Category Archives: Libertarianism

The polar opposite of Communism, and every bit as stupid.

Yes, the Road to Serfdom is Indeed Paved by “Conservatives”, you Libertarian Idiot!

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Look at this op-ed piece:

The Road to Serfdom is Paved by Conservatives
 

The parts of the article itself will be in red and my responses will be in blue.

The Road to Serfdom is Paved by Conservatives

By Veronique de Rugy
For the last ten years I have been baffled as I watched the conservative movement devolve into a weird wing of progressivism—especially on economic issues. While once at least paying lip service to limited government, fiscal prudence, and personal responsibility, conservatives now ignore the size of government and fiscal responsibility. They increasingly call for a larger child tax credit, a universal basic income, and paid leave arranged and ensured by the federal government. Many conservatives now also proudly embrace tariffs, hyperactive antitrust, and industrial policy (often justified, of course, as necessary to ‘fight’ China).

Note the loaded rhetoric. The author is clearly writing from a strictly Libertarian point of view, which is the form of idiocy on the far right that is no better than Communism was on the far left.

Conservatives – or at least the more politically active ones – are reverting to their 1920s selves (See Matt Continetti’s book, The Right: The 100 year war for American Conservatism.) I failed to see this reversion occurring, in part because I moved to the United States in 1999 and was until recently fairly ignorant of the history of the conservative movement- and how the last forty years were more an exception than the rule.

And you are still ignorant about the real nature of conservatism, in all its insidious forms throughout the world. The only real goal of conservatism is:  to maintain the status quo because it benefits the already powerful at the expense (often literally) of the powerless. Thus in the Soviet Union of the late 1980s, hard-line Communists opposed to the reform efforts of Mikhail Gorbachev were the conservatives in their state. Thinking it is always about “limited government, fiscal prudence, and personal responsibility” means you are delusional; at least two of those are actually LIBERAL concepts that American conservatives stole from liberals in the past! Why? Because the first and the third were spelled out in the Bill of Rights and the second is just common sense.

I fear that this recent trend is just the beginning. It won’t be long before the conservatives’ platform is a full-on version of big government, big business, and big unions. It’s depressing.

Seeing the real truth about it hurts, doesn’t it? Feeling outright SCAMMED yet?

It is hard not to wonder if the liberty movement is now failing to follow in the footsteps of Hayek, Friedman, and other great 20th-century champions of freedom. It’s important now to recognize that on most fronts the challenges faced by the first- and second-generation members of the Mont Pelerin Society were, if anything, greater than what we champions of freedom face today. After all, people in 1947 – or even in 1987 – could not, as we can today, point to the actual collapse of the socialist states as evidence of the dangers of collectivism. And yet Hayek and his peers left us a world that was more accepting of free trade and free-market economics, even if these liberal policies were not the default position.

If you are so worried about “collectivism”, why not help us tear down capitalism, in which an economy is dominated by collective entities known as CORPORATIONS?! Corporations can be just as oppressive as governments in how they treat their workers. The original purpose of Communism was to overthrow the capitalists and allow the workers to run the economy themselves via a democratic socialist state. But then Joseph Stalin ruined everything when he took the “dictatorship of the proletariat” and made it a dictatorship of himself alone and turned against the proletariat! He even killed a great many Communists who opposed him, since they were true to the original vision of Karl Marx.

Perhaps a more optimistic way to view the current situation is to be inspired by those who fought for a more classical liberal world at a time when things looked particularly grim. Rather than despair, get energized by the challenge. But this raises the question of what is the best way not merely to preserve the flame of freedom but to spread it. What the next steps are, I do not know. I am open to your suggestions. The private sector continues to deliver innovation, growth, and widespread prosperity. But as of today, few people are willing to acknowledge that it is the free-market system that allows these wonderful things to happen, and that while of course imperfect (often because impaired by government interventions), any alternatives would be much worse.

We tried the classical liberal approach with the Articles of Confederation in the early 1780s and it was a complete FAILURE!

The Articles of Confederation and the beating down of Libertarianism on YouTube

That absurd rhetoric sounds like the sheep in Animal Farm bleating out “Free market good, government bad, free market good, government bad”. A realistic approach allows for a variety of solutions based on the needs of the people at various times.

How do you fight the battle of ideas when so many people distrust the institutions that host those of us who produce and apply these ideas? I have spent most of my professional life producing work to show that arguments for government interventions are bunk. For instance, in this new paper with Chuck Blahous, he and I take on the new conservative recommendation that Social Security be used to provide paid-leave benefits. We show, again, all the ways that this is a terrible idea. Of course, I believe that work such as this is important, since these are serious propositions introduced in Congress and supported by a fairly large number of conservatives. But is there a better way?

Yes, there is…..stop being delusional and deal strictly with reality. Government intervention was absolutely necessary to get Americans out of the Great Depression. Without Social Security, millions of older people in the decades following that period would be impoverished, even starving. Only an idiot ignores such lessons and uses false rhetoric to argue otherwise.

In this new paper, Gary Leff and I argue that next time legislators are tempted to bail out airlines ostensibly to ensure that they will be ready when the economy reopens, the public should remember the actual, depressing results of the most recent such bailout. But Congress won’t change its response unless we change the incentives politicians face during the next emergency. How do we do that? After all these years, I still don’t know.

Of course, you don’t. Because even an ideologue like you should be able to figure out that allowing massive businesses to fail in a struggling economy is what makes that economy even worse. Hence the bailouts.

Maybe it is more effective to offer a vision of what a libertarian world looks like. This is what Aaron Powell does in this edited volume. I recommend it. I think this approach describes also a lot of the work of former EconLog blogger Bryan Caplan. He inspires by offering a vision of what a world would look like without government subsidies to higher ed, a world with largely open borders, and a world with radically fewer restrictions on home building.

If libertarian ideas never worked in the past, why bring them up yet again? One definition of insanity is trying the same solution repeatedly and hoping for a different result.

The Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom Index offers such a vision, because it is a concrete way to illustrate what countries with less economic freedom look like compared to those with more freedom. The 2022 Economic Freedom of the World Report was released earlier today; all countries have declined in economic freedom, thanks to over the top pandemic responses, but the U.S. has actually declined even more relative to other countries. The U.S. rating fell by twice the amount of the average reduction worldwide. The U.S. is at its lowest level of economic freedom in four decades.

Those “over the top pandemic responses” saved millions of lives, but I guess allowing a “free market” to make more $$$$$$$ for those already rich is more important to you, eh? And that rating system must be bullshit, since I actually don’t see much of a loss of economic freedom around here. Is America anywhere near socialism yet? Obviously NOT!

The bottom line is that while I am usually an optimist, I find myself increasingly worried and wondering what we did wrong and what to do next.

What you did wrong: kept promoting Libertarian bullshit. What to do next: abandon it forever.

 

Debunking Libertarian Economic Bogosity

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The title of this blog entry refers to this earlier one:

Shane Killian sells out!

It’s time to revisit that issue. Look at this meme:
37211526_10211829385762290_2164135833207046144_n

The whole premise of that meme is a lie. Capitalism and corporatism are one and the same and have been for at least 300 years. The attempt to make a distinction between them is profoundly dishonest, implying that “real” capitalism does not exist. If so, it never did and never will. The only real alternative to crony capitalism is Democratic Socialism, period.

Here’s what really happens:

A individual has an idea.

That individual forms a company and makes a product with that idea.

Consumers give the company money for the product.

The company becomes successful.

Someone else has a better idea and creates a better product.

The first company uses its money to buy out the new product from its inventor and sells it in addition to or even instead of the original product, increasing its profitability and leaving the actual inventor with almost nothing later.

As a result, the company makes money no matter what product it sells.

Always remember this:  Those who already have a lot of money will always have an unfair advantage over those who don’t.

Government corruption does NOT produce corporatism. Tyranny and abuses can also come from economic forces too if government does nothing to stop them with policies such as “trust-busting” and progressive income taxation, among other tools at government’s disposal to redistribute wealth. That is why Libertarianism is worthless.

The Articles of Confederation and the beating down of Libertarianism on YouTube

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In an earlier blog entry, I referred to the Articles of Confederation as the ultimate expression of Libertarian thought and noted their complete failure. Of course, the term libertarian was not used back then; what we call Libertarianism now is merely a repackaged form of “classical Liberalism”, much like today’s Tea Party is merely a repackaged form of the “Religious Right” that plagued American politics in the 1980s. Same shit, different label. Now two channels on YouTube, Extra Credits and the Alternative History Hub, have teamed up to give the Articles of Confederation the public beatdown they so deserved but never seemed to have gotten. Why not? Perhaps because their failure shows that the Founding Fathers of the USA were not after all the nearly infallible saints they are often depicted as, though I suppose George Washington comes close. Anyway, here are those videos:

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Responding to The Future of Freedom Foundation

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Freedom is a precious thing, but the best way to promote it is to take all facts into account, not merely the ones that make your cause or extreme positions look good. That’s cherry picking, a classic tactic of denialism and thus dishonesty.

Check out this statement on the The Future of Freedom Foundation website. It will be in red and my responses will be in blue.
http://www.fff.org/about/
Our nation was founded on the principles of individual freedom, free markets, private property, and limited government. As the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution reflect, people have the natural and God-given rights to live their lives any way they choose, so long as their conduct is peaceful. It is the duty of government to protect, not destroy or infringe upon, these inherent and inalienable rights.
Note that the Articles of Confederation are not mentioned. This was the first actual Constitution of the United States and was based on pure “libertarian” ideals (then known as “classical liberalism”).  But reality eventually proved the Articles unable to maintain order in the USA. Government that is too limited leads to anarchy, which benefits only would-be tyrants that flourish in a society where they can engage in abuse of others and not fear punishment. Eventually, a tyrant may become popular enough to impose his own law on the society, resulting in despotism. But despotism and anarchy have no provisions for human rights. Only a government can protect them. And if rights are given by God (who is by nature an absolute monarch), they can also be taken away, making the concept meaningless. And rights cannot be natural because animals do not have any, as their behavior shows. Only humans have rights among themselves and those rights only exist when they are recognized by both governments and the people.
For well over a century, the American people said “no” to such things as income taxation, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, public schooling, economic regulations, immigration controls, drug laws, gun control, paper money, the Federal Reserve, overseas empire, militarism, entangling alliances, and foreign wars. Despite the tragic exception of slavery, the result was the most prosperous, healthy, literate, and compassionate society in history.

Wrong! The people did not say no to income taxation, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, public schooling, economic regulations, immigration controls, drug laws, gun control, paper money, the Federal Reserve, overseas empire, militarism, entangling alliances, and foreign wars.  Many of these were simply not political issues at all until the 20th Century, the public schooling was done as early as the mid-19th Century, and the first of the foreign wars was the Mexican War of 1846-1848. Slavery was not merely a “tragic exception” (what an insult to the descendants of those slaves); it was a basic part of American society and thus proving that America was not at all the libertarian paradise being implied here. Slavery was ended by federal government force as a result of the Civil War (a denial of property rights of the slaves’ owners) , and more federal government force was eventually required to end the institutional racism that remained in the Southern states. The proliferation of bureaucracies resulted from the people demanding more and more services from their government, which must be paid for.
In the 20th century, however, America moved in the opposite direction—in the direction of socialism, interventionism, and imperialism. The result has been massive infringements on our economic liberty, civil liberties, gun rights, and privacy, along with out-of-control federal spending, debt, and inflation, all of which have reduced our prosperity, damaged our families, and weakened our sense of morality, self-reliance, and voluntary charity.
Again, only because the people have demanded certain things to improve their lives and then we become dependent on them. An example would be the interstate highway system. Without that, trade, tourism, and other matters relating to commerce would be far more difficult and would thus limit our economic growth. And the very reason government welfare programs were established was because with welfare being only voluntary, people still starved. People simply are not generous enough to provide for the needs of all without government intervention and force. If they were, we would not have so many billionaires in America, along with so many that are impoverished, even with government helping the poor. So that statement above is simply absurd!
The time has come for the American people to lead the world out of the statist morass in which it has plunged. The time has come to restore libertarian principles to our land. It is to that end that The Future of Freedom Foundation is dedicated.
We never had the kind of freedom they are calling for, and we likely never will. What they may really be saying is that we need to use force to overthrow the government and have libertarian extremists take over and run it their way – which would negate their entire premise of promoting freedom. If the people WANT an authoritarian government and elect one, via a free and fair democratic process, it is the height of arrogance for anyone in the name of “liberty” to say that is unacceptable.

The ultimate discrediting of Libertarianism

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Over the past several years I have gone from being sympathetic to the ideals of Libertarians because of their opposition to the Iraq War and their support for drug decriminalization, to being highly skeptical of some of their claims and dogmas because of practical experience. But now, I am ready to publicly declare that Libertarianism as a political force has been completely debunked and should be abandoned as unworkable. It should not be contained in either a political party called the Libertarian Party, nor in the Republican Party. And here is why: http://www.viralnova.com/walmart-turned-library/

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A good reason not to be Libertarian – Classical music

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As a lover of classical music for decades, I have been dismayed by its gradual decline in our society. In most record stores today (at least in north Texas), it is increasingly difficult to find a section of the store dedicated to classical music, or even new age music for that matter. Instead, I find our culture swamped constantly by rock, country, and even rap music. Not that there is anything necessarily wrong with those genres, since I listen to plenty of rock and even some country myself  (indeed, I grew up only with country since that was all my parents would listen to). OK, I don’t like most rap. Want to call me elitist for that? Be my pest!

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Obama bashing, Libertarian style

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Take a look at this op-ed piece by Wayne Allyn Root, who ran for Vice-President in 2008 under the Libertarian ticket. It might explain the Tea Party and its anti-Obama madness that has possessed so much of the American population. I will post parts of it and respond directly to it here (the numbers refer to my answers).

http://www.lvrj.com/opinion/obama-s-agenda–overwhelm-the-system-95716764.html

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Why Libertarians are wrong about economics

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One of the founders of the Libertarian Party, David F. Nolan, is credited with creating the Nolan Chart, which has been used ever since as a guide to understanding various political positions. Here are two different versions of it:

The higher you are on the chart, the more freedom you beleive in. If you beleive in more economic freedom and less personal freedom, you will be on the right (Conservative) side of the chart. If you beleive in less economic freedom and more personal freedom, you will be on the left (Liberal) side of the chart. Libertarians beleive in more freedom for both and Statists beleive in less freedom for both, while centrists have a mix of all positions.

The real problem with the chart is that it is misleading. I beleive in maximum freedom for individuals, both in their personal dealings and as small business owners. Sole proprietorships and partnerships should be as free from government interference as possible, the only exception being that anyone wanting to start a small business should be able to apply for a loan from the government, which they can pay back five or ten years later with interest (thus enabling the government to make a profit from helping establish the businesses).

So I beleive that governments should be severely restricted in how they can treat individuals. But for some reason, Libertarians insist on corporations having the same rights of free speech and property rights as individuals. This is unacceptable to me, since I see corporations as being more like governments than individuals. Corporations can have an infinite lifespan and can acquire an infinite amount of property and money. In a “free market”, small businesses with individual owners cannot withstand competition with giant corporations;  it’s like a mouse trying to compete with an elephant. And when corporations become powerful enough, they are able to bribe or threaten the officials in the government to do their bidding by bailing them out when they face bankruptcy.

Bailouts and corporate mergers should be forbidden. Corporations, I beleive, should be treated the OPPOSITE of small business owners. They should be regulated and taxed heavily and never bailed out, but BOUGHT OUT by the government, which then may break up the corporation’s properties and sell to individuals who want to establish their own small businesses. Indeed, I would make it so that new corporations couldn’t even be established at all!

An industry with thousands of small business and no corporations would result in a far healthier economy than one dominated by a half dozen giant corporations, due to their being far more competition and less risk of massive economic damage from businesses failing. The thousands of small business owners would value their freedom and would translate that value into a classically liberal democratic government. But an economy dominated by giant corporations would consist mostly of people used to taking orders from a few powerful executives, the very essence of an authoritarian society.

And that is why Libertarianism is doomed to fail. It is absurd to put giant corporations and small businesses on the same playing field, for the corporations will inevitably crush them, just as giant empires tend to crush smaller nations. Quite simply, there is really no such things as a “free market”, nor will there ever be. The only true path to freedom and social justice is a Liberal or Centrist path. Not Libertarian. The very existence of giant corporations and their corrupting power makes Libertarianism a dream that will never become reality.

Can libertarians overthrow the Neo-Conservatives?

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I first became interested in the Libertarian Party because of its strong anti-war stance. In my opinion, it’s the one thing that definitely makes libertarians better than the Republicans or even many Democrats:

http://www.lp.org/news/press-releases/time-to-cut-off-iraq

For Immediate Release
Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Time to Cut Off Iraq

Iraq should be footing their own bill 

“It is time for Iraq to take responsibility for the costs and burdens of rebuilding their country,” says Libertarian Party National Chairman William Redpath, following a new report from the Government Accountability Office stating that Iraq may have a budget surplus of up to $79 billion dollars. 

“Using US taxpayer money to pay for the rebuilding of the infrastructure of another nation is bad enough,” says Redpath, “but it is reprehensible and unforgivable when that nation is running a budget surplus while we have a substantial and growing federal budget deficit and a crumbling infrastructure.”

The Libertarian Party has been opposed to the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq from the beginning.  The Party, which stands adamantly opposed to the use of taxpayer money to support functions of the government not defined in the Constitution, has taken special exception to the use of tax revenues to pay for rebuilding foreign nations.

The Party calls for an end to the Iraq war and a withdrawal of U.S. troops in Iraq without undue delay. 

“It’s a case of tragic irony,” says Libertarian Party spokesperson Andrew Davis. “The American public was told reconstruction efforts in Iraq would be paid for by oil revenues from that country.  Now, more than five years later, Americans are shouldering the responsibility of rebuilding Iraq while facing decaying bridges and skyrocketing gas prices.”

“Something is very, very wrong with this picture,” says Davis. 

The Libertarian Party is America’s third largest political party, founded in 1971 as an alternative to the two main political parties.  You can find more information on the Libertarian Party by visiting www.LP.org. The Libertarian Party proudly stands for smaller government, lower taxes and more freedom.
 
For more information on this issue, or to arrange a media interview, please call Andrew Davis at (202) 731-0002.

But most of their positions against governmental intervention seem too extreme and unrealistic. If they would moderate their platform to support smaller government in general instead of taking any absolute positions, then they could gain a larger and more diverse membership and start winning elections at the federal level, which they never have before. Their reluctance to be more moderate is their first mistake. As the Nolan Chart shows, the Libertarian Party needs to be open to all those that would score as “Libertarians”, not just those purists who would be at the uppermost tip of the chart, and perhaps even Liberals, Centrists, and Conservatives well away from the lower (Statist) part of the chart.

nolan_chart

Their second mistake is to ally themselves with the Republicans against the Democrats. If the Republicans ever regain power, what’s to stop them from throwing the Libertarians under the bus later to persue power for themselves once more?

A group that is ideologically pure can never take power in a pluralistic democracy. It can only do so by force, which libertarianism does not allow. Therefore, the Libertarians may never take power, though they should. Fortunately, there are some who see this and are working to make the Libertarian Party a more diverse one:

http://www.reformthelp.org/

Assuming that they ultimately fail, however, there is another possibility. It would involve libertarians taking over the Republican Party and getting rid of the most hard-core Conservative elements in it. The best example of a libertarian who is also a Republican is Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, who ran for President last year.

http://www.rlc.org/

Either possibility will be fine with me. The status quo of a weak Libertarian Party, a stronger Republican Party still dominated by neo-Conservatism, and a Democratic Party with total power and no accountablity is not!

The Great Depression debate

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This is my third blog entry in a row about economics.

If you have never lived through the Great Depression, it’s possible that you either don’t know what you are talking about, or are lying outright to promote some form of ideological extremism.

First look at this:

This is a video by Shane Killian, a Libertarian activist. While I admire the man for his work on defending evolution and attacking pseudoscience, he seems to be out of his league when it comes to economics, as the next video clearly shows:

Killian then proceeds to rewrite history regarding the Great Depression:

What bull$#it! Quite simply, if the New Deal was such a failure, then why did FDR not become a one term President?. Why, indeed, was he elected no less than FOUR TIMES!?

Because the Great Depression was the worst economic crisis ever in American history, it may be considered uncharted territory. Our government had to experiment to find a solution. Some things attempted during the Great Depression worked better than others, but it was hardly true that the New Deal was a total failure and that World War II finally got us out of the Depression! Indeed, if our economy had not recovered to a reasonable degree by 1941, we would never have been able to wage World War II so well! The right-wing extremists got the issue EXACTLY backwards! War is more likely to destroy a struggling economy than to strengthen it!

So why did Killain make the claims he did? Two reasons.

  1. He is a Libertarian. While the ideals of free market economics promoted by that party are indeed admirable, they are also purely a theroetical concept. In the real world, a completely free market CANNOT EXIST FOREVER! If you allow a capitalist economy to run on its own without any government intervention, we will only fall into a depression eventually and stay there PERMENANTLY! Killian’s faith in the “free market” is no better than religious fanaticism.
  2. He is brilliant on some subjects, therefore he assumes that he must be right on ALL subjects. But that is simply not true of anyone. No one knows or understands everything equally well. Myself included.

Vote for Jake Towne for Congress!

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If you live in Pennsylvania, please consider supporting Jake Towne, a libertarian, in his quest to get elected to Congress and defeat Republican Congressman Charlie Dent!

http://towneforcongress.com/

I want to see the libertarians become more influential, to the point that they completely overthrow the Republican Party, thus becoming the Democratic Party’s main opposition. Even if Jake does not win, Dent is likely to be defeated by a Democrat. Either way, I am determined to keep the Republicans from ever regaining the power they had under Bush Jr!

I want MORE economic freedom, not less!

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One of the most laughable misconceptions people have about economics is that laissez-faire capitalism is somehow an example of economic freedom, while socialism is a form of economic tyranny. Certainly the type of socialism that Communism was came across as tyrannical and deserved to be abolished. But not socialism itself. Socialism coupled with a democratic government that has a written constitution that guarantees civil rights for all citizens actually promotes the most economic freedom, while laissez-faire capitalism is economic ANARCHY that eventually results in both chaos and tyranny, like political anarchy does. With no restraints by government, corporations will only get larger and more powerful by merging with smaller and weaker corporations and will so dominate the market that small businesses started by individual owners seldom have a chance to even get off the ground. That is NOT a free market! Such a concept doesn’t really exist, except in the deluded minds of many Conservatives and Libertarians. You either have a market in which government occationally intervenes to break up giant corporations (trust-busting)  to allow small businesses to thrive and maintain their independence, or you have a market in which individual efforts at owning one’s own means of production and income are destroyed by the giant corporations themselves. The Founding Fathers of the United States understood that unrestrained government destroys individual liberty, so they made a system of checks and balances in the Constitution to restrain government. They should have done the same with the American economic system. If a democratic government can have its own method of checks and balances against corporations, and thus prevent corporations from ever merging and even buy out and sell off the properties of failing corporations to individuals who wish to start their own small businesses, then we will have more economic freedom. Corporations themselves are more like governments in their makeup and operations than like individuals. They should never be “free” to exploit resources and people as they please. Only INDIVIDUALS should be free for freedom to have any real meaning! We see imperialism, which was the norm 150 years ago, as evil today, because it involved governments conquering and ruling other peoples for the gain of the conquerers. Why should laissez-faire captalism be seen any differently? Can we not abolish that as well and promote real economic freedom instead?