Libertarian Democrats

I thought I might comment a bit on Markos' "libertarian democrats" concept since, technically, abstract political theory is actually what I know about. But let me start off with a little political analysis. Insofar as we're talking about attracting libertarian voters, I think the case that libertarians should vote Democratic in 2006 is ironclad. A Pelosi-led House of representatives, and to a lesser extent a Reid-led Senate, would provide more of an obstacle to the Bush administration's imperialist instincts than the reverse. Either would offer some oversight of the executive branch and to some extent curb Bush's taste for gross abuses of power. Neither would really be in a position to enact any grandiose economic policy plans. So Q.E.D., as I see it. For the future, though, it's just going to depend on circumstances.

Meanwhile, I don't see any reason to believe it would be smart for a major political party to deliberately aim at the votes of some libertarian constituency. The reason is that, to a decent first approximation, about zero percent of the electorate is primarily motivated by a principled opposition to state coercion. We're not literally talking about zero people, I know some of them, and some write blogs, but it's genuinely a rounding error in the scheme of things. You do have some people who adhere to the Economist-style center-right politics of the American elite consensus, and this view has some similarities with libertarianism, but this genuinely is an elite consensus voting bloc rather than a libertarian one. It's also not seriously accessible to the Democrats over the long-run because a core element of the consensus is a fairly deep-seated loathing of progressive activism and progressive activists. It's worth understanding that, at the end of the day, there's much less libertarianism in American society than people sometimes think.

For one thing, a lot of the views liberals tend to think of us libertarian-ish liberal positions aren't actually especially libertarian at the end of the day. For example, liberals, like libertarians, don't think the coercive authority of the state should be deployed to discriminate against gays and lesbians. Unlike libertarians, however, liberals generally think the coercive authority of the state should be deployed to prevent discrimination against gays and lesbians. We think that landlords shouldn't be allowed to refuse to rent houses to gay men, that bartenders shouldn't be allowed to refuse to serve them, that employers shouldn't be allowed to fire them, etc. Liberals believe in a certain notion of human liberation from entrenched dogma, prejudice, and tradition, but this isn't the same as hostility to state action, even in the sex-and-gender sphere.

Similarly, it's often said that the interior west manifests a libertarian or proto-libertarian politics. I see, however, very little support for this view. We're talking about a portion of the country that derives its economic viability largely from huge levels of subsidy from the rest of the country. From the Universal Service Fee that makes telephones in the rural west cheap, to the way highway money disproportionately flows to sparsely-populated states, to agricultural subsidies and protectionism, to cheap exploitation of natural resources (lumber, coal, metals, grazing) on federally-owned land, these are people who very much enjoy sucking on the federal teat. A principled libertarianism would sell horribly in Montana. It is true that Jon Tester is cutting ads about the Patriot Act that get Jim Henley hot and bothered but this is on a limited domain of topics.

More to the point, what Tester is really appealing to here isn't libertarianism, as such, but an American self-conception and rhetoric of rugged individualism. This certainly is a sentiment one tends to see in the West. The dense living conditions of the coasts naturally incline people toward a sort of gut-level collectivism and fear of chaos that you don't see in the West. This is an important phenomenon, since even though it's geographical and demographic range isn't what it once was, it's deeply entrenched in the broader American political tradition so it resonates at least somewhat everywhere.

And I heartily agree that this is something Democrats and liberals ought to try to do better to tap into. Our best shot at it, however, isn't to become "more libertarian" but to simply run with the somewhat tired positive freedom agenda. There's a long tradition, dating all the way back to John Stuart Mill's personal trajectory, of seeing modern -- i.e., egalitarian -- liberalism as the appropriate successor-ideology to what was valuable in classical liberalism's ideology of negative liberty. The Morality of Freedom, on this view, requires people to not merely by free of formal constraint but to have the actual capacity to practice autonomy and self-creation which, under contemporary circumstances, requires some level of state provision of public goods and social insurance.

The pioneering German social democrat Eduard Bernstein, to whom "liberal" meant "libertarian," wrote "with respect to liberalism as. a great historical movement, socialism is its legitimate heir, not only in chronological sequence, but also in its spiritual qualities, as is shown moreover in every question of principle in which social democracy has had to take up an attitude" and that "The aim of all socialist measures, even of those which appear outwardly as coercive measures, is the development and the securing of a free personality."

Proper libertarians have all heard this line of reasoning, and they disagree with it, which is what makes them libertarians. For electoral purposes, though, the key issue isn't serious ideological libertarians, but simply people with a very autonomy-oriented emotional makeup. This way of framing egalitarian liberal politics has some reasonable chance of succeeding at persuading people of that sort. But it isn't libertarianism, it's simply the orthodox egalitarian view of how to understand egalitarianism.

10/11/06 9:40AM del.icio.us this incoming links

Comments

Yes. Thank you. I find the fascination with libertarianism, and this whole Kos thing, somewhat baffling. I'm not so sure Raz and positive freedom are the way to go - I'd suggest the Sen-Nussbaum capabilities approach, with a little less naivete about state power, as a possible alternative, which could be described in almost exactly the terms you describe the morality of freedom - but that's just at the level of political theory. Also at the level of theory, from this perspective, the later work of Rawls has been a disastrous distraction with its recoil from autonomy-centered liberalism.

But both at the level of theory and of politics, it strikes me that this whole debate is indicative of the fact that the orthodox egalitarian view of egalitarianism is not all that orthodox these days.

Posted by: Jeff on October 11, 2006 10:46 AM

It's almost a little strange- the predominance of libertarianism online has dwindled over the past half-decade, yet it still pops its head up every once in a while and provokes odd posts like Kos'. There's nothing in anything that Kos said that doesn't make him a liberal; aside from the demonization of the term, why not simply argue that liberals and libertarians can make common cause against a conservative ideology that values neither egalitarianism nor liberty?

Doing backflips to try to define oneself as "libertarian" is both unnecessary and more than a little silly. While I appreciate what Kos does, this really does remind me that sometimes that "I don't know anything about philosophy or theory" line gets a little tired. Pick up a book.

Posted by: Demosthenes on October 11, 2006 11:08 AM

Thanks for clearing that up. I've been quite vexed by sites like QandO where they come off as basically stealth conservatives since they seem to give lip service to treating gays like people, but then don't seem to have common cause with liberals on the issue. The distinction between liberals and libertarians not wanted state enforced discrimination vs. liberals only wanting state enforced non-discrimination helps explain some of that.

Posted by: Chuck on October 11, 2006 11:52 AM

I think Matt underestimates the power and sway of libertarian ideology because he restricts his view only to the existsnce of a 'principled' libertarianism. Probably very few people adhere to a well-reasoned libertarian ideology. So, I tend to agree that a principled libertarianism would never sell well in Montana. But that's because I think most libertarianism is unprincipled. (my dad and that entire side of my family being, in fact, libertarian Montana natives)

What is more common is the naturalization of certain rights, like rights of property and contract, which are treated as somehow "private" when in fact they implicate state coercion. The larger the realm of private action free from collective power, the freer we are, according to classical libertarianism.

The blindspot of libertarianism is that the "rights of Englishman" are privileged and reified, whereas post-New Deal rights are seen as illegitimate. In fact, they all implicate state power, they all can be characterized as "positive" rights in some sense, and they all can be conceived of as "handouts". For reasons unrelated to geometric-style theoretical reasoning, they are not treated the same.

I think the Economist-style right does in fact remain committed to a kind of libertarianism in that it seeks "privatization" and privileges "private ordering". The conclusion that private ordering is more efficient is appealing precisely because it coincides with a desire to vindicate libertarian starting assumptions. The government's presence in the economic sphere is analogized to its presence in the private sphere, or even conflated. Having dethroned the economic monarch, libertarian utopia may now ensue. 'Efficiency' just happens to line up precisely with libertarian 'freedom' defined as the absence of regulation. Again, the blindspot remains: this 'absence of regulation' is just as rife with state coercion as any other form, except it masks the privileging of the already wealthy.

This is also why there is an almost visceral rejection of social science tending to demonstrate the existence of oppressive social power aside from government action. That is because within libertarian ideology, if the state hasn't acted, there is no danger of collective coercion. Hence gender subordination, racial subordination, systemic corporate domination are all trivialized.

Neo-liberal economic rhetoric appeals to a kind of "keep the government out of the private sphere" libertarianism, which is why deregulation of corporations, say, resonates surprisingly well with people who stand to gain nothing from lax corporate governance. The idea that taxation is evil also precedes from libertarian principles whereby a single, particular conception of property rights precedes the existence of a government that creates and enforces such rights.

Libertarianisms even extends to the international sphere, where neo-liberal economic policies predominate. "Deregulation" still has much rhetorical force, even though in reality deregulation denotes a policy that is just one form of regulation among others.

Libertarian ideology is resurgent, despite being just as unprincipled as ever. If libertarianism appears to be a corpse, it is because it has managed to transubstantiate before its deserved death into the body of economic theory. The fact that "free markets," "deregulation," and "privatization" are all analytically empty concepts hasn't yet lead to them being drained of cultural and rhetorical power. The assumptions of a private realm preceding the public and the identification of freedom with lack of state coercion still have great influence over American politics.

Posted by: StJoe on October 11, 2006 12:08 PM

Opposition to eminent domain is riding high right now. There's certainly a "libertarian moment", or at least a property rights moment, in the wake of Kelo. Prop 90 in California takes advantage of that to enact a lot of the nasty anti-environmental "takings" policy that the Federalist crew have been after ever since the Contract with America, and a similar measure in Oregon has resulted in some $5 billion worth of anti-takings claims.

Posted by: Wrongshore on October 11, 2006 12:48 PM

There's no such thing as a libertarian.

You have the old "classical conservatives who think drugs and gay marriage should be legal" cohort (ie the ones kos wants to court... I refer to these as the 'Sullivanoids"), and the more radical anarcho-capitalists (who were essentially bought off with tax cuts and fear).

Both camps (esp. that second camp) have been largely silent during the bush era-- funny how the same folks foaming at the mouth back in the day over issues like waco, PGP encryption and the CDA are now just fine with the actual suspension of habeus corpus and illegal wiretapping. We've been merrily sliding down their slippery slopes for quite some time now, with nary a peep from our erstwhile Defenders of Liberty.

Not that libertarianism was ever a serious movement outside of the internet, but what little right they had to be taken seriously was long ago spent.

"Libertarian" as a label was mostly just a useful way to get laid at dotcom cocktail parties back in the ninties. In hindsight it was never a serious, cohesive movement on its own.

Posted by: the dreaming ape on October 11, 2006 02:33 PM

why not simply argue that liberals and libertarians can make common cause against a conservative ideology that values neither egalitarianism nor liberty?

This is the point. I have been calling for an alliance for a while now. An alliance is not a merger.

StJoe is exactly right (about this and much else). In fact, the defining characteristic of Anglo/American libertarianism (as opposed to other kinds) is its abstraction, its impossibility (strictly speaking). Liberalism-in-the-modern-sense, on the other hand, is distinguished by its practicality. It subsumes libertarianism.

StJoe is also quite right to point out that a certain kind of libertarian/civil libertarian ethos is an irreducable part of this country. There's enormous political frission to be found there. And it has little to do with the LP itself or various theorists.

Posted by: jonnybutter on October 11, 2006 02:34 PM

Dreaming ape - I think you're off base. Bush's numbers haven't slipped to below 40% approval because all those people that supported him before switched to the democratic party. Those people that used to support him no longer support him, and they're increasingly vocal about it. The people switching are not neo-cons or paleo-cons or the brainless partisans that would support anybody with an 'R' next to their name on a ballot. They're normal people who respond more to issues than to candidates. They're the "drugs and gay marriage" crowd you mentioned.

Also, use caution with that "anarcho-capitalist" tag, as it usually represents a businessman that hates paying taxes but doesn't mind paying for lobbying to seek a little economic rent through subsidies, restrictions or penalties on competitors, or their usual favorite, penalties on specifically foreign competitors via tariffs and the like. (Maybe we should change the name from anarcho-capitalist to "Montana Libertarian.") Bush has been kind to this type, but libertarians (there are some of us out here) reject this type of government power at least as much as coercive policies on social issues.

People I know that share my political philosophy are mostly voting democrat this year and projecting to follow up in 2008. Much of it is due to disappointment in the repubs on both policy issues and "culture of corruption" style power, not that they're necessarily embracing any of the principles espoused by leading democrats right now - it's just that we want a change. The other big issue is divided government. As Matt pointed out, if I don't like what Bush wants to do, and I don't like what Pelosi wants to do, then it's best for the government to be split so neither can really do any damage.

Posted by: Mike on October 11, 2006 03:05 PM

Dreaming Ape is dead on- while it doesn't sound anywhere near as good, most self-professed "libertarians" are really anarcho-capitalists, or at the very least minarchist capitalists who see government as simply a means of supporting capitalism.

(And, yes, those who are about "freedom" are still in this camp. Sorry, Mike, but unless you're willing to go full-on anarchist, you're going to still have the market as a coercive organizing force, just as you had the state before.)

The term "libertarian" simply leverages the word "liberty" (which has a profound effect on American and pro-American audiences) to support this ideology. The term "liberty" itself is so indistinct as to be meaningless. It's a lump of play-doh to be molded by the hands of rhetoricists, nothing more.

As we see with Kos and others, though, it works pretty well, largely because the term "liberal" has been so demonized and liberals in the United States so reluctant to call themselves so. "Progressive" and "Libertarian" are two sides of the same coin- side effects of the demonization of the accurate, legitimate term.

Posted by: Demosthenes on October 11, 2006 03:35 PM

Matthew's post is right on, but as is typical whenever liberal bloggers post about libertarians it has drawn a number of misinformed posts. Either libertarians don't exist, or are closet Republicans, or are unprincipled. WTF?!

Libertarians are politically irrelevant but ideologically influential. Neither liberals nor conservatives can count on them to pick their side, because the only side we care about is the side of liberty. And libertarians know all too well that liberty is ultimately unimportant to liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans.

Posted by: Kevin B. O'Reilly on October 11, 2006 05:22 PM

Demosthenes - I'm going to have to disagree that libertarianism is a rhetorical gimmick. I'll grant that it's sometimes used as one, but there is actually some substance there.

Libertarians don't reject "organizing forces" in society, just coercive ones. And most libertarians do not believe that FREE markets are coercive. The government is coercive and has too much authority, and businesses exploit that for their own gain, sometimes at the expense of others. But libertarians don't see businesses as the problem in this situation. We see the government as the problem. If the government wasn't so willing (and able) to meddle in markets and private affairs, then there would be no benefit to all the lobbying that mars our legislative bodies. Incentive is a powerful force.

That is one of the reasons that libertarians will not, given today's politics, align themselves permanently with the democratic party. The dems too frequently come off as anti-business, which often makes them seem unknowledgable about how markets actually work. Libertarians believe, for the most part, that businesses seeking their own interests will provide for the interests of others. Starbucks wants to make money and can do so by providing you with a latte, which you want more than you want the $3 in your pocket. Many of Starbucks' customers are concerned about the environment, so Starbucks has a comprehensive and well-developed program supporting fair trade and labor practices, recycling, reducing waste, etc., because they know that will make their customers happy (read: make them spend more of their money in our stores and be happy about it).

Some libertarians even believe that controlling polution and similar issues are legitimate functions of our government, since it causes harm. For the most part, we just want the government to leave us alone, whether I'm marrying another guy, smoking a joint in my living room, or entering into a voluntary employment contract with someone willing to work for less than minimum wage. All of those things are voluntary on the part of all participants, and they don't hurt anybody, so leave me alone.

Posted by: Mike on October 11, 2006 05:53 PM

You guys are funny. Do you actually get any sense of accomplishment out of beating up those strawmen you're creating?

I'm not going to bother defending libertarianism, because you guys won't listen anyways. I will just point out that selfishness is encoded into every strand of DNA in the universe, and everything your democratic programs try to do to subvert that will inevitably be abused, corrupted and laid waste.

Posted by: jb on October 11, 2006 05:57 PM

Markos simply confuses libertarianism with populism.

Posted by: Petey on October 11, 2006 06:24 PM

One could equally well say selflessness is encoded in every strand of DNA in the universe. My cells are dying for me even as we speak. Not to mention my fellow Americans in Iraq, who are dying for...well, I don't know what, but they ain't doing it for themselves.

Posted by: MQ on October 11, 2006 07:33 PM

I don't think you want the government to stay out of your employment contracts. You are asking the government to intervene to protect certain interests of yours. If you want the state to enforce your property rights so that your employee can't merely snatch your "minimum wage" through self-help, you are asking the state to regulate the transaction.

You just want the government to regulate "harms", but you prejudicially select which "harms" will or will not count as legal harms. The harm to the environment counts, but not the harm that results when individuals enter "voluntary" labor arrangements for below minimum wage that tend to reduce the well-being of laborers as a group?

You seem upset about having to pay individuals a minimum wage since this interferes with their voluntary consent. But a right to a minimum wage law is just the same as a right not to have your house destroyed: both are state entitlements enforced through state coercion. Let's see you go into a bargain without a right not to have your house destroyed and come out of it feeling like your choice was "voluntary". The same libertarian blindspot: you aren't arguing for coercion-free policies, just a legal regime that protects the social inertia of the already privileged.

Thanks, Mike, for proving my point. Libertarians do exist, they appropriate very popular rhetoric about the government "leaving me alone", and they are unprincipled.

Posted by: StJoe on October 11, 2006 08:00 PM

MQ: "One could equally well say selflessness is encoded in every strand of DNA in the universe."

Yes, but to your credit, you couldn't bring yourself to actually believe your own claim.

Demosthenes, Dreaming Ape: If I were to impugn your motives as you impugn the motives of libertarians, would that say anything about the merits of your ideology?

Posted by: James on October 11, 2006 08:09 PM

Wow. I don't think I've ever seen a more concise and appropriate analysis of the subject than offered by StJoe.

I will offer the suggestion that it is difficult to understand the appeal of libertarianism without also grappling with the appeal of Social Darwinism. Both are hangovers from the 19th century worldview.

I will also note one group of libertarians whose origins surprised me: civil servants. As nearly as I can tell, having seen the actual workings of government, they are sure that reducing it could only be an improvement. I have some sympathy with the position; having spent a lot of time in corporate and academic environments, I have the same feeling about both of those.

Posted by: James on October 11, 2006 08:10 PM

And libertarians know all too well that liberty is ultimately unimportant to liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans.

Which liberty? I think if you click on and read that "positive freedom" link, you'd see definition after definition of liberty (e.g. whether you are able to do something, or whether something external to you prevents you from doing something, or whether someONE external to you prevents you from doing something).

And the one that economic libertarians have fixated themselves on isn't anywhere near as basic or parsimonius as any of those, because none of those embed private property. If I see an apple in the farmer's orchard and want to reach up and eat it, you have to work hard to define a negative liberty that isn't infringed by that. There is no more parsimonious way to define a coercion that doesn't include private property (e.g. no trespassing signs) other than by explicitly putting a private property exception into your definition of coercion.

Non-parsimonius doesn't mean *wrong*, but it does mean arbitrary. Libertarians grabbed onto private property as the most sacred institution in society, and that act says more about libertarians than it does about the comparative worth of our society's institutions. They should stop pretending that it's "liberty" that divides them from liberals, and just admit that it's an absolutist defense of private property. (Just as Communists are distinguished from liberals by an absolutist opposition to private property.)

Posted by: Consumatopia on October 11, 2006 08:37 PM

No, James, I believe it, at least as much as I believe "selfishness". The human body is a large community of cooperative organisms that sacrifice for each other, so is society. One can see opportunism in both cases, but also self-sacrifice. It's all in how you look at it. You see universal selfishness because of the ideological blinders you wear. I don't think that either the concepts of selfishness or selflessness match nature or culture all that well. The fundamental problem is that the locus of the "individual" is not well defined. On the biological level, is the individual a cell, a bacteria, an organ, a single animal, or a community of animals? On the social level, a human being, a family, a tribe, a nation? The DNA / "selfish gene" stuff doesn't answer this.

Posted by: MQ on October 11, 2006 08:41 PM

The term "libertarian" simply leverages the word "liberty"

I would put it this way: the American Libertarian Party - and by extention, the fairly narrow Anglo/American version of the ideology - leverage the word 'libertarian', which is a much larger tradition, and a larger thought-space (if you please). What really matters about the libertarian spirit in the US is that it is just that - a spirit, not a total, coherent ideology. Independence of thought, the pioneer spirit, hostility to government tyranny above all else - that stuff is bedrock American. Bedrock. Every American is a little bit libertarian, and people from other countries even admire it, in some ways. It's the kind of conservatism we can ALL agree on, to some extent. It's part of our character. I actually haven't read Koz's post, and for all I know he makes a semi-hash of it (or doesn't). But he is canny enough to see something obvious, which is a great skill, and you have to give him that, FWIW.

Speaking of hostility to real government tyranny....American libertarianism, as a 'party', has really revealed its basic (practical) worth in the last few years. I know and/or keep in touch and argue with several 'brand' libertarians, and their effective insouciance about PATRIOT 1 & 2, all the Bush madness, etc. really showed what a cul de sac the 'party' (or brand) has found itself in. Many American Libertarians are really part libertarian, part authoritarian. Seems like a contradiction in terms to me. My, my. Eccentric, aren't we?

Libertarianism (small l) is too important to be left to Libertarians. What is essentially a 'hobby' (theoretical) party has hijacked the very concept.

Posted by: jonnybutter on October 11, 2006 10:51 PM

I completely agree that "selfishness is encoded into every strand of DNA in the universe." That is why we the people sometime need the coercive power of the government to get others to do the right thing. When selfishness is aligned with the public interest, like it is in the matching of corporate payroll deductions to employees' W-4s or like it is in programs like social security's connection of payroll deductions by all to future benefits for all, that's when government works best.

Libertarianism is for teenagers who live with their parents, playing Dungeons & Dragons and imagining that they are fierce independent actors who depend on no one else. I was a bit of libertarian when I was 13. Then I grew up.

Posted by: Sean on October 11, 2006 10:55 PM

What is essentially a 'hobby' (theoretical) party has hijacked the very concept.

OK, 'hijacked' is not quite right. It's more of a default thing. I don't think Libertarians are sitting around trying to figure out how to hijack anything. I'm saying that they happen to have the name, and are inadequate to the total concept. Not their fault. After all, the LP is the classic anti-party.

Posted by: jonnybutter on October 11, 2006 11:35 PM

Sean

"Libertarianism is for teenagers who live with their parents, playing Dungeons & Dragons and imagining that they are fierce independent actors who depend on no one else. I was a bit of libertarian when I was 13. Then I grew up."

Nonsense! Libertarians are people who have to endured tyrannical Communism. If you have to experience a tenth of what I experienced - famine, extreme poverty, political oppression - you would be a libertarian too. F.A. Hayek is the greatest intellectual influencing my thought, but not because his argument sound good, but because it explained my reality. It explaines why I went to bed hungry at a child. It explains the long line at the governmetn cooperative waiting to buy half kilogram of rotten rice. It explains why father was detained and tortured.

Distrusting the state is not irrational. It is only irrational to people who never experience the terrible power of the state. One day if I can invent a machine that allow other to experience my life (especially my childhood under Communism), they will all be libertarian.

Posted by: Minh-Duc on October 11, 2006 11:41 PM

"You just want the government to regulate "harms", but you prejudicially select which "harms" will or will not count as legal harms.

Well, yes. You seem to be arguing that arbitrary discrimination between which non goods or harms constitute legal harms & should be regulated by the state is beyond the pale; ignoring that societies that are hardly libertarian do it all the time.

"The harm to the environment counts, but not the harm that results when individuals enter "voluntary" labor arrangements for below minimum wage that tend to reduce the well-being of laborers as a group?"

So, is your reasoning for the imposition of federal minimum wage laws that allowing someone to voluntarily enter a labor contract for sub-minimum wages will lessen the well being of laborers as a group? Do you mean in terms of wages?

"You seem upset about having to pay individuals a minimum wage since this interferes with their voluntary consent. But a right to a minimum wage law is just the same as a right not to have your house destroyed: both are state entitlements enforced through state coercion."

In the same sense a right to the posession & accruement of private property & say, the right to half-priced goods, if such a right existed, are both state entitlements enforced by the coercive state, but clearly one is more perverse & problematic than the other.

You seem to be making a backwards argument that, because the same measures I.E. state authority, that are used to protect liberal rights, such as my liberty to procure apples & secure my possession of them from theft, are also used to enforce illiberal rights, such as my "right" to apples priced at half their real market value, that there is essentially no difference between them. This is a flawed assumption.

Posted by: DRR on October 12, 2006 12:23 AM

In the beginning, the liberals were the libertarians, and the conservatives the authoritarians. And it was good.

But then came Andrew Jackson. The idea of limited government and federalism was corrupted by the politics of slavery, and perverted by the interests of the (northern, largely) financier elite.

The Kos wing of the Democratic Party in some sense reclaims the left-libertarian roots of the Democratic(-Republican) Party. These are liberals in the tradition of Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson more than the tradition of Mr. Bryan or Mr. Roosevelt.

Posted by: Linus on October 12, 2006 12:36 AM

STJoe - Thanks for being around to make all these decisions for us. I understand your belief that laborers in this country are too weak/stupid to make their own decisions regarding labor contracts. That's why we need the government to step in and make these decisions for us. That is exactly the philosophy we "unprincipled" libertarians object to. People make stupid decisions, so we should protect them from their own stupid decisions by convening a bunch of fat white assholes in Washington DC and charging them with making decisions for the people. Democrats and republicans both believe, magically, that said conglomeration of fat white assholes is not subject to the same risk of bad decisions.

I think you missed my point entirely, which is not surprising for somebody who has been brainwashed by one of the "big tent" parties. I don't want government making my decisions for me. In my example, I don't want the government making decisions for the employer or for the employee. Let them come to an agreement. If the employer is not willing to pay more than $5/hour for labor, and the employee is not willing to work for less than $6, then an agreement will not be reached, and that's OK! However, if someone is willing to work for $5/hour, why should the government step in and say, "Whoa stupid, you're making a bad decision, and we can't let you do that. We're going to have to take over this situation."

Again, the reason libertarians will never stay permanently in the democratic party is your hatred of business and markets. I assume you support the right to gay marriage. You probably think, "Why should the government make that decision, which should be made by two people that love each other?" Why wouldn't you apply that same line of reasoning to other voluntary actions? What about state minimum pricing for cigarettes? If I'm willing to sell the cigarettes for $2 plus tax, and he's willing to buy them for that amount, why should the state step in and say the minimum price is $3 plus tax?

The answer to the rhetoricals above is that your ideology is based on inconsistent principles. You think that some voluntary unharmful actions should be regulated and others shouldn't, but your party's leaders get to decide based on their personal beliefs. Dare I say this makes you unprincipled?

Libertarians support your right, even though you're unprincipled, to buy or sell smokey-treats for $2, to refuse to pay $6/hour for an employee, to refuse to take a job that pays less than $6, to smoke pot, to sell a kidney to the highest bidder, to marry someone of the same sex, some of us even support your right to marry several people of the same or different sexes, as long as all parties are willing and voluntary participants in the situation.

Posted by: Mike on October 12, 2006 10:43 AM

A right to half-priced goods is a little incoherent, but... essentially, yes, I agree with what you just wrote. The grant of one right might be more preferable to the other, but you can't make the distinction based on a freedom/coercion distinction.

I make no such assumption. I think there are good reasons to protect personal property from theft. I am pointing out that these rights involve coercion, just as any other right, if it is to be meaningful, must be backed by coercion. Therefore selecting which rights are good and which are bad on the basis of which rights are "free" and which are "coerced" is incoherent.

I'm a bit unclear about what you mean, I was simply saying that libertarians and their ideological descendents adhere to a "harm principle" but then make odd, self-serving selections about what counts as a 'harm'.

If you want to cut to the chase, my endpoint is that what appears naturally private is actually produced and maintained by social power. Protecting a private sphere is only possible by eliminating government altogether.

Some will bite that bullet. Others will realize that all rights must be justified by social utility or welfare considerations, not a blinding focus on maximal liberty. It's not a matter of whether you want coercion or freedom in your society. It's a matter of coercion on behalf of what.

Posted by: StJoe on October 12, 2006 10:45 AM

I didn't mean to get into another fire-fight with libertarians in which I get to deploy the same arguments I always make... I suppose I can't just get away scott-free with psychoanalyzing libertarians.

Mike:

(1) I see no reason for excluding voluntary contracts from the harm principle, and I believe that boneheadedly protecting all contracts leads to more overall suffering -- our law of contracts has, for over a century, recognized this principle in doctrines such as unconscionability and more recently in implied terms of merchantability (i.e. the government entitles you to things you never contracted for because yes, we often don't have the time or business-savvy to negotiate for liability in the case of harm.) In that sense, it's not white fat guys in Congress, but white fat jurists in black robes that deserve your ire.

(2) Regarding gay marriage, I happen to think the situation extends far beyond "two people chose to do such and such and should be respected". I don't deny that their are third-party harms that result from this voluntary, consensual act -- people will be offended and harmed on their own terms. I believe that in spite of this, these unions deserve to be promoted, recognized, and dignified by partaking in a tradition that has meaning far beyond legal status. You see, unlike a libertarian, I am willing to take substantive stands on these issues, rather than deferring to a free/coerced distinction that formalizes everything into neat categories that turn out to have no basis in reality.

Posted by: StJoe on October 12, 2006 11:05 AM

I realize my first point is unclear. I intended to say that in a competitive market, how one individual contracts for wages will effect the bargaining position of others in the labor market. That is the harm that is being regulated. See game theory: prisoner's dilemma.

That's not to say that the current labor laws are justified, just that labor laws should not be off-limits to the state. The state, after all, has always played a significant role in constructing the bargaining power of both labor and capital. Tort liability against an employer is a grant of wealth from capital to labor. Immunity from liability is a grant of wealth from labor to capital. There is literally no way for the state to "keep out".

Therefore, refusing to legislate a minimum wage law is just choosing to continue to deploy force on behalf of a regime that privileges capital.

Posted by: StJoe on October 12, 2006 11:33 AM

One minor quibble.

Matt says:

to cheap exploitation of natural resources (lumber, coal, metals, grazing) on federally-owned land, these are people who very much enjoy sucking on the federal teat.

The original 13 states have hardly any federal owned land in them at all, not suprisingly since they predate the federal govt. If the original plan of letting in new states in on a completely equal basis were piously adhered to, when the new states were created, the federal lands in them would have reverted to the new stats.

Except for things like military bases, there is absolutely no purely public reason whatsoever as to why the feds own any land whatsoever in any of the states. Montana and other states with large amounts of federally owned land in them aren't being subsidized by the feds, the feds (or more exactly the people of the other 49 states) are being subsidized by Montana.

Posted by: j mct on October 12, 2006 12:38 PM

@ Dreaming Ape
Anachro-capitalist and Classical Conservatives have been silent? Their views are not aired by NBC or your local newspaper but nobody has argued more intelligently against Bush's policies than these two groups. Read Lew Rockwell and the American Conservative for a couple of months and then decide. Unlike the spineless Democrats they have been against the Iraq war from before day 1! The argued against doing it and once we did it...they have been arguing for us to get out. As a Classical Conservative myself I would have actually voted for the Democrats if any of them had a spine. Maybe a Russ Feingold type...but he has a true conviction in his beliefs that will relegate him to the back of the bus in your political party. The republicans have been in power because they won the majority of the people over with libertarian rhethoric. Matt underestimates their numbers. Most independents have at least some (maybe not all) libertarian beliefs. The Contract With America was a good selling point. If the democrats came up with a similar plan with libertarian rhetoric they would win in a landslide. The Republicas have been so pathetic the Dems might squeek out a victory without it. That's just my take though. Saw a link here from my friend Balko. Amusing thread.

Posted by: goldhorder on October 12, 2006 02:43 PM

Sorry Matthew, not convincing, most of the Libertarians I know actually work for the government or for a government contractor. Similarly, all of those who receive those government subsidies love to rail against the government. Western State Libertarians either say those programs they benefit from are different or that they will get off the teat when everyone else does. Hypocrisy is epidemic.

Posted by: Gary Denton on October 12, 2006 06:20 PM

A couple points about votes:

1. The overwhelming majority of voters don't make principled votes, where ever they lie on the political spectrum, so it's hardly surprising that western voters are as concerned with subsidies they benefit from as the libertarian prinicples they may hold. I think this is often lost sight of by bloggers and commenters because most of us are in that small fraction that does.

2. In close races, even small amounts of votes matter. Kerry probably picked up around 2% from libertarian-positioned (as opposed to self-identifying, which is probably smaller) voters' disillusionment with Bush compared to '00. Making small concessions or even emphasizing areas where liberals and libertarians agree may help swing a few elections, especially in more libertarian-orientated areas.

On a more philosophical note, in On Liberty Mill drew a distinction between what we should as individuals do our best to persuade a person not to do and what a government should prevent a person from doing. Mill assigned social and commercial ostracism by private actors to the first category but not the second - I think one of the major differences that is between liberals and libertarians that is often overlooked compared to the spilt on social welfare is that libertarians believe there are more issues that should be approached in this way. The consequence of this is often that differences of means are often mistaken for differences of values.

Posted by: MattXIV on October 12, 2006 07:32 PM

"Libertarian" == "conservative college student who still has hopes of sleeping with liberal women"

Cranky

Posted by: Cranky Observer on October 13, 2006 12:00 PM

j mct -

This isn't a "minor quibble." To the contrary, it's a huge factor. I wonder how many people realize that the Constitution actually stipulates that the federal government shall own only those places "purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be," and that it explicitly limits those places to "needful buildings." The drafters, in fact, thought this was so important enough that, rather than leave the definition of "needful buildings" to the imagination, they even took the step of providing examples: "Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, [and] dock-Yards."

The fact is that, as the U.S. spread west, the government realized something the founders clearly hadn't anticipated: Congress could require land giveaways as a *requirement* of statehood in the first place. So as you go west, you see more and more land claimed, until you reach Alaska which is an astounding SIXTY PERCENT federal land. Go ahead, tell me the founders anticipated *that* scenario!

So the "westerners are a bunch of hypocritical teat sucklers" argument always makes me laugh. Tell you what -- let's say Matt's crowd offered to cut all those subsidies, etc., and in return give the land back to the states. There isn't a single western state that wouldn't sign that deal before it could be laid flat on the table.

The eastern states get the *benefit* of having all that federal land, without having to *sacrifice* anything for it. Of course they want to lock up the resources -- they don't have to pay the opportunity costs of doing so.

- Alaska Jack

Posted by: Alaska Jack on October 13, 2006 02:06 PM

But Alaska Jack, if we look at how the individual states came into the Union as the negotiating of individual different contracts between the states and the government, the federal land aspect is simply nothing more than one clause of a contract.

In short, if you didn't like it, you should have squawked back then. Your beef should be with your negotiators, not the federal government.

After all, isn't that the basis of Libertarianism--negotiated contracts between parties?

Posted by: tzs on October 14, 2006 05:44 PM

tzs -

You can't possibly believe that, can you? I mean, that Libertarians would consider the Federal Government to be just another "party" to a contract?

Quite clearly, the government holds all the cards when dealing with members of a territory who desire the benefits of statehood. I think my central point stands: The founders simply didn't envision a set of circumstances in which the federal government would begin using those cards to extract concessions from territorial residents who desired statehood. And that the concessions it required would grow ever more massive as time went by, and the feds realized there was simply no mechanism in place to restrain them.

- AJ

Posted by: Alaska Jack on October 16, 2006 09:11 PM

StJoe wrote:
The blindspot of libertarianism is that the "rights of Englishman" are privileged and reified, whereas post-New Deal rights are seen as illegitimate. In fact, they all implicate state power, they all can be characterized as "positive" rights in some sense, and they all can be conceived of as "handouts". For reasons unrelated to geometric-style theoretical reasoning, they are not treated the same.

StJoe, I don't believe anyone actually ignores that it is state power employed!

Libertarians do make a logical distinction, not a preferrential one, between natural (or negative) rights and political (or positive) rights.

I would describe it thus, (briefly)... individuals inherently are each their own "warrant and sanction on their own life" (to paraphrase Ayn Rand). The right to live one's own life is the basis by which any individual, in a primitive state of being, is justified in using force, if necessary, in the defense against aggression, to protect against threats to life. Legitimate state power is derived from this individual right to life and granted by the people to the state as an extension of each individual as agent in justice and defense.

Libertarians declare that rights created out of political power, even majority vote, to allow the state to act in ways which an individual acting alone could not morally justify are therefore illegitimate.

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