other types of jobs, because many of them have been outsourced
overseas to the cheapest bidder?
I am a registered Democrat, but I feel little in common with the
typical Democrat platform point of views and while Libertarian
is good way to think (I was hoping Ron Paul would have won the election), I
realize that much of Liberatarian thought would not be practical
in this country.
I calculated one time that I would be better off saving for my
own retirement instead of handing over money to social
security, but shit happens and you can find yourself disabled or
somehow you did something stupid and no money for retirement.
Of course most people WOULD be able to save for their retirement
if they put their mind to it (i.e. their salary would be that much higher
in a FAIR wage enviroment), but most likely the employers would
not give the reduced difference to the employees in additional wages –
they would just pay less salary. But, it is good, in my opinion, to have
some basic safety nets for people.
So, the problem is how do you reward businesses and our medical
system to do things that benefit the most people rather than
try to screw everyone (i.e. cable TV companies not unbundling their
services even though I only need 5 or 10 channels of my choice
to be happy – I dropped my cable TV, since they could not even
get the channels I want working and the web site channel bundling
descriptions were indecipheral – we might get FIOS before, but
still…). I have an elderly friend who just had some hospital care
and he was treated a lot better than some unlucky person who
has our normal insurance that looks at preexisting conditions and
all the krap you go through filing for claims. Medicare for all its
faults works fairly well compared to some of the private insurance
fiascos people have to put up with. I wonder what the Tea Partiers
would say if their Medicare insurance was dropped and they
were required to try and get their own coverage at age 70, for
example. Good luck getting any coverage…..
You could have the point of view that everyone just has to pay
their own medical bills. I think there was a time my folks told me
that you would just make monthly payments to hospitals for years
or decades, if you were unfortunate enough to have a bad medical
emergency and did not die from the complications. I think in
many cases today, you would be stabilized at the nearest hospital
but I am not sure how much good long term care you would get
without medical insurance.
Above just my 2 cents….
The irrational, unconscious, beating heart of libertarianism is literally juvenile. They don’t want anyone to touch their stuff, or to tell them what to do. And, as one poster noted, it is ladled with a liberal helping of social Darwinism and this too is juvenile: they know best, others are fools, so of course they will be on the winning team. Too often the libertarian is the obnoxious teenager in the political house.
That’s the basic mindset of most libertarians I have met and, not coincidentally, they have mostly been younger people.
As a rational, conscious, clear-defined ideology, their response to Yves’ problem will depend on the tenets of their ideology. But,I believe most libertarians would agree that freedom of the individual is the highest good.
If the above description is accurate, the central problem of libertarianism is the fact that the freedom of individual can impinge upon the freedom of another. Hitler’s freedom to impose the Final Solution on the Jews, to use an extreme example, impinged upon the freedom of the Jews (to say the least).
Solving this problem requires a subtle, nuanced approach that goes well beyond “private property good” and “government bad.” Government, corporations and other social arrangements should justified by a liberty maximization test: do they provide the greatest liberty to the greatest number? Understood this way, libertarianism is quite egalitarian. Basically it is the position that no one should be bullied, that we all should have equal authority over our lives, except insofar as granting individuals higher authority enhances the general liberty. (And, since this authority is only provisional, it should be held accountable.)
Finally, just out of curiosity, do real world libertarians make a distinction in how they deal with private corporations vs public corporations? If not, should they?
Oh, as for my answer to Yves’ question: libertarians should be highly suspicious of concentrated corporate power.
Libertarians provide little more than the thin gruel served up to malnourished minds raised on the empty calories of a second rate education and an ideology of wealthy privilege. It is the pretext of an intellectual framework, the apolgia for narcissism. Government, the social order being the social relations between and among individuals, reconciles the conflicting expectations into agreeable courses of behavior. We can’t have the same piece of real estate owned by 2 warring parties, so you get a deed with your name on it registered with the final arbiter of possession, the government which guarantees your property rights as a citizen. This creates a predictable, peaceable platform for civil activity in commerce, farming, cultural development etc. The malcontents who want more, and trample over others with overwhelming power brought about by wealth, political power, social position and the police power of the state to backstop them when push comes to shove, resent and organize against the countervailing power in a democratically controlled republic. When stopped in their tracks from their acquisitive enterprises, like placing a moratorium on off shore deep water drilling, the spectre of the unspeakable hand of tyranny, the jack boot of regulators and gov’mint revenewers comes crashing into the face of the narcissistic personality. The fact that other people have a right to their lives, not have their humanity diminished to the point of misery and suffering, all so that power and privilege can be maintained by a politically connected and more aggressive individual needs only a justification, a moral perch, a reasonable and moderate position that does trumpet all of the 7 deadly sins on parade like a prostitute strutting down the avenue like a billboard. Libertarian ideology as a special movement to counter overweening federal totalitarianism is a farce, a redundant exercise in a democratically controlled republic. Please review this simple list from the Mayo clinic on narcissistic personality disorder and deduce all possible permutations of libertarians.
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/narcissistic-personality-disorder/DS00652/DSECTION=symptoms
Might it be possible simultaneously address the problems concentrating corporate power in conjunction with the corporate complaints of taxation.
Corporations spend on lobbyists and campaign contributions in their effort to tilt the field for favorable treatment on matters of taxes & regulations, in their standing as “persons” under the law. It’s often pointed out by libertarians that corporate income taxes are just another cost built into the products bought and paid for by flesh and blood persons, not the immortal, legal-construct corporate “persons”.
What if we consider a carrot & stick: Give them a zero income tax after amending the U.S. constitution so as to completely eliminate the status of corporations as legal persons.
I’ve not thought this out thoroughly, just an idea for the discussion.
Alternatively, how about having tax evasion and tax fraud penalties paid directly out of the top three positions’ pockets, starting with the CEO and CFO.
That’s a worthy proposal for personal accountability at the top of the org chart, especially from the viewpoint of shareholders.
I have a question for the more well-traveled than I (I’ve not been overseas since the 80s):
How many Libertarians are there, as a percentage of political beliefs, say, in the EU? Or is this, as I suspect, some sort of American Affliction?
Most countries I’ve been to are more libertarian in practice.
No one will call the cops because you look suspicious, are fishing(does he have a permit?) or even place your cat in a garbage bin. Minding your own business folks, that’s libertarian. America, a nation of busybodies.
Libertarianism in general is based on the notion that society is an aggregation of individuals. It ignores that individuals stand in relation to other individuals as element that constitutes subsystems of a larger system that is a society, such as a nation. There is absolutely no concept among them of humanity as a society constituted of elements (individuals) and sub-system (groups like nations). As a result, their philosophy, politics, and economics are ill-conceived, puerile, and naive.
You are conflating society with the state.
No, “libertarians” pretend their beef is with the state when they’re really predators and parasites upon society.
They always support using the state as a weapon in the hands of big wealth concentration in its war upon society.
Joshua, this is true of the anarchist fringe of libertarianism that would like to do away with the state as the enemy of the people (society), at least as much as possible within the bounds of maintaining individual freedom. But that is a radical fringe that is never going to get traction because anarchism has little popular appeal in most countries including the US.
Let me make it a little more clear to everyone: to libertarians, there is no society. We are merely an aggregation of lumps. For any libertarian to then call that aggregation of lumps a society quite frankly shows their utter ineptitude in discussing any rational policy regarding what should or shouldn’t be done.
Maybe true Libertarianism is also Hunter-Gathererism.
If you say anything more, you are likely to descend into paradox territory.
A Cretan says, ‘All Cretans are liars.’
Lao Tzu: ‘The Dao that can be named (or spoken) is not the eternal Dao’
That’s why whenever Chu-Chih (Gutei in Japanese) was asked a question, he simply raised a finger. He was known as the One-Finger Monk.
Here is renouncing whatever I just wrote.
Here is my one finger!!!
@attempter 3:05am
Well said. When I hear a Libertarian call for campaign finance reform or anti-trust action I will start to take them seriously. I will really sit up and take notice when Libertarians call for the breakup of Koch Industries.
Fat chance.
Jim
An issue like campaign finance is where Rand-type “libertarians” join hands with process fetishists like Greenwald and the ACLU.
In both cases the motivation is to exalt the form of “free speech” at the expense of the substance.
At least the libertarians probably understand what they’re doing here. With the porcess liberals you can never tell where malevolence leaves off and stupidity begins.
Yes, yes, liberty is awful.
There is no divine right of incorporation. Let’s leave pragmatism aside for the moment. The United States has been financially and politically choked to death by pragmatism.
Simple home truth. The state charters corporations. Did someone mention BP vs shrimp fishermen? Who gave BP a deepwater lease block? Who rubber stamped the Macondo well plan and exemption from repairing the blowout preventer? Yep, the state.
Who bailed AIG, Fannie, Freddie? Who is giving the big banks free funds to buy Treasurys and mark-to-fantasy their Tier 1 capital and reserves for loan losses? The state.
Who sanctioned the Microsoft monopoly in exchange for backdoor access to every PC hard drive? The state.
If you think there’s something wrong with liberty, you don’t know much American history.
I have never heard a libertarian give a believable answer to this question. Libertarians seem to believe 1)Government should exist only to protect property rights; 2)In a truly free market economy, no monopoly can ever come into being because competitors will arise to challenge it. These two beliefs are in direct contradiction with each other–how can you prevent the one with the most property from having monopoly power if government exists only to protect property?
This is where some kind of quasi-religious Randian belief system seems to kick in–the idea that those who amass the most property are necessarily the most virtuous and deserving, and therefore will not abuse their power.
The only logical outcome of libertarian governance is oligarchy, and the wealthy defenders of this philosophy know that very well. The rest are just pawns (see: Tea Party).
Libertarians are all for individual/natural rights, they are not necessarily pro-corporation rights. We are not against businesses but the existence of ‘moral persons’ having the same rights than individuals is unnatural for many libertarians.
Corporations are not human beings and should not be granted the same rights than human beings.
Human beings have the right to associate themselves, however they should not have the right to escape responsibility by forming a corporation. Freedom does not preclude responsibility.
I am particularly appalled by the following:
-the right to patent an idea. It is not natural.
-the right for a corporation to freely express itself (read: to lobby government and interfere with the political process). Freedom of expression should be a right reserved to human beings.
-the right to live forever. Humans can’t live forever, and neither should corporations.
-the right to escape responsibility: the shareholders of a corporation are not liable for the corporation’s acts. In practice neither does management.
Responsibility is freedom’s inseparable twin. Yet it seems that corporations enjoy freedom without being held accountable for their acts. IMO, the laws allowing the creation of ‘moral person’ should be repelled.
I am not a market fundamentalist and I recognize that markets can fail. I also recognize that market fail to price in negative externalizations (environmental ).
However before we start pointing fingers at the free market let us note that the current system is the result of decades of government tampering with the money supply and favoring the well-connected against the weak.
Libertarians are too often confused with neo-liberals. The core liberterian belief is that freedom is necessary to achieve a meaningful life. Neo-liberalism is a degeneration of libertarianism. Neo-liberals confuse the end and the mean, and have been used by businesses and powerful interests to advance their agenda.
Have a gander at the recent New Yorker article on David Koch, Koch Industries.
On paper, libertarianism is not too far from the non-bomb tossing, actual definiation of anarchy.
small-scale, and in theory, it embraces the best of what a free person might achieve: cooperation and self-actualization.
In practical reality, in the 21st century, Koch’s version ain’t pretty. And, he and those of his ilk are winning.
Aided and abetted by my fellow Amerikans.
Greatest good greatest number? Heh heh…
A government of, for, and by the people? Criminy.
Get ready to grab a soup pan and wooden spoon…. make some noise,
Be brave, think of the sacrifices of our revolutionary forefathers. Only 25% participated, most really suffered as a consequence, but they got it done.
When the revolution comes, will your bike be ready?
At least these Koch folks produce something useful people want to buy.
Which cannot be said about most pundits, politicos and moral philosophers.
I consider myself a “libertarian of the left” in that I support human rights and civil liberties as primary human values and political norms. Noam Chomsky, for example, is a libertarian of the left.
This involves personal freedom and, indeed, is the basis of freedom. I say, “of the left,” however, because human right and civil liberties also involve social responsibilities. Many libertarians of the right do not seem to get the latter.
In medicine, one does not treat all the symptoms of a disorder. One treats those symptoms that put the patient at risk but right away the focus must be on treating the central disease process. Within Yves’ question is a diagnosis: the central disease is the concentrated power and wealth of mega-corporations and the symptoms are everything they have warped by their overwhelming power, and this includes all the branches and levels of our government, our legal system, our mass media, our foreign policy, you name it.
But crucial to this disease process is our own apathy and corruption. Treating the symptoms isn’t going to work. Things will only begin to work when large numbers of us are energized and linked together (initially by anger) and no longer allow this energy to be bought off, co-opted, cynicalized, turned against ourselves,or canned into do-good channels; but instead, keep it focused upon the central disease process.
At some point (surely we don’t have to wait until food riots)the power of anger will overflow the power of concentrated wealth. Intellectuals (and libertarians are invariably intellectuals) need to stop squabbling amongst themselves around one petty doctrine or another and, no matter what, tie ourselves to the mast of combating the central disease. For when the crunch comes, we all will be dazzled by the illusions and 30 second distortions wealth can buy.
How do non-libertarians plan to respond to the power of unrestrained governments, parasitic banking cartels, parasitic public unions, Wall Street theft?
By asking questions about libertarians.
Last I checked the power of corporations is most of the time restrained by the consumer or other corporations. Most things for sale have alternatives. Oil cartel raises the price of gasoline? If the price is high enough, people will stop driving, switch to ethanol, vegetable oil, bike to work, whatever.
It’s when these alternatives are “not allowed” by government edict, union rules and such that the public suffers. Must use union electrician, it’s the law. Must buy insurance/safety equipment(for your own good), it’s the law. etc etc.
There were times with fewer rules, regulations and busybodies. Here’s a cool account by Fred:
http://www.fredoneverything.net/KingGeorge2.shtml
In your example, how do you prevent the oil cartel from cornering the markets in bicycle tires, ethanol, etc? Don’t you need rules to do that?
They can only corner it by enlisting the government to make a law: “people can’t make their own ethanol”. Does that sound libertarian? I believe there is such a law already, probably sponsored by the alcohol industry. Even so, people could make their own bicycles, carpool more, buy smaller cars, motorcycles, scooters, or just stop driving. Let them corner the market in “not driving”!
The point is, if you want to restrict the power of corporations, don’t make laws restricting what people can do. Also don’t make laws forcing people to buy a corporation’s products to be “in compliance”.
So, libertarian or not, how does one deal with unrestrained government, parasitic banks, parasitic unions and Wall Street theft?
Aren’t you assuming the corporations will not make “laws”?
I know they do.
The question was: What is the Proper Libertarian Response to Concentrated Corporate Power?
The answer is: small government. Prevent the government from making laws restricting people’s rights, telling people what to do, when to do it, how to do it in every walk of life.
The answer is NOT: have the government make laws restricting corporate power
You don’t want “the government” to do anything. Remember, the government is “on their side”.
Hmm, so, how is “Prevent[ing] the government from making laws restricting people’s rights, telling people what to do, when to do it, how to do it in every walk of life” going to act against the consolidation of corporate power?
And as I asked, but you failed to grasp the deepness of, what will stop a monopoly from “restricting people’s rights, telling people what to do, when to do it, how to do it in every walk of life”? If I had a monopoly on the private roadways, could not I, as the owner, tell people what to do on MY private road?
They can buy all the corn, they can buy all the ethanol refineries, they can make it too difficult for me to drive a car, but what if I want to drive? Aren’t they depriving me of my liberty? Are they not then my “government”–one that I did not choose? If you follow your argument to it’s logical conclusion, the only way that I can be free is to “live off the land”.
Don’t forget to vote! haha
From my unenlightened perspective down on the cubicle farm, the problem comes down to accountability. If an individual breaks a rule, they can be sent to prison and fined an amount of money that can make a serious dent in that person’s livelihood (a $100 parking ticket issued to a kid making 8 dollars an hour is a pretty serious blow). If a corporation breaks a rule, accountability can be passed around like a hot potato and dispersed to such a degree that few people if any in the corporation feels any pain.
Without me spending the next hour writing a mini-thesis, there needs to be two sets of rules. Individuals risking their own assets (and freedom) should have far more autonomy in how they conduct and run their businesses. Once the jump is made from individual business to corporation (even an LLC), the state grants that business freedom from financial liabilities. In exchange for this freedom, the state can impose more restrictions on how they operate (health codes, environmental codes, hiring practices, etc).
http://www.daytondailynews.com/search/content/project/farm/1204buckeyeegg.html
Let’s take this example. Buckeye Egg Farm had a list of environmental violations a mile long. The worst of these resulted in a plauge of flies that swarmed for miles around the megafarm. The company was cited dozens upon dozens of times for violations on how they handled their chicken manure. But the megafarm simply gave local government the finger and threatened that any action taken against the company would result in job losses.
If this had been Farmer Brown’s Egg Farm, Farmer Brown wouldn’t have had the capacity as an individual, to ever let conditions get that bad. But if he had, the town would’ve likely thrown him in jail and take his land to pay for fines and cleanup.
The lack of accountability allowed the corporation to flourish, and when the hammer finally came down YEARS later, the people that beared the brunt of the government were the low end workers that lost their jobs. Meanwhile, any new laws enacted to thrawrt future Buckeye Egg Farms, will simply make it more difficult for individuals to run their own small farms.
Libertarians believe in accountability, but most do not realize (or simply ignore) the corporate structure is built to remove accountability and consequence from business. It is an environment that allows psychopaths to thrive, the same way socialism ultimately encourages slothful behaviour.
Remove corporate personhood
Put a short and tight leash on corporations, revoke corporate charters and harshly imprison offenders
Ease restrictions on businesses run by indivduals/partners risking their personal assets
Chances of any of this happening? Zero
“Libertarians believe in accountability, but most do not realize (or simply ignore) the corporate structure is built to remove accountability and consequence from business. It is an environment that allows psychopaths to thrive, the same way socialism ultimately encourages slothful behaviour.
Remove corporate personhood”
Agreed!
In my conversations with Libertarians it seems that they are more ambitious for power and control than most people. They would rather have a .001% chance of being the top dog then having to live communally with people and then make excuses for why monopolies will not exist because they one day hope to be the CEO of one. They want to be their own little fascists to practice being a bigger fascist.
I am an advocate for Libertarian Socialism (anarchism’s other name), and I refuse to let another neocon group co-opt term for their twisted ideology.
1 libertarian response for every 20 responses informing libertarians what they are thinking, and why they are wrong, from people who are obviously too fond of their own voices.
But what about my personal liberty to hear my own voice Michael?
What about our personal liberty to expose the cognitive dissonance of Libertarians?
Libertarians have told me what they think, I am just repeating it here.
So let me ask you, if you own all the food, which is ALLOWABLE under Libertarianism, how much will I have to shine the your shoes to get a loaf of bread? (Remember, I said it was ALLOWABLE under Libertarianism for one person to own all the food, not that it would happen. But the fact that it is allowable one must examine what would happen it it did occur.)
I’m so sorry we’ve offended someone who in all likelihood is yet another crypto-feudalist.
So speak up, Michael, don’t be shy. We’re all teeth…I mean ears.
“How do libertarians propose to respond to the power of large enterprises?”
In the real world, what it has meant is that libertarians been supported by, and been steered by, the Koch brothers. They are founders, among so many other things, of Cato.
As David Koch says, “If we’re going to give a lot of money, we’ll make darn sure they spend it in a way that goes along with out intent. And if they make a wrong turn and start doing things we don’t agree with, we withdraw funding.”
This is a must-read, Yves:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer
They also are a prime force in undermining global warming science. They own oil and gas companies (among so many other things).
There would be no corporations law, hence no corporate veil. There would be no barrier to collective action by workers. Rich people will always try to buy for their own private purposes the taxation power of the state, but under a libertarian constitution this power would be very limited.
Well, Yves, near as I can tell, this is an entire blog devoted to what Libertarians think of monopoly power – they think that it is no big deal.
http://truthonthemarket.com
This is ostensibly an antitrust blog, but it doesn’t think too much of all of Section 2. They think that monopolies are inherently efficient. No joke. Or, let me rephrase – they think that the rent extracted by monopolies is a lesser evil than the regulation required to cut them down to size.
Libertarianism seems to assume either equal bargaining power among all agents, or that questions of bargaining power themselves can all be reduced to the binary force/voluntary dichotomy. Neither assumption is correct, thus conclusions libertarians draw from them tend to be unsound in the logical sense.
The question is what the proper libertarian response is to concentrations of power in any group in society. The libertarian does not care if the group concerned is a trade union, the trade union movement in general, a company, a cartel of companies, a government agency, or government in general.
The proper libertarian response is to disapprove of it. However, what does the libertarian think should be done about it, should it come to pass? The central difficulty is that concentrations of power sufficient to dismantle the offending concentrations are themselves to be disapproved of.
Libertarianism ends up therefore being one of these paradoxical creeds, which can only appear reasonable and supportable as long as not enough people support it to try to bring it about.
S what should we do about concentrations of corporate power, or trade union power, or regional power, or power concentrated in particular professions? Read Mancur Olson. You will not like the conclusion. France in the 19c acheived faster economic growth than the UK, despite having defeats in war in 1815 and 1870, and revolutionary regime change in 1815, 1830, 1848, 1870. The defeated South grew faster than the victorious North.
Something has to happen to sweep away the accumulated privileges of vested interests, which grow up during long periods of peace. It is not fun, and it is not pretty, and it may well be that relative stagnation is much more agreeable.
“The proper libertarian response is to disapprove of [concentrations of power].”
WRONG. Libertarians are not against concentrations of power, they are against unprovoked use of force. There is nothing wrong with a company, group, or government having lots of resources and advantages. The problem occurs when a company, group, or government uses force to violate the freedom of an individuals or individuals.
Define “force”. Don’t just attempt to swap in a synonym like “coercion”. Let’s hear it. What exactly constitutes the use of “force”? And what of “the threat of force”?
Libertarian banter about “force” is just a distraction. The real issue is bargaining power, or ability to influence the outcome of a transaction.
Hobhouse nailed it almost 100 years ago:
——–
“On what principle, then, is the line drawn, so as to specify certain injuries which the State may prohibit and to mark off others which it must leave untouched? Well, it may be said, volenti non fit injuria. No wrong is done to a man by a bargain to which he is a willing party. That may be, though there are doubtful cases. But in the field that has been in question the contention is that one party is not willing. The bargain is a forced bargain. The weaker man consents as one slipping over a precipice might consent to give all his fortune to one who will throw him a rope on no other terms. This is not true consent. True consent is free consent, and full freedom of consent implies equality on the part of both parties to the bargain. Just as government first secured the elements of freedom for all when it prevented the physically stronger man from slaying, beating, despoiling his neighbours, so it secures a larger measure of freedom for all by every restriction which it imposes with a view to preventing one man from making use of any of his advantages to the disadvantage of others.”
——-
…poverty is abject because it puts men under the absolute dictate of their bodies, that is, under the absoute dictate of necessity as all men know it from their most intimate experience and outside all speculations.
[….]
For the liberation of the laborouers in the initial stages of the Industrial Revolution was indeed to some extent contradictory: it had liberated them from their masters only to put them under a stronger taskmaster, their daily needs and wants, the force, in other words with which necessity drives and compels men and which is more compelling than violence.
–Hannah Arendt, On Revolution
“Define “force”. Don’t just attempt to swap in a synonym like “coercion”. Let’s hear it. What exactly constitutes the use of “force”? And what of “the threat of force”?”
Force is an action or actions that restrict or violate the freedom/rights of an individual or individuals. The free market, by definition, is made up of voluntary trades and agreements. Libertarians would be against any action in the market that involves forcing consumers to do something against their voluntary will.
“Libertarian banter about “force” is just a distraction. The real issue is bargaining power, or ability to influence the outcome of a transaction.”
A distraction from what? Why is bargaining power an issue at all? You people keep saying it’s an issue without saying WHY it’s an issue…
See the example from Hobhouse quoted above.
I come upon a man who has fallen off a precipice. I agree to throw him a rope to save his life in exchange for everything he owns and a claim on everything he owns in the future. Libertarians might call this “voluntary exchange” but it is no such thing.
I come upon a jogger, pull a gun, and say, “your money or your life”.
In both examples, the issue is bargaining power. I have superior bargaining power in both examples. The other party always has a choice – they can fall to their death in the first example or run or fight in the second example.
“How do libertarians propose to respond to the power of large enterprises?”
A even better question is, how does libertarians propose to respond to the fact that the State gives privileged individuals (often quite wealthy) something of worth in exchange for nothing?
http://geolib.com/essays/sullivan.dan/royallib.html
This does not pose a challenge to libertarianism, at least not to a pragmatic, this-world kind of libertarianism. A pragmatic and non-dogmatic libertarian can still believe in the state and in the utility of antitrust enforcement. Heck, a pragmatic libertarian can still be for seat belt laws (with reluctance…people aren’t as rational as they should be, and since the popular will is to socialize medical costs, we should also have seat belt laws in response). Anti-trust law is not a real problem, unless you are trying to argue against a dogmatic, purist kind of libertarianism. But the pure form of any ideology is always wrong. Best to take what’s right about each one. The basic program of libertarians is maximizing human freedom, and that is a wonderful thing.
“The basic program of libertarians is maximizing human freedom, and that is a wonderful thing.”
As a pragmatist who advocates seat belt and anti-trust laws, you are doing the exact opposite of maximizing human freedom.
Freedom, despite what liberals want to believe, also includes the freedom of others to do things you don’t like, and even the freedom to be wrong, stupid, and ignorant.
“A pragmatic and non-dogmatic libertarian can still believe in the state and in the utility of antitrust enforcement.”
One only needs to be a pragmatic libertarian to see that Antitrust is not the biggest fish to fry in the real world today.
Corporations do not need to worry about antitrust laws to exert their force on government. They just go to Washington DC and claim they are to big-to-fail and the government will hand then 100s of billions of dollars to the detriment of 1000s of smaller firms trying to compete in the same market.
The real question is; why are you as a progressive even arguing with us libertarians about it?
http://reason.com/blog/2010/08/28/what-is-the-proper-republocrat
Is it a problem that some companies are more powerful than others? As long as a company does not use force or fraud against individuals, why is this a bad thing? As a libertarian, I don’t see why the fact of corporate power necessitates a response at all.
Maybe if your question actually specified a problem, such as “how would libertarians respond to corporatism, government working in the interest of corporations?” it would merit an answer.
I notice you failed to respond to RueTheDay’s request to define “force.”
I don’t blame you for failing to do so. Because if you attempted to, your entire little fantasy world comes tumbling down upon you.
I did define force. So, could you actually argue against what I’m saying instead of arguing against what I haven’t said?
Could you please elaborate on WHY libertarianism is wrong instead of falling back on ad hominems?
Ah ha! There’s another rhetorical retort I’ve noticed coming frequently from libertarians.
When someone fires too many broadsides into their little fantasy world, they immediately trundle out that trusty old weapon, the accusation of ad hominem.
What’s wrong, heller, can’t come up with any substantive arguments to defend your simplistic little world built upon distortions and half-truths?
This is just silly. How can I defend my ideas from criticisms that you haven’t given? How can I respond to your arbitrary claims that libertarianism is make-believe or fantastical? Attacks of no substance can only inspire replies of no substance.
http://www.wireless.att.com/learn/articles-resources/wireless-terms.jsp
I couldn’t possibly have enough time to respond to all the various idiotic strawmen and ignorant viewpoints in these comments, so I won’t even attempt to.
Economics is the secular equivalent of theology and libertarians are the secular equivalent of creationists. Like them they cling to a simplistic and literal reading of favoured sources and blithely ignore the glaring contradictions that result.
There’s no arguing with them. To concede the contradictions (or even to see them) would bring their faith-paradigm crashing down.
Libertarianism is a political philosophy, not an economic theory. My advocation of freedom is not dependent on any idea in economics.
Obama, not libertarians, bailed out GM.
Obama, not libertarians, gave billions to wall street firms.
Obama ,not libertarians, gave sweet heart deals to insurance companies and mega pharmaceutical companies with health care reform.
Perhaps the progressive argument is that Obama is not a progressive.
But if that is the case then why aren’t progressives standing side by side with libertarians and shouting to the rooftops in protest?
Why invent this weird straw-man that libertarians are in favor of government giving large corporations subsidies, bail outs, and special regulatory favors?
Libertarians agree with progressives on the issue of corporate power bending government to its will. So instead of beating us up over some phantom argument how about you join us in stopping these government hand outs to the mega-rich and powerful.
Bush gave those bailouts to the banks…not Obama.
It was conservatives and libertarians who weakened the Public Option in the health care bill(and who argue against a single payer system) that made it completely pathetic. Indeed, a single payer system is nothing more than saying the government is the insurer(a non profit insurer at that) for everyone….yet you people get so scared at any thoughts of “rationing” when it’s already done by health insurance companies today. What’s worse is that millions go without insurance and go without proper medical checkups in our current system, and rather than fix it the right way you losers made us fix it the pathetic way. You retarded maggots.
Yes, Obama was definitely against the bailouts. That’s why he vocally supported them.
The rest of your comment was just a big non-sequitur, and there is really no point in discussing it other than to say that Democrats had the majority in Congress, and there are no libertarians in Congress, so I don’t see how you could possibly blame us for screwing up your own bill.
I never said Obama didn’t support them, I was simply saying that it is factually incorrect to say he gave them.
Libertarianism comes in different strands. As far as I’m concerned, the conservatives in congress are the stupid variety of libertarianism. Just because they don’t jive with your more purist version of it(purist in the political sense) doesn’t mean they aren’t libertarian.
So are the bail-outs progressive or is Obama not a progressive? This is the original question that you have not answered.
“Libertarianism comes in different strands. As far as I’m concerned, the conservatives in congress are the stupid variety of libertarianism. Just because they don’t jive with your more purist version of it(purist in the political sense) doesn’t mean they aren’t libertarian.”
This is a textbook straw-man argument. You get to call whomever you want libertarian, then argue against that person and say you are arguing against libertarianism. Sorry but conservatives =/= libertarians. That’s why they have different names.
The solutions of conservatives and libertarians when it comes to issues of economics are almost precisely identical. Indeed, except for the purist Ron Paul, it is impossible to say that if any self described libertarian were to run for political office that they would not fall in line with the party on other issues. This is where Niebuhr and his theory of moral man and immoral society comes into play. Where a man may be moral in his personal dealings, the complete opposite can happen when dealing with his own group.
So to me, the only difference between libertarianism and conservatism today is one has political power and has a large group, while the other is a collection of individuals not burdened by the pressure of groups. It is not a straw man argument in that I cannot reasonably seem to find any difference between the economic policies libertarians and conservatives regularly advocate(with the exception of the issue of the federal reserve…but with respect to political conservatives I attribute this to ignorance…as they do not know what they are up against and are biding their time for a more perfect realization)
“You retarded maggots.”
Go Go Team Blue.!!!
Meanwhile Wall Street sips a cocktail while watching the economy burn to the ground and your precious uninsured are now indebted to insurance companies by law.
But yeah, sure, call the libertarians, who told you the whole thing was a really really bad idea in the first place, retarded maggots. That makes a whole hell of a lot of sense.
In recent years it has been pretty fun to be a libertarian. With the republicans in 2006 and 2008 we got to watch them step up to plate and get beamed straight in the head. I have to say this November I am not looking forward to them comeing back. But i will savor laughing my ass off when team blue get smacked dead center between the eyes.
In case I don’t catch up to you after November.
We told you so.
Idiot.
“team blue” is typically bad at the politics because they are much more purist in their motivations. Furthermore, team blue is typically full of pussies. That’s why we can’t get anything substantive passed the way it should be, because there are too many pussies in the blue camp side who are afraid of getting criticized by a right wing speaking with moral overtones.
How do libertarians respond to the power of large enterprises?
It’s a twisted weird sorta Ken Melhman thing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NduKrNAZp4I
What a timely post for me. Today I’ve been having a strong argument/discussion with a friend on the tendency for established old industries to encourage government subsidies in the maintenance of a dying industry. I live in Trinidad [Caribbean] with a few months old government, and am trying to encourage a new development model. Unlike the USA of old, we believe in government intervention. Being a major petrochemical world player we could afford this, but the world and our finances have changed. Having little or no private venture capital programs the government has to assume the role. The big problem is all of the old now money losing industries clamor for state subsidies and reduce the funds for new stuff. Don’t even talk about the rent seekers. Annual profit growth by sucking more from the customers.
The big boys get the biggest grants for establishing plants and lower rates for consumables, plus tax holidays. Firms lobby for pioneer status in decade old industries. I always thought, pioneers were the first ones.
I am a small business owner and my beliefs are:
1] Government subsidies to dying industries should act as a limited time transition help to smooth the social costs of change. It should not be the norm. Anyone thinking that large numbers of unemployed is not a societal cost is dreaming.
2] Allow referendums on major programs. So what if people make bad decisions. We all do, and that is how we learn. Watch Venezuela [my neighbor]if they crash. I am willing to bet, the populace will be wiser to the sustainability of huge social programs. Brazil has.
3] Why do we need huge businesses. In a large # of cases, virtual companies can replace the existing reality with mobile, fast reacting business entities. The problem is that you will not be able to pay $50-100 million salaries to the CEO.
4] Antitrust as was in the US is good. Compete fairly on merit not by being the school bully.
5] Any person with radical libertarian beliefs who thing any HUMAN institution should ignore it’s weakest members, do not belong to the human race. Winner takes all leads to the ruin of us all.
Great blog Yves, I read it everyday.
To expand on what you said, the kind of anti trust they have in Europe in addition to their social welfare programs is the best system possible…they call it “positive integration regulation”. They don’t sacrifice anything in the name of growth. The only problem they’ve had with this is that they let the banks get too big in the name of not wanting to limit the possible growth of the economies they work in. To sum up, not only do they have great environmental/labor regulations, but they also do a good job with antitrust without going too far.
Large corporation can not exist without parasiting otherwise useless gov. services. Large corporation need laws tailored for them (intellectual property, financial services, taxes exemptions, legal protection), and public servant to enforce them
Yves,
I believe the proper libertarian response would be that for practical reasons interventionist policies almost unanimously favor large businesses; that the principle barriers to entry are a result of regulation; that in many fields small businesses hold advantages, but where they do not the consumer only benefits from economies of scale; that monopolies are in every case political entities; and that the only way to remove corporate influence from the state is to abolish state influence over the markets.
Perhaps now you can answer a question of mine. Why is competition good in some cases, and bad in others? Why must the government break up trusts (that it created) in order to preserve competition, and then establish cartels to prevent it? Where is the line between competition you like, and competition you don’t?
To whoever is b–ching about BP: let’s have a contest. You give an example of something bad the free market has done. Then I’ll give an example of something bad the modern state has done. Perhaps we’ll discover the more dangerous party. You started with the oil spill in the gulf. OK. I’ll start with – so many choices! – the Holocaust. Your turn.
Yes, the typical response of the lazy bastard who tries to find the easy culprit. What, sir, will you not sacrifice in the name of your ideology, that in your mind should be perfected? Do you not realize that without a government and a society that was created around it much of the growth over the last few centuries would certainly not have happened? The problem is that we want growth, we want equality in prosperity. That is a problem in that to have that externalities MUST NECESSARILY BE PRESENT. Thus, regulation MUST NECESSARILY be present.
Your fantasy world is completely devoid of any logical thought that I truly feel sorry for you. The real problems this society faces is the utter inability to progress and have strong regulations in the face of those like you that must absolutely stick to your ideology. The Jews of the past would loved the lower classes advocating on their behalf…if you had made a bet with them that such a thing would one day occur none of them would have guessed it.
Indeed, your ideology is completely illogical. It says that are really not smart enough to know what problems are and what solutions are. Here’s my response to you, and you should definitely think about this: if we can’t know the solutions(even after looking at the problems), then how do we know that what you or I are looking at are even problems? Indeed, how the fuck do we even know anything at all?
Alas, the emperor(mr. custard) has no clothes.
“Do you not realize that without a government and a society that was created around it much of the growth over the last few centuries would certainly not have happened?”
Most libertarians are not anarchists, so your point is moot.
“The problem is that we want growth, we want equality in prosperity. That is a problem in that to have that externalities MUST NECESSARILY BE PRESENT. Thus, regulation MUST NECESSARILY be present.”
Sure, we all want growth and prosperity, but I don’t think we should have to sacrifice our rights and freedoms for those things. There is no reason why we can’t have a society that prospers economically from a FREE market, instead of a controlled market. The only way regulations can be justified is if the action of causing negative externalities can be considered a criminal act. I do not think that this is so, and if it were so, we might all be guilty.
“Your fantasy world is completely devoid of any logical thought that I truly feel sorry for you. The real problems this society faces is the utter inability to progress and have strong regulations in the face of those like you that must absolutely stick to your ideology.”
Yes, I’m sure it is annoying to you that there are people in this world who demand that their fundamental rights not be infringed. How inconvenient for you.
“The Jews of the past would loved the lower classes advocating on their behalf…if you had made a bet with them that such a thing would one day occur none of them would have guessed it.”
Hmmm, speaking of illogical… anti-semitism can be such an ugly thing.
“Indeed, your ideology is completely illogical. It says that are really not smart enough to know what problems are and what solutions are.”
Regardless of whether or not you are smart, you have no right to decide for me what the solutions are and what I should do. Do you see the difference there? The ends do not justify the means. Just because you might know better doesn’t mean you can force my hand.
How is consumer protection, say in regulating private or public industries, infringing on your right? In fact, they are protecting you from a completely different sort of problem: that of predation. I will meet with you in stating that it may not be possible to come to that perfect harmony of freedom and freedom from predation, but I will diverge from you in stating that you completely destroy any chance of real success by continuing your ill conceived arguments against regulation. Instead of fighting to make us understand things better, you seek to take us back to the dark ages…no matter what you may think.
“How is consumer protection, say in regulating private or public industries, infringing on your right?”
Not on my rights, on the rights of the people behind the company being regulated. If I owned a company, I should be able to enter any kind of voluntary agreement with a consumer that I wish. Regulations would restrict me from doing that.
“In fact, they are protecting you from a completely different sort of problem: that of predation. I will meet with you in stating that it may not be possible to come to that perfect harmony of freedom and freedom from predation, but I will diverge from you in stating that you completely destroy any chance of real success by continuing your ill conceived arguments against regulation.”
Fraud is a form of force. You enter a voluntary agreement saying one thing and then do something else. That is a violation of the rights of the other party. But most regulations on the market today have nothing to do with fraud.
You have stated no reason why without coercive regulations we would not prosper. I therefore feel no need to argue this point besides saying you are wrong.
“Instead of fighting to make us understand things better, you seek to take us back to the dark ages…no matter what you may think.”
It’s ironic that you invoke the dark ages, a time when there was very little freedom, and economies were totally controlled by feudal governments. Libertarian policy changes would take us farther away from the dark ages, not closer.
“Not on my rights, on the rights of the people behind the company being regulated. If I owned a company, I should be able to enter any kind of voluntary agreement with a consumer that I wish. Regulations would restrict me from doing that.”
This is what I was waiting to hear. Indeed, let us ponder a question: does a legal entity bear rights(in other words, an entity created by the state)? It may bear rights in determining whether they truly violated something or not(in essence, fairness must always apply) but it cannot bear rights that we as a thinking people have granted to mankind. So the question becomes, why do we have corporations in the form of legal entities? Why can’t a businessman just set up a business without having to go through whatever set up to make his business? Whatever the reason may be, they are for reasons of law and not necessarily economics…and tell me if I’m wrong, but through what concept has a libertarian every judged the value of law(other than intellectual property rights)? Thus, again, your argument falls flat on it’s face.
“Fraud is a form of force. You enter a voluntary agreement saying one thing and then do something else. That is a violation of the rights of the other party. But most regulations on the market today have nothing to do with fraud.”
Quite a distinct trap you’ve put yourself in, pal. There is a difference between law and regulation. Law is not only meant to prevent fraud(through penalties and such) but also to exact those penalties when it occurs. Regulation as a concept was developed to prevent fraud from occurring to begin with…and if the predatory self interest of mankind is to be taken as a given, then regulation is indeed a necessary path. For those that refuse to believe that predation is a problem only shows your lack of knowledge of the true nature of mankind.
“You have stated no reason why without coercive regulations we would not prosper. I therefore feel no need to argue this point besides saying you are wrong.”
Predation, it’s quite simple.
“It’s ironic that you invoke the dark ages, a time when there was very little freedom, and economies were totally controlled by feudal governments. Libertarian policy changes would take us farther away from the dark ages, not closer.”
You are correct in your criticism of me here, and I knew I was making a mistake when I said it. When I say Dark ages, I speak rhetorically and not literally. I don’t speak to the actual dark ages but the rhetorical times of past.
Heller said: “Fraud is a form of force.”
Fraud is NOT a form of force. That’s another typical libertarian muddle.
Fraud exists due to information asymmetry. If you knew a priori that the other party was going to cheat you, you would not engage in a transaction with them. There’s no force, just imperfect information
Information asymmetry, like the bargaining power problem that libertarians misunderstand as force, should be measured as a continuum rather than a binary fraud/no-fraud.
As for the seemingly anti-semitic remark on my part…I apologize to those offended, but I use it more to entertain myself as I find it deliciously appetizing to use a funny stereotype to prove a point. The Jewish stereotypes are incredibly funny to me…and I have no problem using them in that I have a big nose and for purposes of self-deprecation sometimes refer to myself as a Jew when many come to see me as stingy.
I am not very amused.
Deus-DJ…
Your reply stands out to me for several reasons. First because it has no bearing on anything I said – are you responding to me? – and secondly because your argument, such as it is, consists mainly of calling me an illogical, lazy bastard. Is this really how you engage another person in argument? Or just online? I assure you, you don’t know me, you don’t know my “type”, and if you have any desire to have an impact upon my thoughts, you would be better served if you approached me at face value and not as a mere windmill in some intellectual crusade.
I’ll respond to the point you made about externalities, because it at least was lucid. Externalities are generally the result of limits upon property rights — limits imposed by the state. This is why the more socialistic a state is – think the USSR – the greater the problems it will have with externalities. If a corporation inflicts damage upon or interferes with the property rights of other groups – for instance if a relative newcomer to the gulf like BP interferes with the pre-existing rights of fishermen to use the fish – then the situation should be resolved in the courts, which can (unlike government) address the peculiar merits of the case. Regulation often has the effect that corporations and individuals who cause harm are cleared of liability, simply because they met regulatory requirements.
Your property right argument is basically arguing the Coase Theorem I believe….and it is wrong, but I don’t want to argue that right now. As far as regulation letting people off the hook, that is completely ridiculous. There are regulations, and then there are laws. Regulations are not laws, they are rules for an incorporated business. If someone follows regulations but breaks the law, they’re still on the hook.
How deliciously perverse, to pick out what is perhaps the most egregious example extant of corporatism—the Nazi regime in Germany—-and then invoke it in the defense of corporatism.
Actually he is arguing that corporatism, the partnership of the state and corporations, is bad. Progressives and conservatives are the protectors of corporatism, not libertarians.
No, what Costard is arguing is that strong central governments are always corporatist.
One only has to compare German history of the 1930s to American history of the 1930s to see that is not true.
The New Deal, just like National Socialism, ushered in an era of greatly expanded central government. But in the United States, the government, instead of being the handmaiden of powerful corporations, was instead their nemesis and served to keep their abuses in check.
What Costard attempted is a typical libertarian stunt, to rewrite history so as to leave out anything that doesn’t conform to their make-believe world.
Um, no. Yours is the make-believe world in which the US government acted as the “nemesis” of big business. Big business has always held influence over our big government, and after the New Deal it became even more profitable for businesses to lobby the government. Just look at today’s lobbying if you don’t believe me.
Umm… am I arguing “in defense of corporatism” or am I arguing that “strong central governments are always corporatist”?
Which of these statements would you like to retract?
Well yes, Heller, as you say “big business has always held influence over our big government.” But there are questions of degree, and during the New Deal the influence of big business was greatly reduced.
Of course distinctions of degree are too subtle to make any impression upon the black and white world of the libertarian true believer. He’s typical of any religious true believer, as described here by the Christian theologian Reinhold Niebuhr:
[T]he tendency of religion to obscure the shades and shadows of moral life, by painting only the contrast between the white radiance of divine holiness and the darkness of the world, remains a permanent characteristic of the religious life.
This tendency has more than one dubious effect. It certainly very readily tends to a moral, social and political indifferentism. The individual, and more particularly society, are regarded as too involved in the sins of the earth to be capable of salvation in any moral sense. Usually the individual is saved by the grace of God, while society is consigned to the devil; that is, the social problem is declared to be insoluble on any ethical basis… That is a very realistic interpretation of the realities of social life. It would stand in wholesome contrast to the sentimentalities and superficial analyses, current in modern religion, were it not marred by a note of defeatism. That note creeps easily into all rigorous religion, with its drift toward dualism. The injustices of society are placed into such sharp contrast with the absolute moral ideal, conceived by the individual conscience, that the religiously sensitized soul is tempted to despair of society. Religion thus degenerates into an asocial quest for the absolute.
–Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society
Yes, heller actually read what I wrote. Perhaps if you extend the courtesy, we’ll have a dialogue, downsouth.
Yes, you are right, both capitalism and the state exert force over those they rule.
So as an advocate of Anarchism, I say get rid of both the “free market” (Which is just a nice word for Capitalism) AND the state.
That would be complete freedom.
Why would an anarchist be against a voluntary system of trade?
I am not against voluntary trade. Libertarians are not advocates of voluntary trade. Voluntary trade is their newsspeak. Trade based on private property can never be voluntary.
If I own all the land, and you need the land to LIVE, how can that ever be voluntary?
http://www.infoshop.org/page/AnarchistFAQSectionC2
and
“The terms of social compact between these two estates of men may be summed up in a few words: ‘You have need of me, because I am rich and you are poor. We will therefore come to an agreement. I will permit you to have the honour of serving me, on condition that you bestow on me that little you have left, in return for the pains I shall take to command you.'” [The Social Contract and Discourses, p. 162]
and
Proudhon argued that “[t]he manufacturer says to the labourer, ‘You are as free to go elsewhere with your services as I am to receive them. I offer you so much.’ The merchant says to the customer, ‘Take it or leave it; you are master of your money, as I am of my goods. I want so much.’ Who will yield? The weaker.” He, like all anarchists, saw that domination, oppression and exploitation flow from inequalities of market/economic power and that the “power of invasion lies in superior strength.” [What is Property?, p. 216 and p. 215]
That is basic Anarchism. Maybe you should read more about it to understand the flaws of Libertarianism.
“Libertarians are not advocates of voluntary trade.”
This is news to me. And here I though I was a libertarian…
“If I own all the land, and you need the land to LIVE, how can that ever be voluntary?”
Just as with anything else. If you want an iPod, and I have an iPod. You must enter into an agreement with me to buy it from me. The alternative would be stealing the iPod, which would not be voluntary.
“The terms of social compact between these two estates of men may be summed up in a few words: ‘You have need of me, because I am rich and you are poor. We will therefore come to an agreement. I will permit you to have the honour of serving me, on condition that you bestow on me that little you have left, in return for the pains I shall take to command you.’”
This is pure Marxist puffery. If I own a factory, then I will hire workers to use the machinery. In exchange for their labor I will pay them. This is a voluntary agreement.
“Proudhon argued that “[t]he manufacturer says to the labourer, ‘You are as free to go elsewhere with your services as I am to receive them. I offer you so much.’ The merchant says to the customer, ‘Take it or leave it; you are master of your money, as I am of my goods. I want so much.’ Who will yield? The weaker.” He, like all anarchists, saw that domination, oppression and exploitation flow from inequalities of market/economic power and that the “power of invasion lies in superior strength.” [What is Property?, p. 216 and p. 215]
Again, what about this situation is involuntary? The consumer or laborer is making a CHOICE. There is no use of coercion. If the consumer does not think that a good is worth its price to him, he will CHOOSE to not buy it. If a laborer thinks a wage is not worth the effort, he will CHOOSE to not work. The alternative the Marxists propose is that no one should be able to make economic choices. You will work where society demands you work. You will receive what society deems it necessary you receive. Marxists don’t care about voluntary trade, they only care about equality of outcome.
“That is basic Anarchism. Maybe you should read more about it to understand the flaws of Libertarianism.”
Um, no. That is basic Marxism. Maybe you should read more about it to understand the flaws of Marxism.
Can one have voluntary trade if one party is threatened by force? As in, you are free to work for me or starve to death?
It scares me most that you do not see the force involved in the example I gave and compared it to someone buying an f-ing iPod. Who needs an iPod? I was talking about food, as in life, as in not dying.
You said; “There is nothing wrong with a company being big and having lots of bargaining power.” If I put a gun to your head and say “your money or your life” would you still be OK with one party having more bargaining power?
Bargaining POWER; do you see the second word I emphasized? You substitute state power for corporate power, what is the difference?
Anarchism does away with all power one can have over another. What is wrong with that?
But you are free to leave the country if you do not like the unfair greater bargaining power of the state. Hey, why are you still here?
Libertarians baffle me.
Typically they fail to understand that A’s freedom will conflict with B’s.
They have a pathological hatred of government. (Big government is the tool used by powerful interests to oppress us. As if those powerful interests would be helpless without the state.)
They are basically anarchists but refuse to admit it. They arbitrarily exempt the military, police, and the courts, but demonize the other aspects of government. (If individuals really cared about, say, a Mexican invasion, why wouldn’t they form a voluntary association to oppose it? If I don’t care about being Mexican, why should my tax dollars fund a military?)
Typically they demonize government but evince a quaint naivete about instruments of oppression. As if a minimal state consisting of courts, police, and the military would have any trouble oppressing us–typically these are the chosen tools of oppression.
Baffling.
“Typically they fail to understand that A’s freedom will conflict with B’s.”
Not if A’s freedom ends where B’s begins.
“They have a pathological hatred of government.”
On the contrary, there is a specific reason why we don’t like government. Government as it exists today is coercive. How is this pathological?
“(Big government is the tool used by powerful interests to oppress us. As if those powerful interests would be helpless without the state)”
Well yes they would. If you take away the tool of coercion, how can they coerce us? Only by creating another tool, which libertarians would also be against.
“They are basically anarchists but refuse to admit it. They arbitrarily exempt the military, police, and the courts, but demonize the other aspects of government. (If individuals really cared about, say, a Mexican invasion, why wouldn’t they form a voluntary association to oppose it? If I don’t care about being Mexican, why should my tax dollars fund a military?)”
It isn’t an arbitrary exemption. Those are the only services that are necessary for protecting us from coercion.
“Typically they demonize government but evince a quaint naivete about instruments of oppression. As if a minimal state consisting of courts, police, and the military would have any trouble oppressing us–typically these are the chosen tools of oppression.”
Hmmm, so because those things might be used to coerce us, we should give MORE power to the government? I don’t understand your argument. If you agree that the government can coerce us, why would you possibly want to make it EASIER for it to coerce us?
I notice you deftly switched from using the word force to using the word coercion.
Nice move, but the underlying issue still remains.
The ancients figured out that there can be no freedom until the forces of neccesity—-the compelling urges of the life process—-are first fulfilled.
So what libertarians give us is a half-truth. Sure, man can be reduced to slavery due to coercion, violence. But he will also sell himself into slavery in order to get his necessities met. This latter point, however, is lost upon libertarians.
“The ancients figured out that there can be no freedom until the forces of neccesity—-the compelling urges of the life process—-are first fulfilled.
So what libertarians give us is a half-truth. Sure, man can be reduced to slavery due to coercion, violence. But he will also sell himself into slavery in order to get his necessities met. This latter point, however, is lost upon libertarians.”
Freedom from want is a positive “right.” In order to get the food I need I might have to get it from some producer of food. If I had a “right to necessary food,” I would then be justified in demanding, even stealing, food from my local grocer without payment. These are not the same kinds of freedom. A positive right will always conflict with the freedoms of others. For this reason libertarians believe the government should only enforce negative rights. All issues involving positive freedoms can only be justly resolved by individuals in voluntary agreements, adhering to negative rights first.
Now we’re getting somewhere.
I suppose only the WINNERS deserve freedom in your market paradise.
As to the LOOSERS, they hardly deserve stale bread and gruel, and freedom is totally out of the question.
You guys are really having some fun chasing your tail here. To be a libertarian is, to me, to be a utopian.
I love the American Musical Theater and the show Paint your Wagon has a particularly cogent song; “Wandering Star” and there is this refrain . . . “but only people make you cry”.
We are inherently conflicted organisms. We seek aggragation yet we thrive most with autonomy, accomplishment and recognition.
“Typically they fail to understand that A’s freedom will conflict with B’s.”
Not if A’s freedom ends where B’s begins.
— I think we are in agreement here. A’s freedom to live in peace ends where B’s freedom to shoot him and take his stuff would begin.
“They have a pathological hatred of government.”
On the contrary, there is a specific reason why we don’t like government. Government as it exists today is coercive. How is this pathological?
–But coercion will always exist in human affairs. I am utterly unable to conceive of society where it would not. Such a society would be radically egalitarian simply because there would be no one with authority over another–I’m fine with that if not that it would somehow have to be co-operative and self-policing, which goes against everything I’ve observed in human nature. The closest I can think of is my Quaker in-laws — pacifists who decide everything by unanimous vote. But, they are a small, self-selected group and, even then, they suspend the rules somewhat to get stuff done.
–Nor is coercion necessarily bad … enforcing laws against murder, for example.
“(Big government is the tool used by powerful interests to oppress us. As if those powerful interests would be helpless without the state)”
Well yes they would. If you take away the tool of coercion, how can they coerce us? Only by creating another tool, which libertarians would also be against.
–I’m Canadian so my cultural prejudices and experiences of government are probably different then yours. I tend to see it as “my government” because I have a vote, and one of the only big institutions that is even marginally accountable to me. But leaving that aside, we are really just back to our disagreement about coercion. Government, or anything that is coercive is bad according to libertarianism–and, by implication, society is possible (given human nature) without some measure of coercion. We will have to disagree on both of these points.
“They are basically anarchists but refuse to admit it. They arbitrarily exempt the military, police, and the courts, but demonize the other aspects of government. (If individuals really cared about, say, a Mexican invasion, why wouldn’t they form a voluntary association to oppose it? If I don’t care about being Mexican, why should my tax dollars fund a military?)”
It isn’t an arbitrary exemption. Those are the only services that are necessary for protecting us from coercion.
–Yes, but they are themselves coercive–both in the sense that we must pay taxes for them, and in their usage.
“Typically they demonize government but evince a quaint naivete about instruments of oppression. As if a minimal state consisting of courts, police, and the military would have any trouble oppressing us–typically these are the chosen tools of oppression.”
Hmmm, so because those things might be used to coerce us, we should give MORE power to the government? I don’t understand your argument. If you agree that the government can coerce us, why would you possibly want to make it EASIER for it to coerce us?
— You are putting words into my mouth here. I’m not arguing FOR “more government”–(I tend to think in terms of “good governance vs bad governance” and not in “big” or “little”), but merely against what I see as a bizarre libertarian propensity to argue that government is illegitimate EXCEPT for its MOST coercive organs.
As if those powerful interests would be helpless without the state
Wall Street would be more helpless without the bail out money Obama and the Democrats voted to give them.
Within the past 4 years there have been real shifts in wealth from poor to the rich that have been very very anti-progressive and very very anti-libertarian. And from reading most of the posts here it would appear the progressives are in denial of these real world facts.
open your eyes. Your team has controlled the senate and the house for the past 4 years and has had the presidency for the past 2. Massive trillion dollar hand outs to corporate powers by the state has happened under your watch. If the fact that the very party that claims to anti-corporate is the one being the cronies how can libertarians be expected to take anything your side says on the subject seriously. How can anyone believe that the state can be trusted?
We libertarians told you this would happen and it happened.
What more evidence do you need?
Easy short answer.
Limit the scope of government. Fewer rents to seek.
That doesn’t mean zero scope to those commenters that confuse libertarianism with anarchism.
Here’s a thought for those non-libertarians: compare the number of people have libertarian governments killed in all of history to those of the conventional nation state. Not saying that all wars are wrong, but if you were going to err on one side which would it be?
Your argument starts from a false dichotomy as it is completely impossible to have a pure libertarian “government”. Thus your question is an unanswerable one.
Meant to be a spectrum, not dichotomy.
Compare N Korea to Switzerland. Pretty easy to figure out where you would want to live.
The number of people killed by libertarian governments is zero, because a libertarian government has never existed.
Libertarian governments only exist in the mind of the libertarian, not in the real world.
“The number of people killed by libertarian governments is zero, because a libertarian government has never existed.”
Yes, that was his point. Thank you for agreeing with us.
If you choose to live in some make-believe world, more power to you.
But don’t try to confuse that with facutal reality.
I think DownSouth might be illiterate. He doesn’t seem to able to reply to anything others actually say. Instead he keeps repeating the same catch-phrases, hoping we won’t notice.
dude he’s saying such a reality does not exist and CANNOT POSSIBLY EXIST. Thus it is completely pointless to even bring up the comparison.
There are many governments that have significant elements of “libertarian” ideas.
Switzerland has a highly federalized/localized govt. Their federal income tax rate maxes out at 11% on incomes over roughly $650,000. It imposes few burdens on the cantons and cantons themselves decide what or how much they will tax.
Much of East Asia (notably Taiwan) have very robust support for truly free competitive markets. Taiwan itself mostly taxes via a land-value tax (a creation of Henry George who was one of the few ever leftist libertarians). A land-value tax is precisely a tax on the monopoly grant of land itself — not improvements or property — and is the one tax that even Milton Friedman said was the least distortionate tax system.
Chile has privatized pensions – and thus doesn’t have the liability time-bomb of the US and now has a pool of savings (comparable to Asia) that has funded its growth and made it the best economy in the world.
All of those countries adopted their ideas and structure of government from the 19th century US.
We, adopting our new modern ideas from the useless bits of Europe who were so useless that they exported their people to us in droves, have thrown those ideas overboard in favor of big government, centralized planning, nanny state, dynastic and near-monarchic legislatures, corporatism, imperial do-goodism, etc. And in doing so, have also turned into a state that murders and exports state violence. Irony. We have become what our great-grandparents fled.
“We, adopting our new modern ideas from the useless bits of Europe who were so useless that they exported their people to us in droves, have thrown those ideas overboard in favor of big government, centralized planning, nanny state, dynastic and near-monarchic legislatures, corporatism, imperial do-goodism, etc. And in doing so, have also turned into a state that murders and exports state violence. Irony. We have become what our great-grandparents fled.”
Europe currently has a system of regulation called positive integration. It works in two directions: 1)labor is protected from abuses and corporations in general can’t cut costs by doing things that would cause externalities…in other words, they have to actually grow to increase the value of the corporation(completely unlike the US, and Yves has more knowledge of this than I do) 2)They welcome advantages of size if the the issue of competition arises(on a global scale). In this the one large mistake Europe made was letting the banks get too big, and it ended up hurting them much more than it hurt us.
Growth in Europe is slow due to a declining population, which ironically is only declining because of the higher standards of living there among the average consumer. Look to Texas as the perfect example of economic and population growth yet complete stagnation for a large portion of the population. A correlation has previously been discovered between population growth and poverty…the more poverty, the larger the population growth. Anyone who points to Texas as the future are right only in the sense if they are rich individuals or corporations looking to find more unsuspecting consumers to legally steal from.
All that sounds great! And it describes the libertarian’s paradise of innocence to a Tee.
Take Chile’s privatized pensions that you lavish such praise upon, for instance:
• “The Chilean system of personalized accounts managed by private funds has inspired a score of other countries since the pioneer effort to create it here 25 years ago. It is endorsed by President George W. Bush, who has called it ‘a great example’ from which the United States can ‘take some lessons.’ “
• There is an “obligatory minimum payment, which is 10 percent of wages.”
• “[P]ension funds retain between a quarter and a third of workers’ contributions in the form of commissions, insurance and other administrative fees.”
• “…Chile’s pension funds, whose number has shrunk to six from more than 20 as competition has diminished, recorded an average annual profitability of more than 50 percent during a recent five-year period.”
• “At the moment, the government pays about 5 percent of gross domestic product, or more than it spends for either health or education, on pensions for the poor, payments into a separate military retirement plan, and so-called transition and administrative costs.”
• “[H]alf of Chileans have no pension coverage, and of those who do, 40 percent are going to find it hard to reach the minimum level.”
RE Desu-DJ:
“does a legal entity bear rights(in other words, an entity created by the state)? It may bear rights in determining whether they truly violated something or not(in essence, fairness must always apply) but it cannot bear rights that we as a thinking people have granted to mankind. So the question becomes, why do we have corporations in the form of legal entities? Why can’t a businessman just set up a business without having to go through whatever set up to make his business? Whatever the reason may be, they are for reasons of law and not necessarily economics…and tell me if I’m wrong, but through what concept has a libertarian every judged the value of law(other than intellectual property rights)? Thus, again, your argument falls flat on it’s face.”
Notice I never said the corporation has rights. I only said the people that make up the corporation have rights.
As to why the government incorporates, I am not in favor of incorporation.
Libertarians judge laws through one concept: Does the law coerce individuals or not?
I fail to see how my argument has fallen flat.
“Quite a distinct trap you’ve put yourself in, pal. There is a difference between law and regulation. Law is not only meant to prevent fraud(through penalties and such) but also to exact those penalties when it occurs. Regulation as a concept was developed to prevent fraud from occurring to begin with…and if the predatory self interest of mankind is to be taken as a given, then regulation is indeed a necessary path. For those that refuse to believe that predation is a problem only shows your lack of knowledge of the true nature of mankind.”
It’s as “necessary” as banning cars is necessary to prevent car accidents, banning alcohol is necessary to prevent drunk driving, banning guns is necessary to prevent murder, etc. It is only necessary to make fraud against the law, not to restrict businesspeople’s freedoms lest they might commit fraud. The latter is called pre-crime.
“You are correct in your criticism of me here, and I knew I was making a mistake when I said it. When I say Dark ages, I speak rhetorically and not literally. I don’t speak to the actual dark ages but the rhetorical times of past.”
Regardless, the civilizations of the past were generally much less free than where we are today, as well as much less prosperous.
I’m sorry, but it isn’t feasible to have a conversation with someone who only judges things through the lens of “Freedom”. When you completely discount/ignore the predatory aspects of human nature(essentially saying you’d rather bad things happen and then go after them after the fact), in thinking that somehow the law will make past ills go away and that the law will even do anything about it to begin with. Man will always err on the side of predation no matter the potential consequences. You find man far too rational.
As far as your actual arguments go, they’re stupid. When I said consumer protection earlier, it was to go after legal entities. Thus there is no issue with regards to freedom, and you have yet to admit it.
Your other comment on my “prevention” argument is completely ridiculous and not worthy of a response.
“When you completely discount/ignore the predatory aspects of human nature(essentially saying you’d rather bad things happen and then go after them after the fact), in thinking that somehow the law will make past ills go away and that the law will even do anything about it to begin with. Man will always err on the side of predation no matter the potential consequences. You find man far too rational.”
I haven’t ignored the predatory aspects. I want to outlaw coercion. I’m saying there is no reason to prevent a “predatory” action that is not coercive. It is not problematic to me that someone might fool someone else into buying something they don’t actually need. This is part of life, and honestly I don’t believe that any amount of regulation can stop this. It is, as you say, part of man’s nature. I honestly don’t want to live in a world where we cannot make mistakes or act irrationally. That is central to humanity itself. Freedom really just means allowing all humans to live to their fullest nature.
“As far as your actual arguments go, they’re stupid. When I said consumer protection earlier, it was to go after legal entities. Thus there is no issue with regards to freedom, and you have yet to admit it.”
People are behind those legal entities. They own the businesses. When the government makes a regulation that says I can’t do something with the property I own it IS an issue with regards to freedom.
“Your other comment on my “prevention” argument is completely ridiculous and not worthy of a response.”
Why is it ridiculous? The only thing that is ridiculous is to claim that it is just to punish people for being capable of committing a crime.
The obvious question is: do you think it’s ok for a consumer to get openly ripped off because 1)they are fools and 2)the corporation made the product or service with the very intention of selling that product or service to fools(because any obviously smart person would never enter into that product or service)?
No coercion here…and thus apparently you find this perfectly OK. This is why we will never be able to agree. Predation outside of coercion occurs every day and my above comment is exactly why I found your comments ridiculous, as they don’t deal with INTENT as I suggest.
If your suggestion to the above problem is that they shouldn’t be stupid…I want you to engage your thought on a different level. Think about this…is it possible statistically speaking to believe that all consumers are rational and/or smart? Of course it isn’t, just like it’s feasible to know that a portion of the population doesn’t bathe often or a portion of the population does this or does that. Is it their fault? Answer me that, is it their fault they’re not wise?
I continue to disagree with you on the legal entity bit; you are simply wrong. When I am dealing with a legal entity that is not considered property I am not violating anyone’s freedoms. If I fine that company for consumer protection violations I am going after the entity, not the business owner.
“The obvious question is: do you think it’s ok for a consumer to get openly ripped off because 1)they are fools and 2)the corporation made the product or service with the very intention of selling that product or service to fools(because any obviously smart person would never enter into that product or service)?”
Do I think it’s OK? Yes, although with some caveats:
Do I think anyone can accurately judge what products are “rip-offs” and which are not? No.
Do I think it is obvious what products are “designed for fools” and not for “smart people”? No.
What, in your opinion, is a rip-off? Is it what they sell on infomercials? How do you define a rip-off?
“No coercion here…and thus apparently you find this perfectly OK. This is why we will never be able to agree. Predation outside of coercion occurs every day and my above comment is exactly why I found your comments ridiculous, as they don’t deal with INTENT as I suggest.”
I’m sorry, I just don’t find it problematic or warranting of government action that people buy Quacker Factory clothing from QVC.
“If your suggestion to the above problem is that they shouldn’t be stupid…I want you to engage your thought on a different level. Think about this…is it possible statistically speaking to believe that all consumers are rational and/or smart? Of course it isn’t, just like it’s feasible to know that a portion of the population doesn’t bathe often or a portion of the population does this or does that.”
No, I would not say it is their fault. But I would also say that there is nothing that can or should be done about this. This is just how the world works. We can’t force people to be smart. We can only hope that they will learn from their mistakes.
“I continue to disagree with you on the legal entity bit; you are simply wrong. When I am dealing with a legal entity that is not considered property I am not violating anyone’s freedoms. If I fine that company for consumer protection violations I am going after the entity, not the business owner.”
What business isn’t considered property? When regulations are made, they are enforced against the people who make up the businesses. The people are punished, not some abstract entity. This is reality. When the government says I can’t do something with my business, that is coercion.
RE Desu-DJ:
“The solutions of conservatives and libertarians when it comes to issues of economics are almost precisely identical.”
That’s not true at all. Conservatives have no problem with intervention in the market. They also believe in corporate welfare.
“Indeed, except for the purist Ron Paul, it is impossible to say that if any self described libertarian were to run for political office that they would not fall in line with the party on other issues. This is where Niebuhr and his theory of moral man and immoral society comes into play. Where a man may be moral in his personal dealings, the complete opposite can happen when dealing with his own group.”
First of all Ron Paul is a constitutionalist. He doesn’t even call himself a libertarian. He is far from a purist libertarian.
Second of all, it’s ridiculous to assume that libertarians, if elected, would become conservatives. Libertarians hold as little or as much in common with conservatives as they do with liberals. They cannot be said to be part of the conservative group.
“So to me, the only difference between libertarianism and conservatism today is one has political power and has a large group, while the other is a collection of individuals not burdened by the pressure of groups. It is not a straw man argument in that I cannot reasonably seem to find any difference between the economic policies libertarians and conservatives regularly advocate(with the exception of the issue of the federal reserve…but with respect to political conservatives I attribute this to ignorance…as they do not know what they are up against and are biding their time for a more perfect realization).”
Apart from the economic policy differences I already mentioned. Conservatives differ completely from libertarians in the premises behind their economic policies. Conservatives wish to preserve the economic policies of the US at its beginning, found in the Constitution. Libertarians want to create a free society, which would necessarily include a free market. Apples and oranges are both round, but they are two different fruits.
There is a basic flaw with libertarianism, broadly understood. One aspect of this the a priori assumption that contract negotiation is the highest form of social interaction. The second aspect flows from this in the attitude that politics that deviates from recognizing the contract negotiator as the true first class citizen is more-or-less illegitimate. Broad strokes, I know.
As for corporate power, protecting capital is rarely seen as peculiar, despite the very unnatural and political origins of the corpoarte form. Labor unions, on the other hand, are held as abominations.
That said, I am sympathetic to the usefulness of political and economic liberty. It frequently works pretty well, and exercising an instinctive regulatory impulse frequently does not.
I could go on regarding this, but the meltdown and TARP was at least partially caused by government being subservient to very big money both before and after. Government had been nearly drowned in the bathtub and all it could do was write a check. John McCain suspended his campaign for what? To show he was clueless? Capitulate? President Obama hasn’t done a lot better.
Now I remember why I stopped caring about libertarians very much. When Rand Paul made the comment about the Public Accomodations part of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, I remember reading and hearing libertarians agree and it pretty much disgusted me that property meant so much to them, particularly as race problems in the US were pretty tightly intertwined with how we understood “property” for a few hundred years.
Until then, I would usually defend libertarians, but in light of the nearly universal cluelessness, I decided “screw them.” They might be right about grass and gays, but the truth is, they haven’t been the ones getting it done there.
Oh yeah, and then there was the “sanctity of contract” claim about the AIG bonuses. Although I have strong anti-lynching sentiments, but I would have made an exception there.
Nicely written, MinnltMan.
Property and taxation. That is what it always seems to boil do to for the libertarian. “How can people take what is mine and not spend it on something I want?” says the libertarian, aghast. “That’s theft!”
“Well, what do YOU want?”
“Whatever is the absolute minimum to protect what I have.”
Yves, I’ve got to commend you on this second (third maybe?) installment of the best Traffic Builder to your blog you seem to have hit on. Earning some good pageviews?
Just as with the last time you asked a similarly hilarious question (what’s the proper libertarian response to the BP oil spill), a tidal wave of anti-libertarian hate floods forth, and people get to stretch their legs and insult the hell out of each other (nevermind that you used to implore decency and politeness in your comments). That probably less than 1 response in 10 is actually from a libertarian tells you exactly who your demographic is. And while I don’t really care to limit myself by calling myself a libertarian or a progressive or a statist or a martian, I can certainly see that the sort of readership (ahem, I should say, commentership) you have is now so repugnant and full of opinionated hate, that I am less and less inclined to read your blog. Ever.
So thank you for this second installment on the libertarian response thing. Might I suggest you craft one of these posts per week to really goose your pageviews? Time it with whatever is in the news: What’s the proper libertarian response to Federal Reserve secrecy? What’s the proper libertarian response to HFT algos run amok? What’s the proper libertarian response to corrupt politicians? …The key here is to craft the questions to be as obtusely far from what libertarians are actually in control of or have caused, and thus simultaneously incite the flamewar while subtly saddling those pathetic libertarians with guilt for whatever subject you posit. Just keep drifting the questions further into absurdity, and you may just help push a full-blown alienation of libertarians from all of society while your page hits grow: What’s the proper libertarian response to child molesters? What’s the proper libertarian response to school bullying? What’s the proper libertarian response to date rape? All the hot button issues of the day are available! I’m telling you it’s a win-win! Except for the libertarians of course. Those poor bastards shouldn’t be able to walk the streets without being egged with a half million libertarian-caused salmonella eggs. See? There’s your post for next week! I’ve done the work for you.
Goodbye, Naked Capitalism.
+1
+2
This blog gets over 1 million page views a month. I hardly need to worry about traffic. And my economic interests are not served by putting up anything other than posts on financial markets topics, pretty narrowly construed (as in what happened in the stock/bond/commodity/currency markets today). So your attack is well wide of the mark.
But you instead seek to engage in a thinly veiled ad hominem, and insinuate that the only reason I run this post is to generate traffic. Repeatedly I’ve turned down material that was sensationalistic and spurious and therefore would clearly generate a LOT of traffic and did so when it ran on other sites.
Funny that you want to make this about status issues. If you had read ECONNED, I bothered writing an entire book about the damage neoclassical economics has done to the economy and society.
The question I pose is a legitimate one. Much if not all of the practice of business management as taught in business schools (starting with Michael Porter’s classic, Competitive Strategy) and promoted by thousands of management consulting firms is the pursuit of market power. Libertarianism for the most part denies that this can exist and instead incorrectly claims that the state is the only source of coercive power.
And as for your decision to go elsewhere, Barry Ritholtz said:
Embrace the Churn
Every public entity needs to understand churn: Netflix, Mobile carriers, magazines, HBO, Broadband providers, etc. all understand that for each new 10 clients they get, they lose a few. Sometimes, quite a few.
Your widespread publicity means that you will be pulling up a lot of jellyfish in your tuna nets. Its inevitable, can’t be helped.
Understand this, expect it, embrace it. You can start by throwing the jellyfish back.
http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2007/11/an-open-letter.html
I don’t for a second think you need pageviews. The comment was meant to be as absurd as your poorly crafted question. I’m amused you don’t see it.
And I bought and read ECONNED almost the day it was released. Good book, I’ve shared it with others. Want it back? You can sell it again.
Um…well I read your comment and I didn’t see it and I still don’t see it. Your mind games aren’t too bright :(
“The question I pose is a legitimate one. Much if not all of the practice of business management as taught in business schools (starting with Michael Porter’s classic, Competitive Strategy) and promoted by thousands of management consulting firms is the pursuit of market power. Libertarianism for the most part denies that this can exist and instead incorrectly claims that the state is the only source of coercive power.”
That is ridiculous Ms. Smith. Libertarians don’t deny that market power exists. Go to any libertarian blog and you will find tirades AGAINST corporatism. The only way corporations can LEGALLY coerce us is through the state, which has a monopoly on LEGAL coercion. That is fundamentally different from the ideas you claim are libertarian.
Yves spotlights economic power, your all caps dodges the point. Do you not understand markets or business? Any business with big first mover advantages, economies of scale, or network effects.
You can’t have contracts or markets work as a way to curb abuses if both parties don’t have more or less equal bargaining power. You keep trying to deny the point made by attacking the question. It’s legit, you just don’t want to deal with it.
Whoops, “Any business with big first mover advantages, economies of scale, or network effects will be able to wield a lot of power, it has noting to do with the state and everything to do with competitive dynamics.”
“Yves spotlights economic power, your all caps dodges the point. Do you not understand markets or business? Any business with big first mover advantages, economies of scale, or network effects.”
You’re the one who doesn’t get it. How are corporations coercing us without the state? Is it by selling us things? Do you know the definition of coercion? A free market, by definition, is a system of voluntary trading. There is nothing wrong with a company being big and having lots of bargaining power. You enjoy the products and services of huge corporations every day. If we didn’t have them, your life would suck that much more.
This idiotic question is only problematic to progressives because they see any inequality of outcome as bad. Get over it. The world is made up of inequalities. I wouldn’t want to live in a world without them.
“You can’t have contracts or markets work as a way to curb abuses if both parties don’t have more or less equal bargaining power. You keep trying to deny the point made by attacking the question. It’s legit, you just don’t want to deal with it.”
I already answered the question. If you don’t want corporations to have power over us, don’t give the state power over us. Given that this blog lent tacit support to both the financial and automaker bailouts, you hardly seem to have a leg to stand on when posing this question. If you don’t want big corporations to exist, don’t give them billions of dollars when they fail!!!
heller
You say;
“You’re the one who doesn’t get it. How are corporations coercing us without the state?”
Lets see, when they (like WalMart) become the largest buyer from a producer they have the ability to, and do, force them to supply at cheaper prices causing the workers to make less. Its a race to the bottom. Do they coerce the buyer perse no but they coerce others in their supply chain to cut cut cut to meet their demand. You say “well they dont have to sell to them” except when WalMart represents almost half or over half of their business they are kind of over a barrell.
” A free market, by definition, is a system of voluntary trading”
Vastly oversimplified statement but to be a COMPETITIVE market, which I’m much more interested in than a free one,there cannot be too great of a disparity in information gathering between the two sides of a trade. A competitive market sets a minimum level of information and reduced barriers to entry.
“There is nothing wrong with a company being big and having lots of bargaining power. You enjoy the products and services of huge corporations every day. If we didn’t have them, your life would suck that much more.”
Somewhat true, but none of us really know the true costs of these behemoths and if we did many would say its not worth it. What affect has the large food companies had on the quality of our food? A lot and most of it negative. Do American farmers benefit from our food system, only with large subsidies. I’ll just say Ill accept a little higher food prices as long as there are fewer in poverty more attention paid to how agriculture and livestock management negatively influence our lives.
“This idiotic question is only problematic to progressives because they see any inequality of outcome as bad. Get over it. The world is made up of inequalities. I wouldn’t want to live in a world without them.”
Depends on the inequalities. There was a time when providing enough food and shelter for all was impossible, thats not so now. No one is “free” if they are living meal to meal and not protected from the elements. Libertarians seem to believe that the baseline existence of humans should be living in the forest and foraging for food. I think subsistence food and housing should be (because it CAN be) the baseline. One cant even begin to be a free human until they start with food and shelter.
We’re implicitly getting the real answer here:
Libertarians don’t deny that market power exists. Go to any libertarian blog and you will find tirades AGAINST corporatism. The only way corporations can LEGALLY coerce us is through the state, which has a monopoly on LEGAL coercion. That is fundamentally different from the ideas you claim are libertarian.
The peculiar emphasis on “LEGAL” gives it away. They want any public interest manifestation of the state to cease to exist so warlords and corporations can extralegally coerce, tyrannize, enslave, loot, and massacre the atomized mass.
(Although as I and others mentioned, they want to maintain the state only as a thug to enforce their psychotic concept of forced “contracts”. In that sense only they want to preserve a legalistic fraud.)
Another term they use for this psychopathy is “anarcho-capitalism”.
He has a point, albeit a bit off the mark. I’ve read your book and it is very good one indeed. But, the question here, does give me pause. I see it as a query that will incite precisely what transpired above. Yet in all that verbiage and blather, there isn’t anything worth noting. In my view your better response would have been to ignore his closing jibe.
We’re experiencing the greatest financial fraud since Teapot Dome. We are at the effect of an oligarchy that is based in the counting houses of the world. The play of this theater causes me to wonder, would it be better to worry more about my own well being or should I be more concerned with the general welfare.
I think I shall focus on that which operates to insulate from the predations of the oligarchy. For those who post here, if you are young I would suggest that you consider emigration. This, which was once a grand republic now produces only banana oil. We call it QE which is a too cute by half euphemism for the debasement of the currency. It’s making all of poorer by the day. It’s the stuff that can lead to a revolution.
Now, what I’d like to see is the fractionation of the oligopolysts and the destruction of the oligarchs.
These are just the idle thoughts of a responsible anarachist.
nicholsong, sorry to see you go.
But I hardly see a “tidal wave of anti-libertarian hate” flooding forth here nor are commenters “repugnant and full of opinionated hate”. By contrast, your own snarky comment seems like projection.
A Truman quote seems appropos here: “they say I give ’em hell…when all I do is tell the truth and it feels like hell!”
In denouncing Yves’ question as mere easy-money bloody bait, you don’t say how or why it is unworthy of your answer. From your comment we don’t know if you endorse concentrated corporate power or not, or if not, how you would leash it. We are often angry and defensive when we don’t have reasonable answers.
Where , Yves clearly provides an indispensible public service in the vacuum left by a delinquent MSM, but it’s laughable to dismiss this forum as money-grubbing. Not projection, I trust.
Yes, I hate libertarians. Why should I not hate a group of people with an ideology that advocates one group of people exerting economic force over another group?
You speak of liberty for the individual, I speak of liberation for all.
+1000000000000000000000000000000000
“You speak of liberty for the individual, I speak of liberation for all.”
Hilarious. As if “all” is somehow different from individuals.
We are talking about liberty for ALL individuals. The progressives will always sacrifice liberty for equality of outcome, while giving lip-service to liberty.
+3
RE DownSouth:
“Now we’re getting somewhere.
I suppose only the WINNERS deserve freedom in your market paradise.
As to the LOOSERS, they hardly deserve stale bread and gruel, and freedom is totally out of the question.”
No everyone, gets freedom. All I’m saying is that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Either you make your own or you buy it from someone else.
Let’s see now, neoliberalism is libertarianism is conservatism. Everything that is wrong in America is the fault of these awful libertarians even though there is only one congressman from Texas in office who is remotely libertarian. The Koch brothers (named the Kochtopus by libertarians who disliked them) are libertarians, but they are also the biggest contributors to the GOP.
On a very personal level, and without relying on any politician or government plan, the first thing to do about concentrated corporate power is to stop giving them your money. It is unfortunate that one can’t do the same thing to respond to concentrated government power.
I find it bizarre that so many who truly fear corporate monopoly seek salvation from an entity that is the ultimate monopoly – government. Their monopoly being one of violence, threats of imprisonment, thugs with guns, etc.
Certainly it must be apparent to enlightened progressives that government has always been by the elites, of the elites, and for the elites. Is anyone so naive to believe that voting and going to townhall meetings gives the ordinary citizen any real power over the leviathan called government?
I’m wondering what the proper progressive response is to concentrated government power used to further the interests of the elite. I’m quite sure that voting for Democrats or Republicans isn’t the answer.
Straw man, I doubt anyone here is looking for salvation,. People want s a less bad outcome. What about “balance of power” don’t you understand?
There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch buddy.
I have a free lunch buddy. His name is Tom. :^P
Seriously though, there is “no such thing a s a free lunch” because Libertarians hoard all the food and charge you out the ass for it!
“Seriously though, there is “no such thing a s a free lunch” because Libertarians hoard all the food and charge you out the ass for it!”
I wish that made enough sense for me to reply to it…
Regardless of WHO has food, someone has to pay for you to get it. You don’t seem to care who does pay, as long as you get it.
Straw man?
How about the straw man of a “balance of power”?
First, corporations have only as much power as the government, the politicians, and their customers give them. Corporations are created by statute. People are not forced to give their money to corporations, unless required to do so by government (as in Obamacare).
From the point of view of an anarchist/libertarian, there would be no balance of power because there would be no power to begin with.
The notion that you are willing to concede any power at all to corporations indicates a slave mentality. It’s not enough for you that the state owns part of you? Do you really want to give more of yourself to corporations? I see you have no grasp of the two main concepts of libertarianism: self-ownership and non-aggression (no initiation of force – that which you beg the government to do to others to enforce your agenda).
What is it about the government existing to serve the elite that you don’t understand, Ralph? Setting aside the self-serving political rhetoric and lies of politicians, when has government ever done anything but serve the elite? Even the few scraps thrown down for the “little people” serves the interest of the elite by making people dependent on government and obedient, while keeping hungry people away from the elite.
I’d suggest reading Orwell’s Animal Farm to understand more fully the concept of “more equal”. Maybe then you can understand that in the system you cling to (with balances of power between elite rulers and elite corporatists), you are and will always be less equal.
Mr. Blanton,
How would you describe Europe then? The social welfare policies are generous to it’s citizens…do you hear them complaining as much as you hear complaints here? No, you fucking don’t. Nothing in your ideology has any significant answer for the whys and hows of Europe.
You have not responded to the argument. All you have done is, from a rhetorical standpoint, is put your fingers in your ears and try yelling louder (albeit with some elaboration of the argument that has been rebutted).
You either have little experience with the real world of business or are compartmentalizing what you know. Corporations seek to and frequently gain MARKET power. You keep trying to insist, with NO evidence, it comes only from the state. There is an entire literature, both academic and popular, on how to amass more competitive power.
Or let’s try it another way. Libertarians keep pretending the only source of coercive power is the state. That’s ridiculous. Private employers in the past have had private armies, goon squads, read up on Ford on this one. The Rothschilds made and broke governments. JP Morgan was effectively the US central bank in the 1907 crash.
And your “more equal” is again straw man. If you knew the literature on balance of power, it’s not static, each side continued to jockey with and reassess each other. The idea is to check the other party’s aggression.
RE: Heller
I’ve already felt like I’ve won the argument, but I’ll respond to you one more time so you realize why that is.
“Do I think it’s OK? Yes, although with some caveats:
Do I think anyone can accurately judge what products are “rip-offs” and which are not? No.
Do I think it is obvious what products are “designed for fools” and not for “smart people”? No.
What, in your opinion, is a rip-off? Is it what they sell on infomercials? How do you define a rip-off?”
These are the comments from someone ignorant of the existing literature by a vast variety of individuals to the trouble with the group egoism exhibiting itself through predation by corporations. OF COURSE we can judge ex post whether something was intentionally predatory or not…handing out teaser rate loans to those that obviously cannot afford them when the rates jump was a predatory practice, one identified by the FBI in 2005 or 2006 far before anything fell apart. Your argument that we cannot is simply an excuse to prevent anyone from justifying state action. Indeed, if we can’t do that then we can’t do or KNOW ANYTHING. That is the implicit argument you are making and it’s entirely foolish. Again, go pick up a book like a consumer protection book by the likes of Bob Sullivan(or go to his blog).
“I’m sorry, I just don’t find it problematic or warranting of government action that people buy Quacker Factory clothing from QVC.”
Yes, I realize you don’t find it problematic when someone has had, figuratively speaking, his face ripped off in the form of bad business practices like using fine print to hide details and that ends up costing the consumer a lot of money. Now someone like you would say that the fine print is a result of regulation….ah! but how and where they put the relevant information in the fine print matters as well, and this is how we can ascertain predation. How is one to get justice from this injustice? In today’s society, they can’t, and it’s honestly been helped along thanks to ideologies like yours that refuse to see what happens in the real world.
“No, I would not say it is their fault. But I would also say that there is nothing that can or should be done about this. This is just how the world works. We can’t force people to be smart. We can only hope that they will learn from their mistakes.”
Yes, you’re right, we can only hope that next time they and millions of others won’t be dumb enough to pay thousands of dollars for something that they really didn’t need but were misled into needing(again not coerced, but misled). Think for example those credit consolidation ads…complete fucking ripoffs. Yes, this is the kind of society you live in now and the kind you wish to exist from hereon out. The kind where it’s ok for someone to learn from his mistakes from losing thousands of dollars, dollars he earned from his minimum wage job.
This is why I have absolutely 0 respect for libertarianism. It attempts to crowd out the human mind in exchange for the godlike beliefs of voluntary exchange and utility maximization. Sigh.
“What business isn’t considered property? When regulations are made, they are enforced against the people who make up the businesses. The people are punished, not some abstract entity. This is reality. When the government says I can’t do something with my business, that is coercion.”
No, my example was one of a consumer protection agency. A consumer protection agency would fine the company for bad practices, not the owner. Accounting and law says the corporation was hurt, not the owner/etc.
Translation:
Everybody, except me, is too stupid to prevent themselves from being taken advantage of by slick salesmen, Therefore, I want to enable government to take the earnings of a single mom with three kids and two jobs, by threat of force, to pay bureaucrats to pretend to protect those not as savvy as me.
Just to make sure government has enough money to protect its subjects who aren’t as smart as me, we can jack up the real estate taxes (causing the single mom’s rent to go up) and force businesses to pay higher taxes (which they will pass on to the single mom through higher prices).
Now, maybe that single mom who is too dumb to look out for herself will be fully protected from anything bad by the benevolent government – even if she has to get a third job.
The sad part is that businesses are already heavily regulated and fraud is already against the law – and yet because of some mysterious force that can’t be comprehended by statists, people keep getting ripped off. Perhaps each American should have their own government minder to manage their life correctly and safely.
Translation: I don’t know anything.
First of all, the FTC doesn’t have the power to fine. They only have the power to send violations to the Justice Department for further review. We have a weak system here for consumer protection, AND the FTC had triple the amount of staff before 1980 than they did in 2008. Consider population growth, and then consider how ridiculous that sounds.
Your theory that the regulation would be so burdensome as to raise taxes is furthermore more ridiculous. Who has the higher tax incidence here in the USA? Poor people or rich people? Oh, and don’t give me that bullcrap that it’ll travel down, that’s as ridiculous as to say tax cuts trickle down, Neanderthal.
What I mentioned above IS NOT always considered fraud. When the contract is written one way but in talk sounded different who’s to say one misled? Right?
No, your belief system is that it is OK for business to rip consumers off whenever and wherever they can.
Well my belief system is that you – and only you – should buy things only from businesses that will – guaranteed – rip you off. That is after all the only way you can perpetually justify your calls for a legion of bureaucrats to protect you from yourself.
Indeed, I hope you can make things easier for businesses inclined to rip you off – and people inclined to harm you. Wear a big “Please rip me off” tattoo on your forehead so that businesses recognize you — and a big “Kick Me” sign on your back so that everyone else can take advantage of you. And if your SO could wear an “I’m with Stupid” T-shirt; then the wandering bureaucrats will find it much easier to recognize you both from afar and pounce on those evil businesses.
Help! I need a progressive quick! The Wal-Mart swat team is here and they’re banging on my door. They found out that I hate Wal-Mart and never shop there. Now those bastards are going to take me there and force me to buy tacky clothes at gunpoint. I’ll probably wind up living at the Wal-Mart Detention Center and working at the Wal-Mart store for life earning less than someone else thinks I should be making.
I sure wish this Libertarian Government would protect me, but of course they are all neoliberal conservatives and they don’t understand a balance of power should exist.
:) I laughed
“Your theory that the regulation would be so burdensome as to raise taxes is furthermore more ridiculous. Who has the higher tax incidence here in the USA? Poor people or rich people? Oh, and don’t give me that bullcrap that it’ll travel down, that’s as ridiculous as to say tax cuts trickle down, Neanderthal.”
I’m saying that the operation of government is ALREADY so burdensome that you have working people now that can’t make ends meet because the poor ALREADY pay a much higher percentage of their income in taxes than the rich. I didn’t mention tax cuts or anything about trickle down. It is you, Deus-DJ, that seems to think all this is just fine. Who is the neanderthal? I’d suggest it is you with your limited knowledge of politics, law, government, and economics.
“No, your belief system is that it is OK for business to rip consumers off whenever and wherever they can.”
No, it is not OK. But, it is fantasy to believe that government can or will protect people from getting ripped off. It happens everyday. The worst ripoffs are usually done with government complicity: the huge ripoff by the military-industrial complex, $700 billion bailouts, the great mortgage scam (can you say Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and FHA with all their guidelines and regulations).
It is your belief system that it is OK for the government to pretend to protect people (from their own inability to discern a ripoff) while at the same time doling out billions to political cronies. This is what is going on as you look to government to solve the problems they created or helped to create in the first place. In addition, you believe it is proper for government thugs with guns to force me to pay for this massive fraud in the event I resist paying voluntarily. And I’m the neanderthal.
Tom…at least you’re man enough to admit that the rich aren’t taxed enough, bravo.
I do not suggest that it is all fine, I suggest that things CAN be fine.
I find government “scams” to be complicit with that of the people. In other words, that is the price society pays for the type of government they have…they will always pay a price, in one form or another. That is why I don’t have anti-government feelings even though I am completely pessimistic on whether government does good or bad. I DO argue on the other hand that government CAN do good. Furthermore, unlike you and others I don’t mix government activities together…for example, you cannot mix the actions of legislators with the actions of bureaucrats in a particular agency…to refer to it all as the “government” misses essential details that are ALWAYS important.
I’ll be honest with you Tom. I have absolutely no hope for the United States. I am actually going overseas after I get my PhD in 5-6 years and start up a privately run consumer regulatory agency that will get authority from the government…I will not fill you in on the particulars of it. I will however tell you that the only reason I am doing it is because there is no hope for me to possibly fix anything here. It is too bogged down in anti government sentiment generally and distrust of bureaucracies and etc, as well as a host of other problems. I wish it were different, but it isn’t. I hope I can bring change here after making a real model for change abroad, but that is the only hope I have.
One libertarian who has a son that is the ultimate libertarian.
Board certified doctor, board certified by himself, the head and only member of his board.
How does the ultimate libertarian feel about this? He is sticking to the script. But maybe this is a little too far for even him?
If I decide that I want to be a cop, can I just start my own police department? Proclaim myself mayor? Start an electoral college and proclaim myself president?
Well, I cannot speak for all libertarians, certainly not the anarchists, but will attempt to explain my response to the question, “What would a libertarian response be to corporate monopolies or concentration of power?”
The first question is, what type of monopoly? The question is important.
The first type is a State Sponsored Monopoly. No one will deny that there are monopolies which are setup by the government (the post office comes to mind). In that case dismantle them and dismantle the laws protecting them.
There are all kinds of state sponsored monopolies, Fannie and Freddie (actually they are a duopoly). ATT during the 80s and 90s. The post office. They can either be setup by the state or have a list of regulations so tight that it serves as a natural bottleneck.
Secondly, there are cases as has been brought up by many intellegent statists that there are Natural Monopolies. Those usually exist temporarily. There are many reasons for corporate concentrations. Telephone wires, plumbing lines, electricity all have one thing in common. There is a common infrastructure which needs to be accessed, and it is difficult to come up with a compelling reason for competing systems (water is a great example of this).
What should be done is what was done to ATT which was a monopoly before and allowed competition for interstate long distance. They should breakup and allow individual firms to compete for servicing of that common infrastructure. In Minnesota, we had three companies cometing to take my garbage, where we used to have just one. And if you can remember, after the breakup of ATT, the INTRAstate long distance was still a monopoly which is why it cost more to call from Dallas to Fort Worth than from Dallas to Honolulu.
Third, there are natural reasons for some concentration of business (think of technology or the network effect). I’ll call these a free market monopoly. Microsoft/Intel duopoly was mentioned so we will deal with that. It makes some sense to have everything on the same machine preinstalled. But it gets more tricky. They of course have the code, so they can shut out all their competitors.
The reasons for breaking up the monopoly usually center around fairness. Its unfair to practically force people to use Internet Explorer or Windows Media, at least that’s what Netscape and Real were arguing.
The other reason is that innovation from startups is crushed.
For this, I would do nothing. Yep, that’s right. I’d sit on my hands. With the exception of violation of inalieble rights, I’d balk.
For me, it comes back to property rights. Who said free markets will always give the most desireable outcome. The benefit that we all get from free market driven solutions is a byproduct of property rights. We all know that individuals and corporations can be downright nasty and only look out for themselves.
In most case, this self interest ends up having side effects in the case that there is an free exchange of value. But, there are some cases where individuals make decisions that are not in society’s interest. That is why we have eminent domain to protect the obstinate holdout who doesn’t want to sell his house to putup a mall. Now, would it be more beneficial to society to have a mall? Yes.
Would it be right to take away the property rights of a homeowner to steal that house and putup a mall? No
Imagine Microsoft was owned by only one person, Bill Gates. Would it be right for government to break his code and say that you have to give away your code on your operating system that you wrote. That would be wrong.
Anyway, all free market monopolies are temporary in nature. In the 80’s, Coke was the monopoly of scorn. The contracts they wrote shutout everyone else. They played unfairly. No one seems to worry about them anymore.
Today, the potential free market monopolist could be facebook and google. We all know Microsoft is a dying breed. They have failed in almost every new thing they try. But they have the PC and the OS and MS office. That won’t be around forever and we will be arguing about something else.
The railroads of the past turned into the phone companies which turned into the technology firms. Who knows what will be next.
The only ones that never die are the ones that have a wall of government protection. Think Fannie and US Post.
Anyway, people here like making fun of Libertarians, but you know they call you the same names… think of any term and add BOT. They call you sheep.
Anyway, I would be proud to be called a freedombot. I will err on the side of freedom every time. And while you are at it, isn’t government the biggest monopoly of them all.
At least in free markets we can sue for grievances. Try suing the government and they will roll up your lawsuit nice and tight and try push it into a place where it will never see the light of day. `
While you are at it join my humble blog www. Economypolitcs.com were you can read my libertarian responses and call me names.
Wow! That’s such an ideologically blinkered telling of the history and philosophy of utility regulation that it’s hard to know where to begin in correcting all the distortions and misrepresentations.
For an excellent review of some of the pertinent issues, there’s this paper by William Yurcik, which discusses in detail the AT&T breakup.
At the heart of utility regulation is the belief that every household has a right to certain services—-running water, electricity, telephone. Households are provided what is called a “lifeline,” which is a minimal quantity at a minimal cost. Since it almost always costs more to deliver this “lifeline” than what it is sold for, the delivery of this “lifeline” is cross-subsidized. Services that are deemed to not be a necessity—-long distance, large business and industrial users, etc.—-are charged more so that this “lifeline” can be provided at below cost.
When Judge Greene ordered the breakup of AT&T, he left the monopoly of the local loop in place. And despite the howling of AT&T, he left the regulation of the local loop in place. Basic telephone service is considered to be a necessity. Long-distance is not. The high intralata long-distance rates the still-regulated RBOCs charged were used to cross-subsidize the low “lifeline” rates. The unregulated interlata and interstate carriers, on the other hand, had no “lifeline” service to cross-subsidize. This explains why intralata rates remained high while interlata and interstate rates declined.
In place of this factual reality, however, EconomyPolitics invents this fiction, which conforms to his ideology, out of whole cloth:
What should be done is what was done to ATT which was a monopoly before and allowed competition for interstate long distance. They should breakup and allow individual firms to compete for servicing of that common infrastructure. In Minnesota, we had three companies cometing to take my garbage, where we used to have just one. And if you can remember, after the breakup of ATT, the INTRAstate long distance was still a monopoly which is why it cost more to call from Dallas to Fort Worth than from Dallas to Honolulu.
In Latin American, where neoliberalism has been forced upon the people as a result of the US’s strong-arm diplomacy, the scheme EconomyPolitics advocates has been implemented, and with predictably tragic results:
Arguably, the best-known reaction to water privatization occurred in Cochabamba, Bolivia when the engineering giant Bechtel set up its subsidiary, Aguas del Tunari, in early 2000 and immediately raised the price of water beyond the reach of the vast majority of the population. Its contract even gave the company the right to charge people for the water they took from their own wells and to send collection agents to homes to charge for rainwater collected in cisterns on roofs. Consumers were hit with up to 200% rate increases as the company planned for annual profits of $58 million. Public protests forced the government to reverse this privatization effort, but Bechtel is now suing Bolivia for $25 million in lost profits. Despite the fiasco in Cochabamba, the Bolivian government is still pursuing several other privatization schemes, including plans to export and sell bulk water to neighboring Chile for use in its mining industry. If last October’s attempted exportation of gas through Chile is any indication, this plan is bound to provoke a negative response from the Bolivian public.
But despite these setbacks, EconomyPolitics and his neo-colonial allies are undeterred in their drive to subjugate the poor peoples of the world:
The nudge towards water privatization in mexico provides yet another alarming example of how governments, the international financial institutions and private water companies work in concert, with little regard for public well-being. The government of Mexico, along with others in the Global South, is laying the groundwork for the corporate takeover of the country’s water system.
Oops! Screwed up the link to the article discussing the privitization of water in Latin America. Hopefully this link will work better.
“Its contract even gave the company the right to charge people for the water they took from their own wells and to send collection agents to homes to charge for rainwater collected in cisterns on roofs.”
Why is it so hard to understand that it is not “privatization” when the government “grants” the rights to a single company? That’s just subcontracting.
Did you even read the report I linked?
Clearly, the only way for you to perpetuate your libertarian delusions is to remain willfully ignorant.
Often, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) facilitate the aggressive entry of these companies into Latin American markets. Both Suez and Vivendi use their considerable clout among multilateral lenders to make private water delivery a “condition” for debt relief or new loans. According to Public Citizen, the IDB alone holds about $58 billion of debt in the region, giving it tremendous power to impose water privatization on desperate municipalities. The IDB’s current projects have slated more than $1 billion in funding for privatized water and sanitation services. In fact, some of the largest IDB loans of the last decade went directly to transnational water companies for the operation of private water concessions in countries like Argentina, Bolivia and Honduras.
Meanwhile, the World Bank has decided to triple its annual financing commitments to global private sector water projects. After a decade of lucrative assistance from the World Bank, the Big-3 are now demanding guaranteed financing to insulate themselves from foreign currency fluctuations before making any new investments in developing countries. At the same time, the major water privateers are facing mounting and fierce public opposition to their operations in many parts of Latin America. As in the rest of the world, the damaging effects of water privatization are well-documented: rate hikes, cut-offs to customers who can’t pay, reduced water quality, huge profits for corporate investors, secret contracts, bribery and corruption.
Down South:
All of those tragedies are pretty scary.
I’m sure you forgot to include the stories of substandard government water. But for you it is an inalienable right to crappy water that you can’t drink without boiling. Most middle class bolivians and peruvians drink lots of bottled water.
you didn’t read what I said. Or maybe you didn’t get it.
What happened in Cochabamba bolivia and Mexico is very predictable. There is no real functional difference between a government monopoly and a private one. In madagascar, they tried a similar privatization of the long distance phone company. The problem is they gave the privatization to one company in a private bid. They found that long distance phone rates increased.
If you privatize by giving rights to one individual monopoly private company, you just screw the consumer through a different hole.
In Peru, the long distance phone company was privatized, and they allowed 6 private companies to bid on the service. Now it is just pennies to call Lima.
Just because I think private companies can do things better, doesn’t mean I favor government sponsored privatization into the hands of a single monopoly. You make it sound like I was ok with Fannie rather just because its private. Give me a break.
One of the problems most of you statists have with libertarians is that you think that we think private companies can do things better than government, that we like big business getting into bed with government. I call that socialism lite because it leads to concentration of power which is what we were trying to do away with in the first place.
My recommendation was to have multiple companies competing for servicing the common infrastructure. That is very different from all the examples you gave.
So think some more and come back with a real response.
Oh, by the way, I know Bolivia well. I have lived in Peru and central america for several years. Just because people are protesting high rates doesn’t mean that they are right. In Latin America, people protest for all kinds of reasons. They protest to keep jobs. They protested in Mexico for the high tortilla prices.
And if you think that people shouldn’t get their water shutoff for not paying bills, try not paying your water or electricity bill in the United States or Europe and you will see how inalienable that right really is.
EconomyPolitics,
If you were to provide research or evidence to back up your assertions, it might give your arguments some credence.
As it is, you have providied nothing, other than your own opinions, personal anecdotal experiences and a telling of telephone deregulation in the United States that is about as far from the truth as one can get.
I’ve been a registered Libertarian for some years now, mostly because I’m too goddam independent to register as such and because I’m a big fan of civil liberties. So I feel obliged to take a crack at this.
“How do libertarians propose to respond to the power of large enterprises?”
Well, there’s large and there’s large. Under what circumstances would breaking up Microsoft have resulted in anything like what we saw after Lehman failed?
I’m for accountable government intervention top and bottom — a genuinely fair chance for all kids, and no TBTF — and as a venue for recognizing and pricing externalities.
I believe the concept of the corporation needs a rethink. Particularly in the realm of finance, the concept of limited liability and corporate personhood seems ripe with disfunctional incentives on scale that hold the viability of the American experiment at risk. My comps are Russia and Mexico.
I believe it’s possible as a libertarian to recognize that markets can fail, fail badly, fail cumulatively.
“In the long run we’re all dead.” True enough, but to digress I’m enough of a conservative to think there really is an obligation to consider the future.
This is the crux — the largest enterprises are middle-eastern death cults that imagine eternal paradise, and, some, apocalypse to bring it about.
The Founding Fathers grappled with essentially this problem (in a different form because of their time period) and came to the only really implementable solution: institutional checks and balances.
The question to ask libertarians or those of a right wing persuasion who are opposed to regulation of large companies is simple: are they also opposed to any regulation of other combinations of people? Are they, for instance, in favor of trade unions being able to combine and operate exactly how they please? Are they in favor of the Bar Association being able to set whatever rules it pleases?
The great difficulty with it, if you look wider and geographically, is that it is possible and has happened for special interest groups to lock societies into fixed modes of behavior which act to the disadvantage of the majority of the citizens. This seems to have happened with Middle Eastern theocracies after about 1100, it probably happened in China. It was only after great struggles and much conflict that the Church in the West lost its power to freeze society in dysfunctional modes.
Now, you can argue that sooner or later market and historical choices will put an end to these frozen states, and maybe: but not in ways that libertarians can approve of. The end often has occurred from outside force. And the condition has often persisted for centuries, keeping millions in misery and ignorance to benefit a small minority.
Olson’s point is a profound and far reaching one. He points out that it is in the economic interest of minority interests to impose almost any cost on society, as long as they have net benefits. It is in their interest to impose costs which dwarf their own benefits. It was, for instance, in the interests of the British Leyland unions to persuade government to sponsor cartels and price fixing that resulted in keeping UK vehicle prices at 150% of European levels, as long as they got a little of the spoils. Never mind if the costs for society were huge, and the union members only got a tiny percentage of them.
Now, extending the point, it may be and has been in the interests of a minority to impose long term costs on society almost without limit, in exchange for improving their condition slightly. Even when the costs are huge in relation to the bit they obtain. For instance, if a group of wheat producers were to be able to control the import of wheat by tariffs, and flat prohibit the import of wheat below certain very high levels. There would be widespread hunger, there would be high food prices, the costs of all manufactured goods would rise as a result, there might be large scale unemployment due to poor relative cost position of the country’s work force. It would still be in the interests of the wheat producers to keep it up.
This actually happened in the UK in the 19c, until the repeal of the Corn Laws un split the Tory party.
I love these posts on “What is the proper libertarian answer to…?” I’ve always been a big fan of Robert Heinlein, and though I think a libertarian world would not work in practice, it’s fun to imagine how it would work like.
I think somebody came with the right libertarian answer to the BP spill: Everything, including all the animals in the sea, the seawater and the seafloor, would be owned by somebody, some company or some organization. All the injured parties whose property was harmed would get together and sue BP.
I’m not sure anybody has come with the right libertarian answer to monopolies on this comment thread. After a bit of research, I think this is the right answer: Libertarians don’t have any issue with monopolies in principle, assuming that everybody is happy about that particular monopoly. If somebody doesn’t like it and they are engaged in some contract with them, they would check that the contract has been respected and it still counts as a voluntary contract, and sue the monopoly if they thought the contract was breached or not truly voluntary. For example, you may have voluntarily paid some price for their goods or services before you knew that they were overcharging, but after you knew it, you realize that you were deprived of vital information, and you would have chosen something else if you had this information. Also, you may be able to argue that the contract wasn’t voluntary because you had no other alternatives, and the price you were given was bad enough to count as coercion. I’m not sure how libertarian law courts would draw the line on which point a contract stops being voluntary, I suspect most libertarians would put the limit somewhat higher than we have nowadays, but I don’t really know.
Unless the proverbial gun is pointed at your head at time of setting your hand to the contract, it’s voluntary.
A contract creates, modifies, or destroys a right. If I am a free man and house painter, and I contract to paint your house next Tuesday, guess what? I’ve just contracted away my liberty for next Tuesday. Next Tuesday, I’m your house painter, unless exigent circumstance or some variation of your withholding of material information prevents me from painting your house. I am no longer free next Tuesday, and I am in an actionable position upon failure to perform. Some progressives would decry this situation, calling it inequality that I am no longer free, and they would be correct, but only insofar as next Tuesday. But they would be dead wrong to call it actionable exploitation of any kind. Sure, if it appeared I had undercharged under duress–that you might have me over a barrel because of a glut of hungry house painters–it might look like exploitation, it might sound like it, might smell it. But so what. Actionable? No. I set my hand to it, with open eyes.
The Libertarian simply believes that an individual takes individual responsibility, in who he buys from, who he sells to, who he associates with and who he enters into binding contracts with. And he doesn’t want third party coercion over his choices, whether that third party is a local magnate, local union, or monetary cartelizer who is manipulating the value of a medium of exchange itself. But none of those have true coercive power over the individual unless the State backs it up with its monopoly power–the monopoly of organized violence. Without that backing of implicit violence of the State, the only way those sorts of third parties can coerce me is due to a lack of imagination and/or motivation on my part. And the paint job on your house should not suffer because of a lack of contractual sophistication on my part. Libertarians have made the point that a free market should not be one that assumes that all participants are equally rational. To the contrary; participants are NOT equally rational, but the less rational see the success the more rational and seek to emulate their behavior. And so if I get soaked on my contract to paint your house, I take my lumps, learn my lesson, and bring increased sophistication to the table next time I paint someone elses’ house. This of course would work best without a government or monetary cartelizer constantly changing the rules and thus arbitrarily picking winners and suckers by moving the goalposts.
As to your point about some monopolies might be agreeable to the Libertarian, I can agree to an extent with a necessarily idealized example. Suppose a local property owner has ownership of a length of sweet waterway. That owner may well have set up a water bottlery, and, being the only game in town, enjoys a monopoly on his market, us. I see no problem, so long as he is not charging what we as local constant customers would agree is not an onerous price, since the requirements for water is after all a necessity of life. Were I as an individual to decide his price was unbearable, and found others who found the same, and using our imagination and motivation we found no other way to provide for our own (whether by pooling funds to buy water rights or finding other sources of water), we may bring suit, not to confiscate his holdings, not to expropriate his property into commons, and not to deprive him of income due him for access to his property, but that his unreasonable price demands were violative of our right to exist as water-drinking beings. I see in that situation no mandatory cause for administrative governmental regulation outside legal system purview, let alone foundation for perpetual taxation to maintain bureaucracy.
You look don’t like the price that’s being charged for water, so you get together with your neighbors and sue the bottler. In other words, you use government (the court) to force the bottler to sell his property at a price lower than he wishes. And if he refuses? Naturally, you use the power of the state to coerce him, using force if necessary. By the way – who gets to decide what is a too onerous price for water, and by what mechanism?
This is the hallmark of libertarian thought – seemingly thoughtful argument riddled with glaring contradictions.
I agree with what mrmetrowest said.
It is weird, maybe it is a cultural blindness that causes Libertarians not to see the economic “guns pointed at peoples heads” under the rule of private property. It is like you were born into a world where everyone always has a gun pointed to your head, that would be normal, yes? So they build a political and economic theory around that because you see it as “well, that is life!”, never thinking they can just get rid of the guns.
briareusm, do you think everyone in the world has the same mental capacity? Do you think a mentally handicapped person enters into a contract on the same footing as say Warren Buffet? What would the individual interest of the smarter people letting the slower in on their trade secrets?
Your world would lead to much of what we have now, con-men selling derivatives to the people who willingly gave them the authority because they did not understand the math.
Economic pressure because of private property will always exists as third party coercion. The State is just that concept brought to physical reality. In the 1870’s there was the Pinkerton National Detective Agency in the U.S. that acted as a private police force for business. What in your ideology would prevent what they did from happening again? They infiltrated free labor organizations and staged false flag operations to drive public sentiment. The ended up getting ten people hung based on only the evidence they provided.
So, you say you would bring suit against the man who had all the water rights. Well, it only takes a few days to die of thirst. On the second day I am sure you would give him what he wanted for more then he asked for on the first day. And who would be this third party you would bring your grievances? The Pinkerton National Courts?
The libertarian fundamentalist belief that “lawsuits to protect property rights” should be used to resolve all matters leaves me wanting.
Anyone who’s been around the legal system sees how rich defendants (such as insurance companies, oil companies) use the plaintiffs’ desperation against them, to offer them a settlement with much less money now than what the plaintiff is entitled to. But, that’s just one arena. The playing field is always tilted in favor of the rich.
In turn, over time, they end up with all the money and power. Over time, libertarianism yields and maintains oligarchy.
“In turn, over time, they end up with all the money and power. Over time, libertarianism yields and maintains oligarchy.”
Yes, because history has shown progressivism and conservatism have brought different results, yes?
Absolutely. Progressivism has brought very different results than libertarianism. And while progressivism doesn’t deliver the “white radiance of divine holiness” that libertarianism promises, it has delivered, in practice, far superior outcomes than what libertarianism has.
Latin America, beginning with Pinochet’s rise to power in Chile, has become a libertarian’s wet dream. Perhaps no place on earth has provided a greater laboratory to test libertarian policy prescriptions than Latin America.
And everywhere the libertarians have been given free reign, and in spite of all the high-sounding theorizing, in practice the results have been disastrous. Perhaps the most recent example is Mexico—-truly an exemplar of the fruits of the implemenation of libertarian policies beginning in the early 1980s.
But despite this historical reality, the libertarian clings to his utopian Shangri la.
“But despite this historical reality, the libertarian clings to his utopian Shangri la.”
Most libertarians and anarchists don’t promise any utopia. In fact, it is the statists that promise utopian dreams and when the promises fail, the same people want you to give them more of your money to try again.
Remember Katrina and pay careful attention to the aftermath of the BP spill.
As the Latin American experience illustrates, no reality and no common sense can penetrate the minds of the libertarians.
No utopian visions here.
Life itself brings plenty of uncertainty and opportunities for pain and “inequality”.
We dont have to add to the inequalities with our man made systems.
Nothing we’ve created is “natural” it has mans handiwork and imperfections all over it. It either is good for more people or bad for more people.
I believe I have put my finger on the nub of the disagreement.
Libertarians:
Liberty is needed to the extent that it ensures private property is held sacrosanct. Private property is the end, liberty the means.
Liberals (or progressives as “liberal” is a dirty word):
Private property is needed to the extent that it protects the liberty of the individual. Liberty is an end in itself, and property as a means to secure that end.
Superb!
That’s idiotic. The end of libertarianism is to create a free society, not to create private property. We already have private property in a society that is not free.
Also, liberty is not the ultimate end of progressives. Progressives will ALWAYS sacrifice liberty in the name of equality of outcome.
Heller responded “That’s idiotic. The end of libertarianism is to create a free society, not to create private property. We already have private property in a society that is not free.
Also, liberty is not the ultimate end of progressives. Progressives will ALWAYS sacrifice liberty in the name of equality of outcome.”
Please don’t be rude.
As for your first point, I never said that the end of libertarianism is to create private property, but that it seems to want to ensure that private property is sacred, untouchable.
Secondly, I think you are confusing liberalism with communism.
I doubt I can add anything new to this debate. I will say this:
Most liberals are, I believe, concerned with equality of outcome Heller mentions only to the extent that it mitigates the well known problem that many individuals are born on third base or home plate and others come to the game without a bat or glove. This why child poverty is so heartbreaking to liberals. It is unfair and liberals wish to “level the playing field” but not determine the score of the game.
An radically Liberal proposition might be that all wealth is confiscated upon the death of an individual, so it can’t be unfairly used to benefit any family members or offspring. And an effort is made to provide all the amenities the wealthy benefit from for poorer children — then, when the age of majority hits it’s “Play Ball” and inequality enters the equation.
I believe most liberals, such as myself, would see such a scenario as giving everyone a fair shot, and as maximizing freedom for all, although they might have issues with its feasibility.
I am not sure what a “pure” libertarian response to the above thought experiment would be, but I believe they would be aghast for reasons other than “implementation problems”.
But their opposition would be puzzling because it clearly this is a situation designed to maximize liberty for everyone. I assume they would be aghast because it would go against the sanctity of private property.
I could be wrong, however. Libertarians might hold a different position.
But doesn’t private property result in the very scarcity that drives homo econimicus? My ownership of land, energy resources, water rights, etc is the underlying source of your SCARCITY – not mine! Without the latter would there even be a need/justification for private property? Would liberty be necessarily scarcer/threatened without private property? Why is the latter deemed so crucial to individual liberty and why is historical context so often missing from the LIBERTARIAN argument as to how private property originated?
Private property ensures man-made scarcity – not NATURE – driving the theoretical discussion that legitimates why economic/political inequality exists. Anyone taking more from nature than he/she can use – the principal of spoliation – is committing a crime against it and other human beings, depriving them of the means of their existence thereby violating their right to life, regardless of whether he/she can convert this “surplus” into a commodity – gold – that does not spoil. [John Locke’s apologetics notwithstanding.]
LIBERTARIANISM is little more than a justification for the privatization of what belongs to US all and the CONTROL it affords the privatizers over the rest of us brought about by the creation of artificially-induced scarcity resulting from that privatization.
This sums it up well. Those who fraudulently claim freedom is synonymous with the economic prerogative of “property” must always seek artificial scarcity because only that can prop up illegitimate profits and amass illegitimate power.
Earlier in the thread the example of water privatization was discussed. Well, the water existed before mankind existed, so on its face no one can legitimately claim “ownership” to it. We can either say it belongs to no one (which would be chaos), or it belongs to society as a whole. But under no circumstances can it ever be legitimate for anyone to have any “private ownership” of it, nor can any government legitimately alienate this public property. (It’s funny how Mr. Anti-State Libertarian suddenly becomes a radical statist when he wants to validate the government’s aggressive action here.)
That applies to all natural resources and the land itself. At most a private producer may add value to something and be paid as a contractor or gain a possession/stewardship right to something. You mention Locke, but ironically it was Locke who best promulagted the labor theory of property, that a property right can be bestowed only by one’s actually personally working the land, improving it. By Locke’s measure almost all land “ownership” today is illegitimate.
The modification I’d make on Locke is that this useful improvement may confer a contingent right of useful possession, not of “property”. One can have true property only in the actual fruit of one’s labor.
(I also laugh the fraud of “produce the food yourself or buy it from someone who did”. Unless that means bartering your own useful production for someone else’s, then it can only mean theft, since where is this “money” to “buy” stuff supposed to have magically come from? In the end it’s only derived, legitimately or not, from the real economy.
One is either an actual producer, a contributor to the real economy, or not. Being one includes those who wish to be so but have been out-closed from the criminally enclosed resources that really belong to us all.
But those who support the enclosure and produce nothing themselves are pure parasites, their “money” notwithstanding. They’re leeches off the productive economy, robbers.)
Libertarians, like a lot of political ideologies, are essentially a Rapture cult gussied up as something else.
Libertarians believe that if everybody adopted their core tenet, all worldly problems would disappear, or be mitigated into virtual nonexistence. They also believe in a strong ordering force to the universe — Reason — and think this makes their preferred outcome inevitable.
Reality is, even if people agreed with the premise that state and economy should be separate, it’s hard to imagine how you’d do it. There’s never been a time in history when this was the case; the state was always an economic actor, back to its very beginnings organizing land use for agriculture (and promoting racist peonage systems to do so). Continue down the line to iron age systems of mint and fiefdom, Renaissance mercantilism and state finance capitalism; at every stage the state is a force in business affairs. It’s no wonder the state is cozy with corporations; the state is a corporation, the very first.
Furthermore, even the ideal libertarian state remains an economic actor. Preventing direct force by some upon others is an economic regulation in an economy where otherwise, “property rights” mean catch-as-catch-can. These folks are deluding themselves if they think courts and laws can be purified of de facto cronyism, even by limiting their scope. As long as human beings are economically interdependent, there’s no free pass on the problems of public institutions.
The only hope for either fairness or efficiency is to maintain the state in flux. With the expectation that (a) it will transform to meet situations we can’t envision now, and (b) we will forcibly transform it to remove entrenched injustices. That requires constant engagement with both politics and the economy, and if that prospect drives libertarians to a sneezing fit, then it only underscores how mystical and essentially unserious is their theory.
It is apparent that most people here have a very strange definition of what a libertarian is. Rand Paul is referenced as the ultimate libertarian. He does not claim to be a libertarian and most people in the libertarian don’t consider him to be a libertarian, but rather a conservative. Glenn Beck has claimed to be a libertarian, but virtually nobody in the libertarian movement would agree with that.
We are told to look at the failures of libertarianism wherever libertarian policies have existed. This is outlandish. Are we to believe that Bechtel charging people for collecting rainwater is based on libertarianism? To the contrary, it is based on collusion between Bechtel and government.
In fact, libertarians (antiwar.com) are at the forefront of peaceful noninterventionist foreign policy. People like Kevin Carson and Sheldon Richman are on the front lines of the fight against corporatism (google their names and do some reading). Organizations like the Future of Freedom Foundation are fighting for civil liberties for all Americans.
It certainly serves the so-called progressive movement to pretend that the Koch brothers, Glenn Beck and Rand Paul are libertarians in the same way conservatives like to claim Obama and Pelosi are progressives. The reality is that many libertarians and anarchists believe the power of government and big corporations is dangerous.
Sure, if you ignore the fact that America has a garrison of military bases around the world, the world’s largest incarceration rate, among the widest disparity of wealth, among the largest expenditure of funds by all levels of government (while receiving little in return), spends as much on defense as the rest of the world combined, assassinates people for being SUSPECTS, conducts warrantless surveillance of citizens, and maintains databases on citizens, it is easy to extoll the virtues of government with limitless power.
If you choose to ignore the economic problems that will likely render future generations paupers because of massive debt and unfunded liabilities, it is also easy to point to the social programs that may alleviate some suffering temporarily but have failed to curtail poverty – here and abroad. European nations are also beginning to cut back on their social programs due to economic problems with their models.
To embrace large centralized government run by corrupt politicians is far more dangerous than anything big corporations can do, The reality is that it is becoming harder to tell where Pennsylvania Avenue ends and Wall Street begins. It’s called fascism – not libertarianism. When you favorite politician talks about market based solutions or public-private partnerships, they are generally talking about fascism.
It might also serve some of you well to understand “regulatory capture” and “rent-seeking” – google.
I applaud many of the outcomes progressives desire, it is the means (government) that I question – and not without good reason. How many of you really believe that the same guy who orders the assassinations of innocent people in Pakistan by drone actually cares so much about your health care? Do you honestly believe that politicians that have contracted with corporations to conduct surveillance on you care about corporate power? Finally, do you really expect politicians who are bought and paid for by corporate interests (visit opensecrets.org) will protect you from corporate power?
Wake up kids – it’s time to try something new and by that I don’t mean fascism. It ain’t working and calling this corporatism “libertarianism” doesn’t change anything.
Where have we heard this same defense of tyranny before?
Oh yes, I remember.
We heard it from the defenders of Marxism, arguing that the Bolsheviks were not true followers of the tenets of Marxism, or that the Bolsheviks were precluded for some reason or another from implementing true Marxism.
Heck, the two Grand Wizards of libertarianism, Hayek and Friedman, traipsed off to Chile to personally oversee the implementation of libertarian utopia. Anyone who opposed their policy recommendations was rounded up and either tortured, summarily executed or shipped off to a concentration camp. And look at the social and economic chaos that little experiment in libertarianism produced.
And then there’s Argentina, whose ill-fated flirtation with libertarianism also began at the point of a gun under a military dictatorship.
And then of course there’s Mexico, which is currently living the libertarian wet dream, as is evidenced here and here and here and here.
The biggest dilemma the libertarian faces is how to perpetuate the supernatural when reality encroaches upon his paradise of innocence.
DownSouth, you don’t seem to get it. The basic tenets of libertarianism are self-ownership and the non-initiation of force. Any situation where the government decides and the individual has no choice coupled with the initiation of force against the individual is not libertarianism.
What constitutes a free market is the absence of regulation, and yet you seem to think the reams of paper containing NAFTA is not regulation – it is in fact a managed market system as opposed to a free market system of trade.
What you point out in your rantings are once again failures of government to treat people with basic human dignity, not failures of libertarianism – which, despite your insistence, was not present.
A libertarian system of trade with Mexico would consist of nothing other than the governments of those countries doing nothing other than simply allowing individuals to do business with one another as they see fit. Nothing more than buying and selling upon mutually agreeable terms set by those involved in the transaction.
You need to capitalize “Libertarian” if you’re referring to free-market fundies. (Or, preferably, just call them free-market fundies.) Otherwise, you’re referring to those who believe in the historical definition of libertarianism, i.e. anarchists, and have fought long and hard against exploitation and corporate power. The U.S. Libertarian Party is a misnomer.
Yves, Thanks for asking this question. Like the Koch brothers mentioned in that linked article from earlier on in the week I voted for Ed Clark in 1980 and I’ve tended to call myself a Libertarian since then as that label fits best. To answer your question: I think the common response of most people who wear such a label would be, as some others in this post have stated, is that there would be no response. The reasoning would be that corporations are voluntary organizations of individuals, blah, blah, blah, so the outcome of such initial voluntary choices of individuals is best—no matter what that is.
Like communism and fascism in the previous century, we possibly are all going to find out the logical conclusions of such a philosophy. I have a feeling it’s not going to end well, but hopefully there will be a lot less misery than in the last century, and from the lessons we can come up with something better. Not a utopia because I’m thinking that maybe the nature of human beings is not really consistent with that, but something indeed better.
Dirk, are you claiming that we now live in a libertarian society with a free market where there is no government regulation of corporations and the economy in general?
It would seem that many posting in this thread seem to believe that America has a laissez faire system in place. Literally hundreds of thousands of pages of federal laws and regulations, lobbying systems, state and local laws and regulations, volumes of case law, a central bank monopoly, and massive amounts of government spending and borrowing are irrefutable evidence that a laissez faire economic system does not in fact exist.
The 900 foot strawman in the room here is that a free market has failed and doesn’t work. What has proven to be a failure is third way/fascism/state capitalism/corporatism. Strangely enough, many here call for more of the same to solve the problems created by exactly what they are calling for.
Tom, No we don’t live in a complete laissez-faire, free market society. But we probably won’t ever. However, I didn’t want to be like those communist/socialist apologists (remember them?) that we had to endure for years. The “Oh the Soviet Union (or China, etc.) is not a real communist state. Stalin (or Mao, etc.) corrupted the ideal. Trust me, communism really will work once it’s done right” crowd. For all of its lack of purity, you need to take our present society as some reflection of the capitalist ideal—and learn lessons from it. To what degree I don’t know, but it should be used as some evidence about “free” markets—and the nature of human beings as they act in such a system.
kris – within the libertarian movement, a big “L” libertarian signifies someone in the Libertarian Party, and a small “l” libertarian is everyone else. You are correct that most libertarians, even more radical elements of the Libertarian Party, and virtually all libertarian anarchists have indeed fought long and hard against exploitation and corporate power.
At this point, the Libertarian Party may be far worse than a misnomer. I know few hardcore libertarians that are associated with it these days. Those that remain are fighting an uphill battle with disgruntled Republicans who have mistaken the party for some sort of patriot movement obsessed with tax cuts (with no spending cuts) and gun rights.
First the statists demonized the word “liberal”, it now appears they have demonized the word “libertarian” judging by the sometimes bizarre comments on this thread.
A final note on free markets: whenever you see something written about the “free market policies” of a government (such as Chile), you can be certain that you are not reading about libertarianism – which is the absence of statist policies such as central banks, government incentives, subsidies/bailouts, tax structure, etc.
Likewise, “privatizing” something does not mean selling or outsourcing some government operation to cronies of politicians. It means the government ends that endeavor altogether. In other words, to privatize social security would not be the government forcing you to invest a certain percentage of income with select Wall Street entities – it would simply mean the government ending the program and allowing people the freedom to plan for their own retirement however they see fit. Contrary to what the Koch brothers’ CATO Institute or George Bush would claim. Again, we see fascism masquerading as libertarianism.
Tom: I appreciate the response.
All anarchists are libertarians. Specifically, they are libertarian socialists (which is what Noam Chomsky calls himself) or libertarian communists. Small-l libertarians have pretty much always been one of these, since the beginning of anarchism back in the middle of the 19th century. The need to add “libertarian” to socialist or communist is in order to distinguish themselves from Marxists/Leninists/Stalinists, or authoritarian communists. But “libertarian” by itself is basically synonymous with anarchists and those with similar views. There is no room for big-L Libertarians (almost their polar opposite, since most anarchists will at least support, if not participate in, popular movements trying to force the state to keep capitalism in check) in this group. Likewise, there’s no such thing as “anarcho”-capitalists.
Yves, My background: Like the Koch brothers in that linked article earlier on in the week on this blog, I voted for Ed Clark in 1980 and will say I am a Libertarian when people ask me for my political label. I don’t believe I am in the true sense anymore but it’s still closer than Communist, Democrat, Republican, Tea Party, etc. That said, I think the answer to your question, for most people who wear the Libertarian label (as others in this post have pointed out), is that there would be no response. A corporation is a voluntary organization of individuals, blah, blah, blah. As such the consequences of such initial free individual choices is the best, not matter what the outcome.
Like communism and fascism in the previous century, we are possibly going to learn the logical conclusions of such ideas. I think it’s not going to end well, but hopefully with a lot less misery than in the previous century. Hopefully the right lessons will be learned from it. Not to create a utopia, because I’m an thinking that that may just be inconsistent with the nature of human beings, but something better.
Er, ISP/computer problems. Delete this if you want.
Recall the movie “Jeremiah Johnson” with Robert Redford? That’s libertarianism in a nutshell. PRECAPITALIST, solitary, and alone… except when the original inhabitants are trying to kill you [protecting?] because you’re poaching on their COLLECTIVE PROPERTY! The “tribe” owned the land – not the individual. Perhaps we need to go back a bit further in HIS-story to get a better example. Any examples would be appreciated. I wasn’t there… any of you?
LIBERTARIANISM is AHISTORICAL much like anarchism in that when asked to provide one historical example of this idyllic world, there is nothing but tone deaf silence! Why? Likewise, there’s no explanation of how or why free individuals exchanging goods [surplus] or the subsequent division of labor and commdification of labor-power on which CAPITALISM is predicated came about. Coercion? Primitive accumulation? Did they play a role or not?
Let’s suppose that instead of exchanging my surplus [agricultural?], that I decided [private property rights] to hoard it or let it rot and watch you starve to death, knowing that your death meant less competition for scarce resources next year? Now that’s forward thinking! Not my problem… I’m a productive farmer and you have no claim on my produce [surplus crops and/or livestock – my property] correct? I simply refuse to sell/exchange it to/with you under any circumstances. That is still my right, correct? But now I’m acting irrationally… but only from your standpoint. Where’s the government when you need one? Or do you plan on violating my property rights with the “natural rights” argument? Be careful here because of the precedent you’re about to set. When is it my turn to violate your right with the same argument? I’m slipping on that slippery slope…
LIBERTARIANISM has nothing to say about the concentration of economic power threatening individual liberty, but only insofar as it might come to threaten competition between individuals. [Hayek and Friedman] The question is simply outside the scope of its primordial premise – the ATOMIZED individual. In theory such concentrations of economic/political power cannot even occur. If they do it’s the government’s fault! But why was government created/invented if this idyllic situation was working so well in the first place? Any libertarians want to weigh in on this one?
Could it be that along the way to the present that the libertarian exaltation of the individual was subverted/coopted by the interposition of the CAPITALIST for the INDIVIDUAL? After all, the only real individual is the capitalist writ large. Recall ATLAS SHRUGGED, one of the sacred texts, where INDIVIDUAL=PRODUCER=CAPITAIST [minority] versus the LOOTERS [majority] was the hero. Hank Reardon? Perhaps John Galt, a quitter who refused to be looted? Hank Reardon is the real hero though, the individual who produced at the same time that he was looted… Or was he just stupid or irrational, driven by something other than enlightened self-interest?
Now if only all you “libertarians” would disappear into the wilderness to pursue your individual liberty in the “state of nature” the rest of us could set about to live in SOCIETY where economic concentration of wealth/political power is a FACT of everyday 21st Century life! According to your theory it couldn’t happen… But it did and has.
Why and how proves beyond a reasonable doubt why LIBERTARIANISM does not have an answer to question posed. Its relevance to resolving the question of concentrated sconomic/political power is simply beyond its theoretical scope.
Mickey says:
“Now if only all you “libertarians” would disappear into the wilderness to pursue your individual liberty in the “state of nature” the rest of us could set about to live in SOCIETY where economic concentration of wealth/political power is a FACT of everyday 21st Century life! According to your theory it couldn’t happen… But it did and has.”
I don’t think any libertarian would deny that concentration of wealth/political power is a fact – in this century or any other. Where libertarians would disagree with you is that this condition is attributable to libertarianism when, in fact, libertarians have not been in power and therefore have had no power to prevent or mitigate the problem.
Now, if it was only so simple for libertarians to go live in the wilderness and be left alone by all the central planners who promise to make life so grand. Unfortunately, there is no question that progressives would send an armed government thug around to collect their “fair share” of the fruits of my labor in order to pay for their plans to protect me from myself.
This delusion of do-goodery has now manifested itself to progressives demanding that low income people be relegated to a third world existence in order to pay benefits to the prosperous middle class to which most progressives belong. The modern progressives have shown what they are made of when they stopped protesting the awful policies of Bush after Obama was elected, even though he has continued most of the same policies: corporate welfare, wars, assassination teams, surveillance, etc.
Go read some Bastiat.
Mickey says:
“Let’s suppose that instead of exchanging my surplus [agricultural?], that I decided [private property rights] to hoard it or let it rot and watch you starve to death, knowing that your death meant less competition for scarce resources next year? Now that’s forward thinking! Not my problem… I’m a productive farmer and you have no claim on my produce [surplus crops and/or livestock – my property] correct? I simply refuse to sell/exchange it to/with you under any circumstances. That is still my right, correct? But now I’m acting irrationally… but only from your standpoint. Where’s the government when you need one?”
This the most absurd premise I have ever encountered. Assuming you’d prefer to let your produce rot so that I would starve to death and there would be one less person to sell it to next year, I think I would go somewhere else far far away from you. Voluntary cooperation is what makes society work and even the most totalitarian government can’t change that.
Maybe when you grow up Mickey, you will come to realize that the government can’t actually solve many problems in life. Politicians can promise much, but they rarely deliver and when they do it is usually at a tremendous price.
It seems to me that there is something profoundly wrong with so-called progressives after reading these comments. I find it frightening that those who hold themselves out as being enlightened caring people are so willing to use government force to realize an agenda that would best be left to communities and civilized society.
Tom,
Where is this voluntary cooperation originating? Are you making an assumption about human nature – that it’s good. What if it’s evil – the virtue of selfishness? Talk about wishful thinking? Have you ever read Thomas Hobbes? Could you even give me an example of this idyllic setting that is generalizable to a society of several millions of people? One big flea-market or farmer’s market where we all show up… That was part of my original post. Just one example.
What if I simply didn’t like you or your kind and refused to sell my produce to you, willing to absorb the loss? What if I don’t want to participate in your market? Your supposed rationality is irrelevant to mine or merely equal to it at best in this setting. I’m self-sufficient and INDEPENDENT. You have nothing which I need or want. Let’s say I only grow enough to subsist on and can do so on a regular basis so as not to have to engage in any exchange with you at all? Then what? It’s your assumptions, not mine, that are flawed.
What if I own the land on which the headwaters of a stream originate and course along on my property and you’re downstream in need of that water for your crops and I damn it to create a lake? Next you’ll be asking me why would I do that? Because I want your land which is useless without my water! I know the geology of the land we both own and know that my water is the only source for miles. I do not have to cooperate with you as I’m able to raise enough livestock and grow crops on my land whether you live downstream of me or not. Of course, if you want to “buy” water from me I might be willing to sell it to you for a price… Thirsty yet?
I do not have to cooperate with you in such a setting as I have a MONOPOLY on the water and am within my property rights, correct? Better take a look at case law pertaining to water rights in Western states regarding such issues. That it has involved similar arguments is indisputable. But once again LIBERTARIANS like you are never bothered by the HISTORICAL record and you’re just further proof that this is the case.
Tom,
“I don’t think any libertarian would deny that concentration of wealth/political power is a fact – in this century or any other. Where libertarians would disagree with you is that this condition is attributable to libertarianism when, in fact, libertarians have not been in power and therefore have had no power to prevent or mitigate the problem.”
Then your acknowledging my comment above that the INDIVIDUAL was supplanted by the CAPITALIST, that LIBERTARIANISM was hijacked and tranformed into something that you claim it is not because it never had the power to mitigate the problem of economic concentration, etc? Kinda like the Bolsheviks hijacked Marxism? The capitalists hijacked libertarianism?
“Now, if it was only so simple for libertarians to go live in the wilderness and be left alone by all the central planners who promise to make life so grand. Unfortunately, there is no question that progressives would send an armed government thug around to collect their “fair share” of the fruits of my labor in order to pay for their plans to protect me from myself.”
The bogeyman – central planners – of all freedom loving libertarians rooted in the historical context of Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Russia. [Hayek’s Road To Serfdom] Yet you say nothing about PRIVATE central planners running large global entities that PLAN on a regular basis, marshalling resources, natural and human, organizational, etc in pursuit of their objectives that rival many a functioning state. Hayek nor Friedman ever really considered this possibility, even though I suspect Hayek knew that large modern corporations would engage in planning as time wore on. But so long as it was to compete he allowed for it. But the logical outcome of such successful planning would be the elimination of one’s competition and the ability to control the market. If not outright monopoly then oligopolistic cartelization.
Yet even then, Hayek saw a need for government intervention and had nothing but contempt for those who saw no need for it. In Chapter 9 “Security and Freedom” in the ROAD to SERFDOM he states:
“There is no reason why in a society which has reached the general level of wealth which ours has attained the first kind of security – security against severe physical privation, the certainty of a minimum sustenance for all – should not be guaranteed to all without endangering general freedom. … the case for the state’s helping to organize a comprehensive system of social insurance is very strong.” And he was writing in the early 1940s!!
He even acknowledged that “.. for great numbers some external pressure is needed if they are to give their best.” Was he talking about incentives or coercion?
A chief difference between us I suspect is that I’m still willing to pay for this security of which Hayek spoke above and you’re not. Is there a limit to such security? Yes, but compared to other countries we have a ways to go. So focus on the fruits of your labor and keep the virtue of selfishness in mind. It will facilitate voluntary cooperation.
As for armed government thugs, have you ever heard of the Pinkertons , Balwin-Phelps, or other private armies employed by corporations to keep their employees in line? At least there are constitutional limits on the government – not always observed – but do these limitations apply to private corporations? Do I have free speech in the latter or am I free to organize without interference? The large private corporation is the other elephant in the room which libertarians choose mostly to ignore.
Believe it or not, I too am leery of all concentrations of power – PUBLIC and/or PRIVATE because I did grow up watching this debacle unfold. The national security state is no laughing matter. The military-industrial complex, the energy-auto-industrial complex, agribusiness, need I go on? All these forms of power threaten individual liberty. Yet for the most part the government is the libertarian target and nary a word is uttered on large, global corporations and the threat they pose to individual liberty. Indeed, why do we even need a law to protect whistleblowers – people with a conscience – if such organizations act within the law? We wouldn’t need one if they obeyed the law, would we? Why they don’t in some cases is another matter.
Let me suggest that there are at least two kinds of TOTALITARIANISM, not just one. On one end is STATE TOTALITARIANISM [your primary concern] and on the other is MARKET TOTALITARIANISM [my primary concern]. That you’ve probably never considered the latter is something to think about if you haven’t. But one thing is certain, and I believe you would agree, any fundamentalism – secular, economic, and/or religious – when taken to its logical conclusion is TOTALITARIAN. And that is something to be feared by all.
RE RueTheDays:
“In both examples, the issue is bargaining power. I have superior bargaining power in both examples. The other party always has a choice – they can fall to their death in the first example or run or fight in the second example.”
No, in the second example, the man with the gun is exerting force with a gun. That is coercion, not bargaining.
In the first, the man hanging onto the cliff is about to die. Another man comes along that had nothing to do with him being on the cliff. This man is not exerting coercion because he did not push the man off the cliff. In fact, if the other man had never appeared at all, the hanging man would surely die.
Ha, Heller, you are priceless and ruthless. So, it is OK to take economic advantage of a person if you did not initiate the force? You are OK with price gouging I assume? OK with kicking a man while he is down?
The repercussion of force is still there with the man as he is dangling off the cliff. If you do not help the man up from the cliff you are still using the force even though it was not initiated by your own person. The contract is formed while one party is under duress. Duress is coercion.
But in your heart you know what you would do, you would help the man, absent any contract. Your true self would sacrifice for another human because it is in our DNA. The capitalists, in their desire for efficiency, want to strip that messy unpredictability from you.
What if one man had a gun to the other persons head and you walked by. Could you then form a contract with the man to save him from the man with the gun? I think in your cognitive dissonance you will say you are fine with that situation.
To go further on the point, if the man with the gun does not FIRE the gun, where is the force? The man never touched the other person, the gun is not fired. Explain; Where is the force in that situation? You see, it is the THREAT of force that is coercive, that is duress. And private property ownership keeps the treat of force alive and kicking. “If I do not work for this man I will not be able to eat.”
The Libertarians, Heller, they do not want to free you, they want to enslave you in a wage slave system with no social control. They want to strip you of your compassion so you can be another Remington replaceable widget in their factory system. I am truly sorry that you do not see the puppet you have become. One can one be free in coordination with a society. We are never independent, always interdependent.
I do not want to live in a Libertarian world, and I will always fight against any capitalist system.
“Ha, Heller, you are priceless and ruthless. So, it is OK to take economic advantage of a person if you did not initiate the force? You are OK with price gouging I assume? OK with kicking a man while he is down?”
I don’t understand this. Are you saying it would be better for the man to not have a choice than to choose between dying and paying a price for his life? I haven’t said what the man on the cliff should choose. That is up to him.
The assumption you are making is that it is somehow wrong for me to demand an exorbitant price for my services or goods. Do others have a right to my services or goods for whatever price they decide? In a voluntary agreement, BOTH parties must agree to the price, or no deal is made.
“The repercussion of force is still there with the man as he is dangling off the cliff. If you do not help the man up from the cliff you are still using the force even though it was not initiated by your own person. The contract is formed while one party is under duress. Duress is coercion.”
This simply does not make sense. Saying that you are initiating force without initiating it is contradictory. Either the man caused him to fall off a cliff, or he didn’t. We all need food and water. When a supplier charges a price (any price) for food and water, aren’t they too charging us “under duress?” Again, this all goes back to the assumption that we have a positive “right” to those things we need in order to exist. These issues cannot be settled by the state without conflicting with negative rights. They therefore have to be settled by individual parties.
“But in your heart you know what you would do, you would help the man, absent any contract. Your true self would sacrifice for another human because it is in our DNA. The capitalists, in their desire for efficiency, want to strip that messy unpredictability from you.”
Yes, I probably would. And I am a capitalist. I don’t hold much value at all in taking the time to help a man off a cliff. A capitalist would never mandate to you what price you demand from the man. That is up to you as an individual.
“What if one man had a gun to the other persons head and you walked by. Could you then form a contract with the man to save him from the man with the gun? I think in your cognitive dissonance you will say you are fine with that situation.”
No you may not, since that man is being coerced by someone. Demanding a price from him in order to end the coercion is therefore a form of coercion in itself.
“To go further on the point, if the man with the gun does not FIRE the gun, where is the force? The man never touched the other person, the gun is not fired. Explain; Where is the force in that situation? You see, it is the THREAT of force that is coercive, that is duress. And private property ownership keeps the treat of force alive and kicking. “If I do not work for this man I will not be able to eat.””
Both the threat of coercion and the actual action of coercion are forms of force. My refusing to give you something that I already own is not coercion.
“The Libertarians, Heller, they do not want to free you, they want to enslave you in a wage slave system with no social control. They want to strip you of your compassion so you can be another Remington replaceable widget in their factory system. I am truly sorry that you do not see the puppet you have become. One can one be free in coordination with a society. We are never independent, always interdependent.”
More Marxist bullshit, wow.
“I do not want to live in a Libertarian world, and I will always fight against any capitalist system.”
Then you are fighting against freedom, on the side of coercion. You are already losing the battle. Humanity wants to be free. The future will be more free than today, and there is nothing you can do to stop it.
“Both the threat of coercion and the actual action of coercion are forms of force. My refusing to give you something that I already own is not coercion.”
Here, you f-ing newsspeaking idiot:
Economic coercion arises when a controller of a vital resource uses his advantage to compel a person to do something he would not do if this resource were not monopolized.[citation needed] If someone is the owner of the only water supply, then the owner can compel the thirsty person to pay an exorbitant price for that water or have him perform enormous labor. This is also referred to as a form of exploitation. It has been argued that as the global economy has expanded greatly in scope, economic coercion has replaced other forms of coercion such as coercion involving physical or military force.[2]
Economic coercion requires market power. In the above example, the coercer’s refusal to supply the coercee would be meaningless if the coercee had access to other independent sources of supply. But the coercer can turn his conditional refusal into a vital threat only because of his coercive monopoly over an essential resource, with no other substitutes. In a competitive marketplace, the possibility of economic coercion is much reduced as suppliers are compelled by competition to accept less money or labor for their goods. The potential for economic coercion is one objection to using markets for organ transplants.[3]
An analogous result can also be obtained through pure monopsony power (where there is only one buyer as opposed to one seller in a monopoly). To reverse the above example, suppose that there are numerous independent suppliers of water, who sell it at a competition market price. If someone can only sell potatoes (to get money to buy water), and there is only one potato buyer he can sell to, then the buyer’s simple conditional refusal to buy his potatoes would be a death threat, just as before.
The idea that monopoly control may facilitate coercion has been underlined by some business ethicists and economists. It shows that in some cases the social effects of market power goes beyond those on economic distribution and efficiency (economics).
The term economic coercion is also used within economics to refer to sanctions imposed by a powerful government or group of countries against another.[4].
RE RueTheDay:
“Fraud is NOT a form of force. That’s another typical libertarian muddle.
Fraud exists due to information asymmetry. If you knew a priori that the other party was going to cheat you, you would not engage in a transaction with them. There’s no force, just imperfect information.”
Of course fraud is a form of force. If I say I am going to sell you one thing in a contract, and sell you something completely different, then I have just forced you to give me money for something you never agreed to buying. It has nothing to do with amounts of information.
RE DownSouth:
“Well yes, Heller, as you say “big business has always held influence over our big government.” But there are questions of degree, and during the New Deal the influence of big business was greatly reduced.
Of course distinctions of degree are too subtle to make any impression upon the black and white world of the libertarian true believer. He’s typical of any religious true believer, as described here by the Christian theologian Reinhold Niebuhr:”
Again, this is just a silly rhetorical device. If you actually payed attention to the comment you were replying to you would have seen that I specifically mentioned DEGREES of business influencing government. Do you deny that AFTER the New Deal increased the size of government, lobbying greatly increased as well? Do you deny that overall, the trend has been that increased government has gone hand in hand with increased lobbying? Not only is this a logical relationship to predict, it is true in reality.
RE Christian:
“Can one have voluntary trade if one party is threatened by force? As in, you are free to work for me or starve to death?”
Refusing to give you something that I already own can never be called force.
“You said; “There is nothing wrong with a company being big and having lots of bargaining power.” If I put a gun to your head and say “your money or your life” would you still be OK with one party having more bargaining power?”
Using force, threatening to commit an action that will violate your rights, is not “bargaining.” Companies don’t violate your rights when they offer you a certain price for goods or labor.
“Bargaining POWER; do you see the second word I emphasized? You substitute state power for corporate power, what is the difference?”
The difference, as I have explained many times already, is that state power is coercive. It is the equivalent of putting a gun to your head or threatening to put you in jail. A company that offers to sell you something is not being coercive.
“Anarchism does away with all power one can have over another. What is wrong with that?”
Because, as I already explained, having power is not the same as being coercive. Owning a gun does not mean you are guilty of shooting someone.
“But you are free to leave the country if you do not like the unfair greater bargaining power of the state. Hey, why are you still here?”
The state is not bargaining, it is coercing. That you can’t tell the difference is idiotic.
Ah, here we go. Round in circles.
Heller said; “Refusing to give you something that I already own can never be called force.”
Well, that was not what we were speaking of, was it? Because I agree with what you said there.
We were speaking of the power dynamics of bargaining. What IS coercive is making a contract with someone while they are under duress and the implications that has on the outcome of a contract. Refusing to sell someone something is not duress, but refusing to sell someone their very means of their survival until they are desperate enough to pay more is making a contract with one party under duress.
Heller, you said; “threatening to commit an action that will violate your rights”.
What are my rights?
You said “state power is coercive”.
Isn’t all power coercive? How is economic power not coercive?
You said “Owning a gun does not mean you are guilty of shooting someone.”
Of course not. If you walk into a bar and see one guy has a gun, would If you not act differently to that man? I am not against owning guns, but I understand their power and how they can influence how someone acts towards me. I would not use that power to take advantage of another. But you see to think that would be fine.
You keeps simplifying situations when they are not simple. “All I am doing is buying an iPod.” That is the mark of a person of a cult.
“We were speaking of the power dynamics of bargaining. What IS coercive is making a contract with someone while they are under duress and the implications that has on the outcome of a contract. Refusing to sell someone something is not duress, but refusing to sell someone their very means of their survival until they are desperate enough to pay more is making a contract with one party under duress.”
You’ve contradicted yourself again. If refusing to sell someone something you own is not duress, then refusing to sell someone your food or water is also not duress.
“What are my rights?”
You have the right to do whatever you wish with your body and property as long as you do not limit the same right of another to do what they wish with their body and property.
“Isn’t all power coercive? How is economic power not coercive?”
No, as I said before, having power does not mean that you are being coercive. Having a gun on your person does not mean you are forcing people to act differently towards you. Only if you held up the gun and threatened to shoot someone would you be coercing people into a certain action. If you can’t understand the difference between having power and being coercive, there is no point in continuing this discussion.
“You keeps simplifying situations when they are not simple. “All I am doing is buying an iPod.” That is the mark of a person of a cult.”
You are also simplifying things: “Isn’t all power coercive?” This is how people argue. Get over it.
Heller said;
“If refusing to sell someone something you own is not duress, then refusing to sell someone your food or water is also not duress.”
The logic here is so simply flawed it is sad.
You are basing your argument on the premise which is over simplified and on which we disagree. So that was just childish.
You seem to also think that keeping water away from me does not restrict my freedom. That death is my free choice in the matter.
And you said that “Of course fraud is a form of force. If I say I am going to sell you one thing in a contract, and sell you something completely different, then I have just forced you to give me money for something you never agreed to buying. It has nothing to do with amounts of information.”
Where is the waving gun? What force? I don’t see it! Oh, yes, you see force where you want to see it. Like a Christian who sees god’s work only where they want to see it.
I seem to forget sometimes that I sometime argue with people who do not think well. Thanks for reminding me. You are not a good spokesperson for Libertarianism, you should not talk so much.
RE greg b:
“Lets see, when they (like WalMart) become the largest buyer from a producer they have the ability to, and do, force them to supply at cheaper prices causing the workers to make less. Its a race to the bottom. Do they coerce the buyer perse no but they coerce others in their supply chain to cut cut cut to meet their demand. You say “well they dont have to sell to them” except when WalMart represents almost half or over half of their business they are kind of over a barrell.”
I keep saying this but you don’t get it: There is nothing coercive about saying “I am deciding not to do business with you if you don’t give me these things.” It is the right of Walmart to do anything it wants with its business, and demand any terms it wants, just as it is the right of any potential partners to do anything they want with their business, on any terms they want. You have all fallen into this Marxist illusion that a company is somehow doing something wrong by deciding for who and for what it will do business.
“Vastly oversimplified statement but to be a COMPETITIVE market, which I’m much more interested in than a free one,there cannot be too great of a disparity in information gathering between the two sides of a trade. A competitive market sets a minimum level of information and reduced barriers to entry.”
The amount of information present does not change the fact of whether or not a transaction is voluntary. Either you sign a contract based on the terms that are actually stated in that contract, or you don’t. It actually is incredibly simple. What the contract specifically says has no sway over whether or not you made a voluntary agreement.
A contract is not voluntary if the item contracted for is necessary to the survival of the consumer and its supply is controlled entirely by the vendor. Bargaining implies that each side has power. In the case of a vendor who controls all a society’s water (for instance), there is no bargaining. The need for water is constant and acute, so the consumer has no choice but to be satisfied with whatever few crumbs the monopolist decides to leave him.
That is, of course, assuming the consumer is a libertarian, possessing an irrational, essentially religious regard for the primacy property rights over all other rights. Certainly no rational people would respect or tolerate a ‘right’ granted in some transaction to which they may have not been a party, and in fact may have transpired in the distant past, that would leave them paupers in return for basic necessities.
Consider the historical components of the DJIA, the very companies to which you refer:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_components_of_the_Dow_Jones_Industrial_Average
All of these companies wielded considerable power in their day. Yet, the influence of the vast majority dissipated or disappeared over time. Other than Standard Oil and MSFT, very few lost their power as a result of governmental police-keeping.
Additionally, you’re treating large corporations as if they are separate from the government.
The distinction has been rendered moot.
Does this current form of US “governance” exist without the backing of the large corporations. Doubtful.
And we all know that the financial, real estate, insurance corporations that dominate our economy would not exist in their current form without the government. The same goes for GE, Big Pharma and Big Auto.
“Some sixty years ago people used to declare: You cannot compete with the railroad companies; it is impossible to challenge their position by starting competing lines; in the field of land transportation there is no longer competition. The truth was that at that time the already operating lines were by and large sufficient. For additional capital investment the prospects were more favorable in improving the serviceableness of the already operating lines and in other branches of business than in the construction of new railroads. However, this did not interfere with further technological progress in transportation technique. The bigness and the economic “power” of the railroad companies did not impede the emergence of the motor car and the airplane.
Today people assert the same with regard to various branches of big business: You cannot challenge their position, they are too big [p. 276] and too powerful. But competition does not mean that anybody can prosper by simply imitating what other people do. It means the opportunity to serve the consumers in a better or cheaper way without being restrained by privileges granted to those whose vested interests the innovation hurts. What a newcomer who wants to defy the vested interests of the old established firms needs most is brains and ideas. If his project is fit to fill the most urgent of the unsatisfied needs of the consumers or to purvey them at a cheaper price than their old purveyors, he will succeed in spite of the much talked of bigness and power of the old firms.” – Ludwig von Mises, Human Action
I keep wondering where on earth is this mystical place where there is only one farmer that produces food and refuses to sell any to progressives. And is this the same place where only one man controls all the water and he waits until people are dying of thirst before allowing them to purchase his water, but only at an exorbitant price?
I’m guessing this place is the same place where a wicked witch lives who casts evil spells on people and then provides them with a magic potion to remove the spell in exchange for their children.
I’m thinking this place is probably a bad place to live regardless of who the grand potentate is and whether he ascribes to Austrian, Keynesian, or Chicago School of economics, and whether or not he is a fascist, socialist, or capitalist.
I’d try to find a nice little town with no government where people understand the desirability of trading with each other in order to get the things that improve their lives and otherwise mind their own business.
Which reminds me of a joke told by the great philosopher, Robert Anton Wilson, that progressives probably won’t find humorous:
Little Tony was sitting on a park bench munching on one candy bar after another. After the 6th candy bar, a man on the bench across from him said, “Son, you know eating all that candy isn’t good for you. It will give
you acne, rot your teeth, and make you fat.”
Little Tony replied, “My grandfather lived to be 107 years old.”
The man asked, “Did your grandfather eat 6 candy bars at a time?”
Little Tony answered, “No, he minded his own fucking business.”
“And is this the same place where only one man controls all the water and he waits until people are dying of thirst before allowing them to purchase his water, but only at an exorbitant price?”
How about India and Argentina?
http://www.organicconsumers.org/politics/water071805.cfm
http://projects.publicintegrity.org/water/report.aspx?aid=50
http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/VANOVEDR/
Holy F Tom, watch something besides Fox News and maybe you will understand what we are talking about.
Holy F, Christian! Wake up and smell the government!
The monopolies on water you reference are imposed not by individuals or corporations – they are imposed by government by force on behalf of a corporation.
This is not libertarian in any sense as the use of force is present. Instead it is that unholy alliance between totalitarians and corporatists. In an agorist, or free market, society, there is no government violence to force individuals to purchase a particular item from a particular vendor and there is no government violence to prevent individuals from becoming vendors themselves.
It would seem progressives have only one solution to every problem and that is government. No matter how genocidal, tyrannical, corrupt, expensive, unjust – government is always the answer. I guess it is easier just to say the word “government” when any problem arises than to think out creative and innovative solutions that are equitable and actually work.
By the way, I never watch FOX News. I’m not a conservative. But, I do wonder what informs your opinions. Apparently, it is filtered by statist gatekeepers as you obviously have no understanding what libertarians or anarchists or even conservatives believe.
If ind your balck and white thinking to be very similar to what one finds on FOX News – everything is either good or bad, damn the facts.
Tom,
“In an agorist, or free market, society, there is no government violence to force individuals to purchase a particular item from a particular vendor and there is no government violence to prevent individuals from becoming vendors themselves.”
Likewise, there would be no government violence/coercion to participate in such a free market either, correct? And no one vendor would have a monopoly on any one of the products sold, correct?
Now, just give me one historical example of a capitalist society – after 1750 – based on such a free market principle. Please… just one? Not an isolated example, but a free market society. Where and when?
Mickey, I wish I could cite one historical example of a capitalist society – after 1750 – based on such a free market principle.
However, being stuck in the same rut of rule by the elites is being stuck in the past. There is no evolution or progress there. Clinging to 19th century dogma and the repeated failure of government is certainly not progressive. In addition, it shows an extreme lack of imagination and creativity.
To say that agorism, or even true libertarianism, is some sort of pro-corporate scheme to enslave the population is bizarre and certainly is not even a real argument. If anything, agorism is forward thinking and seeks to empower individuals, not voting blocks or special interests (no matter what form they take). It favors decentralization and allowing self-expression, creativity, innovation and dignity for individuals.
There will always be evil people – government certainly hasn’t prevented that and has often encouraged evil people to take the reigns of power. I suspect that in a stateless society, bad actors would be unable to get the mutual cooperation needed to get very far. Good people would refuse to deal with them.
Once more I would suggest the best way to respond to corporations you don’t like is to boycott them. Do business elsewhere. Substitute other products. Do without. Compete against them (if the government will allow it).
Oh Tom, I am an advocate of Anarchism, so why would you think I liked the State (note: the State is a different animal then the Government)? The State is an evil created by capitalists, not by “the people”. State power has always served the interest of private property interests (capitalists, land owners, corporations, etc).
You said yourself that the privatization of water was caused by the corporations. And that the capitalists are the cause of corruption in government. It was not the government that wanted to own the water, it was the corporations. The corporations and private property created the State. In fact, without the corporations how would the government be corrupt? With out money interests, what other interest would there be left to act upon but the peoples? Why would we need a State to enforce the laws of the Government? So, you say, “strip corporations of the title”! Not having a title, you say, will stop a group of people who own the means of your lively hood from abusing their power? Really?
We could have Government without the State (without the influence of capitalism). Which I am sure you will completely misunderstand and freak out which would only tell me you do not understand Anarchism. Anarchism (an=without and arch=ruler). So why would you think I would want to create a State to rule over people? The Government is just a tool, never the answer, and is always subservient to the people. We could have a direct democracy. You can read about it for you want, click on my name to read the Anarchist FAQ. Libertarians understand this issue but wish to make the government into another private corporation. How would that be different to what we have now?
What makes you think that private property owners (corporations) would not have owned the water long ago if it were not for the people fighting against them through the use of Government? And what makes you think that a corporation, or any business, or a person, will not be coercive ones they own the means of your lively hood?
The Government of the U.S. right now is a mix of two groups; the People and the State (Hence, a Democratic Republic) and they are fighting against each other. The Capitalists are on the side of the State and always have been. I mean, if you live in a rich neighbor hood, you need a good police force to protect your property, yeah?
The Libertarians, who are playing people like you as a fool, want to get rid of the Government, but not the State. They recognize that an organized group of wage slaves can ruin all their plans.
Here is something for you to read I ran across this morning:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/free-market-has-turned-us-into-matrix-drones-2064799.html
The Government is just a tool, never the answer, and is always subservient to the people.
Oh, of course, The government is never subservient to corporations, special interests, or the elite. How foolish of me to think otherwise.
Libertarians understand this issue but wish to make the government into another private corporation.
What libertarians wish to make government a private corporation?
It is obvious we live on two different planets and that is fine. My problem is that I am perfectly willing to let you live your life as you see fit, while you insist that I live my life as YOU see fit backed up by the threat of imprisonment and ultimately, death.
Anarchy is self-rule. Plain and simple. Direct democracy is not self-rule, it is mob rule. Voluntary association and mutual cooperation are what a stateless society are all about. It is not about 51% of the people using force to rule over the other 49%. It is not a committee with guns and prisons determining what is “fair”.
Your article about “free-market capitalism” is delusional. The concept is an oxymoron. Free markets don’t exist under the type of state capitalism that is assumed.
It seems whenever someone makes the claim that large corporations could not exist (or even compete) in a stateless free market society, you (or others) point to a situation where government is complicit in some corporate crime in an attempt to refute the claim. Instead, you are making the case.
The notion that in the absence of corporations, the government would be squeaky clean is preposterous. History does not bear that out. The simple fact is that corporations are fictitious entities created entirely by statue and their charters are issued by government. Without government, there would be no such thing as limited liability corporations with artificial rights. Problem solved.
It seems to be that it is the progressives that are more than willing to suffer under corporations as long as there is a government to regulate them. This is the model that exists – progressive just don’t like they way it has turned out. But, what you propose in theory is no different than what already exists.
I merely propose that under a stateless society, we would all be better off than under the centralized government that exists to serve the elite. It is the progressives that have always promised utopian ends through government action and this has failed miserably to the point of where we are today – more dystopian than utopian.
Instead of direct democracy, anarchists should be thinking direct action. Build small decentralized systems that are voluntary to solve problems and provide services. Create a counter-economy. Quit relying on corrupt politicians to cater to your every whim and solve every problem.
I’ve had enough of this banter with ill-informed youngsters. Just remember, it is your ilk that wishes to lord over me using violence to promote your vision of “fairness” and live according to your preferences. I’m perfectly OK with letting you live any way you wish as long as you let me live as I prefer.
Just remember, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. In other words, be careful of what you wish for. You never know what 51% of the people backed up by a militarized police force may do to you in order to promote their agenda.
I keep wondering where on earth is this mystical place where there is only one farmer that produces food and refuses to sell any to progressives. And is this the same place where only one man controls all the water and he waits until people are dying of thirst before allowing them to purchase his water, but only at an exorbitant price?
I’m guessing this place is the same place where a wicked witch lives who casts evil spells on people and then provides them with a magic potion to remove the spell in exchange for their children.
I’m thinking this place is probably a bad place to live regardless of who the grand potentate is and whether he ascribes to Austrian, Keynesian, or Chicago School of economics, and whether or not he is a fascist, socialist, or capitalist.
I’d try to find a nice little town with no government where people understand the desirability of trading with each other in order to get the things that improve their lives and otherwise mind their own business.
Which reminds me of a joke told by the great philosopher, Robert Anton Wilson, that progressives probably won’t find humorous:
Little Tony was sitting on a park bench munching on one candy bar after another. After the 6th candy bar, a man on the bench across from him said, “Son, you know eating all that candy isn’t good for you. It will give
you acne, rot your teeth, and make you fat.”
Little Tony replied, “My grandfather lived to be 107 years old.”
The man asked, “Did your grandfather eat 6 candy bars at a time?”
Little Tony answered, “No, he minded his own f–king business.”
How do libertarians propose to respond to the power of large enterprises?
They don’t. Actually, concentrating power in the hands of a lucky fews and freeing them of any check or balance seems to be the only discernible goal of libertarian ideology.
It’s not random happenstance that libertarians’ sugar daddies are the Koch brothers, those proud fine upstanding sociopaths.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer
Awesome, feisty thread.
I had a little short lived tryst with libertarianism once. Read Hayek, Freidman, and a few others. Drank a few glasses of Kool-aid. Ultimately, it debunks statism fairly convincingly – but proposes nothing in return. So I ended up kissing it goodbye. Just a lot of morally sound theory that ends up with private armies as far as I’m concerned…
That being said, you can’t totally discard people who clamor for smaller government by showing what would happen if we had no government. Taken to the absolute margins, all political ideologies fail – libertarianism is no exception.
All Government or no government? Neither sound enticing.
Which leads me to the true question of this post. Where are we on the Pendulum currently?
Libertarians would argue we are all the way full tilt towards creeping progressive Marxist regulatory and Government intervention – to the point it is crippling our economy. They would say we are far left right now.
Progressives would argue we have just undergone 30 years of the pendulum swinging towards deregulation, unfettered laissez fair capitalism and libertarian ideals – and THAT has crippled our economy. They would say we are far right, right now.
Final point that put the nail in the coffin for Libertarianism for me. (I remain basically a free market guy, though):
Friedman says that is a free market one can only produce a profit by serving his fellow man.
Sounds nice.
It MY experience – and MY life, profit seeking enterprises lower their costs by passing costs onto society – and increasing their profits. (think current China,Nigeria or the EPA here)
Thats it. It order to make more money for themselves profit seekers “dump costs onto society.”
Enter the GOV….
(But don’t go thinking some statist utopia will be very productive either!! That’s the dilemma! They ALL fail at the margins)
Well said scharfy
Come on folks! Remember, Horatio Alger made his biggest break by marrying the boss’s daughter. What does that say for free market economic competition?
I don’t like concentrated corporate or government power. It seems many in this thread want to take a hard line on one ideology over another. Big corporations and big government are both too powerful right now. We are sliding into fascism.
Obama is a war president. Bush was a war president. Ron Paul was anti-war. I’m not a card-carrying libertarian, but why aren’t any other mainstream democrats or republicans anti-war? Many point to evil libertarians hoarding food and water but don’t want to think about the fact that their government is sponsoring terrorism. I don’t like BP, Goldmun Sucks or Uncle Sam these days. Business isn’t all good or bad and government isn’t all good or bad. But the current system is taking the bad aspects of concentrated power from the public and private sectors and creating a horrible Frankenstein.
I don’t know what the ideal libertarian response to the question is, but mine is that corporations shouldn’t exist at all. People who own or run businesses should not be able to hide behind a legal structure to avoid responsibility. Freedom, since this is what libertarians supposedly want, requires huge amounts of responsbility. Since most are lazy, they hate freedom. Since most are lazy, we don’t have freedom. We have state-sponsored corporatism, which is fascism.
There are no universal solutions and life will never be fair or easy regardless of what ideology holds sway. Those who seem so angry at libertarians should answer my question: What is the Proper non-Libertarian Response to Concentrated Government Power?
Cant disagree with much in your post Adam.
So how do we extinguish corporations? Via a non govt channel? Is that possible? Any action that involves 100s of millions of citizens acting in concert to achieve an end results in something like a govt action. No simple internet poll with a petition would suffice to be actionable. There is no way we could successfully boycott corporations and hit them where they count, we’d be committing suicide. Our access to goods, services and incomes for many people would end.
Any action to extinguish corporations would require, under our present arrangement, a govt that just says ” NO MORE!” Is it gonna happen? Not if we continue to allow the private corporate sector influence elections with their money.
Also MMT offers some insights via our money creation channels (no debt issuance with fed spending, guaranteed employment in public sector if private sector lays you off) that would go a long way to reducing private wealth channels form OVER influencing commerce in this country. The idea that private wealth gets to have a say over ALL spending in this country is antithetical to much that our founders believed. Our people via our govt should control the issuance and flows of money in this country, NOT private banking interests who are dominated by people wishing to skim more and more interest off more and more of OUR economic activities every day. Make more and more of the bond vigilantes get a REAL JOB.
I am running for Congress in Virginia’s 3rd Congressional District as a Libertarian. In my view the largest corporations grew with the increase of government, and the two are in fact linked. We have become a Corporatist state. A corporation is an entity only created through a government Charter of Incorporation. When there is deregulation it is always in favor of corporate business and not for small, private business. As a Libertarian I believe that there should be no benefits given a large business unless the same advantage can be fully enjoyed by someone that is starting a small business. Right now certification requirements and fees are put into place to keep the poor from competing in the market.
Adam Smith was concerned about monopolies as he knew they would essentially eliminate free markets. If you really believe markets should be free, then you need to eliminate the incentives to form large organizations by making it illegal to negotiate preferential pricing, for example.
It’s this kind of conundrum that makes purist libertarian positions essentially inimical to free markets, democracy, and so on. Libertarian policies become oxymoronic very quickly.
The proper response to corporate power and statism generally is to roll back the state grant of Limited Liability to shareholders.
It is this grant that drives the decision to use the corporate form, that leads to Moral Hazard in shareholders and management, that in turn produces risk-shifting to the rest of society and the growth of call by the public to “rein in” corporations that are now far better positioned than individuals to manipulate government.
More here: TT’s Lost in Tokyo http://bit.ly/4nr2Ay
Correct, Tom, but it leaves open the question of how to organise complex things like transport and communication networks.
Science and technology rendered libertarianism obsolete a century or two back.
The really amusing libertarians are the ones who backed the Citizens United extension of legal personality from the economic sphere to the political.
“How do libertarians propose to respond to the power of large enterprises?”
You’d have to be specific, because in your short little paragraph you speak in generalities. I don’t see that you’ve raised a single problem.
When I was two, I said “mine”. But when I matured into a libertarian who took others into account I said “get your own”.
+1 for scharfy’s post: subscribing to an ideology in all cases often just means, “I’m tired of thinking.”
-1 for scharfy’s post: I’m tired of thinking. Just give me the right answer.
+1 for anyone who pointed out that corporations are established by law, existing under the law, a product of government
Ignoring concerns over monopoly, which might not be universally held, here is an answer to the question:
Corporations should not be allowed to rewrite the rules they are subject to, as that right should be reserved for the contract holders.
In the Citizen’s United case, the Supreme Court said the Corporation represents the shareholders, so the corporation should be able to influence the rules.
This ignores the special, limited liability status of the shareholders money under law. If money is speech, let the shareholder take their money out of the corporation and spend it. While it’s in the corporation, it’s a stretch to say that it’s shareholders’ speech as 49% of the speech can be suppressed when it comes to a vote.
Maybe more importantly, it ignores the case where a corporation is influenced by foreign interests.