Let's make a deal, you guys refrain from pop-psychoanalyzing those of us with libertarian leanings and I won't submit right-wing essays that diagnose socialists with megalomania and delusions of grandeur.
Impugning your opponent's motivations is the lowest form of rhetoric.
It seems the post has wounded your ego, and I guess that's fair enough given it makes such sweeping generalisations (and "pop-psychoanalysis", as it were.)
However, I'd be really interested to hear your comments on some of the other points he makes, or the other threads of his argument (particularly, comparisons to history.)
(FWIW, I didn't submit the article because I whole-heartedly agree with it, I just thought it was quite well-written and interesting, and I thought it might generate some enlightening responses.)
It hasn't wounded my ego, rather I find the article insulting. It caricatures people of my political beliefs as having nasty motivations and abundant personal failings. It reads like an op-ed in a high school Marxist newsletter and is about as balanced. I am fine with reading political articles on Hacker News but I would hope they have a little more respect for their audience.
Any Capitalist would make the rejoinder that society sucked so much in the Victorian era because society was so much poorer in aggregate. You could tax the rich at 90% and it wouldn't have stretched very far.
In the long run, the wages of labor are determined by labor productivity. Laws, unions, regulations, and other beloved institutions of the left can tinker with that ever so slightly at the margin but not by much. It is only through the accumulation of capital goods and the advancement of technology that a middle class arose. You can legislate all you want before that happens and you aren't going to do a ton of good. You can declare free unicorns for everyone but if you ain't got no unicorns then you'll leave people disappointed.
And after a capital stock is accumulated, labor becomes more productive, wages increase and life gets better of course ideologues of all stripes will claim credit for it.
Well, in the current political climate? Libertarians are a self-caricature. Not you personally, and sorry, but Carl Paladino's got signs up all over New York state that say "I'm mad too, Carl!". That's literally the guy's slogan, major party candidate for Governor of a large and important state, and his platform is a bunch of incoherent nonsense. And 99% of self-described libertarians are lining up behind these wackos all over the country.
Sorry that the crazies are ruining your rep.. but if you don't want it to happen, don't enable the crazies.
Why should I take credit for people I don't agree with? Do you think it fair if I lump you together with people you don't like because they are in roughly the same part of the political spectrum as yourself?
To the extent that the libertarian voting bloc goes Republican this year, it will probably have something to do with the $1.4 trillion deficit. During the Bush years, people that have roughly libertarian values went Democrat (you can look up old Cato articles for details) so it is not as if they are beholden to any one party.
Unfortunately our system forces people to choose between the lesser of two evils and right now many people are blanching at the deficit.
There's two ways to view somebody's political views; one can look at the direction they wish to take a given system, and one can look at the destination they wish to end up at. We tend to classify people by their direction, "right" or "left" or "liberal" or "conservative", but it is a grave error to mistake the direction for the destination. I drive south to get to work but it is not in fact my intention to get to the South Pole every time I do so; I arrive at my destination and stop, and in fact if I pass it, I will turn around to get there. (It would be absurd in ideological terms to then call me a hypocrite for going from being a Southist to a Northist.)
And it's hard to get past that fundamental error to have some sort of "discussion". I am a libertarian right now, but the caricature in the post is so absurd I can't even take offense. Because I think an entity so utterly absurdly monstrous that its yearly budgetary overruns are measured in the trillions of dollars a year and it's unfunded liabilities measure in the hundreds of trillions should be cut down to size before it takes the entire world over a cliff, I want to see child labor laws repealed? It doesn't even make sense. There's not much to "counter".
In fact I actually consider myself a "Classical Liberal", which today makes you a "conservative" in terms of direction, but my destination isn't "anarchy". Just something much smaller, much more focused, much less resource intensive, and much less likely to crash the economy because there's every incentive to spend and no incentive to stop. (Which I actually consider the fundamental failure of liberalism, it in fact has become a direction and not a destination in practice. If you can identify some principle being used to decide when we have spent enough money on something, I'm all ears. And I mean a principle in use by the government, not some hypothetical principle that could be used by somebody, sometime.) If that's so unreasonable, well, I hope you enjoy the blasted remnants of the economy that results.
Part of the reason I want to see our government cut down to size is that when we crash the system, we will lose welfare and child labor laws and potentially civil order itself. I understand the impulse to circle the wagons and defend the government, but the simple fiscal reality is that if you really do like the results of a strong government capable of protecting its citizens, you really need to help me refocus it on those tasks or you'll be left with a government that can do nothing. Can you seriously imagine child labor laws being repealed in the US? I mean, seriously? This isn't even remotely a threat; economic collapse on the other hand at this point due to an overextended government is more like "can we avoid it or is it too late already?" Probability of a repeal of child labor laws is virtually zero; probability of a government without any ability to pay anyone to enforce them, rather greater than zero even if I am not yet panicking.
Well, the point of the essay was that your destination, in terms of policy, would most likely lead to the situation he's describing. Take away OSHA, welfare/SS/medicare, the 40-hour work week and the rest of those burdensome regulations and redistributive entitlements and you're pretty much where he described.
If you're not that extremist, great. But most libertarians, whether extreme or not, have an annoying tendency to approach every problem like they've studied it for decades and the answer is "less government". That's it! No need to know anything about the subject or even attempt to justify such a self-evident claim. In those cases it's hard to resist the Somalia retort.
While I do appreciate you posting another example of the very mistake I was describing, I still have to admit I'm a little astonished. After all that you still think you actually know me well enough to know what my destination is? Just from the fact that I at one point used the word libertarian?
At what point did I say to take away OSHA, welfare/SS/medicare, the 40-hour workweek (to the extent that it even exists), and etc. etc.? I'm somewhat less concerned about "burdensome regulations" and a lot more worried about crashing the economy right now. How much welfare will exist when the government is bankrupt?
(Er, well, actually that's a bad question. The government is bankrupt. So, how much welfare will exist when everybody realizes the US Federal government is bankrupt?)
The problem you face now when countering people like me and the reason this attitude is on the rise is that the entire premise that everything is fine and we shouldn't cut a dime from government spending and in fact we should spend as much more as possible (is it OK if I just guess at your ideas too?) is that it has become plainly obvious that that is completely fiscally unsustainable, and no amount of moralizing, philosophizing, theorizing, or any other sort of -izing actually adds to the wealth-generation side of the equation. A crashed government does nobody any good. Step one, keep the patient alive; worry about what he's doing and how well he's doing it after you've got that settled.
Hi, please reread? I specifically said not you personally.
And if we're talking about budget balance and actual policy details? Great. That's what most libertarians never ever do, they just prattle on about how less government would be better in theory. Oh, and cut taxes.
So, again, not you specifically, but including you, I've almost never heard a practical policy suggestion from a libertarian. Something like "import drugs from canada, it saves money", or "repeal farm subsidies". All I hear is either the vague "less government" or occasionally the extremist Somalia routine that you very much are not proscribing.
To be blunt, you don't know the first thing about libertarians and I think you should stop using the word as a synonym for "Republican". Just looking through the first page of the Cato Institute's blog, here's a post criticizing the future Republican Speaker of the House for pandering to the Medicare crowd:
90% of articles at Cato, Reason, and other libertarian publications between 2001 - 2009 were critical of Republicans when they were in power and running up a big debt, starting wars, and generally making a mess of the place.
If you listen to ACTUAL LIBERTARIANS, you will find plenty of unapologetic concrete plans for reducing government spending. These plans are ignored by 100% of Democrats and 90% of Republicans, but we hope in time to have a larger influence over society. People like you using the word "libertarian" even when you don't know what it means is a good sign that we are increasing our visibility at least.
Ooh, CATO wrote a blog post with some token criticism?
They're still gonna line up behind the banner when it matters.
90% of everything Cato did during the Bush years was just the opposite, supporting the republican party and/or undermining the democratic party. Then they throw in a little 10% of criticism to make it look like they're principled, and people like you just fall right in line.
If you vote for republicans, you're a republican. Period. Here you are saying your plans are ignored by 100% of democrats, excuse me? Obama cut your taxes, and Republicans are the ones who time and time again ramp up government spending and deficits, then leave it to the democrats (Clinton, Obama) to clean up the mess.
And, yeah, you're increasing your visibility, but it's all tea party crazies. To these people, "i don't like government" is a synonym for "i don't like obama". There is no deeper principle there than that. Good luck with those guys.
Unfortunately, in American politics, you have to pick a side. I'm sympathetic to some bits of libertarian philosophy but I'll oppose anything that enables the Republican party with my wallet, my vote, my phone, and my shoe leather.
The idea that we will end up in a Dickensian (or Somalian) nightmare if we were to reduce the size of the government by any substantial degree (80%? 50%? 20%?) is patently absurd and, hopefully, self-refuting.
To hear people talk you'd think that any amount of reduction would lead to Somalia.
However, history tells us that even when the federal government is 1/8th the size it is today (as a percent of GDP) the US does not turn into Somalia, not even a little bit.
As for laissez faire, I think every government has already concluded that it doesn't work very well.
One might think that with modern labour-saving technology (and the consequential age of leisure) that this might change. One theoretical counter-argument is that people seem to love to have "inferiors" - it makes them feel better about themselves - which probably comes from our innate sense of pecking order/dominance hierarchy etc. Being a part of human nature, changing that is a hard one. Evidence in support of this is how some US citizens treat illegal immigrant workers who don't enjoy the protection of labour laws etc - it is laissez faire in action, right now. Another example is how US corporations treat labour in developing countries (such as China), and detainees from other countries. Whoa, that's getting political.
OTOH, we must remember that trade - like language, law and religion - are created spontaneously by human communities. Our current society didn't just create it; it appears to be innate. However, the specific ideas of trade and civic structures that we have today are informed by centuries of experience and thought, and constitute a tremendous cultural refinement of the innate concept of trade. Unlike the foregoing, it seems that civilization is not quite innate in humans - we have to work at it.
It's odd to know Ferrett from the Magic community and then see his link on the tech related site.
While very well written and an enjoyable read, my problem with his opinion and the people who think Libertarians = Anarcho-capitalists is that they take it to the complete extreme. Democrats aren't Socialists, etc. My #1 desire with Libertarianism is for a smaller government, not a destroyed government.
I'm tired of the crazy libertarians spoiling it for the rest of us. I would like to have something to call myself that includes removing corn subsidies and capping medicare, but also retaining fiat currency and instituting a carbon tax.
We might not agree with libertarians 100% of the time, but we're not lunatics, we're with you on social issues, not actually that far economically, and we approach problems with the intention of solving/ameliorating them, rather than using them as social dog whistles.
It beats hearing rhetoric about small gov't and then getting Medicare Part D (absolute budget disaster - and obamacare reduces the projected medicare deficit, for those keeping score at home)
I generally vote democrat in national elections, and whoever seems most competent in local elections. The democrats at the moment seem to have a monopoly on "believing in science." So I don't really have much of a choice.
They are just libertarians who take the position to the logical extreme. It's why some libertarian opponents sometime said libertarianism is very consistent.
Being a moderate is nice because you get to be vague and stuff.
However, being a crazy radical actually does have a perk. It make me very open to technologies in a way that's just not possible with other political philosophy.
What's wrong with anarcho-capitalists? They don't believe in chaos. They believe society would function better if laws were provided in a market and consumers had choices of law providers. They may be wrong, but the position is not a priori laughable.
Have you read "The Machinery of Freedom" by David Friedman or other pieces of anarcho-capitalist literature? If not, then what gives you the right to dismiss it so easily?
Reading the Hacker News guidelines, it seems terribly odd that "please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them" is only suggested for comments, because many submissions have this problem as well. (And no, "life was miserable in the era of the robber barons, therefore libertarianism is wrong" isn't anything genuinely new to say, nor is "libertarians secretly imagine themselves to be the robber barons instead of the tenement-dwelling wage slaves".)
It's election season, and as far as propagandizing, the republicans* have probably had an edge in it on HN. Not that I'm suggesting anything organized on anyone's part, it's just topical right now. It'll drift off the front page soon enough, and all will settle down after Tuesday.
*during the fall of even numbered years, you're either a D or an R unless you actually vote third party
Actually, many of the criticisms that libertarians make of government explicitly assume that government workers don't deviate in any significant way from the norm. They point out that government is essentially monopolistic. If you have an enterprise that can force its customers to buy its goods then unless the people running the enterprise are perfect angels then the quality of its services will turn to crap over time. Contrast this with a competitive market where a consumer has lots of choice and service providers have incentive to provide the best quality at the lowest cost. If you have the same quality of people employed in both industries, you expect competitive enterprises to produce higher quality goods than monopolies.
Libertarians would argue that a good system is one that is not designed to be run by angels.
Impugning your opponent's motivations is the lowest form of rhetoric.