Re: Cal Libertarians Information
Seth David Schoen (schoen@uclink4.Berkeley.EDU)
2 Feb 1998 05:10:12 GMT
Daniel C. Burton writes:
>Kevin Dempsey Peterson <peterson@autobahn.org> wrote:
>
>: Basically, libertarians want drastically less government in all
>: areas.
>Except in the protection of individual liberties. There, minarchists want
>government involvement and anarchists want none.
>We're not simply against government. Then we'd be called antistatists.
>We're against government infringement on individual liberties, and that's
>why we're called libertarians.
>: Some argue that government doesn't work, some believe
>: that government has no moral justification for it's power, but
>: all agree that we have way to much of it right now.
There should be two "o"s in "too".
>: Libertarians are opposed to government taking money from the
>: people in the form of taxes, because people can most often
>: better decide how they want that money spent, and in any case,
>: are the only ones entitled to make the decision.
>
>I don't like this jumping into taxes right in the first paragraph. First
>off, it's simply not true. A lot of libertarians see moral justification
>for government taxation, but only to protect individual liberty. (This is
>the classical natural rights argument of John Locke.)
Taxation is a relevant issue, though, and most libertarians at least think
that taxation for any sort of "public policy" purposes (what might also be
called "discretionary" programs) is immoral.
>Secondly, taxation is not the only way government interferes
>with the economy. You can achieve virtually anything you can through
>direct taxation through economic regulations. (Why fund wheelchair ramps
>when you can mandate that anyone who does business must do that
>themselves?) You can also acheive pretty much the same through inflation
>of the government-mandated monopoly currency, manipulation of interest
>rates through the central banking system, and all sorts of other monetary
>manipulations.
That's true.
>Taxation seems like the wrong emphasis to me. I think it's more about
>whether decisions on the use of economic resources are made by individuals
>or the government/society as a whole. No matter what particular
>structures exist, when the decisions are made by individuals, it is both a
>more moral situation and one that will exhibit more characteristics of the
>free market.
Taxes are harder to circumvent than most of the other controls, though.
My econ book talked about "sophistication of international capital markets"
(working against government attempts to control them) and my teacher
mentioned "public policy arbitrage" (working against the effectiveness of
government programs). Taxes are the best example of a government economic
manipulation which it is most directly illegal to resist or circumvent.
>: Libertarians
>: are also opposed to government limitations of liberties,
>: believing that there is no reason that government has any moral
>: jurisdiction to tell people how to live their lives.
>
>Again, watch the wording. There are practical arguments for personal
>freedom as well. (If you have the power to limit other peoples' most
>cherished freedoms, they have the power to limit yours as well.)
Not all libertarians are concerned with the practical arguments for personal
freedom, though.
Almost all of my present drug letter to the _Daily Cal_ suggests that the
War on Drugs would probably a good thing, if only it could possibly be moral
for government to engage in. Since it can't, we should be particularly
upset about government activities in this direction...
>: Libertarians do not fit on the conventional right/left
>: political spectrum, but for issues, they will likely agree with
>: the left on issues of personal freedom (abortion, free speech,
>: deregulation of drugs), and with the right on economic issues
>: (taxes, welfare, regulation of corporations). It would probably
>: help to understand the libertarian position by thinking of them
>: as both more extreme and more consistent than either the right
>: or the left.
>
>It is good to point out that we are neither right- nor left-wing and that
>we are more consistent than either, but "extreme" is only relative and can
>have negative connotations, especially for moderates. They tend to follow
>the Rule of the Golden Mean, which is that it's always best to choose the
>midpoint between any two extreme alternatives. The only problem with this
>is that it doesn't work when both of the alternatives in consideration are
>bad to start with.
We could possibly express "extreme" in a less perceived-as-pejorative term
by some phrasing like "tending to follow principles to their conclusions",
or "putting principle above pragmatic considerations". (I know some
libertarians think that the principles are justified by pragmatic
considerations, but from the point of view of a random centrist, they will
at least seem to be disregarding pragmatic considerations, because they're
not interested in any of the "social" merits of a public policy.)
You could also say "based on principle rather than on issue advocacy" or
"based on principle rather than personal opinion"; the latter phrasing tends
to get libertarianism denounced as a cult, but I don't understand why critics
of democracy are always called cultists... (Similar things happen to one of
the characters in B. F. Skinner's _Walden Two_ when he says that voting on
the basis of what one would personally prefer is not a good way to decide
issues. It might have actually been a cult in that book, but certainly not
merely for that reason!)
One thing I find important about the "extremism" of libertarianism is that
it frequently suggests making apparently stupid decisions. For example,
"I'm going to vote against this redistribution even though it helps me a
lot at the expense of other people." "I'm going to vote in favor of allowing
this drug use even though I hate the fact that people use it." The
conventional wisdom is that you should vote for what you would personally
like to see in society, and libertarianism powerfully disagrees with that
algorithm.
>It's better to point out that how we differ from both the right and left
>than how we're more extreme in some areas than one of the two. This is in
>that both of them want to use the power of the state to control people's
>lives, whereas we don't.
I like the comment that "the left is libertarian on personal issues and
the right is libertarian on economic issues" (Berglund?); that might be a
better way to phrase it.
>: For example, the right only want to end welfare
>: to the poor; libertarians want to end welfare to corporations
>: in the form of subsidies as well. The left may want to allow
>: doctors to prescribe marijuana for medicinal purposes;
>: libertarians don't see where government gets the moral right to
>: dictate what you are allowed to put in your body in the first
>: place.
>
>I think it would be better here to talk about what we stand for ourselves
>rather than compare us to other ideologies. What we need to do is present
>some of the major points of libertarianism. (End the income tax with no
>replacement, end the war on drugs, drastically cut military spending,
>etc.)
Most of libertarianism is in the negative, though, mainly because we believe
in negative liberty.
"Eliminate..."
"Refrain..."
"Cut..."
>It's important to focus on things that are the most major
>activities of government. Medical marijuana is just a little blip on the
>radar screen compared to the income tax and the military.
But it's an issue getting a lot of attention. Also, the income tax and
the military are in the economic category, and it's good to have some
instances in the social category.
In high school, I ran a Harry Browne campaign, and I was accused of only
caring about drug legalization "because that's what the students want to
hear". I had to defend the idea that the campaign was ideological and
legalization was one of many issues out there, and we didn't care particularly
what the students wanted to hear -- they certainly didn't want to hear that it
should be legal for people to own automatic rifles.
Possibly as a reaction to this, people don't want to be accused of focusing
only on this issue, but it's a big one to show how the Libertarians are more
"extreme" on social issues than the Democrats.
>: ...
>: to try to prevent you from killing someone (so government, which
>: derives its authority from people, does also).
I think this point (that the government shouldn't do things which individuals
wouldn't do) deserves stressing; that's the point against the sovereign
immunity laws, for instance, and the basis for the critque of the "cult of
the omnipotent state".
>: Libertarians draw a strong distinction between real crimes,
>: which have a victim who was harmed (physically, financially or
>: emotionally) like murder, fraud, reckless driving, and
>: harassment; and victimless crimes, where everyone involved
>: consented to the "crime", like drug use, non-mainstream sexual
>: activities (oral sex is illegal in some states) and gambling.
>
>Libel, anti-discrimination laws, "hate speech" laws, and all sorts of
>workplace conduct laws all have specific victims, but we're against them
>because none of these acts involve force, fraud, or the violation of other
>peoples' individual liberties.
Yes, the criterion is not really whether someone actually ended up with a
negative outcome (which would be a substantive equity concern, and easily
lead libertarians into socialism -- large aggregates of market transactions
could be seen as crimes because as an apparent "result" some people were
less well off than others). The criterion is whether someone nonconsensually
harmed someone else. (It shouldn't be in the passive, because it's vital
that the criminal harmed the victim, rather than "The criminal made an
action at a certain time, and at a certain later time the victim was
harmed.")
>: Liberals want government to be your mother, conservatives want
>: government to be your father, libertarians want government to
>: leave parenting to parents and let people run their own lives.
(mumble)
>In general, I think this whole section spends too much time considering
>specifics and sorting out technicalities and too little time presenting
>the big picture. There's a lot to be said about the libertarian ideology
>and its stances on general issues, and we could probably fill up the same
>amount of space without touching on half of it.
That would be a good improvement, probably, and then people could be
referred to the LP Platform for good examples of what this means, as you
suggest.
>A good source for ideas of how to do this type of thing is the Libertarian
>Party Platform, which has some general statements of principle, and a
>whole bunch of issue planks, every one of which has more general language
>than most of your introduction. The Libertarianism FAQ for the Usenet is
>also pretty good.
I recommend Mike Huben's Non-Libertarian FAQ for a link from the web page.
(Mr. Huben, if you're reading this again, I haven't forgotten about your
earlier message, and am still going to reply to it...)
There is also a left-anarchist FAQ which denounes anarchocapitalism and
libertarianism as perverted.
I think I had something else (pro-libertarian) which was good...
>: The standard recommendations on where to learn more
>: about libertarianism are _Libertarianism_in_One_Lesson_
>: by David Bergland and _Why_Government_Doesn't_Work_
>: by Harry Browne. For those who are consider themselves
>: liberals, Ruwart's _Healing_Our_World_ has been recommended.
>: It's more recent than the above, and is available online at:
>: http://www.cyberpop.com/ebooks/ruwart/ruhomeframeset.html
>: You could also come to our meetings or ask questions on the
>: newsgroup (see below)
>
>I would NOT recommend _Why Government Doesn't Work_. It's a campaign book
>and it's pretty obvious from reading it. The recommendations I'm hearing
>the most these days (which I would go along with) are David Boaz's
>_Libertarianism: A Primer_ and Charles Murray's _What it Means to be a
>Libertarian_.
Murray's not very popular, not that this should bias our choice of books.
How is _What it Means..._?
--
Seth David Schoen L&S '01 (undeclared) / schoen@uclink4.berkeley.edu
Magna dis immortalibus habenda est atque huic ipsi Iovi Statori, antiquissimo
custodi huius urbis, gratia, quod hanc tam taetram, tam horribilem tamque
infestam rei publicae pestem totiens iam effugimus. -- Cicero, in Catilinam I