• Tag Archives libertarianism

  • Libertarianism and Classical Liberalism: A Short Introduction

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    Liberty is central to libertarians and classical liberals. It may be summarized as person, property, and consent, the individual’s dominion that others are presumptively not to mess with.

    Suppose your neighbor asserts that he is to get 25 percent of your income and brandishes a gun to show that he means business. Or, suppose he says you are not to employ people for less than a certain wage, or that you can hire only plumbers on his own special list of plumbers. We’d consider such a neighbor to be criminal in initiating such coercions. Libertarians and classical liberals say it’s coercion when done by government, too.

    Yes, government is a special sort of player in society; its coercions differ than those of criminals. Its coercions are overt, institutionalized, openly rationalized, even supported by a large portion of the public. They are called intervention or restriction or regulation or taxation, rather than extortion, assault, theft, or trespass. But, say libertarians, they are still initiations of coercion.

    That is important, because recognizing it helps to sustain a presumption against government coercions, a presumption of liberty. Libertarians think that many extant interventions do not, in fact, meet the burden of proof for overcoming the presumption. Many interventions should be rolled back, repealed, abolished.

    Liberalization

    Thus libertarians and classical liberals favor liberalizing social affairs. That goes as general presumption: For business, work, and trade, but also for guns and for “social” issues, such as drugs, sex, speech, and voluntary association. It differentiates the libertarian from both the leftist who favors “economic” restrictions and the conservative who favors “moral” restrictions.

    Libertarians and classical liberals favor smaller government. Government operations, such as schools, rely on taxes or privileges (and sometimes user fees). Even apart from the coercive nature of taxation, libertarians don’t like the government’s playing such a large role in social affairs, for its unhealthy moral and cultural effects. They favor school-choice reforms and lean against redistribution and the welfare state.

    Libertarians can be radicals, believing in liberty as a sort of logos and axiom. Some ponder a pure-liberty destination. But libertarian is also suitable to describe an attitude that respects the status quo and yet looks to liberalize, a directional tendency to augment liberty, even if reforms are small or moderate.  So libertarians can be moderate or radical, directional or destinational. They can bargain, or they can challenge.  

    Overall Liberty

    Most libertarians and classical liberals recognize that sometimes liberty must be sacrificed for the sake of liberty. A policy that reduces liberty directly might augment liberty overall. Areas of contention among libertarians include immigration, foreign policy, weapons policy, pollution, and financial doings for which the taxpayer is on the hook.

    Here, we might have a way to interpret some of the differences between libertarians and conservatives who also cherish liberty: Libertarians think conservatives overstate disagreement between direct and overall liberty, and conservatives think libertarians overstate agreement. Conservatives are often more favorable than libertarians to, say, restricting immigration or enhancing military spending.

    Another important difference between libertarians and conservatives is that the word conservative functions widely as code for Republican. Conservatives feel more involved in the contest for power. Libertarians sometimes come across as theoreticians who don’t concern themselves with the struggle for power and the process of actually making reforms. They are accused of being content to espouse liberalization yet failing to help bring them about. Libertarians respond by saying that insight and understanding are preconditions to reform, and that careful research and learning are crucial to wise leadership.

    The principle of liberty has its holes, gray areas, and exceptions; it does not speak to all important issues of government; and it is not self-justifying. Despite the limitations, however, it remains cogent and gives backbone to libertarian and classical liberal thought.

    Liberalism Unrelinquished

    The first political meaning of the word liberal was launched in the 1770s, most notably by Adam Smith. But in the period 1880 to 1940, many English words lost or changed meanings, including the political term liberal. In the postwar period, classical liberal ideas enjoyed some reinvigoration, led by such figures as Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, now sometimes fashioned as libertarian, notably by Murray Rothbard, who offered up a sort of paradigm of libertarianism.

    But, again, the term libertarian functions as signification both for the more formulaic thinking of Murray Rothbard and for the less formulaic thinking of Hayek, Friedman, Richard Epstein, Deirdre McCloskey, and organizations such as the Foundation for Economic Education, Cato Institute, Reason, and several units at George Mason University.

    America has an election system in which third parties are damaging to their own cause—that is, a two-party system. For this reason, many libertarians and classical liberals do not support the Libertarian Party. The smallness of the Libertarian Party should not be taken to mark the extent of libertarian sentiment.

    Many libertarian sympathizers do not vote at all, vote Republican, or vote Democratic. Most libertarians think that Republicans are less bad than Democrats, but some libertarians think the opposite.


    Daniel B. Klein

    Daniel Klein is professor of economics and JIN Chair at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, and associate fellow at the Ratio Institute (Stockholm). At GMU he leads a program in Adam Smith. He is the author of Knowledge and Coordination: A Liberal Interpretation and editor of Econ Journal Watch.

    This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.


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  • The Environment’s True Friends Are Libertarians

    Posted on by Azrael 1 Comment

     

    The Environment’s True Friends Are Libertarians

    The libertarian movement should have been the natural home of environmentalism. Robust, well-defined property rights and mutually-beneficial exchange in a genuine free market create strong incentives for environmental stewardship, thwarting the kinds of environmental degradation that have been all too common under the status quo, defined by pervasive regulation, inept bureaucracy, and thus frequent disasters.

    Government wastes and destroys its own holdings, because it lacks the incentives of the true owner, insulated as it is from the attendant costs.

    As economist and public policy scholar Robert H. Nelson observed, “environmentalism and libertarianism have important common elements. Both outlooks are fearful of the uses to which human beings will put the enormous new powers made available by the modern products of science and economics.”

    The philosophy of liberty furthermore emphasizes the importance of accountability, personal responsibility, and efficiency: values which should be focal points for any worthwhile project of environmental protection. Why, then, does prevailing opinion make private property and free market competition the enemies of nature, cast as the sources of widespread pollution, ecosystem destruction, and thoughtless resource depletion? Clearly something has been lost in translation, confused by the easy and largely incoherent narratives of left versus right.

    Recasting the Debate

    Libertarians are, no doubt, partially to blame for this. We have emphasized the primacy of economic development and market innovation, the processes that have enriched the world. But the fact that the selfsame processes have at the same time made the world cleaner and more sanitary is less frequently remarked upon, lost in the narrative that freedom means corporate license—which in turn spells doom for the natural world.

    First, libertarians must challenge the oft-repeated myth that unhindered competition is a cutthroat game of wild and irresponsible misbehavior, the inevitable result of which is environmental destruction borne by the many, and large profits enjoyed by the few. Nothing could be further from the truth.

    Government is itself the worst polluter, responsible for more serious environmental damage than any other single actor.

    In fact, libertarians see well-defined private property rights and voluntary exchanges in the marketplace as the best mechanisms through which to protect the natural world and its resources. Seldom do the free market’s detractors—or indeed even its friends—observe its valuable restraining effects: the natural limits that property and exchange place on corporate power and license.

    Sincere environmentalists should care about the track record of government intervention and regulation. The worst, most tragic environmental disasters have uniformly been spawned from heavily-regulated and cartelized industries, occurring in spheres of human activity in which property rights are not well defined or are vested in derelict government bureaucracies.

    And we should be especially indisposed to give credence to government’s lofty environmental protection rhetoric given that government is itself the worst polluter, responsible for more serious environmental damage than any other single actor. That this fact will surprise so many demonstrates the success with which the federal leviathan has deceived and cheated the American people.

    Property Means Preservation

    The pollution problem is fundamentally a property rights problem. Consider it: history’s greatest environmental disasters are defined by the fact that their perpetrators violated others’ property rights without full and proper recompense. The offenders unfairly and coercively impose their costs, those associated with the operations of their businesses.

    As a property owner itself, government has been notoriously irresponsible.

    There is, then, an important, if underappreciated, sense in which definite private property rights beneficially constrain participants in a free market economy; such rights compel consumers, producers, entrepreneurs, and investors to internalize their own costs, to forgo a subtle form of theft—causing damage without indemnifying the injured party.

    We face the problem of how best to prevent this. The solutions of free-market environmentalism address the associated incentive problems realistically and straightforwardly, rather than naively believing government to be a deus ex machina.

    Consider the incentive paradigm under which government operates. As a regulator, government most often hears from and interacts with the powerful global companies that are subject to agencies’ rules. Mobilized and well-positioned to impact policy making, industry pressure groups are able to influence the rule-making process much more directly than the dispersed general public, which lacks both the necessary knowledge and resources.

    Moreover, as a property owner itself, government has been notoriously irresponsible: derelict in its duties as the country’s largest environmental steward and principal landowner. Federally-owned land dominates particularly in the American West, where, through agencies like the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service, among several others, DC owns almost half of all land.

    Deadbeat Landlords

    In Nevada, for example, the federal government owns 85 percent of the land. And these figures do not account for other government holdings: land owned by state governments or even smaller public entities such as municipalities. Taken together, governments of one kind or another own about 35 percent of American land.

    Government lands are historical centers of pollution and waste in the United States.

    As environmental policy scholar Daniel H. Cole notes, “That is a comparatively high percentage of public landownership for a noncommunist country.” While today’s figure is down from the one that elicited Cole’s assessment (42 percent) it is nonetheless high, and it is perhaps surprising that governments should own more than one-third of the real estate from sea to shining sea.

    What’s more, the ownership of submerged lands, offshore seabed beyond the tidal zone, is confined exclusively to governments. A federal statute grants the first three miles to respective state governments and everything further to Washington. These federal holdings total “more than 1.7 billion acres,” according to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement.

    It will surprise few to learn that government lands are historical centers of pollution and waste in the United States. As Romina Boccia, Jack Spencer and Robert Gordon explain, “poorly conceived environmental laws, heavy-handed regulation, and aggressive litigation by political activists” function as high barriers to entry, severely constraining access to these lands. Such policies naturally “benefit special interests or powerful constituencies” at the expense of ordinary taxpayers and the environment.

    Perverse Incentives

    When environmentalists complain that the government should do more to protect the environment, they seem not to realize that the federal government already holds most of the power and natural resources—that this fact is itself the source of the moral hazard giving rise to the most serious environmental problems.

    The federal government is an essentially lawless institution, unconstrained by the benchmark law of equal freedom, empowered to pollute and violate property rights with impunity. Acting as its own judge, it flouts the basic principles that support a free society. Government is thus entirely unlike ordinary property owners. It wastes and destroys its own holdings, because it lacks the incentives of the true owner, insulated as it is from the attendant costs.

    The amelioration of environmental problems requires a devolution of power.

    If government is unlike the ordinary property owner, then perhaps it is more like a trustee, holding these vast swaths of valuable land as the fiduciary agent of the people, the beneficiaries. But absent such defining incumbencies as the duty of care and the duty of loyalty to the beneficiaries of the trust, government isn’t very much like a trustee either.

    Rather, government ends up looking like a criminal, an instrument of bald land theft, executed on a massive scale and in favor of influential friends.

    Liberty Holds the High Ground

    In the final analysis, then, we face a choice between a competitive, decentralized system and a centralized one, in which a privileged monopolist, that is both a major resource owner and a rule-giver, may waste property and resources quite without a thought to the costs associated therewith.

    The results of such a system of moral hazard accord with the predictions of libertarian theory. In For A New Liberty, Murray Rothbard advised his fellow libertarians not to ignore the problem of pollution, not to cede the moral high ground on the issue to anti-market leftists. Rothbard understood that we must not put our pro-market, pro-private property “stamp of approval on those industrialists who are trampling upon the property rights of the mass of the citizenry” through reckless pollution. The amelioration of environmental problems requires a devolution of power: first to more directly accountable local bodies, and ultimately to individual proprietors, who have the strongest incentive to conserve.

    David S. D'Amato


    David S. D’Amato

    David S. D’Amato is an attorney and independent scholar whose writing has appeared at the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Future of Freedom Foundation, the Centre for Policy Studies, and the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies.

    This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

    Source: The Environment’s True Friends Are Libertarians | Foundation for Economic Education


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  • Libertarians: Team Cap or Team Stark?

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    The liberty movement must decide now, once and for all, where our allegiance truly lies: Team Cap or Team Stark. We are talking, of course, about the new summer blockbuster Captain America: Civil War, and the epic showdown between Captain America and Iron Man. Warning: here be (some) spoilers.

    The film starts in the aftermath of the previous Avengers movies — briefly summarized: very destructive battles between good and evil, in which the Avengers heroically save the day, but unfortunately, in their efforts, a large number of innocent people are killed. In its opening scene, Civil War shows us the danger the Avengers pose to bystanders, when Scarlet Witch and Captain America accidentally cause the deaths of seven civilians in Nigeria.

    In response to this international incident, world leaders design the “Sokovia Accords” (named after the site of a previous Avengers’ battle) to regulate the superheroes. Secretary of State Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross tells the Avengers the treaty is “approved by one hundred and seventeen countries. It states that the Avengers shall no longer be a private organization. Instead, they’ll operate under the supervision of a United Nations panel, only when and if that panel deems it necessary.”

    Tony Stark (a.k.a. Iron Man) insists that the Avengers need the Accords to provide accountability and oversight. Citing their history of deadly collateral damage, he argues, “We need to be put in check! Whatever form that takes, I’m game. If we can’t accept limitations… We’re no better than the bad guys.”

    But Steve Rogers (a.k.a. Captain America) warns against the dangers of government control. The UN, says Rogers, “is run by people with agendas, and agendas change. … If we sign this, we surrender our right to choose. What if this panel sends us somewhere we don’t think we should go? What if there’s somewhere we need to go, and they don’t let us? … The safest hands are still our own.”

    The Case for Team Stark

    After a speech like that, most libertarians would side with Team Cap, but Stark’s arguments should not be dismissed out of hand.

    Holding powerful people accountable for their actions — whether it’s the government or a nominally private vigilante group — is not a weird or unreasonable idea. In Avengers: Age of Ultron, Tony Stark and Bruce Banner (the nerdy alter ego of the Hulk) created an artificial intelligence named Ultron to protect Earth from aliens and other super-threats; instead, Ultron ran wild and nearly destroyed all human life.

    Even though Stark was vital in ultimately stopping Ultron, he was also responsible for a huge amount of damage caused by his creation, including the destruction of Sokovia. Similarly, Ultron’s former henchman Scarlet Witch eventually helped stop Ultron, but only after she sent the Hulk rampaging through a city, causing massive damage and likely many casualties.

    In Civil War, after Scarlet Witch has joined the Avengers, she accidentally contributes to seven innocent deaths in Nigeria. But merely by being part of the “good guys,” she appears protected from any kind of accountability, with no real repercussions nor even a process for assessing responsibility.

    As a viewer, we have the benefit of perfect information and perfect hindsight on the Avengers’ actions and intentions, but the people living within the Marvel Cinematic Universe do not, creating reasonable fears that the Avengers’ great power may not be exercised with great responsibility.

    The Case for Team Cap

    Stark’s appeal for accountability has merit, but Captain America astutely notes the dangers of government control when he asks what would happen if the UN orders them to do something they shouldn’t, or stops them from doing something they should. “We’re not taking responsibility for our actions,” he says of the Accords. “This document just shifts the blame.”

    Cap essentially asks, if we give power to these governments to dictate the Avenger’s actions, what will prevent them from making misguided decisions or being infiltrated by malicious forces? In other words, the Accords don’t solve the problem of holding power accountable, they just shift it from the Avengers to a new and unknown group, who will get to dictate their actions.

    Secretary Ross and Tony Stark cite three major cases to argue for government oversight of the Avengers: 1) the battle against the alien invaders in New York City in The Avengers, 2) the violence in Washington, DC, in Captain America: Winter Soldier, and 3) the destruction of Sokovia in Avengers: Age of Ultron.

    From their perspective, the destruction and collateral damage caused by the Avengers naturally justifies government control. “Whatever form that takes, I’m game,” Stark says.

    However, the relevant question is notwhether private actors behave perfectly — of course, they don’t. Rather, the question is whether governments, composed of equally fallible people, can reliably improve the situation given their information and incentives. Identifying a problem does not inherently justify government intervention to fix it without firstshowing both that the government canfix it and that its specific policy wouldfix it — without also creating a worse problem or sacrificing other more important values.

    Captain America sees a basic public choice problem with government taking over the Avengers: why would world politicians do any better? Do they have better knowledge, better incentives, or better intentions? Cap argues, “I know we’re not perfect, but the safest hands are still our own.”

    Who’s Really More Trustworthy?

    Two of the cases cited by Stark and Secretary Ross cut directly against the case for more government. First, during the alien invasion in The Avengers, the government tried to stop the invasion by firing a nuclear missile at New York — which Stark intercepted and sent into the alien spaceship, thus simultaneously saving New York from rampaging alien hoards and government “oversight.”

    Second, in Captain America: Winter Soldier, Cap saves the world from the government agency S.H.I.E.L.D., which had been secretly taken over by a Nazi death cult and was planning to kill millions of people with a fleet of flying death machines (“helicarriers,” not drones).

    Government supervision during the alien invasion nearly killed everyone in New York, and the violence in Washington, DC, resulted from Captain Americastopping the harm caused by the government itself. Based on their past experiences, the Avengers should be very skeptical of government control. In most of the cases, government posed a much bigger threat than the alternative of (in Stark’s own words in Iron Man 2) “privatized world peace.”

    Secretary Ross correctly identifies a real danger originating from the Avengers in the Ultron fiasco. Tony Stark and Bruce Banner created Ultron, and Sokovia was obliterated as a result. But, in this case, the Accords would not have helped. The Ultron problem did not come from the Avengers lawlessly rampaging around the world but from an R&D project gone awry. (Stark points out that the Avengers “dropped a building” on civilians while battling Ultron, but while that is their fault, it’s not clear how having UN-approval to go fight would have prevented such collateral damage.)

    The only regulations that could have plausibly prevented Ultron would have been control over all research into artificial intelligence, control that would have had to extend far outside of the Avengers and into all computer science research around the globe — an unwieldy, unrealistic, and intrusive violation of people’s privacy, not to mention a huge burden on scientific progress.

    The government does not have a such great track record on safe scientific research, either. In his condemnation of the Avengers, Secretary Ross sarcastically asks, “Tell me, Captain, do you know where Thor and Banner are right now? Cause you can bet if I misplaced a couple of 30-megaton warheads, there’d be consequences.”

    However, as is often the case, the right process is behind door number three: the liberty approach.

    Yet it was then-Lt. General Ross, while in charge of the Army’s supersoldier program, who accidentally transformed Banner into the Hulk in the first place, and then subsequently lost track of him! For him, the consequences of misplacing a 30-megaton warhead were to be appointed Secretary of State. Apparently, that’s the kind of supervision and accountability government bureaucracy actually fosters.

    A Better Way

    In forcing us to choose between Team Cap and Team Stark, Civil War presents a false dichotomy: either cede control of the Avengers to the UN or continue to have no accountability at all — a choice between the dangers of concentrated power and the dangers of unaccountable private individuals.

    However, as is often the case, the right process is behind door number three: the liberty approach.

    There are two basic ways to hold people accountable: command-and-control regulators telling them what to do beforehand (Ross and Stark’s solution) or courts requiring them to provide compensation to injured parties when they cause harm.

    Centralized regulatory agencies have all the typical problems of government: corruption, bad incentives, insufficient knowledge, and stifling innovation. In contrast, tort law holds people accountable if and when they hurt others or recklessly put them at risk. This decentralized mechanism allows for a free, innovative, and diverse market, while still holding people responsible for their actions.

    In the context of superheroes, torts could provide the accountability Stark needs without the dangers of government control Cap fears. Rather than having the government direct the Avengers’ missions or stringently regulate their actions, the Avengers can be held accountable through the courts: if they cause damage, they have to justify their actions and, if found liable, make restitution or face punishment.

    Ultimately, in his quest for accountability for himself and the Avengers, Stark overlooks the dangers of state control, leading to abuse of his friends by a powerful and unaccountable government. On the other hand, although Rogers correctly identifies that threat, he attempts to unduly insulate his friends from accountability. He may be right that “the best hands are still their own,” but if those hands smash buildings to pieces, they shouldn’t simply be able to hide behind government protection. Just like any private citizens, the Avengers should be subject to civil liability and criminal prosecution for their actions — and just like anyone, they may claim self-defense and necessity.

    What is the correct outcome of such a process for the Avengers’ actions in Sokovia, Nigeria, New York, and DC? It’s hard to know in advance. Stark endangered the world by the mistakes he made creating Ultron, but he also helped save the world from it. Did he act recklessly or negligently? Should he have known better? Would jailing him make the world safer, or deter reckless behavior in the future by other scientists or superheroes?

    These are hard questions to answer. A decentralized, open-ended approach won’t guarantee you a certain outcome, but that’s the risk of freedom. The risks of centralized government control you can see for yourself — in theaters and innewspapers.

    Source: Libertarians: Team Cap or Team Stark? | Foundation for Economic Education


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