Re: Libertarianism Q&A

Kevin Dempsey Peterson (peterson@ocf.Berkeley.EDU)
Sat, 7 Feb 1998 22:48:45 -0800 

Since we're doing a Q&A, it would be a good idea to discuss our
responses to certain questions in advance.  Here are some things that
I'm not sure how I would respond, or likely questions:

What is the basic idea behind libertarianism?
"Minimum government" is a little vague.  Additionally, it isn't the
philosophical basis, but a summary of what grows out of it.  For the
"philosophical basis," I have, The government has no inherent rights
except those that people have; No one has a legitimate right to force
others to do anything; Government is a tool of society, and the
libertarian system is the most efficient; or, what?  These don't really
seem conclusive to me.  What are the basic principles from which all the
policy ideas are built up?

Don't the poor have a right to eat?
I would say no.  My honest response is that the lazy or incompetent have
no inherent right to survive.  This is not a good image, though.  Do you
all really believe that a totally capitalistic society would be better
for the lazy or incompetant than what we have now?  I think that the
societal benefits outway the cruelty of letting the poor starve, but
this probably isn't even acceptable to republicans, much less Berkeley
liberals.  Of course, a totally capitalistic society is better for
everyone who is willing to work, and has anything at all to provide.  No
doubt the totally incompetant would get charity (the handicapped, the
uneducated, the sick), but I really couldn't care less about the lazy.

Wouldn't removing X restriction cause societal chaos?
Drug reform, free speech, whatever.  Do we want to go directly into the
morality of "do I have the personal right to steal your pot," or play
the game and say these restrictions are bad for society?  These are two
valid responses, but presenting both might sound contradictory, or like
we are just looking for things to justify our ideas.  Saying "they're
bad for society" after we say "they're immoral" might lead someone to
thing that we have been blinded by our belief that they are morally
wrong into believing they were practically bad.

What's all this about money?
I don't get it either.  What does a gold standard or "inflationary
monetary policies" have to do with anything?  The "government monopoly"
is pretty easy to attack on the "I wouldn't be allowed to do it" moral
grounds, but the gold standard is a joke.  Libertarian dogma seems to
say that it's immoral for people to agree to use valueless slips of
paper as a medium for exchange, while I have no problem with buying and
selling in pooka shells, federal reserve notes, or grams of crack.

But eliminating minimum wage would let the greedy capitalists exploit
us!
I've been thinking about this one lately, since I've just taken a job
that actually doesn't pay enough for me to live off.  One attack is that
removing minimum wage is good for the economy, but I think the best
attack is showing that minimum wage is just a price floor on labor, and
means that people are going to be unemployed and companies will not be
able to find workers.  I didn't actually believe these arguments until I
was thinking about them this afternoon, then this hit me as the right
way to do the analysis.  Anyone want to come up with a good explaination
of how unemployment greater than about 0.5% is an indication that the
economy is wasting a lot of resources?

What about pollution?
It would be good if Dan could at least think over how to condense his
essay into the bare essentials before wednesday.

Do you want to totally eliminate government?
Anyone out there have an explaination that doesn't contradict our
"government doesn't have inherent rights" idea?  I don't think that the
government we have is legitimate, so this should probably be answered by
someone who does.  (I don't think we should present anarcho-capitalism
as the first response, because we don't want to be too extreme)

What's wrong with affirmative action?
This is a good place to appeal to liberals (really!).  We can show the
hypocracy of throwing people into *any* groups and come off looking like
the last outpost of sanity.

Any more ideas?  This is a good time to discuss the basic ideas of
libertarianism so that we're all thinking about it one wednesday.

-- 
peterson@autobahn.org (preferred)
http://www.autobahn.org/~peterson