Re: Libertarianism Q&A
Daniel C. Burton (dan@antispam.autobahn.org)
8 Feb 1998 08:44:27 GMT
Kevin Dempsey Peterson <peterson@ocf.Berkeley.EDU> wrote in article
<Pine.SOL.3.96.980207221925.12231G-100000@apocalypse>...
>
> 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?
The point of this is not to make people understand all the lofty
philosophical intricacies of libertarianism. It's to introduce them to it,
and get the most important points across. The most important things are
what we stand for, and the biggest problem we have to deal with is that
we're not even on the conventional political map in most peoples' minds.
So, I think the most important thing to start out with is giving people the
World's Smallest Political Quiz. Then we should tell them what we've been
using all along: Unlike liberals, we think that you should control your
own money, and unlike conservatives, we think that you should control your
own personal life. What both of them have in common is that they want to
use the government to control peoples' lives, and what sets us apart from
them is that we think you should decide how to live your life yourself.
And, what separates government from all other institutions is it's monopoly
of force. When it comes down to it, the idea of force is the most central
part of our philosophy: We're against the use of force for political and
social ends.
I think, just like you said, this is based on minding your own business.
Most people, in their personal lives, operate on the principle that you
can't force other people to do things they don't want, and we apply the
same principle of civility most people do in their personal live to
political life as well.
Keep in mind, that on a basic level, this is train of thought is one of the
most effective arguments for convincing people of the basic libertarian
philosophy in both practial and moral terms. And ultimately, what we're
trying to do is not to accurately represent our own reasons for being
libertarians, but convince other people to be libertarians with the best
arguments possible.
This train of thought is the only thing that actually opened me up to any
of the other libertarian arguments about morality, and it's what has drawn
a lot of other people as well. Remeber, people won't hear you at all until
they're at least listening.
> Don't the poor have a right to eat?
Of course they do. But they don't have the right to take other peoples'
money or food to do so.... (Good because it emphasizes the rights that
must be violated to have a right to be PROVIDED WITH food.)
> 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.
I seriously do think that even the lazy or incompetant would be better off
in a capitalistic society, especially the incompetant, because they would
more likely be the target of other peoples' charity. A free market would
give people much more resources to carry out their compassion.
Through government welfare programs, about 2/3 of your money goes to middle
class social workers. In private charities, about 1/3 does. The current
welfare programs would not even exist unless a majority of the populace had
some compassion for the poor, so a rough projection is that more than half
the populace would give to charity in amounts comparable to those going to
welfare programs. If this were the case, mathematically speaking, there is
no way the poor could be worse off, because more money would be going
directly to them. In reality, a free market economy would also give the
entire society more resources, making this even more pronounced.
Such figures simply cannot be ignored. In addition, there is plenty of
empirical evidence that when taxes go down, contributions to charities go
up significantly.
And I bet even the lazy would be better off, because nobody likes to see
somebody else starve.
We have to be honest: no we would not provide a guarantee that nobody would
go hungry, but we would provide everyone with the best shot possible of
escaping from poverty.
> 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.
We start with the practical (which is stronger for victimless crimes than
almost anything else), and then add "besides, what right do you have tell
people how they can live their own life?" or something of the sort. This
makes the moral seem like it backs of the practical (and despite what you
may think, most people consider issues from multiple angles -- yes, even
moral.)
> 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.
The Libertarian Party platform does not call for a gold standard. This is
just Harry Browne's minor lunacy. What it calls for is a competitive
system of currency, on the free market, that cannot be devalued by the
government. Devaluation is the main point -- by mandating a single
currency for all legal transactions and then devaluing it, the government
is stealing from people.
The real important issue is not WHAT we use for money, but WHO controls the
money supply.
Most likely, if the free market reigned, people would want to keep their
money in something that can't be devalued. As of today, a currency system
would probably be based on gold and silver because they tend to maintain
their value over the long term (but it could be almost anything -- maybe a
bundle of a whole bunch of things). It would start with receipts for the
metals, stored in warehouses that keep full reserves. These would be
deposited in banks with fractional reserves resulting in bank accounts, and
circulating bank notes.
This would give you a choice: Hold on to receipts for some valuable
quantity (whose value might go down over time because there's a cost to
hold them), or hold bank notes (whose value might go up or stay the same,
with the risk of a bank failure), depending on how you evaluate the risk.
Part of economic activity is evaluating risk, and this is good because it
places the consequences of risks on private parties, instead of the
government making the decisions and the consequences falling on everyone.
And if people wanted to use valueless slips of paper as currency, they
could do that as well. Maybe it would even work, though it probably
wouldn't -- in addition to scarcity, utility also plays a part in value.
> 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?
Keeping any prices above market values results in a vast underutilization
of economic potential. If it is not unemployment that results, it is
underemployment or a reduction in the actual value of wages. In any case,
raising wages above market values can only result in a reduction in the
total spending power of the workforce.
(This was in fact the cause of the great depression. Hoover himself
bragged about how, while profits were at record lows, wages were still at a
constant level -- this is not natural, and his policies were far from
laissez faire. Roosevelt, of course, went even farther in this direction.)
The reason this happens is that a raise in wages can only come from two
places -- a reduction in profits, or higher prices passed on to consumers.
Profits can only fall so far before people decide to pull out and do
something else with their money, and the tendency is to pass prices on to
the consumer. The only problem is that just because the product is there,
it doesn't mean they're willing to pay for it. At a higher price, less
people will buy the product, so less will be produced -- which means the
economy is producing less of real value (because all real value rests in
producing things that other people want).
Eventually the only stable equilibrium will be less people buying the same
things at higher prices, and employers paying higher wages for less total
hours of work. This will come about either through unprofitable companies
going out of business, or general cutbacks within companies. People will
probably be unemployed, since it's easier to employ people at a full work
week than more people working less hours. In any case, their wages will
have less total value, which means we're actually farther from supporting
"a living wage."
This is actually as simple as it seems. It is only years of indoctrination
with increadibly complex arguments that this is not that case that makes it
seem somehow wrong. Most of them, when analyzed, are simply
counter-intuitive and can be easily refuted with points from the very
argument they claim to refute. None of them are simple, because no simple
argument could distort basic principles so much.
> 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.
That whole thing was really a long inductive argument. I don't really need
to go that far before explaining what my conclusion is about what
government policy should be. I can actually start by outlining it and then
go through the explanation if necessary. I guess I'm a good spokesperson
because I'm right in line with the Libertarian Party, unlike many "free
market environmentalists."
> 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)
We should keep to the "let's look at where we're going, not our final
destination line." We can decide that once the winds of public opinion are
even blowing in our direction. Maybe we'll have to part ways and split
into smaller parties, but that is so far in the future we might as well not
think of it.
Then we can explain that most libertarians don't want to totally eliminate
government, but some more radical ones are anarchists.
The basic justification for those who want government is that some
government is needed to stop the private use of force. (In John Locke's
terms it people give up their property rights, which their freedom is also
a form of, in order to protect property rights in the whole -- but this is
the only purpose for which they can be curbed.) Of course, the basic
justification for the anarchists is that anarchy protects our rights better
than a government, and/or that a government is simply immoral.
> 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.
The basic justification I've heard from hard-core libertarians and party
members is that it's wrong for government to place anyone higher at someone
else's expense -- especially when it involves dividing society into
different hereditary classes with different rights before the law for any
reason. They'll then point out that the only bona-fide requirement for
government jobs is merit, and that rewarding excellence is best for society
as a whole.
(I would add that denial of past opportunity is also evidence that people
might excel beyond past performance and is thus part of someone's merit,
but this should be considered on an individual level.)
> 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.
I think it would be to our benefit to come out at the beginning and say
that libertarianism is a healthy and dynamic movement lots of different
ideas, so that not all libertarians agree on absolutely everything -- but
we do agree on some general principles, which is something the Democrats
and Republicans don't even have ("principled" is hardly the word to
describe them).