Why I’m No Longer A Libertarian
This review of Ron Paul’s latest book not only shows why I no longer consider myself a libertarian on national security issues, it also helps me understand why I no longer consider myself a Libertarian on so-called “big government” issues either. When Professor Reynolds says that the Federal government is too big, I no longer agree; historically, it’s pretty small if you just do the sensible thing and compare it to simple stuff like the population of the country or the gross domestic product. And when he says its unwieldy size is cause for corruption, he seems to miss the fact that numerous analyses suggest that the Federal government tends to be less corrupt than local government, because it is more frequently scrutinized. And when he says that politicians buy votes with pork barrel spending, I ask myself how many people I know vote for their congressman for that reason, and I have to say “vanishingly few.” Indeed, except for certain districts with very high numbers of government employees, I have to wonder if even 5% of voters are aware of whatever pork their members of Congress have “brought home.”
I’m just no longer a believer in the notion that the nine scariest words in the English language are “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”
I think this, along with the fact that even libertarians can’t get together and agree with each other on fundamental questions like abortion or national security, shows why libertarians never have been and never will be anything more than a minority voice in government. And, frankly, I don’t see that as particularly tragic.
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I’m just no longer a believer in the notion that the nine scariest words in the English language are “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”
Well, I work for the federal government, and those words scare me plenty. Based on the performance of my own agency, there’s not much I want the feds touching at all. But then I’m a scientist, so maybe I just have a higher expectation of competency than most…
JLBussey’s last blog post..Statuary 2
JLB
I work in the private sector, and have been employed by large health insurers. If you think that incompetence, corruption and waste are limited to the federal government then you haven’t gotten around. As for national health care, I don’t see how a single payer system could be less efficient or worse than the cr@pstorm we have in place.
I have to wonder if even 5% of voters are aware of whatever pork their members of Congress have “brought home.”
Maybe so, but I guarantee you that Mr. Byrd having his name on every other building in W. Va helps with the whole "name recognition" thing come election time.
Why I never have been a Libertarian.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Normalized for population, our government is pretty enourmous by historical standards. The federal government spends about $10,000/person these days, which is nearly double the entire per-capita economy in 1970 even after adjusting for inflation.
As a percentage of GDP, the size of government is much less scary. We’re not much above the post-WWII average, although the government controls a much, much larger share of the economy than it did before the New Deal.
I would imagine that pork in general is more targeted to benefit business interests rather than those of the actual voters. This would in turn lead to more contributions and would have a direct impact on a candidates ability to influence voters.
I don’t think that the necessary size of government has a linear relationship to the population. Government should not have to grow as large as the population, because it should gain efficiencies as it gets larger. A company does not add overhead as quickly as it increases sales.
Phelps’s last blog post..Voting Economics
I think the point about Pork is that it is often linked with outsized political contributions, cushy retirement positions and "help" for family members of the politically connected. Not just that people vote for someone because they’ve brought home the bacon.
[…] Posted by Ron Coleman on May 12, 2008 Dean Esmay: Why I’m No Longer A Libertarian. […]
You don’t have to be "a Libertarian" or even "a libertarian," however, to be eager to see government shrink, as I am.
Ron Coleman’s last blog post..Calling our libertarianism
I no longer consider myself a libertarian on national security issues,
For me, as a libertarian, liberty doesn’t stop at U.S. borders. I support liberty for all people at all places and times they are threatened, whether they be South Koreans, West Germans, Taiwanese, Poles, Iraqis, French, British, etc.
Ditto, Dave. Freedom is a human right, not an American one. That is why I support the liberation of Iraq.
Phelps’s last blog post..Police Testimony
Freedom is a human right, not an American one.
Amen to that.
However the Libertarian party is isolationist, as are Libertarians by nature. Therefore what happens abroad is none of America’s business in the eyes of Libertarians, in the same way that what a Libertarian’s neighbor does in his own home is none of the Libertarian’s business.
Isolationism is America’s native state, but one that simply won’t work anymore. What happens abroad does matter, lessons that two World Wars, a cold one and 9-11 should have taught the Libertarians but didn’t.
I think those like Reynolds who throw around the small "l" libertarian often forget the extreme positions that characterize the big "l" libertarians. Their extremism is what has limited their impact on the Republican party much less than the Far Left has had on the Democrats.
And that is why I left the LP.
Phelps’s last blog post..Police Testimony
Dean,
"And when he says that politicians buy votes with pork barrel spending, I ask myself how many people I know vote for their congressman for that reason, and I have to say “vanishingly few.” Indeed, except for certain districts with very high numbers of government employees, I have to wonder if even 5% of voters are aware of whatever pork their members of Congress have “brought home.”"
I don’t get what you’re saying. Pork is OK so long as the voters don’t know about it? Wasting tax money is fine, and there’s no reason to vote against it, so long as tax payers are kept in the dark?
How exactly is most people’s ignorance of pork barrel spending a good reason for not being libertarian on the issue?
Dean,
By the way, since you’re no longer a libertarian (with any capitalization of the l), does that mean that you now think that there are large swaths of life on which the government will make better choices than the citizentry?
Is it now your belief that the best people to run everything are people empowered to shoot you if you resist them?
Are you now in favor of big government? If so, how do you reconcile that with the evil of communist, which in practice has always been not much more than big government writ large? (Communism is in theory different from highly regulated capitalism, but as I gather, the way that people implemented it in practice was not very different.)
Also, does this mean that you’re backtracing on free speech issues? Public speech is obviously a form of commerce (since everything is, these days, if for no other reason that it competes with commercial speech), are you in favor of taxing and regulating speech? Surely speech is dangerous, and the limits we currently have on free speech are miniscule. And most people don’t even know what they are anyway.
(In short, in this post you’re merely being antagonistic towards certain ideas; it would be helpful if you would say your position is, in addition to what it isn’t.)
CTL: It’s not really clear to me that "pork" is anything other than legitimate government spending that only makes up a marginally small percentage of the overall national budget. There is occasionally corruption in that process, but not all that much. I’m all for cleaning it up, but think it’s a mostly a distraction from more important issues.
And while I accept that it’s probably more helpful to say in positive terms what I think, just by answering your questions I’d be answering in the negative. But if I count right, the answers to your questions are "no," "maybe" "I don’t because there’s no need to," "no," and "no."
What I am is a liberal democrat (small "l" and small “d”) and a classical liberal. We intersect at certain points with the libertarians but depart on others, and that makes sense; we do so with other philosophies as well. The libertarian tendency (and it’s not they alone who do this) is to take everything to logical extremes, in variations of the "slippery slope" fallacy. So, for example, if you say you believe regulation of commerce is a fundamental obligation of government, you are asked if you want a centrally organized command-and-control government ala Germany’s National Socialists and the Soviets with their commissars and five year plans. But that’s as ridiculously extreme as saying that if you believe what the Bible says, then you should favor overturning the U.S. government because, after all, Romans chapter 13 makes it crystal clear that the king is to be supported, therefore, it’s time to give Her Majesty Elizabeth II her colonies back. What, you can’t follow that train of logic?
I also see a false dichotomy fallacy here; the choices are, let people decide for themselves what they want, or, let government decide? Uhm, no, because in fact individuals are often railroaded by "the market," and being subject to the market’s whims can often be extremely brutal and dangerous. Indeed, I might ask you, as a defender of unbridled capitalism, whether you think it’s better for my life to be controlled by megacorporations and wealthy fatcats, rather than a democratically elected government that answers to the voters. Which would you prefer?
My belief is that democracy works. It is, in fact, the primary means by which we have a marketplace of ideas, including ideas on just how much or how little the market needs to be regulated, and not just in broad terms but in specific areas. For example, does more regulation of the airlines mean more regulation for the phone companies? No. More regulation where it’s needed is good, and less regulation where less is needed is good.
I believe that democratically elected representative government, broad freedom of political speech and press, and a (generally) loosely regulated market with cushions to protect the citizenry from harsh economic shocks is, on both a moral and practical level, the best system. And that history and political science both prove that theory to be so, at least so far.
I think much of this argument stems from philosophers of the 19th and 20th century who were wrestling with and reacting against Marxism. But everybody with an IQ above room temperature, with the exception of ivory tower academics, knows that Marxism is dead. This does not mean that the logical consequence is that we must embrace Ayn Rand’s universe, if you see what I mean.
Am I making sense so far?
And putting the government in charge of deciding what choices they have is a recipe for Happy Happy Funtime? The market may be brutal and dangerous… regulation is almost always brutal and dangerous.
Phelps’s last blog post..Mark M on Remembrance
We shouldn’t confuse "libertarian" with "Libertarian Party".
Hell, we shouldn’t even confuse libertarian philosophy with a total philosophy; if we take it most honestly, it doesn’t <I>pretend</i> to have anything to tell us about abortion, or what sort of national security arrangement is ideal.
It is, really, about the justification of state power (typically through the enumeration of its proper limits), with a generous side of economics, since economics is so strictly tied to state power these last few millennia.
(Ron Paul does not speak for "libertarians". He’s not a prophet, any more than Ayn Rand - who also, to make things clear, does not speak for "libertarians" as a whole.
My outlook is quasi-libertarian and classical liberal, and neither Paul nor Rand speak for me. I prefer Hayek and Heinlein, though more of the former.
And I agree completely that the Libertarian Party are a bunch of losers, in more than one sense.)
(Dean: I would, by the way, ask when you think individuals are "railroaded by the market", exactly.
You mention "control" by "fatcats", but that’s not very concrete… and the weaker the State apparatus of control, the less ability said "fatcats" have to co-opt it.
I’ve got the idea that maybe our lives don’t <I>have to be controlled</i> by either the state <i>or</i> robber baron cutouts.)
Dean,
I’d much rather large corporations control my life than the government, because large corporations can’t actually control my life. They don’t get to send people with guns to enforce their whims. Government does.
To take an example. I don’t feel like buying my meat from the supermarket, so I buy it (at a higher price) from a local farmer. The Wegmans food chain can’t do anything to stop me.
The government doesn’t allow him to slaughter his own sheep, however, because slaughtering non-poultry requires large mega-slaughter-houses which comply with byzantine regulations.
The most that wegmans does is offer me food cheaper, and occasionally send me newsletters telling me about things that they think that I want. The government uses men with guns to prevent the local farmer from slaughtering his own sheep.
Between the two, I far prefer the way that wegmans oppresses me, since it’s fake oppression.
I sometimes sew my own clothes, I’ve knit my own sweaters, and I’ll probably take up making my own shoes. Corporate America can do nothing to stop me besides offering me similar quality items at much less cost to me in time and effort. Government America can send people with guns who’ll shoot me if Government America wants to stop me.
That’s why I’d vastly prefer a world in which most of the power rests in Corporate America.
Obviously some government regulation makes the world a better place, but the tendency of government is always to over-regulate and over-control. We don’t need a corrective to the passivity of our legislatures, who’ve churned out so much law that it’s in practice impossible for a citizen to actually know what all the laws are that he’ll be thrown in jail for not obeying.
It’s not that libertarianism will actually produce a utopia. It’s just that libertarianism will provide a corrective to government’s attempts to dominate everything. In practice, we’re going to get lots of government regulation. That’s why we need a culture as adverse to government regulation as possible. Because not very much aversion to government regulation is actually possible in practice.
The reason why the nine scariest words in the English language are "I’m from the government and I’m here to help" is because the guy has a gun, or more particularly a police force. He’s telling you that he’s here to force you to run your life the way that he wants you to, and he always wins.
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