Libertarians

[a_majoor]

More on Libertarianism. Buck up fellow travellers; all is not lost!

http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2007_03_11-2007_03_17.shtml#1174182832

Two Fallacies that Cause (Excessive) Libertarian Despair:

Tyler Cowen's counsel of libertarian despair (discussed in my previous post), and other similar works by fearful libertarians (e.g. - this slightly less pessimistic contribution to the same symposium by Brink Lindsey) are, in my view heavily influenced by two important fallacies that lead many libertarians to be more pessimistic than is warranted.

I. The All or Nothing Fallacy.

One is the "all or nothing" fallacy, which leads many to conclude that because libertarians can't completely eliminate excessive government, that means that we can't achieve anything worthwhile by trying to cut it back incrementally. For example, as I argued in my previous post, Tyler provides good reasons for believing that complete victory is impossible, but almost no argument against the possibility of partial success. Of course, the inability to achieve complete success is not unique to libertarianism. Our liberal, conservative, and socialist rivals have the same problem. Liberals are far from achieving their goal of creating a European-size welfare state in the US, and have little prospect of succeeding in the near future; social conservatives are probably even farther away from fully imposing "traditional values" on society and that goal keeps on slipping even further away. Some liberals and conservatives have given up because of all or nothing thinking, but most recognize that partial success is still worth striving for. We should do likewise.

The all or nothing fallacy is not unique to libertarians. You see it also in the views of those 1960s radicals who believed that nothing short of complete social revolution was worth striving for. But for reasons that I can't fully explain, I think that libertarian activists are, on average, more susceptible to this error than liberals or conservatives.

II. Overstating the Importance of Recent Events.

The second fallacy is overstating the importance of the most recent events. Psychologists call this the "availability heuristic." We overvalue the significance of recent data because they tend to be uppermost in our minds and of course get more coverage in the media. Thus, many libertarians despair because Bush's "big government" conservatism has enlarged the state, while the Democrats have turned away from Bill Clinton's moderate, partly libertarian agenda. However, it is possible to point to equally bleak short periods in the past that were even worse, yet proved not to be a harbinger of the future. Between 1965 and 1975, for example, we saw 1) the rise of the Great Society, 2) government's mishandling of the Vietnam War, 3) Nixon's big government conservatism (even more thoroughgoing than Bush's, complete with price controls and a proposal for nationalized health care), 4) the growing popularity of socialist and communist ideology in much of the world, and 5) the beginning of the oil crisis, with its accompanying perverse government interventions. Yet libertarians would have been wrong to give up in 1975 merely because the most recent trends were against them. Indeed, the next twenty years saw substantial movement in a libertarian direction both in the US, and in many other parts of the world. And we would be equally wrong to give up because of today's less extreme adverse trends. Because of our successes in the 1980s and 90s, we - unlike the libertarians of 1975 - have grown used to the idea that we are destined to win, and thereby more likely to be deeply disappointed when we suffer setbacks. This reaction is understandable, but wrongheaded.

That is not to say that libertarianism does not face serious challenges or that libertarians haven't sometimes shot themselves in the foot, as with the waste of time and resources poured into the Libertarian Party. It does not even prove that we have not entered a period where the libertarian cause has, for some reason, become hopeless. However, we are not justified in despairing merely because we have failed to win a complete victory or because we have suffered several years of political setbacks. Those who counsel despair need much stronger evidence than that to prove their point.

Related Posts (on one page):

  1. Two Fallacies that Cause (Excessive) Libertarian Despair:
  2. Does Libertarian Success Just Produce More Government, and Should We Give Up Trying to Shrink It?

The one thing that *can* help the Libertarian cause is the "sniff test". People who brag about how government programs have "helped" need to be challenged to prove their assertations with real numbers. One thing I like doing is to divide any government program by $50,000, which is the loosley accepted figure for the amoount of private investment needed to create a full time job. This gives a figure of merit: how many full time jobs this program cost the economy. I have yet to see a job creation program or any other program that creates more jobs than the private sector could have for the same amount.

Once enough people learn how to smell government BS using tools like this, they will finally be able to ake action rather than submit to the general sense of dispair.

 

[I_am_John_Galt]

It has occurred to me on more than one occasion how much better off we would be if before voting, people took a few minutes to read a little of <a href="http://www.econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basEss1.html">Bastiat</a> (let alone <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_shrugged">Rand</a>, <a href="http://www.freetochoosemedia.org/">Friedman</a> or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_to_Serfdom">Hayek</a>), or hell, even just watch and try to understand an episode of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_park#Political_issues"> South Park!</a>

 

[edgar]

Best Libertarian joke I've heard:


(Yes, yes, I know, that's more Randian than libertarian.)

Let me rephrase that for you.

How many Libertarians does it take to stop a Soviet division?

None.  Obviously market forces took care of it.

 

[a_majoor]

One of many Libertarian prescriptions for policy:

http://angryroughneck.blogspot.com/2007/03/intellectual-means

Intellectual means

Alright it seems my last post warranted a death threat in response. How do I follow that up. Christ there are lots of crazies. I came home wanting to talk about the Negative income tax. Oh well. The show must go on. I have already done posts on the evils of its opposite-- the graduated or progressive tax model (see earlier post)

The easiest way to increase the amount of money available to welfare programs is by changing the means in which they are administered, first, simplify the program to protect them from being exploited from loophole abuse, and secondly, reduce the size of the ever growing bureaucracy that does the administering. Current regulations are complicated with deductions, credits, differing allowance rates, and property considerations, which allows them to be easily exploited by individuals, and even worse than that, a massive bureaucracy is required to monitor and administer the complex program, a bureaucracy also equally vulnerable to abuse and unnecessary waste. Fixing both of these problems can be specifically achieved through the introduction of a negative income tax - subsidy program to replace the current, overly complicated, and mottled legislation of the positive income tax system, which drains our welfare revenue base at an ever increasing rate.

The positive income tax system allows people to receive a certain level of income exempted from taxes. The exempt amount is based on rates, which are deemed as a minimal for subsistence. This level is superficially low so that the government can begin taxing income as soon as possible. Any income earned over this level is subject to being taxed. The problem lies in the fact that if the marginal earner makes under this exempt allowance level nothing happens. The unused allowances simply put, goes unused and wasted, plus he is ineligible for welfare benefits, as he is considered employed. This system punishes the low wage earner as he is unable to recover these unused benefits, and this in effect begins to transfer the incentive from working to not working, as welfare, monetarily speaking, is comparable to the artificially low level of exempt allowances.

A negative income tax system would allow for some portion of the unused allowances to be recovered up to the specified exemption level at a set subsidy rate. Milton Friedman, the system creator recommends a rate of 50%. This rewards the low income earner versus the non-worker, instead of punishing him with essentially 100% tax rates, as all earning are essentially deducted from welfare payments in a positive income tax system. A negative tax system with an exemption level of $20,000 for a family of four with subsidy rate of 50% qualifies a family of four with no income to be eligible for $10,000. Any income made on top of this initial amount reduces the subsidy by 50%. If the family of four earned $12,000 in a single year, the subsidy would be reduced by $6000, giving the family an overall income of $16,000, at an expense of $4000 to the taxpayer. Where as with a positive income-tax systems, the family of four would be left with the decision of taking their earned amount of $12,000 or being completely unemployed and still earning $11,500 from the government, with no incentive to earn the $12,000 as it would be only a $500 improvement over not working at all.

Positive income tax guidelines are designed to benefit only those who are completely unemployed. Unused credits from those that are marginally employed are not refunded, which shifts incentive from working to not working for the low-income earner.

Lack of skills is the biggest problem facing recipients. Keeping recipients in the workforce is of optimal importance as it is the only way to build the worker’s skills, and prevent already present skills from further atrophy. Welfare handouts have no way of passing on the virtues of the employed to the unemployed.

Welfare mother’s are penalized, instead of rewarded when they earn extra money, through such pursuits as babysitting or working one day a week in a restaurant, men turn down the opportunity to drive a cab once a week, because it is essentially deducted 100% from their welfare payments. When the tax rate for low wager earners is essentially 100%, there is little incentive to work.

The primary goal of the state whenever dealing with the unemployed should be to keep them working. A penalty of 100% on extra initiative should be reconsidered.

The strength of a country lies in its citizens and their productivity. A government’s role is to nurture this productivity and not to destroy it with insecure legislation.

 

[Reccesoldier]

Libertarianism as a pure ideology is just as utopian and just as dangerous as communism.  That said, there are fantastic ideas in it, it's just that these ideas must be separated from the rabid selfishness that permeates so much of the libertarian message.

Give me a rational mix of classic liberal and modern liberal ideals, throw in a pinch of Nationalism and a dash of conservative suspicion and I'd be happy.

 

[a_majoor]

Libertarianism is mostly a distillation of Classical Liberalism, with a modern understanding of economics, incentives and human nature thrown in. What you see as "rabid selfishness" I see as human nature boiled down to its essentials (as is visible in places like Bosnia and Afghanistan once the masks come off). Interestingly, in Socialist countries, rabid averace is an even stronger motivation, and scrambling for the levers of power to gain and maintain your standard of living and crush the opposition is far more common there (the result of a purge in Canada's Liberal Party; being tossed from caucus. The result of a purge in Cuba: up against the wall.....)

Maybe we really do need Leviathan to maintain peace and good order, although most Libertarians believe that people can make rational choices and that the rational choice in the vast majority of cases is non coercion.

 

[Reccesoldier]

Libertarianism is mostly a distillation of Classical Liberalism, with a modern understanding of economics, incentives and human nature thrown in. What you see as "rabid selfishness" I see as human nature boiled down to its essentials (as is visible in places like Bosnia and Afghanistan once the masks come off). Interestingly, in Socialist countries, rabid averace is an even stronger motivation, and scrambling for the levers of power to gain and maintain your standard of living and crush the opposition is far more common there (the result of a purge in Canada's Liberal Party; being tossed from caucus. The result of a purge in Cuba: up against the wall.....)

What I see in places like Bosnia is the end result of a fend for yourself, me first mentality which is what raw Libertarianism boils down to.  Human nature proves and you make good example of it with this illustration that unfettered by law, morality and a sense of society/community the human animal quickly succumbs to the lowest common denominator.

Yes greed is a motivator in socialist nations, but I would argue that avarice is just as much of a factor in places like Bosnia, Rwanda and Afghanistan when “the masks come off” as you put it.  What is it that motivates a man to kill his neighbour and take his property?  Is there a better answer than greed?

Maybe we really do need Leviathan to maintain peace and good order, although most Libertarians believe that people can make rational choices and that the rational choice in the vast majority of cases is non coercion.

Is our choice really that simple?  Does it boil down to black or white so easily?  I would argue that as much as the modern Liberal welfare state has got wrong in society it has got just as much right.  The same can be said for Conservatism.  I don’t see government as fundamentally evil, wasteful or corrupt but more as an essential human construct that is continually developing to serve the society it forms within.

Our focus as members of society should not be to dismantle government but to build a government so effective that it appears to have been dismantled already.

 

[I_am_John_Galt]

I think Libertarians recognize that "fend for yourself" is a basic human instinct: handing someone the levers of power of the state doesn't change this.  Perhaps because it is a human construct, the state has no inherent moral superiority: it is simply a tool for the few to best extract what they want from the many.  That it is generally (not always, except in the case of anarchists) ultimately destructive* to the many that it purports to assist or support, only serves to further underscore the point.


*Destructive in the sense that it is less efficient than the free market.

 

[Exarecr]

Gentlemen,(and women),please,this is much ado about nothing. I would be willing to bet most Canadians probably think a "Libertarian",is a Feminist hockey player from Ontario. Most of the verbiage is little more than "stupid speak".

 

[Reccesoldier]

Gentlemen,(and women),please,this is much ado about nothing. I would be willing to bet most Canadians probably think a "Libertarian",is a Feminist hockey player from Ontario. Most of the verbiage is little more than "stupid speak".

If you don't want to join in the argument then by all means don't.  Sitting on the sidelines and poking with a stick is childish at best and generally trollish.

 

[Reccesoldier]

I think Libertarians recognize that "fend for yourself" is a basic human instinct: handing someone the levers of power of the state doesn't change this.  Perhaps because it is a human construct, the state has no inherent moral superiority: it is simply a tool for the few to best extract what they want from the many.  That it is generally (not always, except in the case of anarchists) ultimately destructive* to the many that it purports to assist or support, only serves to further underscore the point.


*Destructive in the sense that it is less efficient than the free market.

But in a democratic system we don't really "hand the levers of power" to anyone.  The most we do is lend them our confidence for a finite period.  This alone is enough to ensure that the baser human desires are held in check.  Yes, there will still be some who play with the darker choices of game theory but I think the majority are kept in relative check by the wants, needs and power of the other players, namely the voters.

 

[I_am_John_Galt]

Well, tyranny of the majority (or in Canada's case, a ~40% minority) is still tyranny!  Even if 99% of the population votes for it, Libertarians don't believe that person "A" has the right to the fruits of the labour of person "B".

IMHO, the biggest problem with democracy is that it results in various special (minority or majority) interests competing for the right to decide how, and more importantly, to whom wealth is distributed.  Constitutions (in various forms) are the tool used to stop one interest from imposing it's will on another, that is the only real check: elections are a popularity contest.  Libertarians generally do not believe in positive rights, that is, rights that impose a (generally financial) burden on another party.

 

[a_majoor]

I think John Galt (like his namesake) has gotten this right.

Libertarians do not (generally) believe in "positive" freedoms, in fact that concept is a corruption of the term.

Reccesoldier, your argument about temporarily handing the levers of power over is perhaps even more theoretical than many of the principles that underlie most ideologies; how do you "temporarily" hand over the levers of power to career politicians and a permanent bureaucracy? You might note I am a big fan of term limits for elected office.

Recognizing that people can descend to violence and coercion to achieve their short term goals is simply a recognition of human nature (and indeed nature in general; watch a troop of Chimps or Baboons in action and you will see lots that is familiar). Libertarianism is a recognition that cooperation and non coercion are the rational keys to setting and achieving long termgoals; and that is really what defines intelligence and civilization.

 

[Brad Sallows]

>Yes, there will still be some who play with the darker choices of game theory but I think the majority are kept in relative check by the wants, needs and power of the other players, namely the voters.

I have met very, very, very few people who were involved in one organization or another who didn't take at least a few shades of grey advantage of a position of authority (ie. power to do something) to the benefit of themselves or friends.  Selfishness, I can deal with - you have something, and I have to make my own if you won't share.  Arbitrary authority I am nearly powerless to overcome - I have something, and they take it.  The worst thing you can say about a selfish person who respects the boundaries between himself and others is that he won't share.  Charity and altruism are praiseworthy and to be encouraged, but selfishness gets too much stick - as a personal failing, it is very small beer.  Using others as means to your ends - that's a huge failing.

 

[edgar]

...  Using others as means to your ends - that's a huge failing.

Isn't that the definition of leadership?

 

[a_majoor]

Isn't that the definition of leadership?

http://www.teal.org.uk/leadership/definition.htm

Our Definition of Leadership

There are many diverse definitions of leadership. This page outlines a few common approaches, and outlines the definition of leadership underpinning Christian Leadership World. For this site, our leadership definition is defined as "enabling a group to engage together in the process of developing, sharing and moving into vision, and then living it out." We also emphasise the importance of a leader's character and integrity in building up the trust necessary for the leadership to be exercised over a period of time. For Christian Leadership, the importance of prayer must be emphasised - since God seeks to work in partnership with his people, and prayer is the primary channel of communication.

Some of the common ideas that others include in leadership definitions include exerting influence, motivating and inspiring, helping others realize their potential, leading by example, selflessness and making a difference. For perspective, we include several other common definitions :

Leadership DefinitionLeadership Definition : The Collins English Dictionary. ( © 1998 HarperCollins Publishers ) leadership 1. The position or function of a leader. 2. the period during which a person occupies the position of leader: during her leadership very little was achieved. 3. a. the ability to lead. b. (as modifier): leadership qualities. 4. the leaders as a group of a party, union, etc.: the union leadership is now very reactionary.

This dictionary definition of leadership focuses on the position (singular or collective), tenure and ability of leaders. As such, it misses key points about the purpose and hallmarks of effective leadership.

Leadership DefinitionLeadership Definition : Peter Drucker : The forward to the Drucker Foundation's "The Leader of the Future" sums up leadership : "The only definition of a leader is someone who has followers." To gain followers requires influence (see John Maxwell's definition below) but doesn't exclude the lack of integrity in achieving this. Indeed, it can be argued that several of the world's greatest leaders have lacked integrity and have adopted values that would not be shared by many people today.

Leadership DefinitionLeadership Definition : John C Maxwell : In the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, John Maxwell sums up his definition of leadership as "leadership is influence - nothing more, nothing less." This moves beyond the position defining the leader, to looking at the ability of the leader to influence others - both those who would consider themselves followers, and those outside that circle. Indirectly, it also builds in leadership character, since without maintaining integrity and trustworthiness, the capability to influence will disappear.

Leadership DefinitionLeadership Definition : Warren Bennis :  Warren Bennis' definition of leadership is focused much more on the individual capability of the leader : "Leadership is a function of knowing yourself, having a vision that is well communicated, building trust among colleagues, and taking effective action to realize your own leadership potential."

Leadership DefinitionLeadership Definition : Roman Catholic Diocese of Rochester :  For the purposes of the Leadership Development Process of the Diocese of Rochester, their leadership definition is "the process of influencing the behavior of other people toward group goals in a way that fully respects their freedom." The emphasis on respecting their freedom is an important one, and one which must be the hallmark of Christian leadership. Jesus influenced many diverse people during his ministry but compelled no-one to follow Him.

And there is the old chestnut about influencing others to willingly accomplish the aim of the leader.

 

[I_am_John_Galt]

And there is the old chestnut about influencing others to willingly accomplish the aim of the leader.

Willingly being the key word here: compelling others to do one's bidding through coercive means (legally or otherwise) is not leadership.

 

[Reccesoldier]

And there is the old chestnut about influencing others to willingly accomplish the aim of the leader.

You mean...

Leadership is the art of influencing human behaviour so as to accomplish the mission in the manner desired by the leader

We had to memorize 5 definitions on my CLC.  Leadership, Management, Inspiration, Command and one that predates Women in the Combat Arms and political correctness

I still remember them all.

 

[edgar]

Willingly being the key word here: compelling others to do one's bidding through coercive means (legally or otherwise) is not leadership.

So what was all that yelling about at the battle school?
Incredible that on a leadership course they would spend so much time not leading.

 

[I_am_John_Galt]

So what was all that yelling about at the battle school?
Incredible that on a leadership course they would spend so much time not leading.

I don't think that I am in a position to answer that honestly in public.