At some time in the 1990s they turned into the Party of Sex, Drugs & Rock’n’Roll, attracting Dems who want to “turn on, tune in, & drop out”. I saw it myself here when Colofornia legalized weed, and all sorts of Bay Area tech companies suddenly opened up Boulder remote offices. (Never in Greely or Pueblo or Grand Jct. for some reason…) The current governor of Califrado still tries to claim he’s “libertarian”, when he pushes for more taxes and regulation and gov’t interference in personal matters like baking wedding cakes.
At some point you have to align your “principles” with the real world, and settle for less than perfection. I think realizing that is when people have finally grown up. (And not choose your allies based on how yucky or kewl they are.) The Libertarians have never done that, and usually have ended up helping elect people who were the least likely to advance their principles, other than the important social libertine-ism of Sex, Drugs & Rock’n’Roll. People who called themselves “libertarian” who only cared about the expansion of their own liberties, even the expense of others losing theirs (especially The Other). That’s whom the Libertarians have been attracting this century.
I think the author, Randy Barnett mostly misses the point.
Libertarians being agnostic on virtue is a virtue not a vice. The philosophy recognizes that there will be a lot of topics where there will widespread near permanent disagreement on what is a virtue. So I don’t agree on the first point.
The second is an important one that I agree with. Perfect is the enemy of good enough. It’s painfully clear that society isn’t coming around to the libertarian ideal through a combination of adverse psychology of many people and conflict of interest. Thus, to insist on achieving the optimal libertarian system is to ignore reality – particularly that there’s a huge portion of humanity who just won’t go along with that.
(If you think you have a great system, then try it first before attempting to enshrine it in society at large. That way you can learn how to make it work as well as figure out ways to get more people on board with your ideas.)
What can be done at the society level is one can make a lot of common sense moves that make society freer and just better overall. Let’s do stuff that will work for all of us rather than try for ideological perfection.
On point three, civil rights isn’t that hard to add in, and I suspect a lot of libertarians already recognize many of civil rights that Mr. Barnett wants. But keep in mind that rights can be used to destroy rights. For glaring example, the Communist right of “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” – that is, everyone has a right to demand fulfillment of their personal needs from their fellow citizens – is notorious as a rights destroyer.
On point four, I can see some need to diversify one’s categorization of political characteristics from a limited “public-private” distinction. But one needs more than just another bit flag that doesn’t really add much. Consider, for example, the US or UK versions of the Freedom of Information Act. Each FOIA acts in similar fashion. One can request data of rather broad sorts (including communication records) from the government subject to a number of exceptions which I believe are similar for each version. In the US case, government can refuse to deliver information when national security is at stake. I can’t demand the current nuclear launch codes. This would be in Barnett’s terms, a government-private item. But government can also refuse to deliver information if it contains trade secrets or a valid NDA with a private party. Government-(nongovernment-private) perhaps? Even for these two bit flags, things get complicated.
Legally, government-private is very different from nongovernment-private. Snooping around in Area 51 has much more serious legal consequences than snooping around someone’s window. The pigeon holes don’t add much.
Finally, I just don’t buy that libertarians should be all that worried about corporate state fascism. For example, Barnett’s example of a cartel of cell phone operators canceling/blocking phone use can be countered often by normal lawsuits. Unless they advertised their services as cancel-happy, and you signed up for the service in agreement with that condition, you have them on false advertising fraud, and/or breaking the contract. And of course, one can create a new cell phone service to pick up the canceled users. Government on the other hand has considerable barrier to entry. One isn’t able to pick and choose between governments without the extremely expensive process of picking up and moving, or perhaps overthrowing the present government with greater military force.
If one looks at historical examples of powerful corporations, they are all state-backed by relatively powerful states, such as the East India Company or the Congo Free State. That’s the attack surface for corporations. Not that they’ll all gang up on their own initiative and cancel you for speechcrime, but rather that a government will coordinate actions of corporations and provide large carrots and sticks to push things along.
He asked, “If you had a choice between a world of more liberty and less property, or more property and less liberty, what would you choose?” After pausing a moment, I answered, “More property.” This was, after all, the Rothbardian libertarian answer. “Well,” he replied, “then you’re not a libertarian. You’re a propertarian.”
I think that was a bad answer. It missed a key point. You need certain liberties in order to have property. You also need to limit certain liberties in order to have property. For example, there’s not much point to having a right to steal each others’ stuff. You can’t use property for long term planning – eventually someone will steal it from you, then you’ll need to redirect your efforts to stealing property again in order to return to where you were. So that’s an easy liberty to relinquish for the sake of property.
Now, suppose you relinquish instead your right to keep your property – say the government can take it whenever they want. They might leave things along most of the time. It’s a hassle to take property and do something with it. But sooner or later, they’ll take it. Maybe they needed some more stuff or space for their next five year plan. Maybe some bureaucrat got greedy and is enriching themselves at your expense. But you gave up a key right that made your property yours, much less useful to you.
Ultimately, this is a problem with a lot of criticism of libertarian ideology. The real problem is common insistence on perfection, not that they aren’t say treating the threat of corporations with the level of gravity that the author would prefer. Frankly, I’d be happy to curb government power, spending, and reduce regulations to a sensible base. There’s a lot of low lying fruit that libertarians could help pick.
Just keep in mind that even if you manage to achieve these sensible goals, you are far from convincing your fellow humans to go along with a firmer libertarian system.
Politically I am quite libertarian.
However, I gave up on the Libertarian Party after 9/11 when the party leadership was announcing the US deserved the attacks
Pretty much the same here.
At some time in the 1990s they turned into the Party of Sex, Drugs & Rock’n’Roll, attracting Dems who want to “turn on, tune in, & drop out”. I saw it myself here when Colofornia legalized weed, and all sorts of Bay Area tech companies suddenly opened up Boulder remote offices. (Never in Greely or Pueblo or Grand Jct. for some reason…) The current governor of Califrado still tries to claim he’s “libertarian”, when he pushes for more taxes and regulation and gov’t interference in personal matters like baking wedding cakes.
At some point you have to align your “principles” with the real world, and settle for less than perfection. I think realizing that is when people have finally grown up. (And not choose your allies based on how yucky or kewl they are.) The Libertarians have never done that, and usually have ended up helping elect people who were the least likely to advance their principles, other than the important social libertine-ism of Sex, Drugs & Rock’n’Roll. People who called themselves “libertarian” who only cared about the expansion of their own liberties, even the expense of others losing theirs (especially The Other). That’s whom the Libertarians have been attracting this century.
Party on, dudes!
I think the author, Randy Barnett mostly misses the point.
Libertarians being agnostic on virtue is a virtue not a vice. The philosophy recognizes that there will be a lot of topics where there will widespread near permanent disagreement on what is a virtue. So I don’t agree on the first point.
The second is an important one that I agree with. Perfect is the enemy of good enough. It’s painfully clear that society isn’t coming around to the libertarian ideal through a combination of adverse psychology of many people and conflict of interest. Thus, to insist on achieving the optimal libertarian system is to ignore reality – particularly that there’s a huge portion of humanity who just won’t go along with that.
(If you think you have a great system, then try it first before attempting to enshrine it in society at large. That way you can learn how to make it work as well as figure out ways to get more people on board with your ideas.)
What can be done at the society level is one can make a lot of common sense moves that make society freer and just better overall. Let’s do stuff that will work for all of us rather than try for ideological perfection.
On point three, civil rights isn’t that hard to add in, and I suspect a lot of libertarians already recognize many of civil rights that Mr. Barnett wants. But keep in mind that rights can be used to destroy rights. For glaring example, the Communist right of “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” – that is, everyone has a right to demand fulfillment of their personal needs from their fellow citizens – is notorious as a rights destroyer.
On point four, I can see some need to diversify one’s categorization of political characteristics from a limited “public-private” distinction. But one needs more than just another bit flag that doesn’t really add much. Consider, for example, the US or UK versions of the Freedom of Information Act. Each FOIA acts in similar fashion. One can request data of rather broad sorts (including communication records) from the government subject to a number of exceptions which I believe are similar for each version. In the US case, government can refuse to deliver information when national security is at stake. I can’t demand the current nuclear launch codes. This would be in Barnett’s terms, a government-private item. But government can also refuse to deliver information if it contains trade secrets or a valid NDA with a private party. Government-(nongovernment-private) perhaps? Even for these two bit flags, things get complicated.
Legally, government-private is very different from nongovernment-private. Snooping around in Area 51 has much more serious legal consequences than snooping around someone’s window. The pigeon holes don’t add much.
Finally, I just don’t buy that libertarians should be all that worried about corporate state fascism. For example, Barnett’s example of a cartel of cell phone operators canceling/blocking phone use can be countered often by normal lawsuits. Unless they advertised their services as cancel-happy, and you signed up for the service in agreement with that condition, you have them on false advertising fraud, and/or breaking the contract. And of course, one can create a new cell phone service to pick up the canceled users. Government on the other hand has considerable barrier to entry. One isn’t able to pick and choose between governments without the extremely expensive process of picking up and moving, or perhaps overthrowing the present government with greater military force.
If one looks at historical examples of powerful corporations, they are all state-backed by relatively powerful states, such as the East India Company or the Congo Free State. That’s the attack surface for corporations. Not that they’ll all gang up on their own initiative and cancel you for speechcrime, but rather that a government will coordinate actions of corporations and provide large carrots and sticks to push things along.
I think that was a bad answer. It missed a key point. You need certain liberties in order to have property. You also need to limit certain liberties in order to have property. For example, there’s not much point to having a right to steal each others’ stuff. You can’t use property for long term planning – eventually someone will steal it from you, then you’ll need to redirect your efforts to stealing property again in order to return to where you were. So that’s an easy liberty to relinquish for the sake of property.
Now, suppose you relinquish instead your right to keep your property – say the government can take it whenever they want. They might leave things along most of the time. It’s a hassle to take property and do something with it. But sooner or later, they’ll take it. Maybe they needed some more stuff or space for their next five year plan. Maybe some bureaucrat got greedy and is enriching themselves at your expense. But you gave up a key right that made your property yours, much less useful to you.
Ultimately, this is a problem with a lot of criticism of libertarian ideology. The real problem is common insistence on perfection, not that they aren’t say treating the threat of corporations with the level of gravity that the author would prefer. Frankly, I’d be happy to curb government power, spending, and reduce regulations to a sensible base. There’s a lot of low lying fruit that libertarians could help pick.
Just keep in mind that even if you manage to achieve these sensible goals, you are far from convincing your fellow humans to go along with a firmer libertarian system.