What are Libertarians
A recently posted article — Mon, 05/30/2016 - 2:28pm — LaFeminista — has generated a rather wide ranging discussion. I suppose wide ranging discussions appeal to those most comfortable with this medium of exchange. I am not one of those kind of people, I am simple-minded, and quickly lose track of any semblance of logic in these discussions and am loath to participate. I prefer to examine details rather than (often oversimplified) generalizations whenever possible. That's why I do elementary particle physics — it's elementary‽
For me it is about the specifics (if accessible) examined one at a time to the extent that those specifics can be decouple for said examination. Meta-discussions tend to leave me unsatisfied like roasted marshmallows or Cheese Puffs. So, if a may I would like to start a discussion about one salient point.
I "Googled" Libertarian Economics, then poked about a bit until I found the following.
A free and competitive market allocates resources in the most efficient manner. Each person has the right to offer goods and services to others on the free market. The only proper role of government in the economic realm is to protect property rights, adjudicate disputes, and provide a legal framework in which voluntary trade is protected. All efforts by government to redistribute wealth, or to control or manage trade, are improper in a free society.
The above quotation is consistent with every conversation I have had with a Libertarian. I find the Libertarian attitude about economics to be profoundly out of touch with the realities of economics. To the extent that this perception is valid, I could not support a Libertarian. I would not want to be associated with such naïveté.
Comments
I agree. Well said.
Naked Capitalism had a good discourse/series/
on Libertarian economics, US definition, with a good pinch of humor added. The comments, are, as usual per that site, very illuminating also:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/11/journey-into-a-libertarian-future...
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/11/journey-into-a-libertarian-future...
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/12/journey-into-a-libertarian-future...
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/12/journey-into-a-libertarian-future...
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/12/journey-into-a-libertarian-future...
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/12/journey-into-a-libertarian-future...
Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo
Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo written in the common language as an affront to the Catholic Oligarchy in 1632 by Galileo compared the Copernican system with the Ptolemaic system. No one uses this piece of work as a foundation for understanding celestial mechanics.
I have but skimmed the linked material you have provided and it seems that Andrew Dittmer has attempted a rhetorical device similar to that employed by Galileo. As you say:
I thank you for suggesting this access point, and I will browse about a bit to see what might be useful within.
It's beautifully stupid.
transparently untrue, to anyone who knows anything about dynamical systems.
why?
What is property? How does it come to be? Is it the proper role of government to redefine that which is neither scarce nor containable as "intellectual" property? Why?
What sort of disputes? Disputes over 'oo killed 'oo? Disputes over whether the parrot was indeed dead at the time of purchase? Disputes over whether it's cool for a group of vandals to drive their ATVs around the semi-wilderness in the middle of the night? Or to slaughter at will arbitrary numbers of wild birds, just for giggles? Or "harvest" unlimited numbers of wild fish, beyond the capacity of the oceans to sustain?
Again ... why? What is so special about commercial intercourse that it, to the exclusion of all other human enterprise, has a moral claim upon humanity? Once upon a time, they used the phrase "enforce contracts". Nobody ever explained to me what exactly was so holy about an "agreement" between two people, that it became the job of anybody else, nevermind everybody else, to enforce that agreement.
They actually state in that platform that they favor "free market banking". What the fuck do they think that would even mean?
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
I prefer the word "naïveté", it sounds nice.
American "libertarianism"
American "libertarianism" ignores the fact that the federal government issues our national currency which we use to pay taxes, pay off our private bank debts and buy foreign goods. Thus, the government must decide what to fund in the course of issuing our national currency, and thus must decide to whom it will distribute financial credits.
Of course hardcore "libertarians" support what they think will be private sector produced money, usually in the form of gold.
But then they ignore the fact that even if this worked in some way, it would still be the government writing and enforcing laws about who and how gold money would be produced. Either that or whoever owns the gold mines would become our new government.
Libertarians just can't get the notion that money is nothing but a system of laws, and whoever writes the laws is the government.
It could be super simple:
Could the disconnect I detect in Libertarians be because they take the " 'We The People' are really the government" so literally that any "delegation of power" to a subset of same is anathema to this foundational principle?
But I digress: I am certain they buy into a "cartoon understanding" of economics as do most people. Perhaps the work of the Modern Monetary Theory economists is too elementary for most people to understand.
John Kenneth Galbraith said something along the lines of:
"Money is so simple it repels the mind".
I'm pretty sure I have the quote 100% correct, but working from memory, which at 54 isn't as great as it was at 24 : )
as i noted in my comment above, their platform calls
for "free market banking". they explicitly reject having the government regulate the hows and whos and whys of gold money, or any other money.
talk about ponies and fucking unicorns
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Right. But if Goldman Sacs were to write the laws
regulating who and how money is created, and then had the police power to back it up, then they'd just be our new government.
Libertarians want to view money as somehow separate from laws - though they tend not to address the connection one way or the other.
I wrote about it
Libertarianism, Anarchism, and Adam Smith
Allow me to quote from my own diary:
So you ((have)) met my older cousin I see‽
Guns. Social Darwinism, and Anti-Tax
One other group I've met are the white collar stoners. They are usually liberal socially (supporting individual rights often when it comes into conflict with corporate discrimination). These folks also are very active in the community, supporting charities since they are generally opposed to government charitable giving. It's more libertarian in a micro level than the absolute nonsense of macro-libertarianism.
It seems to me that the contradiction is resolved by
believing that it's not how hard you work, but the value of your work is what's at issue.
Thus, you can be a really hard working waiter, but that job contributes little, and really should only be held by teenagers on their way to becoming a banker ; )
Beautifully said
My daughter and I were talking about this very example the other day. She pointed out how stupid it was to put-down people because of the jobs they do and she brought up the idea of the "professional" waitress. Why is it that people doing that job shouldn't think of it as a good career. Why is it demeaning to want to do a job well and enjoy doing it "even if it is just ...", you get the gist of the conversation. (I tend to quote or paraphrase my daughter without attribution sometimes: It makes me sound smart!)
Some of my best students are not out there doing physics. They are living fulfilling lives and contributing to a better future each in their own way. And, not one of them is
Thanks for reminding me of this conundrum: The shenanigans behind the bank failures were perpetrated by people just like me. That is, bankers (principally from the too big to fail sector) found that certain people (physicists, programmers, and some engineers) could create "products" and exploit "flaws in the matrix" for fun and profit. If I wanted to be rich, I know how to accomplish that goal, however, I decided a long time ago that I did not want to live in that world. I could'a been a 1%er‽
Thom Hartmann often says that Libertarians are...
...Republican'ts who want to smoke pot and get laid. I tend to agree. I'd add that they are also clinically insane. Anybody who takes their economic theory from a work of juvenile fiction (Atlas Shrugged) and thinks it can actually work in the real world is the very definition of clinical insanity...
I want my two dollars!
I have noticed that
I have noticed that Libertarians almost inevitably find themselves at odd with science. They want personal freedom and assume that any law taxing them invades that freedom, so they then tend to deny all the statistical evidence that shows the obvious, which is that taxes provide the impetus that builds society.
Libertarianism basically causes people to enter every single argument looking to argue with any idea that might lead to a tax. It leads them down strange paths. I've noticed libertarianism frequently leads one into all sorts of strange conspiracy theories.